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BONUS: A loveless landslide, with Stephen Conroy and Michael Kroger
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The incumbent Labor government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has won a second term in office. Whilst the result was expected, the magnitude of the victory was not. Why did it go so wrong for the Coalition, and how did Labor pull it out of the bag, after trailing in the polls only two months ago?
Will raised these questions with Michael Kroger, former Victorian Liberal Party President, and Stephen Conroy, former Communications Minister in the Rudd government. The interview was originally recorded for the UK edition of The Spectator. You can watch the interview here.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Read The Spectator Australia here.
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Transcript
Media Scare Tactics and Election Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
So please, you know, these scare campaigns about, you know, frightening old and sick people, you guys had a picture of a woman eating, a pensioner eating dog food on the front of page of, you know, national newspapers. So just stop it.
00:00:13
Speaker
dont
00:00:18
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Spectator TV. My name is Will Kingston. I host Fire at Will, a podcast from the Australian edition of The Spectator on politics and culture.
00:00:30
Speaker
Australians went to the polls on the weekend and it was a stunning result. Most people were predicting a relatively tight race. It wasn't. The incumbent Labor government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, won a majority, a staggering 87 seats. You need 76 to form a government in Australia.
00:00:51
Speaker
There was some thought that they would need to form a minority government in order to squeak through. It really was landslide. In fact, it was the first time since the Federation of Australia that a first-term government has had a swing towards it.
00:01:07
Speaker
in its first term. A truly
Labor's Victory and Coalition's Loss
00:01:10
Speaker
astonishing success and it raises questions for the opposition Liberal and National parties, collectively the coalition, who seem to be now devoid of a purpose.
00:01:22
Speaker
To help me understand what just happened in an extraordinary weekend of Australian politics, I'm delighted to be joined by Michael Kroger, former head of the Liberal Party in Victoria, and Stephen Conroy, former communications minister in the Rudd government.
00:01:40
Speaker
Michael, Stephen, thank you very much for taking the time. A particular thank you, Michael. These election wash-ups are always worse for one person relative to the other, and Stephen has ah has won out this time.
00:01:53
Speaker
i will ah i will start with you, Michael. Did the Labor Party win this election, or did the coalition lose it? Yeah, very good question. Predominantly, Labor won it and we partly lost it. So overwhelmingly, Labor won the election because um they ran a brilliant negative campaign against the coalition and the coalition's positive plan wasn't strong enough.
00:02:22
Speaker
side So basically, as is the case in Britain with the Conservative Party, our number one brand equity here in the Liberal Party and the National Party is in Australia. is economic management and tax policy ah and you know debt deficit, management of the budget, management of the Australian economy.
00:02:43
Speaker
So effectively, we weren't strong enough on that at all. We had no serious plan for dealing with debt or deficit, no serious policy for reform, change. There was no change agenda.
00:02:54
Speaker
And in the end, we ran on a couple of policies, which was cheaper petrol, and a $1,200 tax handout next year for people. Well, increase, and that led to our forecast for the next two years of increasing the size of the national ah budget deficit.
00:03:12
Speaker
Well, if you'd said to people who didn't know which party's policies do you think they are, people would probably said, well, I think they're probably the Labor Party, giving away free money to people and increasing the deficit, that'd be Labor. So I thought our our tax offering was, and an economic offering was very poor and not strong enough to, to you know,
00:03:34
Speaker
usher you through a whole campaign. On the other hand, Labor ran a very effective campaign as they do every 10 years to say that the Liberal Party youre going to basically close down the national health system. um And people got concerned by that, obviously. They believed it, as they did in the 2016 election, which was a slight variation of it.
00:03:51
Speaker
They associated us with Donald Trump, said that we are you know Trump-like, which was a great irony because today, our reliquant Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has had a phone call with Donald Trump who says what a great bloke Albanese was and he didn't know the opposition leader. I felt like ah felt like saying, him well, I wonder if Albo told him that one of the reasons he won the election was because he got all these people to say how much they all hated Donald Trump. I i don't know whether Albo mentioned that in his call with the President this morning, but That having been said. So they're the principal reasons. it's Weak policy offering by us on our number one brand equity and a very strong negative campaign by Labor, which absolutely landed.
00:04:29
Speaker
Look, think Michael's summed up a lot of the issues. He's avoided criticising Dutton's actual performance during the campaign. And and that's because Michael's very decent human being.
00:04:40
Speaker
But, know, we normally say politics, who won the last week? And Dutton didn't win a single week of the five-week campaign. But it's worse than that. I don't remember a single day that Dutton won. So you might say, OK, he won that day and that day this week, but lost the overall win.
00:04:56
Speaker
I don't remember a single day where Dutton won. His performance was full of stumbles, backflips, disastrous policy announcements that they reversed within a reasonable period.
00:05:08
Speaker
ah And as Michael said, their tax policies were a shambles. um I couldn't tell how shocked I was, to Michael's point, when you read the fine print of their costumes and discovered they were going to have too big a budget deficit than Labor for the next two years.
00:05:25
Speaker
So i think Albo came out from Christmas. You know, Paul Erickson, our national secretary, devised a strategy going forward for those three or four months in the lead up to the election.
00:05:38
Speaker
And Albo prosecuted it ah to the letter he didn't. have during the campaign any he stumbles. And one of the great fear behind the scenes was that Albo had done not his best performance in that first campaign.
00:05:54
Speaker
People famously remember he had a disastrous first week, caught COVID the second week. And so there was behind the scenes nervousness. But by the time he got to the campaign, he was bouncing, he was confident, and he barely put a foot wrong for the entire campaign.
00:06:14
Speaker
But one of
Leadership Quality and Public Perception
00:06:15
Speaker
the other factors that went largely unnoticed was that Peter Dutton was the most unpopular person to run for prime minister in a long time. Dutton's rating of minus 30, you know, the approve-disapprove metric, he was on minus 30.
00:06:31
Speaker
That was more than Scott Morrison was on three years ago. So, know, Peter Dutton was more and popular across Australia than Scott Morrison. And that's a very good thing to say.
00:06:43
Speaker
Michael, I'll i'll unleash here. I agree with what Stephen's just said, but I also think Albo is pretty underwhelming compared to the Hawks, the Keatings, the Menzies, the Howards of times gone by. I think Dutton was underwhelming. It feels like across the board in Australian politics, we are not producing the types of leaders we once did. I think Dutton is a good political operator. i think Albanese is a good political operator. I don't think either of them are within a a ah They're not anywhere near those names that mentioned before. Why are we not producing leaders like we once did?
00:07:17
Speaker
No, I think that's quite right. um Look, I'm sure Albo is, you know, a good fellow to have a beer with. But you've got to remember that up until six weeks ago in Australia, um Labor were behind in the polls. They had been and behind in the polls for most of the previous year and a half.
00:07:33
Speaker
So the public's view of Albo was this guy is not all that good. I think there was a clear majority of voters in answer to the question, does the government deserve to be re-elected? clear majority of voters said no in a number of polls, but he got re-elected.
00:07:48
Speaker
So I think a lot of people are turned off by the the whole political process these days. And, you know, you're finding it harder and harder to get absolutely quality people.
00:07:59
Speaker
I mean, look, as I said, I'm sure Alvin's a nice bloke, but he's not, you know, he he he's a number seven batsman. That's that's that's what he
Challenges in Political Diversity and Female Representation
00:08:07
Speaker
is. He's not a wicketkeeper either. He's just a number seven bat who who they send in to open. And, um you know, he's run a good effective campaign, a weak government, but an effective campaign and got himself re-elected.
00:08:19
Speaker
Well, look, I mean, Michael liked to talk about, know, the failings of, you know, Anthony Alvanezzi without... recognizing the other side of the equation, which was just the extraordinarily poor performance and unpopularity Peter Dutton. I mean, Michael replied, bloke, he's not going to give Dutts the hard time, but it just if you're reading the papers in in the last few days, people are unloading them on him in the Liberal Party about what a shocking campaign it was, how they wouldn't even poll in his own seat because they were too scared to tell him because he'd lose confidence.
00:08:55
Speaker
ah The pollsters that were advising him were, it's now been revealed that they waited it for what was referred to as the voice referendum. i mean, this this was a disastrous campaign, disastrous polling giving him advice.
00:09:13
Speaker
And and I think one of the other factors, i think Michael would agree, is that Mark Latham and John Howards ultimately voted to abolish the parliamentary ah superannuation or pension ah for politicians.
00:09:30
Speaker
And many would argue that since that, you've seen a lower quality candidates on both sides. Obviously, I'll disagree with that on the Labor side.
00:09:41
Speaker
We've got lots of high quality people. But it makes it particularly hard to attract people who earn good money in the private sector. So there's no question I think that is the case.
00:09:53
Speaker
And, of course, ah one of the big problems the Liberals have is attracting women to their party to run. And I know they had one of the better efforts this time to run largely marginal seats, but there's almost no women left in the parliamentary party, whereas Labor's now hit 50%.
00:10:12
Speaker
And we've now got a far better representation of multiculturalism, ah male, female. So were we've you know been able to achieve a broad diversity across that looks more like ordinary Australia than the Liberal Party on the other side, looks which looks largely like particularly older white males.
00:10:36
Speaker
Well, Michael,
Election Strategies and Voter Influence
00:10:37
Speaker
i'll I'll continue on this theme because I was reading this morning in the Sydney Morning Herald from Charlotte Mortlock. This election, I believe we had the highest calibre of female Liberal candidates ever.
00:10:48
Speaker
Unfortunately, they were forced to sell a shit sandwich.
00:10:53
Speaker
Does the Liberal Party have a problem with women and did that contribute to the loss here? Well, our vote amongst women is always um a bit lower than Labor's. Historically, that's always been in the case.
00:11:06
Speaker
We had a number of fantastic female candidates that didn't win, including people like Katie Allen in Chisholm. um So historically, um you know fewer women have voted for us, more men have voted for us. So make of that what you will.
00:11:20
Speaker
um The answer is the surf hits all swimmers. So the tide that hit us hit both the female candidates and male candidates and male members. what What was that tied, Michael? because could i Sorry to interrupt you, but this is the question that keeps going through my mind, and that is six weeks ago, the the coalition was leading in the polls, and I was listening to you, i was listening to Cosimaris on Sky News, and around two months ago, you were predicting a a coalition victory, and the turn was extraordinary around that six-week mark.
00:11:51
Speaker
What happened?
00:11:54
Speaker
So Medicare happened. So... you know As I said, for a year and a half, people thought the government was no good. Labor came out and said the coalition government will privatise effectively the national health.
00:12:06
Speaker
Sorry, well um will slash and burn funding for the national health system. And the Medicare card, which is our you know card you go to the doctor with, and which which means that, you know,
00:12:17
Speaker
a significant proportion of your fee is paid for by the government. That's going to be slashed and burned. Urgent care clinics, which are government run doctors clinics, they're going to be closed. um They scared the living daylights out of sick people, old people, infirm people into thinking that under a coalition government, their healthcare will be sadly diminished.
00:12:38
Speaker
um Now, you know, in Britain, how people judge the NHS to be um you know a great national institution. And of course, Boris Johnson was falling over himself to collect the NHS workers during and after COVID, et cetera, et cetera.
00:12:54
Speaker
And so to say basically that the California was going to smash smash the health system to bits, um caught everyone's attention. This has been a scare campaign for 30 years and sometimes it's worked and sometimes it hasn't.
00:13:06
Speaker
Stephen, do you think that's the reason for for why the the Labor Party got over the line? No, I think we played to our brand, which is, you know, Labor created Medicare, Labor will enhance and increase Medicare.
00:13:19
Speaker
And the Liberals, whenever they've had a chance, have nibbled away at it, tried to undermine it And Dutton was vulnerable from a period when he was the Australian health minister that he had attempted to make cutbacks.
00:13:35
Speaker
So we were were able to exploit that. But think there's two other factors that Michael hasn't mentioned. i in I think he got a mention earlier, but the Donald Trump factor was significant.
00:13:48
Speaker
from, i think, really the Zelensky Oval Office disgrace, followed up by, ah you know, the the tariff debacle.
00:14:00
Speaker
The major tariff debacle that captured attention, but in Australia it started before that because they were going to tax our steel. ah
Existential Crisis for the Coalition
00:14:08
Speaker
And Dutton made a big play that,
00:14:13
Speaker
We're from the same side of the political fence. We'll be able to deal with that with ah Trump better. you know, we've got all the connections. And he made a big play of attacking Albanese.
00:14:25
Speaker
And since November last year, the coalition had been cuddling up to Trump, saying how great he was, how his political agenda was so strong, how we used he defeated the woke debates.
00:14:38
Speaker
And so they really cuddled up to Trump. So suddenly they get this lunatic in the asylum running into the US and everybody is seeing it every day. People are looking at their superannuation pensions and they're going, the the chaos in the US markets. they're oh my God, my I've lost $50,000 in three days because of that idiot in the US.
00:15:02
Speaker
And the other factor which really, I think, helped Labor was in February, there was an interest rate cut. Now, the Liberals had run for years saying 12 interest rate increases.
00:15:16
Speaker
It's all Labor's fault. They can't control their spending. Inflation's high because of this. And so the Liberals were pitching backwards. They were saying, look how terrible the last three years have been But that interest rate reduction made Australians think, right, the worst is over.
00:15:33
Speaker
what How are we going to be... in the next three years. And I think the Liberals missed that pivot. And because of that, they were underprepared in policy. And Michael's spoken well about how poor the policy offering from the Liberals was. I mean, they left their defence policy to, you know, a week out.
00:15:53
Speaker
It was their second biggest, you know, monetary offering. They offered $21 billion. dollars And by then, almost half of the Australians had voted. Michael, let's let's let's look ahead now for both the next term of the Albanese government and the future of the Liberal and the National parties, collectively the coalition.
00:16:14
Speaker
This is a ah there's no two ways about it. This is a landslide. This is a devastating result. It is the first time there has been a swing towards an incumbent first term government since Federation.
00:16:25
Speaker
It is an incredible result, particularly given, as I imagine you would agree, Stephen may not, I think the the performance of the Albanese government was mixed at best, I would probably say underwhelming.
00:16:37
Speaker
ah Is this an existential problem for the Liberal Party? We're seeing reform in the UK potentially driving the Conservative Party ah out.
00:16:49
Speaker
ah Is there a chance that the Liberal Party is ah facing ah extinction in not in Australia? No, there's zero chance of that.
00:17:00
Speaker
um The history of Australian politics that we have this discussion every 10 years, usually about the other party. um I've been in many discussions over the years where I've been asked, you know, is this the end of the Labor Party?
00:17:14
Speaker
ah And every few years the wheel turns and it's now always to the end of the Liberal Party. No,
Economic Management and Fiscal Responsibility
00:17:19
Speaker
because... um um the The brand equities of the Liberal Party, which are which are economic management, national defence and security, and thirdly, a more democrat democratised workplace, industrial relations reform, those three brand equities are still very strong brand equities for the Liberal Party.
00:17:40
Speaker
Michael, are they though? like what What really has been done by the Liberal Party since Howard on any of those three things? but I'm thinking, like I can't really think of any great structural reforms in economics. I think, as Stephen said, defence policy came out a week before the election. Industrial relations, everyone's been scared since work choices.
00:17:57
Speaker
but other like why What is the the point of the Liberal Party today? I'm not sure that brand equity is still there. Yeah. No, that's ah that's ah that's a fair question. There will come a point in Australia, will there'll be there will come a point in Britain, there will come a point in America, there will come a point in every Western country where a leader is going to stand up to much unpopularity early on and say, enough debt is enough debt.
00:18:22
Speaker
We cannot keep driving these countries into debt, ah generation after generation and leave it all for our children down the track, right? um Government's now relying on inflation ah to to to reduce the value of of their indebtedness.
00:18:40
Speaker
um You know, these schemes that they have in Australia, we have this scheme where you can announce government spending, but it's because it's considered an investment, it's sort of on capital account.
00:18:50
Speaker
So it's not considered part of the budget profit and loss. So you can hide all these tens of billions of dollars expenditure on this mythical notion that they're going to be earn an economic return down the track so they're not part of a current expenditure all these funny money economic sort of schemes um these these make work schemes uh government trying to pick winners and so we've been through this debate for 30 or 40 years in the end you know governments will get hit by the economic reality stick of life And that's going to hit Australia as it is going to hit America. I mean, they've $36 trillion of debt. I mean, how long can this keep going on? So sooner or later, the Liberal Party will come out and say, this has got to stop.
00:19:31
Speaker
They're going to be the adults in the room. And what's happened over the last 10 years here, as it has in a lot of Western countries, is debt and deficit have increased. um lost currency as anything that young people need to worry about.
00:19:44
Speaker
There's an endless stream of money to be handed out by governments. ah Just add to that, it's no real problem. ah No one seems to worry about it, that it will never ever be paid off in our lifetimes. People think, well, as long as I get something.
00:19:56
Speaker
And then, of course, in Australia, they're told two things. We have this argument that Stephen's mob have, which is the coalition have secret cuts planned for you. So everyone gets scared about all these alleged secret cuts that that are coming, which is sort of, you know another way of saying don't vote for the coalition because your benefits might be might be taken away.
00:20:12
Speaker
So um this is the merry-go-round in Australian politics that we've been we've been going around for for, you know, more than a decade now. um And people are used to getting things from government. They rely on things from government. But sooner or later, we'll a Liberal Party leader is going to have to say enough of this. We can't keep going on driving these budget deficits into record levels. um mean, and in Australia, when when this fellow Albanese became Prime Minister in the twenty one twenty two budget, our debt here was billion Australian dollars. trillion.
00:20:47
Speaker
and in twenty eight twenty nine it's going to be one point two two three trillion so it's gone up three hundred and it's going to go out three hundred and twenty eight billion Australian dollars in a seven-year period. Well, that's just unsustainable.
00:20:59
Speaker
i mean, this stuff's unsustainable. Sooner or later, the Liberal bur Party will come out and take on debt, have the courage to do that, have the courage to campaign against this whole secret cuts to notion by saying to people, debt is unsustainable. It's unsustainable in your household. It's unsustainable for the nation and the public will in the end say, right, you're right. We've got to stop this age where everyone thinks the government can hand out money and there are no consequences.
00:21:24
Speaker
Stephen, I noticed that Michael said at some point in the future, the Liberal Party will start caring about fiscal responsibility again. And that is concerning to me because it implies, I think quite rightly, they don't at the moment.
00:21:37
Speaker
But at the same time, the Labor Party is spending like drunken sailors. They basically bribe their way to this election, paying off university debts and all that sort of stuff in a way that many people ah would would associate with a centre-left government.
00:21:52
Speaker
Why does the Labor Party not seem to care about this fiscal problem either? Look, I fundamentally reject your characterisation.
00:22:02
Speaker
Michael makes point about the size of debt. And all you have to do go 2022's budget and get Josh Frydenberg's budget out and have a look at his 10-year forecast for debt.
00:22:19
Speaker
Okay? And it was over a billion dollars. So Josh Frydenberg, in their last budget, remember they were going to be back in black? OK, you know, the COVID hit. But Josh Frydenberg's own budget forecast is incredible rise, which meant if they had won that election in 22, Josh Frydenberg would be dealing with this.
00:22:41
Speaker
So Michael tries to make point about debt and deficits, which his own party, were, I won't say guilty of, because the COVID crisis hit the world's economy.
00:22:56
Speaker
But to try and portray that this is somehow Labor's creation of a trillion dollars worth of debt. Now what Jim Chalmers is correct in saying is we've reduced the level of debt as it was going to be under Josh Frydenberg.
00:23:11
Speaker
So Labor has run two surpluses, which Michael just spits chips about. So we've retired some debt. So our trajectory on debt, despite it going over a trillion, is lower than Josh Frydenberg's trajectory. That's the first point.
00:23:28
Speaker
And secondly, very frustrating part of the economic debate is the last refuge of the economic charlatan is start quoting i numbers that have no meaning. So what i what I mean by that is you go, oh, the deficit's going to be $30 billion. OK, this is less than 2%, it's putting 1.5% and 2% of GDP.
00:23:53
Speaker
When you see the size of the Australian economy and you put it as a percentage, you realise that having ah deficit of 20, 30, 40 billion dollars is really quite trivial in the economic sense when you're measuring it against.
00:24:11
Speaker
But if you're the economic charlatan who's trying to make a political point here on the front page of a tabloid, you say 40 billion dollars this year, 40 billion dollars next year, it's unsustainable. It's not.
00:24:22
Speaker
So the idea that being a deficit is a bad thing is a is a ludicrous notion. If you do it over time and you have no capacity to repay, then, you know, a household would have a problem.
00:24:38
Speaker
But governments have the ability to create money, to have the reserve power to increase taxation. And so you cannot measure a household against a government and an economy. They are fundamentally different.
00:24:56
Speaker
So please, you know, these scare campaigns about you know, frightening old sick people, you guys out a picture of a woman eating, a pensioner eating dog food on the front page of, you know, national newspapers. So just stop it.
00:25:12
Speaker
Michael, it sounds like we shouldn't worry about the deficit. Why are you being an economic charlatan?
00:25:18
Speaker
Well, because, um you know, as we know, Economics 101 says that if you keep increasing the size of the national debt, you increase the size of the national annual interest payments or monthly interest payments, depending on the kind of bond you've issued.
00:25:35
Speaker
um and that eats up ah monies that would perhaps be allocated elsewhere. ah You can't keep spending beyond your capacity to raise money. And if you keep spending, you have to keep increasing taxes. If you increase taxes, we know what happens. And apart from everything else, the business will go offshore from Australia. We have massively high energy prices here.
00:25:58
Speaker
People will go offshore. Capital's mobile. Businesses are mobile. Personnel are mobile. So you've got to have a competitive country at the minute. Australia is becoming less competitive.
00:26:09
Speaker
ah And, you know, like the Americans, you know, why is Trump on this Doge train? And why are other Western governments seriously concerned about their debt levels? It's because it's unsustainable. I mean, we've seen what's happened in Africa and South America decades ago where you have unsustainable debt levels. i mean go boom and You can't do it in a household. You just can't have a credit card that has no end to it.
00:26:35
Speaker
and Governments are no different. so Increasing debt year on year. and then
Lessons for International Politics
00:26:40
Speaker
but What's happened well in the Western world is you just pass it on to the next person, the next president, the next prime minister. You just hand this hot potato onto to the next one, let them worry about it. that's been That's been the record in the Western world in the last 10 or so years. It's unsustainable. That's why we have to worry about it.
00:26:55
Speaker
I have one final question for both of you. ah We are recording this from the spectator officers in the United Kingdom. Most of the people watching this will be from the UK. ah what ah From both of your respective sides of politics, can UK political parties, the Conservatives and Reform on the right now in Australia,
00:27:16
Speaker
ah the United Kingdom and then the Labour Party on the left. What can lessons can they take from this election? Stephen, I'll start with you. What lessons can the Starmer government take from the re-election of the Albanese government?
00:27:31
Speaker
Well, look, I think Donald Trump will overhang ah u k politics like he has Australian and Canadian politics. So I think...
00:27:44
Speaker
Keir Starmer needs to be firm. don't have to be rude, but yeah you have to be firm that the UK will stand up for its own interests. It won't be bullied by Donald Trump.
00:27:55
Speaker
It's not going to accept his foreign policy ah edicts where he sucks up to Putin that the Russians are a serious threat across Europe and NATO is important.
00:28:07
Speaker
And You know, the other the other message should be don't be spooked by the economic charlatans who want to talk about the size of British debt and how it's going to cripple the country, et cetera, as Michael's just tried to do, a measured and balanced response to the state of the economy. I mean, Angus Taylor, this is no joke, Angus Taylor said, the way I'm going to fix the deficit and debt is I'm going to grow the economy.
00:28:34
Speaker
Now, fundamentally, I agree with that. But that is certainly not a response that the Liberal Party i know took any credence of. So first thing you've got to do is not plunge the economy into recession.
00:28:47
Speaker
Absolutely, and i cutting government, slashing and burning will plunge the UK government economy into recession. So it needs to get the right balance between a trajectory towards reducing debt and deficits, but not doing it insanely like the conservatives would and, you know, have i true sense of what's important. Being in government is about priorities.
00:29:15
Speaker
So Stalin's got to make sure he's got the right priorities, not be panicked by conservative media and certainly not be pushed around by Donald Trump on any of these issues. i mean, Trump will try and into interfere in politics.
00:29:28
Speaker
i UK politics has already been barracking for us. I think I was back recently. He's interfering directly in German politics. It's just don't be spooked.
00:29:39
Speaker
Well, students worry about one thing, which is the association with Trump hasn't done well for the Conservative Party here and it won't in Britain. I think Nigel Farage's spat with Elon Musk didn't do Nigel Farage any damage, obviously, by viewing the results on the weekend of those by-elections and council elections.
00:30:00
Speaker
um He's got a stand-up to Trump on the Ukraine, where I agree with Stephen 100%. I thought Trump's behaviour towards Zelensky in the Oval Office was just appalling and... For the the leader of the free world to say he's not on any one side, Ukraine or Russia, I'm sort of the umpire in middle, is a preposterous and outrageous um statement to make from someone who is actually the leader of the democratic world.
00:30:27
Speaker
ah So stand up to Trump on on on on those type of issues. Continue to stand up against blatant anti-Semitism, which which broke out here in Australia, which did the Labor government, it did a lot of damage here. They're still elected, but it's done a whole lot of damage to social cohesion ah in this country. So Stammer's got to continue to stand up to the Corbynite wing and the and and their supporters around the world and around Britain.
00:30:53
Speaker
And finally, I think the great message is... um 20 years ago, we had an issue with um unlawful boat arrivals. um We stopped them under a coalition government.
00:31:06
Speaker
After a bit of time, the Labor Party here agreed with our policies. now Illegal boat arrivals in this country are almost non-existent. um We can see what's happened to the British Conservative Party.
00:31:18
Speaker
Farage is standing up for Middle Britain on that. And ah the lesson for... ah the Prime Minister there, as we learned 20 years ago, is you cannot have open borders. As much as you have sympathy for those people who have a lesser standard, you're living than the people in Britain, everyone wants to come to Britain, everyone everyone wants to come to America and everyone wants to come to Australia. It's just not possible. We're not heartless.
00:31:39
Speaker
It's just not possible. And so unless Starmer does something about that, um boy, i don't know what you think, but Farage is making huge headway because he's standing off on that issue.
00:31:52
Speaker
And Starmer, if he goes the way of the Conservatives, which was this weak, pathetic response where nothing much happened except boat arrivals increased, Starmer will be out of office so sooner rather than later. Well, and and well fortunately or unfortunately, compared ah depending on your point of view, it's still four years for Starmer and it's three years for our Anthony Albanese. It is, whichever way you look at it, a stunning success for Labor.
00:32:18
Speaker
Gentlemen, I appreciate very much both of your insights today. Thank you so much on a busy day for taking your time and coming on Spectator TV.