Is Labor in trouble over tax? – Back to Back Barries podcast

I'm Barry Cassidy.And I'm Tony Barry.Welcome to a podcast, Back to Back Barries from Guardian Australia.Well, the government's tax changes, primarily targeting investors, have been introduced to the parliament.Two weeks after the budget, still the debate rages, and the government hints they'll make changes at the margins, but the structure stays.Will that attitude hold?

Other issues, independents, some of them contemplate their future.Will they try and form a party?And last week's Redbridge poll that basically pointed to One Nation being the official opposition after the next election does demand a closer look from the pollster himself.But the budget first and the wash up.And Tony, the government says they need to legislate now in an overarching way, overarching legislation in broad terms.And if it needs a bit of adjustment along the way, they'll do that by way of amendments later on.

Now, they say this is common practice.It doesn't feel routine to me.No, no.

Ronald Reagan always used to say, when you're explaining, you're losing.And the last two weeks, they've been trying to explain, and very unsuccessfully.I think back to the GST with Costello, selling that.And he was all over it, all across the detail.He persuaded a lot of people.A lot of people weren't persuaded.

But he never made a mistake.And you look at these guys in the last two weeks, you know, Tanya Plibersek is one of their stronger performers.She was being asked about Testamentary Trusts.She clearly did not know what that was, and she mixed up the taxation treatment.Yep.But, you know, you've got to be across the detail.

You know, if you want to give people the confidence that you're doing the right thing, that you know what you're doing.We had Tim Ayres out later in the week, also sort of seeming to fall over himself.Mixed messages on how far they're willing to go with exemptions.So I don't think it's been a stellar two weeks.I did see Sam Maiden write a piece saying this was totally expected.that, you know, they knew it'd be going in for rough waters.

And I think that's correct.But that doesn't explain their sort of not being across thedetail and not really having a message to sell it.So I think they're in for a rough time.And I think we've discussed this recently that Albo was clearly, because he's very much about parliamentary process, he thought, I need to do something that the Greens will support so we can get it through, because they only need the Greens in the Senate to support legislation.I'm not going to make the mistake of Tony Abbott and bleed to death for two years and get nothing through.

But of course, if they come back, if they sort of pass it and then come back and make changes and amendments, they're still bleeding.

Yeah, if they're minor, and they should really.There are a couple of things that I think they will deal with.I think the definition of a small business, you know, $2 million is probably a bit low and they might go a bit higher, something around the startups.But I don't think the changes will be significant.The important thing, though, is they now face a three -week Senate inquiry, so that further keeps the debate running.But I do think that they've been quite resolute, and Jim Chalmers is certainly across the issues and the detail, no doubt about that, and I think Anthony Albanese has been quite resolute.

There is the hesitation, and that's where it gets interesting, because if hesitation turns into constantly going back to the thing and rejigging it, then the cracks could open up politically.Yeah, how it was resonant too on work choices.

And we saw how that turned out.So you've got to be cautionary.

I don't think it's work choices though.No, but I reckon there's probably - With WorkChoices, it hurt the wage and salary earners.And this is the reverse of that.It's trying to put those who invest in alignment with wage and salary earners.So it's a different constituency that's having a grizzle about it.And I think what would please both Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese is that their constituency is so determined on this one.

WorkChoices, I was at CrossFit Techster during the pandemic.wonderfully talented fellow was running the ACTU campaign, which was quite brilliant.You know, you'd have ads of single mums being called up by the boss, you know, for the sick kid being asked to come into work.Those sort of things which were highly emotive and sort of galvanised support behind the unions on that messaging.But I think in terms of this, there's a lot of oppositional voices out there.Yes, sure, a lot of them have vested interests.

But it's been unusual in that sense.You don't normally hear such a wall of noise opposing the government on any reform.So they've got their work cut out, I think.

You don't.But it's media driven.And a lot of it is, I think, out of self -interest.And they're picking and choosing groups who they quote.I want to give you one example of a column that really caught my eye this week from Tom Hurd.Tom Hurd, he runs an economic consultancy company.

He says he was a wage earner.20 years ago, he formed a company to do much the same work, and now he's doing the same work, but he pays much less tax.He's taken advantage of numerous tax breaks.He had a family trust.He distributed income to family members that lowered tax rates.And he said, yes, we work hard, but not because we are saints.

We do it to reduce taxes.People do play by the rules, but that doesn't mean the rules are fair.And this was his conclusion.The government is asking some of us to pay a respectable minimum.That may be bad news for some tax plans, but it's not bad policy.Now, the Tom Herds of this world, I don't think, are getting a fair go.

They're not breaking through in the media.He did.He did.But those who share that view are not getting the same run as those who stand to lose.

Yeah.It's one thing to look at legacy media, but when you look at social and digital media, my feed, which is very broad, I follow Labor people.Liberal people, so I get a lot of different algorithms.But it's a, you know, I think it's a fairly representative cross -section that I get.And the voices against it have been massive.I've seen very little in support.

I did read that column in Legacy Media.But there's clearly something happening under the radar here.And It makes me wonder if, you know, One Nation, which I think is a lot more sophisticated than we give it credit for in terms of campaigning, one of our senior researchers at Redbridge, Alex Fine, she's probably in the field more than any of us every week, talking to Australians all around the country.And she wrote a really interesting piece on the substack about One Nation.One of her observations was something we discussed before, which was about Gina Reinhardt's playing to Pauline Hanson.And far from people being repulsed by that, they were like, that's great.

Impressed.Pauline Hanson's an outsider like me.And finally, an outsider is getting the ball ball.Gina Reinhardt is not an outsider.Yeah, I know.But they see Pauline.

And she also made this point.She said, qualitatively, when they talk about Pauline as their wrecking ball, as their voice, as their truth teller, They're talking like a friend.They use Pauline and that sort of terminology, that familiarity.But she also made the point, the Pauline Hanson animations, please explain, which have been around for a couple of years now.And they're very clever.And somewhat ironically, the studio that produced those are around the corner from me in Fitzroy, which is the last place you'd expect these things to be produced.

But they are brilliantly clever, whether you agree with them or not.And they reinforce voter prejudices.

I want to come back to that and pulling hands when we get on to the polling topic that I foreshadowed.But an email this week from Sholto Maud.It's a very long email, so I'll paraphrase it.but he took issue with how he interpreted something that I said last week around that rents had gone up since the budget.And at the Sydney Writers' Festival, what I said is that I have no idea whether rents have gone up, but if they have, they shouldn't have.But he went to realestate .

com and had a really close look at the situation in Melbourne, and he's persuaded that they've jumped by about $100 per week in the last few weeks.But my point about that is, landlords now, existing landlords, cannot blame the budget for this, because by definition they're landlords now, and therefore their investments are grandfathered.And so the point that I was trying to make is that they have no moral and no economic reason to be raising them.But the further point he makes, he says, I don't agree, and this is a quote, the government has any entitlement to the capital gains I make on my investments at all.Well, that's just not sustainable.Of course, you have to do just as you tax wages, you have to tax capital and profits, and that's been the case for decades.

That's not the issue.The issue is the level, the level at which they tax those profits.You know, again, I just make the point, you can't tax a factory worker and not a passive investor.So it's a distortion in the system.But he went on to make one interesting observation.Why, though, with shares, when young people are trying to find ways of saving money and get a deposit on a house, why can't their capital gains tax be means -tested?

Now, that, to me, would be rather complex, it would open up a whole new avenue.But it's not a bad thought.

Yeah, but we've already seen in our research there is resistance to that amongst young people because they have invested in shares.And again, going back to that attention to detail, I'm not sure if you saw that, it went sort of viral, but BillFitzsimons, who runs a website targeted at millennial voters, she's been doing it for about, she's been a journalist for about 10 years, but she interviewed Jim Chalmers, and look, I wouldn't say it was the GST birthday cake, but She was all over it, and he had to consult his papers.He was thumbing through it.It didn't look great.It was certainly not catastrophic.

But for someone like Jim, who's usually very well prepared, but she went straight to the heart of it, which is there was a discrepancy in the figures from the ATO compared to ASIC.And of course, ATO were often using those who've disposed of capital assets, which is different to accumulation.

Look, on the poll, because I'm finished business here, because last week...You were aware of the polls, you couldn't release them, you had an obligation to a client, but now we can.And just recapping, the Liberals, according to your polling, would be reduced to between seven and 21 seats in a 151 -seat parliament.Labor, on the edge of minority government, one nation, 50 -plus seats, and the official opposition, that's pretty much the story.But I'm interested in the methodology.The sample was about 6 ,000, and that's big.

But also, there was a seat -by -seat component to it.How does that work?

Look, it's without sort of going into a 20 -minute explanation, and Dr. Sean Ratcliffe does all our fieldwork on this.It's like -for -like data.So it starts building a demographic profile, because we ask questions about blue -collar, white -collar income levels, tertiary, and so forth, inner, outer, suburban, and so forth.And so then it's matching data.So it's not a perfect profile.expression of what the electorate are thinking, but it's usually pretty accurate.

And we've done EMRPs before a few elections in the past.And Sean in particular has been spot on when he used to be at YouGov.So it's a very good indicative measurement.And there were some clear patterns in that.So Coalition were being crushed by One Nation, losing 37 seats.You know, they've lost a lot of urban seats, as we said, in the last election.

They've only got nine out of 88 urban seats, which is fundamental to their problem.They don't speak the language of urban Australia.But at least they're holding regional seats.Well, this showed that it was total carnage in the regions with One Nation hoovering up that.One Nation, the coalition would not have one seat in Queensland, South Australia, WA, Tasmania.

And the Nats wouldn't have a seat anywhere.Yeah.But so in effect, then what you're doing is you're making an assessment in a particular seat.You can't poll them all, of course, far too many of them, but you make an assessment and then like for like, if a similar seat, you know, with the same kind of demographics, you make assumptions about what's going on there.That one thing it doesn't take into account, of course, is the popularity of sitting members.Correct.

And therefore in Queensland, you would think with the Nationals, there might be sitting members.who could resist a swing and therefore the Nationals could pick up some seats.

It doesn't pick up.We always talk about aided and unaided polling.Unaided is brand, so Liberal, Labor, Greens and so forth.But then you sort of put in there, you know, the name, the Liberal candidate, you know, the name, the Labor MP.And that's when some voters will go Oh, I've met him.He's great.

He's fantastic.Oh, she came and spoke at our club's end of year celebrations.She was very impressive.And so you hope, as a campaigner, to see that they've lifted the generic or unaided vote from, say, 42 primary to maybe 45.So they're adding three points.So no, it doesn't take for that.

And there are some idiosyncrasies that you can never...The MRP is very good, but it always gets Fowler wrong.which is Di -Lee's seat, which is a very complex, and there's a difference in the Northern part to the Southern part of the electorate.And of course, she's a very strong independent candidate.

Yeah.And on One Nation as well, generally they're picking up rural and regional seats, taking seats from both the Coalition and from the Labor Party, but more from the Coalition than Labor.But it also suggests that they're knocking on the door of the cities.They're right on the edges.

Barnaby was a bit ambitious about Western suburbs, but it did show that a couple of seats on a bad day might fall to One Nation from Labor, but it had them picking up quite a few seats on the Central Coast.So Dobell and those sort of seats.That's an older demographic profile up there.A lot of retirees from Sydney sell up and move to Gosford, Central Coast.So it's a slightly different demographic that you will find in other places around Australia.We also had One Nation winning seats from Labor, Leichhardt up in Cairns, the federal seat of Bendigo in regional Victoria and so forth.

Hawke in Victoria?Yep.

Yeah, those sorts of seats.We're two years away from the next election, so a lot can happen in the meantime, and it's just kind of an interesting discussion about what could go wrong, and what could go wrong for Labor, for a start.Let's do that, and then we'll go back to One Nation, because there's potential for a recession.Yes.Finally, I think there are more positive signs coming out of the United States than we've had in a long time now.The oil crisis just might start to fade, but nevertheless, that's there.

Inflation could continue to drive up interest rates.The budget backlash could be as you've explained it.So those sorts of things could impact on the Labour Party between now and then, and they're right on the edge.as you say, in terms of majority government.One nation, though, there are, I think, significant pressures on them.One is greater scrutiny, obviously, and that will come.

It's already starting to come.The internal ructions, their administrative failures, those sorts of things, I know they'll be forgiven for a lot of them because these voters who are defected, they're determined to create chaos if they can.But One nation is such an unknown quantity in many senses, because we've never seen them up on the stage in this way before.So you'd have to accept that it's still, anything could happen.Yeah.

I mean, the client, as you've referred, is the Australian Financial Review, who we poll for every month and do special projects like this.Initially, we had no intention of doing an MRP two years out, because it's ridiculous because there's so much more to run in the electoral cycle.But given the explosion of One Nation, we thought this might be interesting to see if it's landing in the right spots.Because it's one thing for them to be polling in the high 20s and coming second on a national sample, but they have to be doing really well in some seats.And we saw that in Farrow.So we thought, let's sample this and see what it looks like.

So we did for that, but it's by no means a prediction of what's going to happen in two years time.But there's lots of evidence in the research that we do that this is enduring.She's giving voice to the voiceless.She's their wrecking ball, those people who are frustrated with the two -party system.And I think Albania needs to be very careful with this budget that it doesn't become the sort of grievance point where a lot of soft Labor voters switch to One Nation.There's a real possibility of that because they're frustrated with the two -party system and this is more evidence.

And I think, my view,

is they're more likely to stick with Labor as a result of this budget.It speaks to them.

I think their vote is already at low levels, at 31 to 32, not as catastrophic.as the coalition.Well, it's not catastrophic because it's good enough to give you majority government.Yeah, but he can't afford to lose too many more points.If he starts getting into the 20s, you're going to start seeing some realignments there.

That's true.If you get down to 28, then that's a different story.Look, one other thing that I certainly raised at the Writers' Festival about pressures on One Nation was the prospect that national members, when they figure, right, they can't win.the next election and they'll offer themselves to One Nation provided they get pre -selection, right?And you'll get this flood of people wanting to cross from Liberal and Nationals.And I think that would bring pressure on them because their membership, you know, a lot of them think they're a chance for pre -selection themselves.

And that could, they could be furious with that kind of an outcome.If Pauline Hanson addressed this yesterday, I think it was, and she said that she doesn't want them.She doesn't want these defectors.even though she's taken one or two already, but not anymore.It's an interesting approach, and I think she's probably done it for precisely that reason, that she doesn't want to offend the constituency that she already has.

Well, she doesn't want to look like a major party.I think there'll be a few that she'll take, but yes, those comments were hilarious, I thought.It almost sounded like a reality TV show, Coalition Survivor, you know, sort of going on bended knee, sort of married at first sight, sort of begging for preselection.

You know, she gave one exception.one exception to the rule, and that's Alex Antic, the senator from South Australia.And perhaps that would have been in the works there for a while, but he's now running for, or he's talking about running for president in South Australia.And his latest comment was this, that he's happier than he's ever been in the service for the Liberal Party at the moment, because he said they'vegot the dream team.Angus Taylor, Liberal leader, Matt Canavan, leader of the Nationals, and Tony Abbott as president of the Liberals.

So that's it.He's not thinking about One Nation any longer.

Coalition doesn't hold a single seat in the House of Representatives in South Australia, but nevertheless, things are going very well.

Emails.Another one from Noah, who we met after the event.He came up and introduced himself.He's a Gen Z voter.And he sent us an email and he said, my core values still align with the liberal ideals, but I feel completely disillusioned by the current party establishment.I know a lot of people my age feel similarly politically homeless.

It's not the values who we reject, but the We feel the party no longer understands them, that is the younger people, or speaks for them in a forward looking way.Is there a way back for Noah and his friends?And if there is not to the Liberal Party, then where do they go?

Yeah.No, that was a highlight meeting Noah and his father as a new time father.I love that bit.They were great.And Noah raises a really interesting point because in a lot of our polling, the coalition vote amongst Gen Z in particular is in the low teens.so catastrophically low.

And on a two -party preferred basis, you know, they're only hitting about 30 to 70 to Labor.And Millennials is a bit better, but not much better.And the failure for the Coalition to communicate to those people is what's driving a lot of this urban crash that they've been experiencing.And I think for people like Noah, it's that economic hope that they need.They need less sort of obsession by the Coalition on some of these cultural issues.Some of the issues they raise are important culturally, but they're not the most important thing.

a long way.It resonates with some voters.But when 75 % of the electorate say that the cost of living and housing is their top three issues, that's where most of the votes are to be found.And people like Noah, who's already thinking about his future and housing and career and study and all this stuff, they need to see a pathway.Because at the moment, all they see is despair.Yeah.

Now, the independence.So much talk this week about the independence forming a party.A party of independence is the ultimate oxymoron.Two competing contradictory ideas.How can that fly?

Yeah.James Campbell wrote a really interesting column about this some time ago, saying that a lot of these asset class debates are most relevant in the so -called teal seats.family trusts and so forth.And it was previously only the Coalition that was holding that back from changes to those areas.Now, I do support changes to the treatment of property and assets, as long as there's income tax cuts, which the Labor governors failed to do.They're talking about it in the third year of the cycle.

I think they are going to start coming under pressure because they're not going to be seen to be relevant and fighting for their particular constituency.Allegra Spender is sort of caught onto it a bit, I think.And she's now walked back some of her sort of qualified support and she's being a little bit more sort of fighting for her constituents.But I think it's going to become a problem for them because whilst they won't see the Coalition as representing their values, there's been a real values disconnect over the last decade.They're becoming, they could start becoming homeless and looking for another option.

You see that one of the benefits from them is that potentially they could build their strength inthe Senate.And that would be important to them because as a party, they can then be above the line and really significantly improve their chances of getting elected.But I think at the detriment to the House, what is really fascinating about the Teals and the Independents generally is how they've managed to penetrate the House.And that's what's so important.And because politics is becoming so fragmented, That's important.

They might hold the balance of power after the next election.Who knows?Look, I can understand people, you look at the kind of principles that David Pocock spouses, right?The priorities and the social conscience that he kind of represents.And you can understand if he was to form a party or at least be a part of a new party, that that would carve away considerable support, I think, from the Labour Party.In the same way that the Teals took support away from the Liberal Party, I think potentially they could do the same with Labour.

But the problem is that what do they lose?And what they lose is that link back to the community and this genuine sense that they represent not a political party, but the opinions of the community.And I think that's probably the ditch you're dying.

I think they've got to seriously reconsider where they go with this.I think there's a very strong argument for them to form their own party.Now, a mindful caveat this, that when Peter Dutton was opposition leader at one point, their primary vote was 42%.So more than double what it is now.So I'm mindful that 42 % of voters were prepared to vote for the coalition at that point.Things have changed dramatically since with the surge of One Nation and a seemingly credible option for voters looking for another home.

But putting that caveat aside, I'm not sure that any political party can ever get to 40 % again on a primary vote.Labor are well short of that, despitecompletely ascendant in the House of Reps. Those days are over.And can the Coalition ever get to 42 % again?So I don't think so.Historically, they need to be at 45 % primary to win.

Howard won it in 98, ironically, when One Nation had their first rise in popularity.He won it with 38, with a very strong preference flow back from One Nation that didn't win a House of Reps seat.I'm not sure we're going to see that sort of situation where the Liberal Party can compete across all those urban electorates.We could be seeing like the DLP all over again, where they sort of cannibalise their vote internally.And Menzies had that sort of unbeaten run.

Yeah.But with the Teals, I think the idea of forming a party means that you have to adhere to an extent to the disciplines of that, of a party function.They can say, look, we'll just give conscience votes on everything.And you could do that.But I think that would be confusing within their own communities.I just don't think you can really, a bunch of independents cannot have a national policy that is convincing.

But I think it will remain a discussion for a while yet.

They can expand their map into electorates like Bennelong and Menzies.Look, are they going to be able to be competitive in seats like Lindsay around Penrith?Probably not.But there's a lot of middle suburban suburbs, which is kind of beyond those teal areas, which I think are demographically friendly for them.So, you know, they won't get to 40 % primary or 76 seats in parliament, but they can be, you know, a partner in a minority government.

Yeah.I just want to mention the changes to unemployment.It didn't get a big run because of a lot of fish frying on the barbecue this week.But look, what they've tried to do is to take away some of these owner's time.-consuming obligations for the unemployed so that they can go on receiving their benefits.But they came up with a three -tiered system, which I think, so that not everybody will be treated in the same way.

And it seems to make sense to me that, first of all, the tier one is the people who have genuine obstacles to employment, right?There are certain incapabilities and they have to take that into account.The second group is those who need updated skills, and so they have to be treated in a transitional way and helped out with that arrangement.And then the third are the job ready, and the job ready are treated very differently again.So I think all of that makes sense.The one around obligations is that Is it really necessary for these people to fill out 20 or 30 job applications every week or whatever the requirement might be when they know they might get one or two job interviews out of that?

It really did become just a box ticking exercise.

And the other issue that's been adjacent to this is raise the rate that The level that it's at is insufficient, inadequate, particularly with inflationary pressures that we've been experiencing and rents being so exorbitantly expensive everywhere.This has been a sleeper issue, I think, for a few years now, because we've been, you know, economists would say that in the recent years, we've effectively had full employment.You know, I know that's not technically true, but in the sense that, you know, you will at some point get a job because, you know, there are so many jobs on the market.But with unemployment going up, this is where the sleeper issue becomes more relevant.And with NAB forecasting a worst case scenario of 9 .5%, if we start hitting those levels and these sort of issues like raise the rate, but also the compliance measures that are required, they're going to become really salient for not just thosevoters who are impacted by it, but by their family, their parents or, you know, partners and loved ones.

So I think that's going to be a really interesting one to watch.

I just want to raise a final issue about politicians disobeying the rules in a moment.But for the benefit of our YouTube viewers, I'm so accustomed to you coming in here wearing Republican t -shirts.You really do have to explain why this week you've got Kennedy Johnson.

Yep.Friday 29th of May is JFK's birthday.He would have been what?109 years old.109.That was my initial interest in politics.

My late father loved JFK and RFK, had a lot of books in the bookcase.RFK especially, whose anniversary is next Friday, 5th of June.And so...

Have you got a t -shirt to match that?I think there's an RFK Jr. one, but I'm not quite prepared to go that far.

But yeah, I've read a lot of dad's books on that.And the first book I read, which I've still got, and it's about five different pieces because it was a soft copy, was The Making of the President, 1960, which was all about the campaign written by Theodore White, which is a Bible.Because RFK ran that campaign, his brother, in the Hyannis Port compound in Massachusetts.

Well, it doesn't matter what's on your T -shirt.I just admire the fact that you wear them in Melbourne when it's almost winter.Well done.We'll take a short break.All right.I want to raise now a couple of things that have happened this week.

Three cases, in fact, about politicians who just don't seem to follow the rules.The first one is Bridget McKenzie, of course, who who took taxpayers' money to travel to Tasmania, not only for her son's engagement party, but then went back for the wedding.And now we hear that Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson again travelled at taxpayers' expense to Brisbane to board the luxury boat, The World.for a fundraiser in Gina Reinhardt's presence.And the third is Alifrance.But before we get to that, the comments you were making about Pauline and her relationship with Gina Reinhardt and taking the plane, is this a different consideration for them, that she would take taxpayers' money to fly to a fundraiser on a luxury yacht and meet Gina Reinhart there?

I mean, it could be.But I've seen nothing in our research to suggest that it will.It just bounces right off.All the arguments that the Coalition and Labor run against her just don't seem to penetrate.And, you know, people are looking for a wrecking ball and she's their wrecking ball.So I don't think that's going to impact.

And I think, you know, the Bridget McKenzie stuff, I mean, You'd think after sports frauds, which was a, you know, fairly soul -destroying exercise and she had to resign, you'd think after that you'd be a little bit more cautious about...

Well, Annika Wells got... constantly, day in and day out.And this sort of thing is still happening.So all parties have examples of it, but whether or not Barnaby Joyce, Pauline Hanson, Bridget McKenzie, in the end say, well, we shouldn't have done this and we'll pay it back, or whether there's a demand upon them to pay back their money, we'll see.We'll see what happens.But Ali France is a different situation.She's the Labor member who beat Peter Dutton at the last election, and the Liberal Party came after her over the fact that she is registered to a vacant block of land, and they've reported it to the Electoral Commission.

on the surface, fine.Have a look at it.It happens to be though, that vacant block of land, she was living on it in February, a house.She has a disability and she's knocked the house down and she'll be back living there by the end of the year.So it's a minor end of the scale, and yet they're talking aboutit as potential fraud, a criminal offence.

Well, she subsequently cleared the air to that revelation by saying that she did live at that property.They demolished the house to renovate.I think the complication for her was the first two times she ran against Dutton, she was living in the federal electorate of Lillie, which would be about 30 kilometres away.And so that had been a bit of a burning platform.Now, you know, the fact she sort of subsequently moved in, but I think that's why there were suspicions raised.

You know, though, what really annoys me about this kind of thing, about raising something that is of not much consequence, and yet the media grabs hold of it and got a good run, the ABC was right onto it as well, along with everybody else, without looking at the context, without putting into context.And this is the sort of reaction you get.Just by way of background, 15 years ago she was in a car park at a Brisbane shopping centre and an elderly driver lost control of his car.She was pushing her son in a stroller.She pushed the stroller out of the way and took the full impact and lost a leg as a result of that accident.She's rebuilding the house so that she can get a house that takes care of her particular disabilities.

But I went on to X to have a look at how this was playing out.And I found one post, and it probably wasn't the most prominent post, but here was a post, and five or six of these people rushed out to get this really clever, sick line out there that she hasn't got a leg to stand on.And that's the kind of thing that this rubbish, this political rubbish, causes to happen.It brings out these sort of characters.

This is why I stay off X, but yeah.

Yeah, well, I went on X just to see how it was playing out.And that's what I discovered.And it's pretty ordinary.Okay, that's it for today.Write to us at backtobackbarries, all one word, backtobackbarries at theguardian .com.

This podcast was made on the sovereign lands of the Wurundjeri people.It was produced by Daniel Simo and Burton Nguyen.Executive producer is Hannah Parks.I'm Barry Cassidy.

And I'm Tony Barry, and this is Back to Back Barries, a Guardian Australia podcast.