The worst political gaffe of the week – Back to Back Barries podcast

I'm Barry Cassidy.And I'm Tony Barry.Welcome to Back to Back Barries, a podcast from Guardian Australia.And we're going to start this week with a question.What was the dumbest thing an Australian politician said this week?Was it the Prime Minister saying all of the above when a podcaster proposed dating, marrying and shagging Kylie Minogue?

Was it Barnaby Joyce suggesting China was responsible for the Telstra meltdown?Was it Tony Abbott lamenting the fact that school kids no longer start the day saying, I love my God, I serve my king, I salute the flag.And while all this was going on, the Telstra meltdown and the rest of it, Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson tested the system by calling Triple Zero.And what's a list like this without Pauline Hanson's name being on it?She travels to London and records a podcast with Tommy Robinson, a far -right anti -Islam activist who has been to jail five times for violence and fraud.Now that's a great cross -party list.

Labor, Liberal, One Nation are all represented.At the highest level, Labor, the Prime Minister.Liberals, the President.One nation, the leader.Tony, where would you like to start?

I think F, all of the above.Though I think Albo's gaffe was probably the most prominent and the worst of all the week.

Well, he's the prime minister.

Yeah.Yeah.And I don't want to be Captain Hindsight, but all of those were really, you know, there's got to be something in the water in Canberra at the moment because it's a comedy of errors up there at the moment.But I thought Albanese, I'm somewhat sympathetic to people who do lots of media, especially broadcasters.They're on air for three hours a day, 15 hours a week.They all make mistakes, but that was a pretty bad one.

Someone of his experience and undoubted skill, he's prime minister with 94 seats.It's hard to understand how he could make such a stupid error.I mean,it's sort of I know that sort of Bob Hawke, you know, regrets making, regretted making the comments about no child live in poverty, but did he ever make a gaffe like that with you?

Well, no, but look, for a start, it was different then.Podcasts didn't exist.But look, I struggled to get him onto a lot of programs, had to find the time to put him on the essential programs that you had to.And there were so many radio programs back then.There were no breakfast TV, that took the pressure off a bit.But look, I do recall putting him on a podcast called Lawyers, Guns and Money.

It was a public radio program in Melbourne and Ross Stevenson was one of the lawyers who was on it.And I really liked it.It was all about politics and sport and they just had a lot of fun with it.And he went on it and of course he fitted in perfectly.Ross Stevenson is now the most listened to radio broadcaster in the country.So you could put him on that kind of thing and it'd be a plus, but there's no way I'd put him on with something like this.

You'd think Elbow embarrassed himself.I mean, he would have been far worse.You just, it's, you would accept though, you can't necessarily blame the media advice.They want him to, you know, be cool with the kids.But his response should have been, oh, come on, look, I don't think I'm really in a position to be playing these kind of games.I'll pass.

And of course, he didn't.And that's where the problem was.But, you know, he's doing all right trying to reach that generation through policy and through the budget and trying and talking constantly about a more affordable housing.simply didn't need to do that kind of stuff.

The strategy is good, reaching out to audiences that are hard to find, and Gen Z is one of the hardest audiences to find.They just don't switch on ABC 730.

But it's one thing to reach them.It's another to actually impress them.That doesn't impress them.

No, no.And it is hard, as a Gen X bloke, to know what to say when you're speaking to the Gen Z audience, it must be said.But again, you know, it was just, all I could think of was this poor press secretary who must have been sitting there behind the camera, just almost diving across the screen like a bodyguard.But, you know, it's not going to change votes.It might reinforce prejudices.that certain voters have who might be a bit elbow sceptic.

He is around net minus 20.And I did this week go back and check Dutton's numbers in the last week of the campaign when they really put the blowtorch on Dee Madigan, Labor's guru in creative advertising, did some really brilliant ads on him.He was net minus 20.and elbows net minus 18.So, you know, everybody talks about how toxic Dutton was.Well, he's in the neighborhood right now.

Yeah.The theme running through all of this is podcast as well.But Tony Abbott, you know, I love my God, I love my country.And what he said is that this was the way they did it in the 1960s.And in fact, they didn't say I love my king in the 1960s, we didn't have a king, and you'd think Tony Abbott of all people would get that right.Not only do I think it's...

It would be a bad idea to bring all that back, but I think it was a bad idea to simply raise it because it's the president of the party focusing on something like this when there are more important things to talk about.

This is the problem, the co -opposition leaders, it's Angus Taylor and Tony Abbott.And again, I was looking at the numbers of leadership attributes the other day and Tony Abbott has a 96 % name ID.So only 4 % of Australians don't know, whereas 18 % don't know.say they've never heard of Angus Taylor.And that is a function of modern communications and media, which is so fragmented that people have zoned out of mainstream media, so aren't aware of who he is.But when you've got a guy who's got 96 % name ID out there all the time in the media, and Alexander Downer made this point when he was thinking about running for the federal presidency.

He made a very pointed comment about how he won't be out there arguing the case again.And that was a pointed reference at Abbott, because he knew what Abbott would be doing.Abbott, and I can say this as a Catholic, Abbott is looking for redemption.and then resurrection.We all do in my faith.And he will never get over the fact that when he lost the prime ministership, a little less than two years, he'll never get over the fact that it was actually the right of the party that did the spill on the empty chair spill.

That was actually the late Don Randall, the member for Canning, and Luke Simpkin, I think.And of course, it was the right that sort of deserted him that gave Malcolm Turnbull the numbers.And he spent the last 10 years trying to redeem that with the right.So that's why he's constantly pitching at Sky After Dark and so forth.And then ultimately, he's looking for the resurrection, I think.

Now, let me go through the list.Sarah Henderson was the other one.It was a silly thing to do, to call triple zero.during an emergency.I mean, basically, it's there at any time anyway, just for emergencies.What she was clearly doing was research in a sense.

She was trying to get some knowledge of what was going on to aid her attack on, well, perhaps Telstra, but by extension, the Labour Party.It wasn't so clever.Pauline Hanson clearly learned nothing from Karl Stefanovic.And this idea that you would not only talk with Tommy Robinson, but also talk in glowing terms of him and call him a hero.In fact, it pushes her further into the far right corner and further isolates her, I think.And it's also going to draw a bit of attention now to her trip and the purpose and the value of the trip.

Because apart from this, the only other thing that I've seen so far that she went and had a beer with Holly Vallance.

Yeah.She is at risk, of course, hitting that tipping point or that threshold where she's no longer seen as the non -politician.And that is her brand, which is why she's the wrecking ball, because she's not seen as an insider.She's seen as an outsider.But at some point, she might hit that threshold where people just go, well, you're just another politician.And that is something we're monitoring very carefully at Redbridge, because when she hits that point, her vote will start collapsing.

Now, I don't think it's going to hit 6 % and 8 % again.

But not just another politician, a Tommy Robinson style politician.That's who you hang out with.It's just not smart at all.

And this is what a lot of people fail to understand, is that Her vote at the moment is made up of very different cohorts.There's not like a homogenous theme or issue or sentiment amongst them all.Grievance sort of underpins it, that feeling that the economic promise of Australia is no longer for them.But some people, it's about immigration.But it's a very big mistake to say that all of her supporters are voting for her because of immigration.On our polling, and we're retesting it at the moment in the field this week, only 15 % say that.

It's also about racism.Yeah.

Yeah.

And doing this kind of thing draws attention to that cohort.

Absolutely.Absolutely.And it's a mistake to think...And not the other.Yeah.Yeah.

Because there'll be some people who they like her, say, you know, it could be the fact that she is against the two -party system.But they've got serious concerns about that sort of behavior.So suddenly they're like, well, I can't no longer vote for her on those grounds that she's my wrecking ball because I'm really deeply uncomfortable here.

Yeah.Now Barnaby Joyce, of course, raised the prospect of aChinese being responsible for the Telstra meltdown.It was a software fault.It was an equipment failure.Telstra have said that.

They somehow turned the clock back to November 2006, and that put the whole thing out of sync.But again, raising these stupid conspiracy theories starts to put Barnaby in that position.in that category as well.You know, the sort of nut job territory that sees conspiracies everywhere.That came and went because there were so many other things to focus on, but at least we have to say that I guess the China thing reminds us that some work got done this week.And the prime minister did what very few prime ministers have ever done, and that's spend significant time in the Pacific and go around and meet some of the prime ministers.

And then, of course, he had Modi from India here in Melbourne later in the week as well.I think it's important.Well, it's clearly important to the South Pacific leaders that because we're neighbours, but also the biggest fish in the South Pacific, that we spend this time and China circling.And so it just makes sense for Australia to do this.

Yeah, I think China is very good at foreign affairs when it comes to the superpowers.I think they're deeply strategic.I think they outthink Trump quite easily, and they've been positioning themselves very well there.But I think when it comes to their neighbourhood and region, they've got a real tin ear.They miss a lot of signals.And I think that missile test during the week was another example of them just... missing the signals from the region and making their neighbours deeply uncomfortable.

Yeah.Look, the missile test, again, I think was an example where, and sometimes I think the Chinese would be delighted with this, but the Australian media went overboard.Again, it was front page, banner headlines everywhere.When in fact, it'sa routine, it's a routine test, but normally they give two days notice, this time they gave a few hours.But in any case, you're right to say that it backfired because the Solomon Islands president said, we like doing business with China, but be our friend.

but don't threaten us.So from that point of view, they got absolutely nowhere with it.

I think there's little doubt that it was designed to intimidate.It was not just too standard.

But then there was a suggestion it was designed to coincide with Albany's visit.They couldn't possibly organise something like that with such short notice.

But I also don't think it was a totally random nuclear capable missile test either.

No, not random, but these things are, as I say, they're routine.Yeah.Look, on the economy, and it is worth looking at it this week, because there were some significant reports out that told us pretty clearly where things are headed.On the positive side, the recession, the prospect of recession has passed, according to the Commonwealth Bank, despite the oil shock.And it's now back to pre -war levels.Prices did not rise as much as people feared, and the cut in the fuel excise obviously helped, and inflation.

Budget forecast 5%, it's going at 4%.All that's good.Maybe the interest rate rises are over for a while.But the real problem now is the OECD report and the low growth.And that's, it's sub -par now.It's sub -par.

It hasn't been this bad or as long since the 1990s recession.So that's a serious concern now that the government has to address.

Yeah.And that is going to be at the pivot point.of the next election campaign.Ultimately, you know, people aren't going to be sort of too concerned about what Albanese said on a podcast, but they will be concerned about the cash register, because the cash register never lies.It's the one thing you can trust in Australia today and how you're feeling about it.pocket.

And that will keep on fueling and sustaining the One Nation vote, I feel, which is why I'm very reluctant to say they've hit their ceiling, though I suspect they have.I think 31 % was the ceiling.But I also don't think they're gonna go anywhere near 6 % and 8 % again.

No, and just on what is the biggest problem with slow growth, in my view, It's wages, because it's connected with wages.It's almost customary in Australia that you don't have wage increases without productivity growth.Wages now, and again, this figure came out this week, over the past five years, wages in real terms have fallen by 5 % since 2021.And of the 37 richest nations, Australia had the steepest fall apart from New Zealand.So you would think the government would be anxious to address that and get wages up.and improve purchasing power, which is the best way to do that, of course, but with slower growth, it makes it very difficult to do that.

And I think that's going to be one of the, you know, the cost of living is going to be back again as the central issue at the next election, and that's going to be the toughest one, wages.Paul Kelly's book, and I think we'll be inundated with a lot of material from that over the next week or two.But based on what we've already seen, interesting discussions based really on Paul Kelly's conversations with John Howard and focusing on the liberal leaders that followed him.

Yeah.John Howard, of course, the Yoda of the Liberal Party, Liberal Party Yoda.He made some comments about how the Liberal Party is a leadership party, where the leader matters more than, say, in the Labor Party, where it's more caucus, you know, there are sort of formal factions, which I'm not opposed to, by the way.And therefore, the Liberal Party, you know, the leader really carries the party and, you know,he wasn't supportive of the three prime ministers, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison.We've been wondering for a while what Paul Kelly's book will be like.

I do recall his columns during that era weren't all positive about the government at the time.But then, of course, he revealed this week that the title of his book was The Twilight of Exceptionalism, which I think is a big hint as to where the theme of the 900 -page book, I think it is.You know, we're already seeing some news reports out of that.I think the excerpts will be shortly along the way, but it's going to be a fascinating read.

Yeah.And focusing again on the little part of the New South Wales this time and the ICAC hearing suddenly got very, well, will be interesting.

Yep.That's scheduled for the coming months.Eight weeks of hearings.That is massive.The team at The Guardian did a bit of research for me and said, The hearings into Gladys, Operation Keppel, which had two parts, firstly Darryl McGuire, and then came back and did part B, I suppose.Gladys was two weeks and one day.

This is eight weeks.It's going to be unbelievable.There's obviously going to be a very long witness list.It's going to suck all the oxygen out of the media.Of course, this is Angus Taylor's home state.We've already had one New South Wales Liberal figure come out demanding that Anger stands down because of his relationship with some of the people who were called as witnesses.

Now, I think that was a stretch, but it's an insight as to where this story is going to go.And again, you know, if he doesn't have Abbott out there stealing the limelight, using the pulpit, then he's got his home state division doing eight weeks with, you know, every journalist will be covering it.

Yeah.Okay.We'll take a break.When we come back, I want to talk about two biographies.One you'll probably know about.It's coming up in the UK, involving Nigel Farage.

The other is what would ordinarily be an obscure by -election in the outer suburbs of Perth at the state level.But believe me, this could be a by -election with a lot, back in a moment.OK, we're back just before we get on to the by -elections.An email, Tony, from Nathalie.She directed it to you.She said that you mentioned the Pauline Hansons, you know, the wrecking ball for those fed up with the system.

They want to burn it all down.She grew up in Italy.She spent a lot of years in Ireland.She's now in Australia.And she said life was far harder.For her, before she got to Australia, we have jobs, healthcare is free, pay is much higher, quality of life amazing, compared with Europe.

The NDIS takes care of her son's special needs.So why are so many people fed up with the system, when in her view, the system actually works?

No, it was a good email.So I thought I'd give a bit of a profile of the One Nation voter.This is not an exhaustive list.There are obviously big exceptions, but this is statistically, in all our quantitative and qualitative research, what we find the One Nation voter looks like.They are typically Gen X. At the moment, about 40 % of Gen X males are voting One Nation, and about 35 -33 % of female Gen X are voting One Nation.So it's a huge, huge number.

Gen X, of course, is anyone born between 1965 and 1980, so those between the ages of 46 and 61.They are typically outer suburban and regional.and they are feeling economic insecurity.We find in our research they either have a huge mortgage or the younger Gen X usually are still renting and haven't got into the market yet and of course it's just almost prohibitively difficult to get to the market.So they're feeling economically anxious, they feelthat the economic promise of the past is no longer there.

And that grievance is building this, you know, anger against the two party system, which they feel has failed them.Because for the last 15 years, they've been given countless promises by both sides at state and federal level.And they feel that they've been let down.And so in Pauline Hanson, they see someone who's willing to, and I've used this language before, almost take a flamethrower, you know, to the system.And that is the words they use.You know, they use things like, you know, tear it down, you know, burn it all down.

Do you lift the bandaid though and talk to them about racism?

No, but I think, but obviously that's, you know, she's giving these very reductive solutions.

When she says there are no good Muslims, don't you think that strikes a chord with some of them?And that draws people to her as well.

Yep.But people in our focus groups where you raise that specifically, where you challenge them about that, and they say, well, no, I don't agree with it on that.But I think there will become a tipping point where she'll say one too many things or they'll be like, nah, we're just playing politics or there's too many barnacles on the boat for me to vote for.

And those concerned about the sort of things that you raise have to know that some of the fellow travellers with One Nation are the kind of people that I talked about as well.Yeah.That's just the reality.

Yeah.But of course, she's offering reductive solutions like, oh, well, the problem for all this is immigration.If it wasn't for high immigration, your life would be totally different.Now, you know, there's no evidence to back that, but of course, you know, when you're economically anxious and you're feeling the pressures and stresses and someone comes up with a solution, which, you know, sounds superficially that it makes sense to them, they'll be drawn to you.

Well, let's go to somebody else who has similarities with Pauline Hanson.That's Nigel Farage in the UK, and he's come up with a stunner.He's resigning, creating a by -election and standing again.Look, the background of this, and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but how he took a gift of five million pounds, which is almost 10 million Australian dollars from a billionaire based in Thailand.At first, he said it was for his security, but then he accepted that he could do whatever he liked with that money, and he bought a house soon after receiving it.And since then, he's taken other benefits, free accommodation and so on from somebody else.

It was to be a parliamentary inquiry to circumvent that parliamentary inquiry.He's resigning.And what he wants to say then to the people of Clacton in his electorate is that, you know, I want you to judge me. I don't want the media or the parliament to judge me. I want you to put two fingers up to the entire establishment and put me back.It's risky.He won by 8000 votes at the last election, but I think he failed seven times before that.So he's no walk up start.

But anyway, this is the way that he's done it.

Yeah.It's huge.It's going to be a huge roll of the dice.If he wins, it's going to really change the conversation over there.And if it blows him up, then I don't think there's any reform party without him.I mean, he is like Pauline Hanson of One Nation, indistinguishable from the brand.

There's a number of polls in the UK.I do track religiously more in common, Luke Trill, who is a brilliantly clever fellow.And if you look at more uncommon polls, like reform has come off the boil quite a lot.It was polling in the thirties consistently, and it had up to a 10 point lead over Labor and then around a 15 point lead over the Tories.They come back to sort of mid twenties, low twenties.So still performing very strongly, but it does appear that, you know, Farage is starting to wear a bit thin with the voting public and, you know, how he performs in this by -election.

will be pivotal.

Courtesy of Anthony Green, I picked this up and then I went and had a closer look at it.You know you can't resign from the House of Commons.an extraordinary thing.It's an ancient constitutional convention that you, what you have to do is to be appointed to an unpaid office of profit.That's a bit of an oxymoron.It's an unpaid office of profit under the crown.

And so what they do is they go through this, they give two specific roles.They set them aside and the chancellor, the exchequer, the treasurer takes care of this.And they'll appoint you to a steward or bailiff of what they call the Chiltern Hundreds, which would come as a surprise to the hundreds who live in my hometown of Chiltern, but this refers to historic crown lands in the UK.Or you can be appointed a steward or bailiff of a manor of Northstead, which is a medieval estate in Yorkshire.So they actually do go through this process.He will now be appointed to one of these things, provided they allow him to resign, and then they can go through the process.

Why have we adopted so much of the British system when we left this little gem behind?It's an absolute cracker.At times, I'm just stunned by the way that we're so devoted to a system that has little matters like this in there.

I'm all for Lord Barry of Mackay, West Mackay.

Now, the by -election I referred to before, the by -election in Western Australia, It's in the seat of Secret Harbour, and it's interesting for many reasons.First of all, it's right inside Andrew Hastie's seat, federal seat of Canning.It's held by Labor.They held it easily at the last election, 46 percent, but this time One Nation will be running, and according to the Fin Review, Labor and One Nation are in the mid -30s, and the Liberals are down from 25 to the high teens, and it's inthe outer suburbs.So this is the frontier land for One Nation before they hit the city gates.

So the Liberals have said they'll preference One Nation.So if it is close between Labor and One Nation, Liberal preferences could get One Nation over the line.I mean, how would that be in a by -election in Perth?

Yeah.And I think Hastie, to his credit, has not taken a backward step with One Nation.Angus copped a bit of flack recently from doing a major speech, but not mentioning them once.And then he came back on Thursday night and sort of articulated a clearer case against One Nation.And he made it personally relevant to voters, sort of said, this is what it's going to cost you, a One Nation government or a One Nation majority.But Hastie's been out there right from the start.

But if they're going to be successful against One Nation, they've got to articulate the personal consequence of what a one nation government look like.I can tell you from the research though, like people's views are, well, it can't be worse than the current guys, you know, the Labour and Liberal duopoly.Now, of course it can be, it really can be, but at the moment they're feeling that grievance and so They don't see the economic consequences to them of a one nation government.

Yeah, but just imagine what it will do to the conversation in Western Australia as well, with Andrew Heastie right in the middle of the electorate.And as you said, he said before that he'd rather be taken out in a box than bend the knee to one nation.So he's going to be right in the middle of that discussion.And there'll be debates over whether the Liberal Party should have preferenced One Nation and so on, and Andrew Hastie will have to step up and be a very important part of that conversation.And the fourth reason, that's why it's interesting, it's the run -up to the Victorian election.And of course, One Nation are polling in the high 20s, at least, without a leader, without a structure, without candidates.

Maybe when they do get the candidates and the leader, then that'll become a negative, but that's the situation at the moment.It's just quite bizarre that they can be that far without anybody to lead them other than somebody from Queensland.

I think it's going to be fascinating to see what James Ashby does.One Nation Chief of Staff to Pauline Hanson.He's obviously not an idiot.He'll be weighing up a number of things.He indicated in South Australia they'd run a candidate in every seat and they did.He's indicated the same in Victoria.

But that comes with risk.Everything is a risk versus reward proposition in politics.The reward is obviously they could perform incredibly well, which legitimises them further.They also do get public funding and I think in Victoria it's about $5 a lower house vote.That's a lot of money.So he'd be looking at that because obviously what they raise there, they can use elsewhere.

Also, if you have a lot of candidates in the field and there's 88 seats, lower house seats, plus you'd need at least there's eight upper house regions.So you would really need about 110 candidates.That's a lot of people to be out there in front of microphones.

They will have some doozies among those, just wait for it.You would think so?Well, history shows that some of them embarrass them so soon after being preselected.That would happen.And then even after they get elected, some of them don't stand up for very long.

They can be more discerning now about who they choose.Their candidate for Farrah was obviously well credentialed and he performed in the campaign quite well.He didn't make any gaffes.He did make a gaffe in the House of Reps with voting, sided with the Teals and the Greens, I think from memory, which he said was a mistake about process.which is quite legitimate, is very confusing.But yeah, I think One Nation can now be, you know, they can choose better candidates and I think there'll be more attuned to that.

But there's still a lot of people out there in the field and a lot of journalists looking to make a name, uh, to have a great interview, invite them on the podcast, play, you know, shag, marry, date, whatever.And, uh, suddenly there's a story.James Ashby might decide, notwithstanding he said he wants to run a candidate in every seat in Victoria, he might pull back a bit.And I think for him the main game is federal.They want to be peaking at the next federal election.If they've got a Victorian minority government, where One Nation will be scrutinised in terms of performance and delivery, that could create a lot of headaches for the federal brand.

So it'll be interesting to see where they go.

So that's it for this week.This podcast was made on the sovereign lands of the Wurundjeri people.It was produced by Daniel Simo, Viddy Productions, Sanjana Joes.

The executive producer is Hannah Parks.

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