Colleen Harkin on Credlin Sky News Australia – 9 January 2025

In this interview Colleen Harkin appeared on Credlin Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research into Australia’s National Defence.

All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.

Below is a transcript of the interview.

James Morrow:

All right, let’s have some fun here with my first panel, PR Counsel Managing Director and founder Kristy McSweeney and Institute of Public Affairs research fellow Colleen Harkin. Guys, thanks so much for joining me this evening on a Friday night. We’re now 26 days out from the Bondi Massacre. Anthony Albanese has finally caved and called that Royal Commission that pretty much everybody in Australian public life was calling for.

But while this commission is of course welcomed and good on for finally doing it has been soured by the exhausting weight receiving fierce backlash from Australians as well as the Jewish community. And when the Prime Minister was asked why it took so long by the host of the Today Show this morning, Albanese, well, have a look at this, he didn’t seem too happy.

Anthony Albanese:

This is actually record time, forever calling a Royal Commission, if you go back in history.

James Morrow:

Okay there, Kristy. Well, a lot of humility there. We are used to seeing humility from Anthony Albanese, but he refused to apologise for the delay saying he needed time to think. What do you make of this?

Kristy McSweeney:

Making decisions is hard and correctly choosing what the mood of the country is, is obviously something that the Prime Minister has had difficulties in the past. We know he’s still very scarred from going all in on the voice. And perhaps that’s led to not judging the mood of the country, not judging how difficult this is and how prevalent this is in Australia and taking this long. And of course, there’s a significant reframing of the narrative here.

Don’t forget, the government has spent the first 25 days trying to make this issue about gun laws, about gaps in security legislation, about working with ASIO, everything but antisemitism. And now, they have had to accept that the country and particularly Jewish Australians, but Australians united, I feel, are wanting a Royal Commission. They can’t reframe that narrative. It hasn’t worked. And of course, let’s look at the politics of this.

There is a bare reason why the government took so long. It is how can we frame a narrative so we can make the politics of this work for us, so our term in government, the rest of our term is not clogged up by a Royal Commission into antisemitism and bringing forth issues that exist perhaps in six seats in Western Sydney. They had a friendly opening with Chris Minns. They could have done it then. They didn’t jump on the back of New South Wales and say, “We’ll take a Federal Royal Commission.” They let that go and go and go 25 days. It’s not good enough.

James Morrow:

Well, it’s not only that he claims it well as a record time since they called once. The fact that he’s trying to get us to forget that for three and a half weeks, he went out there saying, “No, a Royal Commission is not the answer, Colleen. A Royal Commission can’t answer the questions. A Royal Commission will take too long. It would just be some retired judge,” as he dismissively said in one of his press conferences. Colleen, is he hoping that Australians just have the memory of a goldfish on this one?

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, that’s right. I mean, everything that Kristy has said, I agree with, but I think Albanese must think that we’re pretty stupid. I distinctly remember only about a week ago, him saying that we did not need to have a Royal Commission that experts had advised that we should not have one and that it would give platform to people that we don’t want to hear from. I distinctly remember that a few days ago.

He’s finally relented and listened to the will of the people. I mean, it’s maybe the one thing that Australians are united about. Maybe the only thing that Australians are united about at the moment is the need for a Royal Commission. There is no doubt that we need one. I don’t know why, what they were trying to protect, what they’ve been trying to hide, we must have it. And we must also have the terms, I believe, extended to actually address the even harder issues because this is not just about antisemitism.

This is about the broader picture of immigration in Australia because we can’t forget that the deceased now gunman was here 25 years, came in on a student visa, and the alleged gunman who’s in jail was schooled here, was born and schooled here. So we have to have the hard decisions, and the hard conversation about who we let into this country and why, and what has happened to our own culture.

Our own standards and our own values, the Jewish community at the forefront of this, but the big conversation also has to be addressed.

James Morrow:

Indeed, you’re absolutely right. And we need to talk about things like immigration and why so many people in Western Sydney a decade ago thought it’d be a great idea to run off and join ISIS. But in a more positive bit of news here, Bondi Beach hero, Ahmed al Ahmed has met with a billionaire in New York who presented him with an extravagant gift in show of gratitude in New York City.

Bill Ackman, a financier, honoured Ahmed with a large gold menorah for his bravery at a lavish dinner in New York City. Have a look at the speech.

Bill Ackman:

Menorah represents endurance. Represents courage, represents persistence, and most of all represents light and light in the darkness. And this man deserves this award.

James Morrow:

Kristy McSweeney, I think this is one of the great sort of unifying stories here along with the real Royal Commission that we all wanted. This is the one sort of positive thing. It’s great to see this Australian getting so much recognition around the world.

Kristy McSweeney:

It’s really extraordinary, isn’t it? Look, it’s a great success story of Australian multiculturalism at home, and it’s a great success story of Australian heroism abroad, in New York. And it’s also a fantastic story about the linkages of the Jewish community in Australia and the US and just how far this story and the heroism of this man has resonated across the world amid what is a significant tragedy and a huge tragedy and so awful for Australia, and recognised internationally has been so awful.

This part of the story that has come out of it, the positive light of the story that has come out of it, is wonderful.

James Morrow:

And Ahmed al Ahmed said he wanted to meet Donald Trump. We’re hoping that invitation comes through for the man, so we’re going to keep tune on that situation. But Colleen, I want to move on to another story here too, because the Albanese government has been accused of impotence after they said that they were simply monitoring the situation in the Atlantic Ocean where the United States seized vessels that were allegedly part of a secret Russian shadow fleet smuggling oil out of Venezuela.

Now, Colleen, I thought this was really interesting because it suggests how little sway our defence capabilities seem to have, particularly when you consider a couple of years ago that we were unable to contribute even a patrol boat to go and take part in a monitoring operation in the Red Sea against the Houthis that we had been asked to by the United States, with the United States upping their defence budget by half a trillion dollars. Colleen, don’t you think that maybe we should be able to do more than monitor a situation?

Colleen Harkin:

Absolutely. I mean, there’s no point in having sanctions unless you’re going to do something with the sanctions that you’ve put in place. And that’s what Trump has shown is the strength of leadership that I think a lot of Australians look at admiringly and say we need some of that commitment to purpose. But from a defence budget point of view, we’ve got this sort of manly mouth response. So as we’ll increase our defence budget in 10 years a tiny bit, that’s basically the bottom line.

We have to get serious about our national security and our ability to contribute at the broader level. We need to up it to at least 3%, if not more. And we’re in a position where we are very vulnerable. The idea that other people will look after us and we can’t pull our own weight is very worrying. And the idea that we just sort of look at things and monitor them, but we can’t contribute to them is not where we should be. We have to get serious about our defence mechanisms.

James Morrow:

Well, yeah. And Kristy, at the start of the show, I talked about all the different ways in which actually a lot of totalitarian regimes are starting to fall onto the ropes, but at the same time, we still have China, which says that it wants to take Taiwan sometime in the not too distant future. This would of course, be catastrophic for us if war were to break out a hot war in the North Pacific and we would almost surely be involved.

But it feels to me like this government really doesn’t take these things seriously, that they just want to rely on other nations and our allies and so on to do the heavy lifting and hope that we’re far enough away from the action.

Kristy McSweeney:

Well, James, to take a non-serious look at it, I mean, air New Zealand pilots are now a key pillar of our defence monitoring strategy. We had to rely on them to tell us when Chinese warships are undertaking activity off the coast of Australia. And so, that is what defence looks like. And that is the tussle between the defence department and imminent defence experts, organisations such as ASPI in Australia and intelligence agencies and the government.

Of course, we have seen for the last 12 months, the US asking Australia to up their defence spending contribution and how that is going to affect Australia with American investment. Are they going to ask us for more money or pull infrastructure from us if we don’t agree? Those questions are still on the table. They still exist. We just haven’t seen them be prevalent, but of course with this type of news coming out, we’re going to have to readdress that.

James Morrow:

And finally, Colleen, and I wanted to ask you about a story that really piqued my interest today, that there is a disability youth advocacy group here, which is saying that they might bring an action against the Albanese government if they make cuts to the NDIS saying that it would make some sort of violation of our treaty obligations. Colleen, can you walk me through just how this sort of thing is supposed to work?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, there’s a slightly different component to it. My understanding of what they’re concerned about is basically taking the authority of parents out of the picture, that this sort of whole of government approach will mean that the potential for school teachers or medicals or people like that to make decisions about a child’s, inverted commas, wellbeing without the parental consent. And so these organisations are rightly saying it is not the government’s role to parent a child and to make those decisions.

It’s the parent’s job. And it does … We already do have situations where there are decisions made, that … we already have mature minor legislation that has been weaponized and we already have situations where parents have been taken out of the communication about their child’s development. So it’d be interesting to see how this pans out, but it is a boiling frog scenario where increasingly governments are taking over the parenting rights of the developing child.

James Morrow:

That is very disturbing. Thank you so much for explaining that to us and we’re going to keep a very close eye on that, but we’re going to have to leave it there for the moment. Colleen Harkin from the IPA and Kristy McSweeney from the PR council, thank you both for joining me tonight. Now let’s …

This transcript of Colleen Harkin on Credlin Sky News Australia from 9 January 2026 has been edited for clarity.