Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia – 10 July 2025

In this interview, Colleen Harkin appeared on The Rita Panahi Show – Sky News Australia and discussed the IPA’s research on Australia’s taxation system.

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.

Rita Panahi:

Let’s bring in research fellow and director of the Institute of Public Affairs Schools Programme, Colleen Harkin. Colleen, we are told this is a strategy to tackle anti-Semitism in the streets, in the classroom, in the arts. What do you make of this plan so far?

Colleen Harkin:

Rita, where was this moral clarity in 2023 when the Jewish people were told to stay home? We’ve had university sit-ins, we’ve had teachers walking into classrooms wearing kafirs, and it’s been allowed to fester. So this idea of all of a sudden we’ve found some moral clarity, like, great, but it’s a lot little a too late. And what we need is our leaders who promote the unity of what we have to offer, not division. And the Labour government has actually been mostly absent in this scenario about calling out this disgraceful anti-Semitism. And they’ve done a lot to add to divisiveness. Look what they did with the Voice. But it has to be noted that sectarian fights in foreign countries don’t belong in Australia. And we still have scenarios where teachers are walking in and the Australian Education Union are saying it’s okay for them to wear kafirs. It’s up to individual schools to manage that process. So we’ve got to get serious about what our values are as a country and stamp it out.

Rita Panahi:

But they have tried to make it part of our fight. And if you see any of these pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli activists, their protests always include local issues. A lot of Indigenous issues-

Colleen Harkin:

Indigenous issues, yeah. Yep.

Rita Panahi:

… have been co-opted in, saying it’s the same fight, it’s about stolen land, it’s about colonisation. So they have tried to localise the fight.

Now let’s move on to the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers. He is looking to find ways to capture greater number of Australians under his plan to tax super-balances of more than $3 million for unrealized gains. The super tax bill contains a clause which gives the treasurer power to change the super tax rules without parliamentary approval. That’s after the initial bill is passed, and that would allow him to make all sorts of changes, Colleen, what could possibly go wrong?

Colleen Harkin:

Not much.

Rita Panahi:

Will he be drunk with power like a king?

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, this is extraordinary because definitionally, if he’s proposing that he can make changes unilaterally after a bill has already been passed, it definitely means that there was something wrong with the bill in the first place. I mean, really, who does he think he is? I mean, I know he’s the treasurer, but the extraordinary power to be able to change things after a bill has been passed and tinker with it to fix up what were unintended consequences means that it wasn’t thought through properly in the first place. So as if this sort of super tax on unrealized gains wasn’t bad enough, it’s just getting worse.

Rita Panahi:

Well, and this is the fear that anytime any sort of tax is put in place, that its scope will just broaden and broaden. And of course, with bracket creep, it eventually captures more and more people, anyhow.

Now let’s get to Victoria. The opposition down here is proposing changes to the state’s protest laws that would see activists who defy orders to ditch unauthorised rallies, they could end up spending two years behind prison bars. This is a bit harsh, I would’ve thought, Colleen. The proposed plan would also introduce a protest permit system and give police more powers to crack down on extremist rallies. I’m all for that. I’m all for the permits. New South Wales has that in place already. But is what’s being proposed going a little bit too far in undermining free speech, perhaps undermining the right to protest?

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. Rita, I’m not even a fan of the permit scenario because we have the laws to manage unwieldy and unsavoury behaviour. It’s whether we’ve had the appetite to implement it. So the idea that you have to apply for a permit to exercise what is a democratic right is very problematic because what happens in the future when a government doesn’t like your cause?

Rita Panahi:

That’s a good point, yeah.

Colleen Harkin:

The instinct of this is to shut everything down. And I understand why, because it’s-

Rita Panahi:

We would hope that the police wouldn’t be so politicised. But we have seen-

Colleen Harkin:

Well, we’ve seen that.

Rita Panahi:

… obviously through COVID, they are very politicised. So they may reject permits that are against the government’s interests.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. Well, I mean, we have seen it during the COVID lockdowns. And so the instinct to shut everything down and to prevent people and have to register and more bureaucracy and all of these things is fundamentally a problem. We do have the laws and we just have to have the courage to implement them.

Rita Panahi:

Is that what you think the solution is? Because we do see in Victoria last weekend it was terrible, even by our standards. We had those shocking scenes at the Israeli restaurant Friday night. We had people harassed, motorists blockaded in the Melbourne CBD. We had all sorts of vile chants about death to the IDF again in the CBD. So what can we do to actually combat that if the existing laws are not sufficient?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, I think they are. I think they’re not being implemented-

Rita Panahi:

They’re just not being implemented.

Colleen Harkin:

So without undermining what’s going on it doesn’t matter what they’re shouting out. The fact that they’ve been violent and they’ve done what they have done, it doesn’t matter who they’re doing it to and for what cause. We actually do have the legislative powers for the police to implement that, to arrest them and to do whatever the police person does in that situation. But what happens and what has been allowed to fester for a couple of years now, is the lack of courage in actually implementing them. And increasingly, people have got more courageous in their objectionable behaviour. We had people sitting outside Parliament House shouting at people and blocking off businesses for months and nothing was done about it. So we do have it. It’s just that we’ve sort of sat back and said, oh, we are too afraid to do anything about it.

Rita Panahi:

Or we’re very selective in applying those laws-

Colleen Harkin:

Selective, correct.

Rita Panahi:

… because I have seen them applied quite brutally in the past.

Now, before you go, the Queensland Liberal government unveiled the findings of a landmark investigation into the CFMEU conducted by anti-corruption expert Jeffrey Watson SC. Now, this investigation found that the militant union deliberately used violence, coercion and threatened abuse, including against women and children. And he did it to tighten its grip on Queensland’s construction sector.

Colleen, I can’t say I am terribly shocked. We’ve heard these sorts of allegations before about this union. Will something be done? We are talking about a Liberal government in Queensland. Can they crack down on the CFMEU?

Colleen Harkin:

I mean, they have to. The bottom line is that they have to. This just confirms what we’ve all known for a really long time, that the CFMEU has been a protected species. The Labour government has relied on them for funding and for machinery for election campaign times. And so what has come out is what a lot of people have known for a very long time, and it’s been covered up essentially. So it is time that this union was fully de-registered and given the opportunity for these industries to flourish as they should be. There is obviously a place for unions.

Rita Panahi:

Of course.

Colleen Harkin:

But, this union’s behaviour is simply beyond out of line.

Rita Panahi:

And we hear the same stories, the same sort of tactics, the same coercion and aggression, whether we’re talking about Victoria or Queensland. It just seems to be the identical stories-

Colleen Harkin:

It’s across it all.

Rita Panahi:

… about how they go about their business.

Colleen Harkin, thank you so much for your time.

Colleen Harkin:

You’re welcome.

Rita Panahi:

Joining me-

This transcript with Colleen Harkin appeared on The Rita Panahi Show – Sky News Australia 10 July 2025 has been edited for clarity.