Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia – 11 November 2025

In this interview, Colleen Harkin appeared on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research into the economy.

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

Below is a trancript of the interview.

Rita Panahi:

This is News Corp, Senior Writer Patrick Carlyon and Institute of Public Affairs Research Fellow Colleen Harkin. Patrick, this is a massive stretch of land, of crown land, and there are six other native title applications encompassing most of Victoria before the courts.

Patrick Carlyon:

Yes. Look, I think the point here is that it comes right on the back of the treaty going through a couple of weeks ago. And look, that treaty was done by stealth. No one really understands it. It brings in the question, as George Orwin would say, some Victorians are more than other Victorians under the treaty. And it’s the language, it’s so vague when you’re talking about native title, you’re talking about treaties. I think the native title claim talks about decision-making processes. What does that actually mean in reality?

Rita Panahi:

Exactly.

Patrick Carlyon:

And look, you’ve got a very cynical electorate at the moment. We saw that with the voice. Why is this happening now?

Rita Panahi:

Well, Colleen, we voted no to the voice. Victoria voted no, quite resoundingly, given that the no campaign barely spent any money campaigning here because it’s expensive to advertise and had limited resources. And still, majority of Victorians said no. And yet here we are. We told traditional laws and customs of the Wurundjeri people relating to rights and responsibilities for country are at the centre of this native title claim. What does that mean exactly? And again, where is the respect for the democratic process and the fact that two years ago Victorians said no to this sort of racial condition?

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, of course. And look, this is two Aboriginal clans, relitigating history in order that one of them can actually then move forward to treaty with the government. So we’ve spoken before about treaties within treaties and states within states, and this is where it’s heading. And it will lead inevitably to increasing regulation and restrictions and costs. What we used to have was one law and one framework, which may not have been perfect, but it was working fine. And now we’re moving towards this sort of multilayered co-governance sort of scenario, which pits people of one ancestry against another. And it’s just leading to chaos, quite frankly.

Rita Panahi:

But let’s move to revelations of the ABC committed a similar journalistic sin to the BBC, the UK’s public broadcaster, which has seen its Director-General Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness resign after the network deceptively doctored footage of a Donald Trump speech. It’s now been revealed that the ABC’s Four Corners programme edited Trump’s January 6th address in a similar fashion to the BBC. Daily Telegraph Columnist Tim Blair wrote about this in today’s paper, and he makes this very important point. Unlike the ABC, the BBC actually corrects itself when it commits a dreadful, ideologically driven abomination. And every single mistake the BBC ever makes, just like the ABC always goes in the same anti-conservative direction. Colleen, it really is quite a coincidence. There’s all these innocent mistakes. There’s no bias, there’s no institutional bias, but all the mistakes are in the one direction. But how is the ABC getting away with it?

Colleen Harkin:

Funny about that. Look, even in the ABC’s own reporting, it says that last year they had 25,000 complaints, 7,000 of which were about inaccuracy or bias. And it does beg the question because the ABC and the BBC have the same mandate in terms of using public money and an obligation to impartiality. I don’t understand why the ABC keep getting a free kick.

Rita Panahi:

Well, Patrick, let’s hear from the BBC’s former head of news now, Deborah Turness, who resigned over this scandal. She maintains that the BBC is not biassed.

Deborah Turness:

I stepped down over the weekend because the buck stops with me. But I’d like to make one thing very clear. BBC News is not institutionally biassed. That’s why it’s the world’s most trusted news provider. And-

Journalist:

Excuse me, why did you fail to deal with the mistakes that were made?

Deborah Turness:

… and see my teams. Thank you so much.

Journalist:

Do you think that the journalists are institutionally corrupt like President Trump says?

Deborah Turness:

Of course our journalists aren’t corrupt. Our journalists are hardworking people who strive for impartiality and I will stand by their journalism.

Journalist:

Is there institutional bias at the BBC?

Deborah Turness:

There is no institutional bias. Mistakes are made, but there’s no institutional bias.

Rita Panahi:

There you have it, Patrick. She says there’s no institutional bias. And BBC journalists strive for impartiality. Perhaps they should strive a little bit harder.

Patrick Carlyon:

Absolutely. Look, the perception thing is critical here. Whether it’s the ABC or the BBC, the viewers need to believe that you are actually striving to tell the truth. And there have been a lot of instances, whether it’s been Israel or Gaza or pro-transgender ideology, where it seems that activism has actually pervaded the news process. These aren’t news stories in some of these examples, these are actually activists actually pushing barrows. And you can’t be a journalist and be an activist at the same time.

Rita Panahi:

You can’t. And if you want to express your opinions through your work, then you need to host a programme like this. You can’t be a supposed news reporter who’s supposed to be completely unbiased. Your personal worldview should have absolutely no bearing on the putting to air. But those lines are completely blurred, Colleen, it’s very evident now, and it’s probably why trust in the media is plummeting, because the news journalists have decided they’re also opinion leaders.

Colleen Harkin:

And they think that it’s within their right to be able to do that. The public expects particularly places like the ABC because it does have the onus of reporting using the public funds. It is its job to report with impartiality the facts, not what they actually would like you to believe.

Rita Panahi:

Now, the Business Council of Australia has again ranked Victoria as the worst state to do business because of high taxes and excessive red tape continuing to hamper businesses across the state. The Business Council of Australia, Chief Executive Brad Black, said businesses in Victoria are crying out for policy commitments to cut regulation and tax that support private sector-led economic growth. South Australia is leading the nation and shows us that cutting unnecessary red tape and designing efficient regulations is not just good for business. It’s good for workers and communities. Colleen, what is the island government doing to address this issue? Praise therefore, South Australia, it’s another labour state. So this isn’t necessarily a party aligned thing, it’s about policies, good policies.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, correct. I mean, the IPA last year did a state economic scorecard and also had Victoria at the bottom of the list. Victoria is the highest payroll tax, the highest land tax, the highest stamp duty. In its term, it has introduced 60 new or increased taxes across the board. We are the worst performing state in the nation, and I think it’s a great opportunity for the opposition with the election coming up next year because things are actually only going to get worse for us because of the Treaty and the working from home petition that the state government have taken. Doing business in Victoria is just going to get harder and harder. And there are other alternatives.

Rita Panahi:

And that’s the problem for this state. Businesses will just up and go. If some of them can go internationally, some of them will move into state. But we have enormous tax burden here because of the debt. We’ve got the highest debt of any state.

Patrick Carlyon:

Look, I think that’s the point. We’re being gouged, whether we’re businesses or people or individuals because the government is trying to find money to repay these really bad investments, tens of billions of dollars. We are bankrupt basically. So you’ve got all these taxes that keep on creeping in. Weekly, there’s a new tax. Something gets doubled with every week in Victoria, like the pet levy got doubled a couple of weeks ago. Why? It’s to pay off these massive debts.

Rita Panahi:

Well, who would’ve thought Colleen shutting down… Well, most of the state for six periods during COVID would have some sort of economic consequences. I mean, this is what was mind-blowing to me at the time. I was writing about this every single day for the Herald Sun, because these policies were popular. People were so scared and just spooked by the hysteria that they thought shutting down schools, shutting down businesses, shutting down society was a reasonable response to what in the end was a pandemic. But it was also one that was far less deadly than many people believed. It was because of the hysteria.

Colleen Harkin:

And that is proven if you compare Victoria with other states, financially and to people’s mental health, their social development, all of those things. But Victoria also has the extra burden of our builds, our big builds, and the overrun of costs and time on so many of our projects here. So everywhere you look around, we are quite a dysfunctional state, unfortunately.

Rita Panahi:

Yep. We are broke and broken. And infrastructure Victoria has unveiled a new blueprint for this state, which recommends 30 kilometre speed limits in school areas and other local streets, despite vehement opposition from locals. Patrick, every single report like this that comes out seems to have some sort of anti-car bias. They hate cars. They hate that people drive cars. They think, I don’t know, we live in Paris where you can walk everywhere and they want cars speed limits of 30. I mean, really, what’s the point?

Patrick Carlyon:

Have you tried to drive at 30 kilometres an hour? It’s impossible.

Rita Panahi:

It’s hard.

Patrick Carlyon:

It is really hard. And I think the thing here is every pedestrian death is a tragedy, of course. But we’re sort of reducing the limits to absurd speed limits. What about pedestrian education? I mean, a lot of people are wearing headphones now. We’ve got electric cars that don’t make any noise. I would suspect without knowing that most of these accidents actually happen on the road. They might’ve been for these poor people to get hurt, they might’ve been avoidable if they’d sort of been better educated. Why aren’t we looking at that?

Rita Panahi:

Well, especially for youngsters. I mean, I’m guilty of it myself, Colleen, but I mean, when have we seen a big public awareness campaign for young people about the dangers of wearing headphones, noise cancelling headphones and crossing streets?

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, sure. But I see this as more than that, Rita, because this is also a plan to increase the population of Victoria to 11 and a half million people. High density living, no cars, as you say, they’re terrible things for anybody to own. And it is literally social re-engineering of the way we live. It is destroying our Australian way of life, and it’s masquerading as pretty bike paths. So I see it as a much bigger issue.

Rita Panahi:

Oh, they do beautiful drawings. The illustrations of these reports are always delightful. Just families all on bikes as if we’re living in Amsterdam. Patrick Carlyon and Colleen Harkin, thanks for your time tonight.

This transcript from The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia from 11 November 2025 has been edited for clarity.