Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia – 13 April 2026

Rita Panahi:

Let’s bring in PR Counsel Managing Director Kristy McSweeney and Institute of Public Affairs Research Fellow, Colleen Harkin. Colleen, do you agree with the former defence minister that this prosecution is ill-advised?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, it’s a very confronting time for Australia because this is our most decorated soldier. He got the award for gallantry in 2006 and then a VC in 2011. And he’s represented everything, the best of our defence force, our armed personnel and his service, sacrifice, courage, all of those things that we put on a pedestal. But the real question here is due process, innocence until proven guilty. We have to have confidence in our institutions to be able to see that through. But to me, there’s a whole lot of ancillary questions that come with this.

How is it that the Channel 9 cameras were able to be there at the point of arrest? Why and how has it taken 10 years to get to this stage? How is it that the command chain above Ben Roberts-Smith were given awards for command distinguished service medals, and yet when it comes to this in the Brereton Report, they’re excused? They’re removed from this process for not having oversight.

And then, of course, there’s the Afghan soldier who shot three Australian soldiers while they were sitting and playing cards. And we don’t seem to have that sort of … We haven’t gone chasing, defending our own defence personnel. And I think that the average Australian is sitting here looking at this and going, “Our defence personnel deserve a lot better than what they’re getting at the moment.” And there’s a real uncomfortable feeling that there’s been a lot of activism around this.

Rita Panahi:

Well, yes, Joel Fitzgibbon talks about that journalistic activism. He also made the point that how welcome it would be if just a fraction of the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spent pursuing our war heroes was invested in securing justice for Australians killed in action or in service. It’s a popular sentiment, Kristy. I’ve got to say, I can’t even get my head around how we could spend 300 million in this endeavour. How is that possible?

Kristy McSweeney:

I can’t either. And I can’t understand how we can spend 300 million and a lot of it is largely in the pursuit of one man. And I don’t think there are many Australians who respect the defence force and the fact that people go to war and serve our country and do that training.

I am from Perth. I’m well aware of what the SAS training is. There are SAS personnel in my own family. We ask those people to experience things beyond the realm of human mental and physical capacity that we can’t even have any comparison to what we do in our daily lives to go to war and to do that, to fight for our country. And I think it’s really distressing to see someone who’s done that be frog marched off a plane in front of his children and seems to be the singular figure around everything that is wrong or may have been wrong in the defence force response in Afghanistan.

And echoing Colleen’s comments there, there are possibly other questions to answer around higher up commands. He’s not a particularly high ranking soldier at that time in Australia’s response in Afghanistan. The military does rely on hierarchy and it is a chain of command. That’s how it’s built. So yeah, I would want to ask those questions as well.

Rita Panahi:

Well, he wasn’t particularly high ranking, but he was high profile VC recipient. They don’t hand those out. And you do wonder about what this does to the Anzac legacy, the damage done to have this man sitting behind bars when we celebrate Anzac Day. This is going to be something I think no one imagined would be happening, our most decorated soldier alive behind bars.

Now, let’s talk about some recent polling that has come out last week. A Redbridge/Accent poll revealed the federal voting intentions and the demographic data here is fascinating. You look at Gen Xs, for example, it showed that amongst Generation X, One Nation is now the leading party on 33%, head of Labour on 31. Coalition trailing far behind on 19. The Greens were just on 8%.

And what’s just as interesting is when you look at the two party preferred data, when it’s ALP and the coalition, ALP come out in front, 51%, 49%. But when it’s Labour and One Nation, amongst generation X One Nation is just ahead there on 51 to 49. Kristy, again, this is not good news for the Coalition and I would argue it’s not particularly great news for Labour either.

Kristy McSweeney:

It’s devastating for the coalition that there are now polls mounting One Nation as a two party preferred against the government. That in itself is devastating. What has led to that position is incredibly even more structurally devastating. It’s been very clear that the Liberal Party over years has concentrated on people who we call boomers, perhaps over 60s.

I have sat through many election campaign where we don’t pitch to young people because they don’t vote for us. We don’t necessarily pitch to women because they don’t vote for us. And so political strategy has been since the holidays doubled down your bet. But unfortunately, the demographics of the country have changed. People under 35 are now the largest block of voters, and of course, Gen X people, and that’s me saying, “We did everything you told us to do. We went to university, we got a mortgage, some of us had children. We did everything right. We paid our HEX, we worked hard, and we still can’t afford a house 25 kilometres from where we grew up.” And that’s a real challenge for the coalition parties to get those voters back.

Rita Panahi:

You make some excellent points there, but I’m not sure I agree, Colleen, with the sentiment that the coalition has just doubled down on their core supporters, because I think they have kind of diluted their message by trying to appeal to what they see as the centre, what they see as leftist voters or teal voters, what women want, but they just misjudge it continuously. They completely misjudge what those voters mean want.

Colleen Harkin:

Kristy, I’m going to disagree with you there. I think that what’s happened with the coalition is it has actually lost its base, because it has forgotten about who it is and what it stands for. If it was able to articulate strongly and clearly the idea of personal responsibility and the freedom that gives you, sort of taking a risk and getting rewarded for it, all of those sorts of things, the younger generation is very aligned with having a crack at something.

They’re sort of being taught this entrepreneurial spirit. Everything is sort of … The TikTok scenario, you can make a big difference just by doing a TikTok Zoom type thing. So their mentality is very able to accommodate what are true Liberal Party values, but I don’t think the Liberal Party’s been able to articulate it properly. They’ve got themselves sucked in again to the idea that they don’t represent females very well, but it’s had more females represented than almost anybody else. It sort of has lost its way about how to sell its story. And I think that’s what’s happened with the young generation is that One Nation have been able to articulate very clearly and succinctly in a Tony Abbott kind of way about what they stand for, and that’s really appealing to young people.

Rita Panahi:

Well, there was a poll out in the last month where amongst female voters, when you look at that demographic, One Nation was coming out in front. And again, that shocked everybody, because you think female voters naturally gravitate left. But I think all voters want a party that has some conviction that you know what you’re supporting and what they believe in.

Kristy McSweeney:

The authenticity of it.

Rita Panahi:

Authenticity is key, isn’t it, in politics?

Kristy McSweeney:

It is. Yeah.

Rita Panahi:

Now, Channel 7’s a spotlight programme. We don’t do often promote other stations here, but they have completed a major investigation into the truth behind Australia’s green energy transition. Have a look at what they found.

Spotlight Voiceover:

Deadly and destructive cost of our move to renewables.

Liam Bartlett:

The Chinese are the criminals here, but make no mistake, we’re also contributing to this manmade hell.

Woman 1:

I don’t think we can blame the Chinese for taking advantage of our stupidity.

Man 1:

It is so good. Why is the payer bills keep coming up?

Liam Bartlett:

Why can’t you sit down and answer open, honest questions?

Rita Panahi:

Oh, well, Colleen, it’s great to see other media reporting on an issue we have been talking about on this programme on this station for years with that very same questions. If it’s so cheap, if it’s so good, why are bills going up here? Why are we looking at even greater bills down the track and reliability not being as good? And having a look at the sources of these so called renewable technologies, and they’re quite shameful and it’s something that isn’t talked about enough.

Colleen Harkin:

It’s not spoken about at all. I mean, I think we’ve been solved apart. The idea that everybody has this touchy-feely thing about clean energy and a clean environment is all important. Great. But anybody who’s looked closely at what happens to the environment in these places where what they’re doing with the wind turbines, that’s not environmentally friendly at all. There’s also this scenario about how the solar panels and wind turbines are made using our coal in foreign countries that we buy back at an increased market rate. There are a layer upon layer upon layer of misinformation, disinformation about this whole renewable scenario. It doesn’t provide us national security, national affordability, reliability. There’s nothing about it. And for years, we have sort of sat back and let it all happen. And I’m really pleased to see that this story is actually getting some more oxygen and well overdue.

Rita Panahi:

We’re told, Kristy, we’re going to be a renewable energy superpower, but I can’t see that happening without the government pretty much funding the whole thing.

Kristy McSweeney:

Well, the government funds it at the current time. I mean, the government has just given millions of dollars to Rio Tinto to put in green hydrogen in Queensland. Now, Rio Tinto makes a profit of … They’ve got a market cap of 240 billion. Taxpayers shouldn’t pay tens of millions of dollars for Rio Tinto. So the federal government can give them a tick and say, “Look at this wonderful green hydrogen example.” But of course, the Australian taxpayer has funded it.

Now, if it was commercially viable, Rio Tinto would have taken some of their $240 billion market cap and funded it themselves. We have to ask these questions. The Australian taxpayer is funding large, very profitable companies to accelerate the commercialisation of this technology, because they’re not doing it themselves out of market demand.

Rita Panahi:

The market manipulation in this sector is out of control.

Kristy McSweeney:

And no one understands it. It’s difficult.

Rita Panahi:

Well, there’s not that much transparency around it either. That’s why we don’t understand it.

Kristy McSweeney:

Easily covered.

Rita Panahi:

Absolutely. Kristy McSweeney, Colleen Harkin, thank you for your time tonight.

Kristy McSweeney:

Thank you.

This transcript of Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia from 13 April 2026 has been edited for clarity.