Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia – 16 June 2026

Rita Panahi:

Joining me now for more is News Corps senior writer Patrick Carlyon and Institute of Public Affairs research fellow Colleen Harkin. Patrick, it’s a powerful ad. It’s essentially using the PM’s own words against him-

Patrick Carlyon:

Yes.

Rita Panahi:

… With beautiful pictures contradicting everything he’s saying.

Patrick Carlyon:

An election ad two years before an election. They’re strange times, aren’t they? And it’s very powerful. I mean, I think Mr. Albanese misunderstood the electorate and the fact that we don’t like prime ministers who lie. We had two prime ministers, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, who were deposed by their own parties because they were perceived to lie and he’s now in the same position now. And we’re two years from an election and you’ve got a rampaging One Nation.

Rita Panahi:

Oh, there is a rampaging One Nation. Pauline Hanson this week overtook the PM as preferred prime minister. That was in polling that was published in the nine papers. And what’s incredible about this particular campaign, which they ran off the back of Labor’s $27 donation. So again, it wasn’t planned. It was done on the run. It’s raised an enormous amount. And the average donation amount here, Colleen, is $60. That shows you it’s not the big end of town, it’s everyday people. Have you ever heard of 70,000 people donating to a political party in a few days in Australia?

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. Whoever does One Nation’s social media are geniuses. It is hilarious.

Patrick Carlyon:

It is.

Colleen Harkin:

And it’s even funnier that it’s off the back of Albanese calling out saying, “Stop One Nation.” It’s brilliant. And it is the ordinary punters who are supporting this. I think this is going to stick. This fire the liar, I think it’ll follow him all the way through to the election. I think watching him fall off steps, really simple things that he did that he just had to try and pretend never happened are all coming back to haunt. It’s amazing.

Rita Panahi:

Getting head called by a room full of angry people, was it in a mosque and saying, “Oh, no one had called me. They all love me.”

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah.

Rita Panahi:

It’s just crazy. Colleen, you mentioned how savvy One Nation are on social media and they prove that once again. Lefty activists try to shut down the party’s fundraiser in Melbourne on Friday night. Well, watch here as one of Pauline Hanson’s staffers goes undercover to infiltrate the protest. Of course, he begins by announcing his pronouns.

Video:

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Rita Panahi:

Oh, Colleen, again, superb and that communicates directly to young people. You see Labour pouring so much money into their social media strategy, but you can’t manufacture engagement like that because it’s real.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah.

Rita Panahi:

He’s gone to a protest. He’s made the protestors look silly and it’s a funny little clip.

Colleen Harkin:

And I think the thing with this is it has a sense of authenticity about it. It’s not kind of some expensive studio that’s come up with a polling idea that they’ve work shopped a thousand times before they put it out. It’s quick, it’s fast, it’s authentic. The messaging is really good. And I think what those people who are concerned about One Nation don’t realise, the more they use those phobic language and the more they accuse people of it, the stronger the movement is becoming.

Rita Panahi:

Well, Patrick, they’ve cried wolf too many times. They’ve completely devalued terms like racist, bigot, homophobic, fascist. They have overused and misused those words so much that they hold no value now. So they can throw that around as much as they like. And I think the overwhelming majority of Australians don’t take any notice of what the socialists are bleating about.

Patrick Carlyon:

I think we’ve heard so much squawking on that front in terms of that language for so long and One Nation does represent the pushback against that. And the fact that a political party is actually promoting its most ardent critics to promote the party sort of shows where the world is at now, doesn’t it? I mean, One Nation is actually saying, “We’re not listening to you. People aren’t listening to you anymore.”

 And we’re so convinced that they’re not listening that we’re actually going to put them in our ads to promote us.”

Rita Panahi:

And the note listening to them isn’t just to the socialists, it’s to the Liberal Party. And we’re seeing that in the polling. We’ve got this massive backlash against the budget and the coalition is continuing to dive in the polls. Now a key issue contributing to One Nation’s rise is immigration. There’s been nearly 1.4 million long-term net migrant arrivals since Labour was elected. The government insists this is providing an economic benefit, but Judith Sloan writes in today’s Australian well, that may not be the case. She says, “The economic benefits of immigration were always oversold to quieten the opponents of mass migration. The truth is immigration is much less about its economic impact than about the kind of society we want. That’s obvious to One Nation supporters. Labour may need to catch up.”

Patrick, Australians have made it clear they want to see substantially lower migrant intake.

Patrick Carlyon:

Yes.

Rita Panahi:

And no matter how often you want to criticise that as racist or bigoted or shortsighted, that’s what the population wants and we’re supposed to live in a democracy.

Patrick Carlyon:

Look, I think Judith’s piece today, everyone should read it. It’s fantastic because it’s calm, it’s forensic and it explains a very complicated and emotion-driven issue in a very calm way. And it’s basically saying we’ve got all these visa hoppers in Australia. We’ve got one million more people on temporary visas today than we did four years ago. And I think the electorate woke up to that a long time ago and the ALP sort of been playing this line, “Oh, net annual intake’s going to stay the same.” In reality, people are seeing it on the ground. There are more people and there’s not enough houses and this has created this massive crisis that everyone is fully aware of.

Rita Panahi:

Well, that’s the key, isn’t it? Right now with the housing crisis, Colleen, it’s a admission Labour will not make that there is a direct relationship with mass intake of people and the housing crisis. I mean, it’s something that should be obvious to really anyone with above room temperature IQ, but you will have so many in the commentariat in politics deny that relationship. As if all these people coming here are just sharing a tent somewhere.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. It’s incredible that they just can’t, or they won’t admit the relationship between such an increase in migration and housing and strain on services, on the standard of living on congestion and all of those sorts of things that people on the street know. They’re experiencing it. They know it’s real. But IPA did some research earlier this year and 79% of Australians want less than a hundred thousand.

Patrick Carlyon:

Wow.

Rita Panahi:

That’s a dramatic drop, isn’t it?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, it’s actually what we had for the whole of the 20th century. So that’s when we actually considered ourselves having a successful multi-ethnic community when it was 100,000 a year for all of the 20th century and then it just randomly massively increased around about 2008 and we’re now at hundreds of thousands per year. And when your helicopter up and you say, “That’s the entire population of Adelaide that we have had come in since the labour government went into…” It’s no wonder that people are saying, “It’s too much.”

Rita Panahi:

Yeah.

Colleen Harkin:

We are a very welcoming country. We’re very sort of cognizant of people’s ethnic backgrounds, but we also want to have our standard of living and our way of life protected.

Rita Panahi:

Absolutely. And there’s so much focus on the contribution to GDP and you’ve got many in the business community who are hooked on more consumers in the Australian market. But when you look at the net figure, that’s where we’re going backwards. That’s where standard of living is dropping and per capita we are not doing well in GDP terms, are we?

Colleen Harkin:

No. Correct.

Rita Panahi:

We’ve in fact had recessions in recent years.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, correct.

Rita Panahi:

Now this is interesting. This is very, very Trump’s America. Celebrity chef, Neil Perry has threatened to leave the country if Pauline Hanson becomes prime minister. When I read this, Colleen, I did think of all those celebrities in America who promised to flee if Trump was elected. Pretty much all of them stayed. In fact, the only one I can think of who did leave is Rosie O’Donnell and she’s back in New York right now so it didn’t work too well. Do you think this is… Are we going to get more celebrities coming out of the woodwork and railing against the rise of One Nation?

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, look, I had the same reaction when I… You remember all those people in the US. It was a lot of talk, but not a lot of walk.

Rita Panahi:

Yes.

Colleen Harkin:

A lot of them stayed. But with Neil Perry, I think it’s a really interesting scenario because he’s in an elite position where he just says, “Oh, I’ll pack up my bags and go away.” The average Australian is really struggling to put food on the table and to meet their petrol bills. They can’t go on a holiday. Let alone just threaten to sort of immigrate somewhere else because they don’t like how the cohort of the country has voted. I thought it was extremely arrogant.

Rita Panahi:

It is extremely arrogant and his restaurants are top end restaurants. You’re not going to go there and have a $30 meal. It’s very expensive. And interestingly, directly above Neil Perry’s Double Bay restaurant, Gran Torino, he’s got a few in Double Bay, is the office of Angus Aitken who is a massive supporter of One Nation. One of the biggest sources have told the Australian newspaper that he and his clients have been regulars at Margaret, another one of Neil Perry’s restaurants in Double Bay. But Patrick, perhaps they’ll find somewhere else to dine. Lots of nice restaurants in Double Bay. Got to say, I actually prefer a Palmer at the Royal Oak or 18 footers.

Patrick Carlyon:

Yes, very good. One in three voters are saying that Pauline Hanson is their preferred prime minister. That means one in three customers potentially. This is bad for business, isn’t it? I mean, just on a straight economic sort of scale.

Rita Panahi:

I think especially in Double Bay, although it’s a very rich area, I think those sort of areas aren’t One Nation’s home ground. There are a lot of people there who would be backing her. She’s been very strong on the issue of antisemitism in this country, post Bondi. She was very present and she’s got a lot of support in that area.

Patrick Carlyon:

I think Neil Perry actually validates the legitimacy of Pauline Hanson, doesn’t it? We’re about two years from the election and he’s saying, “I’m going to move if she’s made prime minister.” She can’t even be prime minister as she is as a senator, but we’re talking about this now.

Rita Panahi:

Yes.

Patrick Carlyon:

The fact that we’re talking about it is incredible.

Rita Panahi:

Well, let’s talk about that. It’s convention.

Colleen Harkin:

It’s only protocol. Yeah.

Rita Panahi:

It’s a convention. It’s not in the constitution that you can’t be prime minister from the Senate. So how would that work if it… Could she stay in the Senate and say, “Well, there’s a political realignment happening in this country and it’s going to extend to this convention.”

Colleen Harkin:

It has actually happened before and my history escapes me at the moment, but it has happened before where somebody from the Senate-

Rita Panahi:

But it was brief.

Colleen Harkin:

But it was very brief.

Rita Panahi:

And they moved.

Colleen Harkin:

And then they moved to the lower house. So it is just protocol. I do think, I mean, there’s talk that she might go to the lower house. In the longer term, you probably do need to be in the House of Reps to be the prime minister, but there’s two years away yet.

Rita Panahi:

Anything can happen.

Patrick Carlyon:

Any time.

Rita Panahi:

Colleen Harkin, Patrick Carlyon, thank you so much for your time.

This transcript with Colleen Harkin talking on The Rita Panahi Show News Australia from 16 June 2026 has been edited for clarity.