Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia – 17 March 2026

Rita Panahi:

Joining me now is News Corp’s Senior Writer Patrick Carlyon, and the IPA’s Research Fellow, Colleen Harkin. Patrick, I’ll start with you. Not too much good news there for the country and voters seem to understand economics better than the treasurer. They seem to understand that if you go on this mad spending spree, it’s going to be inflationary.

Patrick Carlyon:

And look, Australians go to the supermarkets and they’re paying so much more for things than they were six months, 12 months ago, and they’re having to make choices. I like nice red wine, I’m buying cheaper red wine. That’s just a very trivial example. But everyone is having-

Rita Panahi:

That’s a huge sacrifice.

Patrick Carlyon:

It’s a big thing.

Rita Panahi:

Don’t downplay it.

Patrick Carlyon:

But interest rates are going up. They’re probably going to continue to go up. The war is going to have a massive effect, but I think I’m pleased to see the Australians are savvy enough to recognise that things weren’t real good when the war started.

Rita Panahi:

Yes.

Patrick Carlyon:

Because things have been mismanaged badly.

Rita Panahi:

The government is going to be keen to blame this conflict in the Middle East, but as Patrick said, all the indicators were pretty poor beforehand, and we have seen in recent years a steep fall in living standards for Australians. And we have had a per capita recession already in recent years.

Collen Harkin:

Yeah, correct. I mean, Australians are not mugs. They know that for the last couple of years, they’ve felt that they’ve experienced the increase in the cost of living with their energy bills because of an ideologically driven energy policy. We’ve seen pressure on housing because of mass immigration, and the stats have come out today that January was the highest net overseas migration ever, so it continues.

Rita Panahi:

I thought we were slowing that down. Were we not assured leading up to the election that there was-

Collen Harkin:

That they were going to do something about-

Rita Panahi:

… curtailing the numbers coming in? It seems that was just one of those non-core promises we hear so much about. Let’s talk about petrol prices because we’ve got farmers warning that people may be forced to choose between fuel and food as they urge city residents to avoid filling up their cars where possible. Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan held a crisis meeting with relevant ministers yesterday to lay out the state’s strategy on dwindling fuel supply.

Victorian Farmers Federation President Brett Hosking said that the entire state may face rationing of food if drastic action on fuel is not taken now, and the conflict in the Middle East continues to choke global fuel networks. He said, “If just one in five Victorian car commuters shifted to public transport, the fuel saved would be enough conservatively to plant half of our entire nation’s wheat, barley, canola, and lentil crop.”

Patrick, I can’t believe I’m hearing this, I can’t believe I’m reading this. The entire state may face rationing of food? It seems inconceivable.

Patrick Carlyon:

It’s unbelievable. Look, I think there’s some basis of truth there, absolutely, in the sense that farmers don’t get to pick and choose when they pick their crops. They’re reliant on the weather, and they’re reliant on having fuel when they need it. I think the big problem with this in Melbourne is, and both governments over decades are guilty of this, we’ve had lots of new housing on the outskirts, but we haven’t had the public transport that actually allows people to catch a bus or catch a train. They have to drive. They don’t have a choice.

Rita Panahi:

But they should be able to drive. You should not be having to choose to tune fuel for your car or food for the, I mean, this seems just completely self-inflicted. We can blame the conflict in the Middle East, but this is a country that used to be close to energy independent, and now we have become entirely reliant and it’s madness. We are sitting on so much gas, oil, uranium. We’ve got every source of energy possible, but we don’t refine our own oil.

Collen Harkin:

No.

Rita Panahi:

We have become dependent on other nations.

Collen Harkin:

We’ve only got two refineries and we’ve paid a regulatory surcharge for a very long time. And again, because of an ideologically driven process, it’s interesting to note that they’ve released a hundred million litres of extra fuel just by accepting the lower grade of fuel that other countries use all the time.

Rita Panahi:

All the time.

Collen Harkin:

We could have that in the system every day, and it would have an impact also on the price that we pay.

Rita Panahi:

Oh, well, the price we pay is heavily impacted by taxes, Patrick, so we’ve already got that happening.

Patrick Carlyon:

Yes.

Rita Panahi:

But all the self-harm that’s happened in the energy sector in this country, we should have the cheapest energy anywhere in the world with the natural resources we’re blessed with, and we’ve got some of the most expensive. And now we’re talking about fuel shortages.

Patrick Carlyon:

Well, it’s amazing, isn’t it? I mean, you look at America, the prices have skyrocketed because of the war. And I think it’s gone up to $1.45 a litre.

Rita Panahi:

Yeah, which for them is a shocking, but.

Patrick Carlyon:

But we have mishandled this for a long time. We were independent. We were self-aligned when it came to energy, and we’ve given that up. And I mean, you look at the ideology that drives, we can export gas, but we’re not allowed to try and find new gas reserves.

Rita Panahi:

No. Victoria, in fact, changed its state constitution to limit gas exploration, so that’s how smart we are over here. And talking about Victoria’s, taxpayers will foot a $125 million bill after the Victorian government settled a class action brought by thousands of businesses, which were forcibly shut down during the COVID era. About 16,000 businesses registered for the class action, but they’re yet to be assessed for eligibility. They were claiming costs for the economic damage caused by failures in the state’s hotel quarantine programme. Colleen, the payout will be one of the largest class actions in Victoria’s history, but you’ve got the taxpayer picking up the bill for the government’s incompetency and their poor decision making because they didn’t need to shut down the state.

Collen Harkin:

No, it didn’t need to happen. I mean, I would forgive anybody for the first lockdown. We didn’t really quite know what was happening, but after that, it was pretty clear what was going on.

Rita Panahi:

I wouldn’t even forgive it for the first one.

Collen Harkin:

Oh, yeah?

Rita Panahi:

We knew enough. We knew enough, but we had six lockdowns here so you’d think by the third one, they would’ve figured it out.

Collen Harkin:

Oh, absolutely, yeah. And so here we’ve got a scenario where 16,000, and there were thousands of other businesses that didn’t survive. These are people who are claiming damages effectively. Look, I’m sure this is a settlement that’s been reached because the government could not afford to have some people on the stand like Sutton and Daniel Andrews and the internal communications to become public knowledge. I mean, that would be incredibly damning because we all know now what most of us knew then. It was entirely unnecessary.

Rita Panahi:

It was. well, the policies was just so illogical, and yet hugely popular because I remember writing about it every single day, and I was in the 20% to 30% at that point. The most of the state was just loving every single crazy measure, which still has me a little bit shook up about this state.

Now, Grace Tame, we have to talk about her. She’s made some terrible claims on ABC Radio about Israeli women not… She claims they weren’t really raped or sexually abused by Hamas during the October 7 terror attacks. Grace seems to think that news was debunked.

Hamish MacDonald:

Timney’s texted in saying, “Can you please ask Grace why she’s selective in her outrage?” She says, “I’ve never heard her condemn or speak out on behalf of the Israeli women who were raped and killed by Hamas on October 7.” Have you spoken about that? Have you expressed outrage about that?

Grace Tame:

I’m not going to think to the level of entertaining any kind of propaganda, Hamish. Yeah, let’s not do that.

Hamish MacDonald:

What’s the propaganda included in that question?

Grace Tame:

Those things have been debunked.

Rita Panahi:

Patrick, the host there, Hamish MacDonald, did try to gently rebuke her and set her down the right path, but she wasn’t having it. She was sticking to that line.

Patrick Carlyon:

Look, she’s been so political in recent times. She was on stage a few weeks ago talking about globalising the intifada. And you got to wonder this extremism, does it come at the cost of her advocacy, which was a big thing. That’s why she’s Australian of the Year. She wasn’t there for her political views. And you got to wonder, it’s sad and it’s unnecessary. And you think, why isn’t somebody steering her away from these controversial issues? Because she is denying the sexual assault of hundreds of women from the sound of it. That is recognised internationally as being a fact. Why is she actually picking this fight?

Rita Panahi:

Colleen, I’d argue none of this is surprising. She was always an activist. Some of that activism was positive, but she was always an activist. Remember that entire scene with Scott Morrison at the lodge? And there’s just been repeated incidents. And perhaps it would be best not to have activists made Australian of the Year.

Collen Harkin:

Yeah. Look, she certainly has tarnished the title of Australian of the Year because that position is put on a pedestal for lots of reasons and she’s certainly not living up to the standard that people expect of that title. I think the really objectionable thing here is that she has made her name on the process of believing the victim. And yet here, she has done everything the opposite of that. It’s incredibly objectionable that somebody can champion for so many years that only some people apparently need to be believed now. It’s very problematic from her consistency point of view, from what she’s supposed to champion. And I do agree with you that she’s generally an activist.

Rita Panahi:

She is, and some of that activism you could say was positive and well-intentioned and did good. But since then we’ve seen a very different side. Now, staying with the issue of the treatment of the Jewish communities, Sydney Swans’ Chief Executive Matthew Pavlich has taken responsibility for removing references to the Jewish community from a pre-match tribute honouring victims of the Bondi terrorist attack. Pavlich fronted the media and said there was no directive or any instructions from the AFL to remove that reference, but a number of reporters claim otherwise.

Journalist:

But I’m told that those high up around Matthew Pavlich believed right up until 24 hours ago that it was an AFL directive to delete those references to the Jewish community. It’s only been in the last day that that narrative has changed.

Rita Panahi:

Patrick, there is speculation that the AFL has pressured the swans, perhaps pressured Pavlich to take the blame because of, well, after discussions began about the league being referred for investigation by the Royal Commission into antisemitism. That would be hugely embarrassing for the AFL if that were to happen, and the AFL staffer, or perhaps even the CEO, was the one who made that direction. Not that I’m saying that, do not sue me.

Patrick Carlyon:

I think the big question here is why would you want to take out the word Jewish or Jewish people for a tribute about Jewish people who were killed because they were Jewish? I mean, what are they pandering-

Rita Panahi:

Because it’s not inclusive apparently.

Patrick Carlyon:

What are they pandering to into even considering this?

Rita Panahi:

Well, we know the politics of the AFL. I’ve got to say, I’m not shocked because again, their acknowledgement of October 7 itself, I would think, wasn’t what it should have been. They’re very happy to play politics when it’s in a certain direction. But here, Colleen, suddenly they were scared to politicise that ceremony.

Collen Harkin:

Yeah. Again, they’re very selective with who they want to promote and what causes they choose. And they always happen to be, surprisingly, progressive ones that they choose to put on a pedestal. I mean, I agree with you, Patrick, I don’t see how you can possibly do a memorial speech or service and not mention the Jewish people when you’re talking about Bondi. It’s clearly a very considered decision to remove that. And the question is why?

Rita Panahi:

Absolutely. Colleen Harkin, Patrick Carlyon, thanks for your time.

This transcript with Colleen Harkin talking on The Rita Panahi Show – Sky News Australia from 17 March 2026 has been edited for clarity.