Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia – 19 August 2025

In this interview, Colleen Harkin appeared on The Rita Panahi Show – Sky News Australia to discuss the IPA’s research on Australia’s declining living standards.

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:

Joining me now for more on this is News Corp Senior Writer, Patrick Carlyon, and research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, Colleen Harkin. Patrick, you can build a house for that cost type of money, a nice house. What is going on in this state? It really is hard to understand how this cost could be justified.

Patrick Carlyon:

Well, it sounds so Victorian, doesn’t it? A, it’s over the top price-wise and, B, It’s not going to work. We talked about this before.

Rita Panahi:

That’s amazing.

Patrick Carlyon:

We had a poor bloke, I think, in Kew in the east of Melbourne the other day, 4:00 AM, he’s got grandparents, he’s got children in his house, he was stabbed 11 times in his own house. And this is not isolated. This has been happening for years in Melbourne.

Rita Panahi:

Well, just a couple of days before that, we saw that shocking footage. We played it last night out of Gladstone Park.

Patrick Carlyon:

That’s right.

Rita Panahi:

A man attacked with hammers and a knife. So, Colleen, you don’t need a machete to terrorise people in their own homes or in the streets. We know that. We’ve now got 17 aggravated home invasions in Victoria every day. This problem is just getting out of hand.

Colleen Harkin:

And it’s indicative of Government that… There’s not really fair income about it because the idea that you put a few bins on the end of the street and the criminals will comply… Ask them nicely, of course they’ll stop doing all of this sort of stuff. And to Wayne Farnham’s costings on this, again, it’s a Government that’s out of touch with reality. The cost of those bins is like 40 times more than he has said. I’d like a contract like that, wouldn’t you?

Rita Panahi:

Oh, I think we all would. I think-

Colleen Harkin:

Was it put out to tender? What are the realities of those financial figures there?

Rita Panahi:

I don’t know. Maybe they’re gold-plated. Maybe there’s something we’re missing here. Let’s move along to the Productivity Commissioner Daniel Wood siding with business groups in rejecting the Allan Government’s push to make working from home a legal right. She says it’s another example of Government’s stifling growth and productivity with rules and overregulation. Colleen, can you see this becoming a big election issue? Because no matter how irrational this policy may be, I think it will be hugely popular with large groups of voters.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, unfortunately, Rita, I think it probably will be popular because it is a populous kind of thing to do. But again, it’s a Government that’s completely out of touch with business and particularly with small business. They don’t understand what it takes to run any kind of entrepreneurial enterprise. And to the rest of the population, most of us probably don’t really have a great grip on that either. So, it’s not a really sort of realistic approach to any kind of economic productivity or innovation. There’s no encouragement for people to pick up the bat and give something a go because this just strangles any kind of business opportunity. People will think it’s a good idea, and I think it will become an election issue, but I think it’s not a great policy to be promoting.

Rita Panahi:

Do you think the libs in this state, Patrick, will be brave enough to actually fight against this policy, to say, “These are the reasons why it’s not good for the state. These are the reasons it’s going to cause you more issues,” despite the fact that most people would prefer to stay at home a couple of days a week if they could?

Patrick Carlyon:

Look, that’s the point, isn’t it? Most people like the idea of not having to go to the office five days a week.

Rita Panahi:

Most people like the idea of never having to work at all.

Patrick Carlyon:

Yes, that’s right. That’s true. Look, bravery and Victorian libs aren’t sort of words you put in the same sentence that often. Look, it is a tricky one because I think I agree with Colleen. This is about the election. This is going to play out until November, 2026. They’re not in a hurry to implement it. Everybody who knows anything about business knows that this is unnecessary. That’s going to strangle… Obviously Danielle Wood knows what she’s talking about. To enshrine this is totally unnecessary. Will the libs fight it? That’s a really good question.

Rita Panahi:

And does the State Government even have the right to enshrine it because we are sort of breaching federal laws, employment laws?

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, correct. It’s not their place.

Rita Panahi:

So, legally there’s a question there. Now, this issue I think is under-reported; the education gap and the way boys are struggling. Analysis of the 2025 NAPLAN results shows that twice as many boys as girls are seriously failing in literacy at every year level. They’re blaming behavioural issues and rising disability rates. But I do wonder, Colleen, if this gap was the other way around, if this disparity was disadvantaging girls, whether we would have a lot more academics, a lot more politicians very energised about doing something about it.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, I think that’s true. Boys seem to be pushed aside a lot of the time, at the moment. This sort of toxic masculinity narrative that’s been run for a couple of years. The other thing is that there is 16% of all six-year-old boys in Australia are supported on NDIS.

Rita Panahi:

That’s mad.

Colleen Harkin:

It’s an extraordinary figure.

Rita Panahi:

It is astonishing

Colleen Harkin:

So, I don’t know what’s going on there in terms of analysis of what constitutes being required by the NDIS-

Rita Panahi:

Well, from what I understand, if you’re considered to be on the spectrum, you qualify for NDIS. And the number of kids who are now considered to be on the spectrum… And a host of other issues as well. Obviously it’s not limited to that. Patrick, this is a real worry because Australia is not exactly kicking goals by international standards, despite the money we sink into this sector. And now just in our own country, we’ve got this widening gap between the genders. And I do feel like, and my son went to an all-boys school and even at an all-boys school, there is so much messaging that is negative about manhood and masculinity.

Patrick Carlyon:

We see it in all sorts of ways across society, don’t we? And look, the gap between girls and boys, what this research sort of says to me, it’s an advertisement almost for single sex education.

Rita Panahi:

Yeah, that’s true.

Patrick Carlyon:

Which has been pushed back against in massive ways in recent years. The top of the class who are primarily females is too far ahead of those boys who are struggling at the bottom. You’ve got too big class… The class sizes are too big. And you got this… Look at those raw numbers. You’ve got one in three or up to one in two boys who can’t actually write or don’t know where to put a comma or anything like that. And I would say AI is going to make it 10 times worse because kids are not going to learn to write anymore, give it 10 years.

Colleen Harkin:

Can I just add to that, Rita, that the stats on boys is shocking, but it’s not great on our girls either. We have more than a third of our Australia’s population of year nines who are not meeting minimum benchmarks. So, we have a significant gender gap, but we have a failing education system full stop.

Rita Panahi:

What about what Patrick said about single-sex schools? Because they were out of vogue. A lot of the single-sex schools became co-ed, but you look at the results and it seems that boys and girls do better at single-sex schools. They seem to achieve higher academic results. Is that something you can see changing?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, there was a push for a long time to co-educationalize all schools. And I think that people are taking a second look at that now. Boys do learn differently to girls. There’s no doubt about it. The way they like to interact with each other, their need for movement is different to girls. And I think in single-sex schools, they do accommodate that.

Rita Panahi:

Now, meanwhile, we’ve got some schools signing up to something called The Anxiety Project, a programme designed to help kids as young as six or seven years of age to understand and manage anxiety. Child psychologist Claire Rowe has written about this in The Advertiser. She said, “Somewhere along the way we’ve turned every wobble, every tear, every pang of nerves into a pathology. Kids now hear the word anxiety before they’ve even lost their front teeth.” Colleen, do we really need to have six-year-olds, year one students having six weeks of classes on spotting signs of anxiety?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, the problem with this, Rita, is that the education system teaches them to be anxious. So, all of this climate anxiety and guilt that’s embedded in the curriculum that they get exposed to all day, every day creates the anxiety. And then they run a programme to say, “You are anxious, aren’t you?” So, the thing with this is: can we just let children be children? Can we just protect the sanctity of childhood?

Rita Panahi:

Well, that would be a fine thing, but it seems to be this counterproductive push because I know they also had classes about resilience in my son’s primary school, and yet everything they do is naturally lowering their resilience, especially things like giving everyone a medal or a ribbon for just showing up. No coping skills.

Patrick Carlyon:

That’s right. And look, it’s normal to be worried about a spelling test or to be afraid about how you’re going to play football tomorrow and those things. And actually pathologizing it, it pushes the symptoms out. It makes you think about how you feel in a way that precludes you from actually finding a way of getting through or faking it until you make it. That’s what I grew up on, fake it till you make it. And at the time, it was okay.

Rita Panahi:

Now, this is a little bit of an amusing topic, but it’s also got a serious undertone about the value of the Australian dollar. Listen to this Aussie who has visited Europe and come back to realise that we’re not as rich as we think.

Australian Tourist:

Got back to Australia from Europe and I’ve come to the realisation that everyone in Australia, you’re actually poor. You’re actually not doing okay. You head over to Europe for a couple months and that Euro dollar will humble you. What’s going on with the Australian dollar? What’s happening? Albanses and them there, sort it out, because I wouldn’t be able to eat in Europe. Do you know what I mean? Now I’m on a payment plan with Commonwealth Bank for the next six months trying to get my life back on track because the dollar is so poor.

Rita Panahi:

Patrick, he makes an excellent point. Anyone who’s a bit overseas, whether it’s North America or particularly Europe in the peak season, we’re not as rich as we once were.

Patrick Carlyon:

We’re not. You did cut it off there. He goes on to say, “Will I come back next year? I probably will.” Look, Europe costs a fortune. It’s always cost a fortune. America’s always cost a fortune. It is worse-

Rita Panahi:

But now it is-

Patrick Carlyon:

It is worse.

Rita Panahi:

… significantly worse. Colleen, on a serious note, we have seen living standards in Australia drop more than anywhere else in the developed world. And we’ve been in a per capita recession at points over the last couple of years.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. Well, a strong currency comes from a strong economy. And we have a government that’s reckless spending, driving up costs, an energy policy that’s reducing our standard of living. And until we have a government that’s committed to growth and to prosperity, we’re going to feel the pain, not only just through travelling, but at the supermarkets. We definitely do not have the same standard of living that we once did.

Rita Panahi:

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

Colleen Harkin:

Thank you.

This transcript with Colleen Harkin talking on The Rita Panahi Show – Sky News Australia from 19 August 2025 has been edited for clarity.