Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia – 2 February 2026

Rita Panahi:

Liberals joining me now is Institute of Public Affairs Research fellow Colleen Harkin and Sky News contributor Louise Roberts. Colleen, it’s not just immigration on issues like cost of living and housing affordability One Nation are doing particularly well.

Colleen Harkin:

It’s tragic for the Liberal Party. And you’re right, it’s not just only about immigration. There are major policy issues that people want addressed, energy. The hate speech laws has had a huge impact on the way people are thinking about what’s happened to our country. And there’s also this issue between the Nationals and the Liberals, this sort of chaotic together, apart together. Little Pratt has just been reinstated as the leader. Where does that leave them to go to next? Because you can’t just keep busting up. And there are fundamental differences between the two parties that they have to sort out. So it is no wonder that One Nation are soaring in the polls. And I think most people have pleased that we’re sort of seeing this reckoning of new territory. We’ve never been here before.

Rita Panahi:

We haven’t been here before. And if we didn’t have a preferential voting system, probably it would be far worse for the Liberal and the Nationals.

Colleen Harkin:

Correct. Yeah.

Rita Panahi:

Louise, the media pundits are blaming the disunity for these figures and the disunity can’t be helping. But let’s not forget, the disunity came after the terrible poll numbers. The Coalition recorded its worst ever primary vote in consecutive polls under Sussan Ley’s leadership. And naturally that is going to lead to all sorts of questions about who is best to lead the party.

Louise Roberts:

Absolutely. I think the average vote is looking at what’s happened with the Nationals and what’s happened with the Liberal Party and overall the Coalition and thinking, “Do these people even understand what it is to represent the electorate?” And they seem to be so inward looking and more about knifing each other than actually addressing the issues I’m concerned about. And that’s where One Nation has really stepped in and sort of created, occupied the space about immigration, cost of living, housing concerns, the things that people are very anxious about, which seem to be dismissed by the major parties. So I mean, to Colleen’s point, it’s no wonder they’re drifting away from that two-tier system because they don’t feel addressed or spoken to or spoken for. And look, some detractors may argue, well, there’s no election tomorrow, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a significant shift in policy and views of the way politicians operate that we have not seen before ever.

Rita Panahi:

Now, Colleen, the Australian Financial Review writes that this poll should serve as a wake-up call to all major parties. They write public dissatisfaction with the scale of migration and cannot be dismissed as racism because many ordinary voters have legitimate concerns about the impact on health, education, housing, and other government services that have not kept pace with population growth. Well, bravo, but I recall writing something very similar, almost word for word, a decade ago. And to this day, we’ve got this taboo topic of mass migration. Indeed, some within the Liberal Party don’t even want to use the term mass migration.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. And anybody who wants to talk about this gets shut down and accused of being a racist. They just don’t seem to want to have a conversation that has a huge impact on our cost of living, on our standard of living and our national values. So people kind of throw around the words like social cohesion, but what does that mean anymore? What is it that we are co-hearing together with?

Rita Panahi:

I think when we hear those words, social cohesion, you should be on alert that you’re about to be sold something that is terrible for you and possibly terrible for the country.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. Or you’re going to patronise with some sort of downtrodden thing that you somehow-

Rita Panahi:

Well, you get told to submit. That’s basically what social cohesion means for the left, for the elite. It is just shut up and learn to like it.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. And be told what to do. Absolutely. And so the thing with all of this too is that the gift to the Labour Party, because only a month ago we had the Anika Wells travel rort. We had the refusal and then the reversal of the Royal Commission. We had the ISIS bride scenario. So we had some really significant issues that people wanted to address. And they’ve sort of been pushed aside because of the coalition to infighting. And I think that’s why, again, the average person’s looking at this and saying, “Well, you just focused on what we need you to be doing.”

Rita Panahi:

Absolutely. But then we had Sussan Ley, Louise, demanding that Parliament come back early when she really had nothing concrete to offer. And then the Liberals back these Draconian hate speech laws, which was only going to put the party in further peril with the base. This was entirely predictable, wasn’t it?

Louise Roberts:

It was, and it was very poor decision by her. It’s so reactionary. She has been to a lot of decisions by labour, recalling parliament, et cetera. But again, voters are thinking, “Well, do you stand for me?” And look, labour may be also enjoying this sort of implosion of the Liberals and the national parties, but unless they get their ducks in a row on immigration as well, and actually speak to the concerns, the very real concerns in the community, they’ll shed more voters towards One Nation as well.

As we was talked about, it’s not a racist issue. It’s a everyday living cost of issue. How many people are in your suburb? How stretched are your services, your schools, your hospitals, your infrastructure, everything around those spaces, that’s a lived experience when migration levels are not properly calibrated to what we have to offer as a nation.

Rita Panahi:

Now, let’s talk about a viral video that has gone around the world from Melbourne. He sees two men kicked out of a strip club after they were allegedly offensive to dancers and other staff. As they were kicked out, one of the men runs to a restaurant next door, picks up a chair intending to throw it at the bouncers, you would think. But as you’ll see, he instead nails his friend in the back of their head. A bit of friendly fire there. But the man did get up shortly. It wasn’t as bad as it looked. The security guards have been criticised for immediately bursting into laughter rather than helping the guy. But the co-owner of that bar, Bar 20, Michael Trimble has defended the guards. Have a listen to this.

Michael Trimble:

People have been emailing the club leaving one star Google reviews, spamming the WhatsApp because they all think the guards were out of line. And I just think it’s important to put things into perspective. In order for an ejection to get to that state where guys are literally being dragged out and thrown onto the ground, things have had to escalate a lot. You have to be acting like a complete prick for it to get to that. And those guys were, they were rude to the girls. They were aggressive and they refused to leave. Then they’ve continued to kick off outside until old mate was taken out by friendly fire.

Rita Panahi:

And in true Victorian star, the Bar 20 operator has the perfect approach to tackle this problem.

Michael Trimble:

We need a statewide chair ban now. I’m sure there’s a spare $13 million or so in the state budget somewhere that we can put towards some chair disposal bins. Let’s get these dangerous weapons off the streets before anyone else gets hurt.

Rita Panahi:

I like this. Colleen, let’s ban chairs. Maybe have some sort of a amnesty where you can-

Colleen Harkin:

Put in the bins with the machetes.

Rita Panahi:

Those dangerous chairs need to be … We need to know what’s happening with these chairs. That footage has been viewed just tens of millions. Probably by now, hundreds of millions. And that’s the impression people are getting of Melbourne. And it’s not entirely bad because there is some humour in that clip, particularly the reaction of the bouncers.

Colleen Harkin:

Well, I mean, it probably makes me a bad person, but I did laugh out loud when I saw it. I thought it was just deserved. And I suspect that their wives might want to have a conversation with them at some stage. But it is kind of part of this scenario that seems to have built the energy that’s built up in Victoria over the last few years of there’s aggression. There’s sort of this fighting, the guy going and taking a chair from a restaurant. It’s just so un-Australian if I can say those words. We sort of seem to have lost our joy in our nation. And I don’t even know from a national pride point of view. I just mean from an ordinary street perspective about where you can be sure of having a quiet, happy dinner.

Rita Panahi:

Louise, Colleen is on the money there. I know at least one of those men is far more fearful of what’s going to happen with his wife than those bounces. I’m in Sydney every week, so I’m in the Melbourne CBD, the Sydney CBD, and you can see the difference so clearly. There is such a different energy. You see people in Sydney, the streets are full on the weekend, the CBD streets, the restaurants are full, people are smiling, happy. You see a lot of families out. You just don’t see that in the Melbourne CBD unless there’s a major event, a football game or something like that happening. It’s a depressing dark place.

Louise Roberts:

And the difference in Sydney is that people are going out to have fun, as you say, with their friends and partners and family members. They’re not going out looking for aggravation, which these two middle-aged tragics clearly were. But I agree with your point, they probably got a lot more grief when they got home from their wives or girlfriends or ex-wives or girlfriends. But I mean, the fact that one of them got turfed out and then went back for more, he tried to go back in. I mean, I’m on the side of the security guards here. They’ve created a really good, safe environment and they just don’t want trash like this on the premises. These people think they can go into a gentleman’s club, AKA strip club and just behave in a disgusting way, and it’s not on. So all power to the owner of that club. I think he’s really set a good example for Melbourne.

Rita Panahi:

I agree a hundred percent. And all those Karens who are giving the bar one-star reviews on Google and pestering them about firing the guards. And if you look at the full footage that’s available, I think those guards did nothing wrong. Colleen Harkin, Louise Roberts. Thank you so much for your time tonight.

This transcript of Colleen Harkin speaking on The Rita Panahi Show -Sky News Australia from 2 February 2026 has been edited for clarity.