Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia – 21 April 2026

Caroline Marcus:

Results that will shock, absolutely no one. The poll found Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s national television address on the fuel crisis had overwhelmingly failed to reassure Australians the government had the problem under control.

Joining me now is News Corp Senior Writer, Patrick Carlyon, and Institute of Public Affairs Research Fellow, Colleen Harkin. Welcome both of you. Patrick, let’s start with those findings on Donald Trump. Why do you think he’s losing favour among many Australians? Do you think that our leader’s wishy-washy support for this war in Iran has maybe contributed to that?

Patrick Carlyon:

Yes. Look, it’s a good question, Caroline. I mean, Donald Trump started this war by saying it was going to be quick, it was going to be decisive, it was going to be over in days, possibly weeks. And here we are all these weeks later, we don’t know where the oil is going to come from. We don’t know how much it’s going to cost. And we’ve seen Donald Trump make threats against Iran that he’s sort of been unpredictable, he’s been erratic. And I think that has certainly played as this war goes on. He’s becoming less and less popular and less and less trustworthy.

And I think, look, the Australian government’s role in all of this has been wishy-washy. We didn’t really know when to stand up. We haven’t stood up hard. We haven’t offered support. It’s all been sort of back here. We’ve sort of been on our heels the whole way, haven’t we, really? And as this keeps going on, this is just going to deteriorate more and more.

Caroline Marcus:

Colleen, I mean, what Patrick says is right, we don’t know when this war is going to end, obviously, and we don’t know if a deal will be struck. Negotiation’s happening at the moment. But Donald Trump, I think, put an estimate of four weeks on it. It’s been about five at the moment. Do you think it’s fair that people are blaming him that the war hasn’t finished yet? I mean, let’s look at what the Iranian regime are doing as well.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. Look, I think the Australians are very much feeling the pressure and the consequences of this and the longer that it plays out, I think the pressure only increases, obviously, and that we’re sort of feeling the uncertainty, and that’s pretty uncomfortable about the global energy shock that we’re experiencing.

I think part of it though is a media narrative of the over-personalising of foreign policy. It’s all about Trump and only about Trump. And of course, foreign policy has lots of arms and legs that need to be considered in play that the average person, sure, is not really sort of thinking about that. They’re looking at their hip pocket, understandably, and feeling the pain. But if you go a little bit further, Australians still acknowledge and respect the relationship that Australia has with the United States. 80% of people still acknowledge the importance of our alliance with them. So I think this is a long-term scenario that needs to play out and that hopefully this is a bit of a blimp and it won’t take too long for the pain to go away and for sort of sensibility and security to be restored.

Caroline Marcus:

Yeah. Maybe when prices start to come down at the bowser, people will be feeling a little bit better about the US president. Patrick, the poll also found almost two-thirds of Australians did not feel assured by Albanese’s national address recently on fuel supply. That’ll be no surprise to you, I’m guessing.

Patrick Carlyon:

Look, the big surprise there, Caroline, was that half the population tuned in to listen to Anthony Albanese. That does really surprise me. He didn’t say anything of any note. He didn’t give any sort of assurance that things would get better. He looked like somebody who really didn’t know what was going to happen. And in times of uncertainty, you want strong leadership. You need strong leadership. And that wasn’t an example of that, was it?

Caroline Marcus:

No, certainly. And Colleen, I mean, as Patrick points out, yes, more than half of people tuned in, but that’s because we didn’t know what he was going to say. We were surprised that he spent a few minutes basically telling us nothing.

Colleen Harkin:

Well, I mean, I’m one of those people who raced home to turn it on and to say it’s a very unusual event for a national address. There’s only been a few in the last 20 years, COVID, Iraq, and I think the global financial crisis was one of them. So they are very unusual occurrences and ought to be held with the highest of respect. When you gather a country together to say, “Listen to me,” we want to hear an answer. And to be told, just be kind to each other and stay home was not any kind of answer to appease people’s concerns. I thought it was a shocking abusive privileged position, to be honest.

Caroline Marcus:

Yeah, I think you’re right. Treasurer Jim Chalmers, well, he’s confirmed cost reductions in the NDIS will be the most important part of the savings package in next month’s federal budget. Chalmers has called a meeting and he’s held that with his state and territory counterparts warning, unless they help relieve the burden of the NDIS, they will be liable for increasing costs. The NDIS is currently the third-largest expense in the budget and is expected to hit $55.1 billion in the next financial year.

Colleen, even one of the architects of the NDIS is warning today. The scheme won’t survive if the government continues to offer participants packages in boutique accommodation worth $400,000 a person. I mean, serious cuts have to be made here.

Colleen Harkin:

Well, it’s not a surprise. There’s been warnings about the unsustainability of the NDIS programme for a long time. And it’s as a result of a policy drift and of a lack of fiscal discipline. It’s now the same give or take as the national defence budget, which is an extraordinary situation to be in. But over a period of time, we have sort of incentivized incapability and we’ve pathologized everything so that we now have 16% of five to seven year old boys, all Australian five to seven year old boys, 16% of them are on NDIS.

That D in there is supposed to be disability and the whole NDIS programme has moved a long way away from what its original intention was. The other thing to remember here is that when they are addressing this is to make sure that the government doesn’t just create another bucket and that actually we just have an increase in budget rather than actually addressing the problems that exist within the system.

Caroline Marcus:

We’re going to have to see how they plan to make those cuts because as you say, there’s just way too many people on the NDIS. It was supposed to be for the most vulnerable and now so many boys and young people on it for what? I mean, they’re suffering, these families, but we can’t have everyone on the scheme. The Nationals have released an attack out ahead of next month’s Farrer by-election targeting One Nation and its now previous employment of convicted rapist Sean Black. Let’s take a look.

National Party Ad:

It was a shower like this where Sean Black attacked his victim, dragged her out by the hair and raped her. It was a cell like this Sean Black occupied after he was convicted of the crime, and it’s a polling booth like this where you’ll decide if the party that then employed him to run their election campaign deserves your vote. What party would do that? One Nation. They’re not what you think.

Caroline Marcus:

Patrick, One Nation has had a dip in the polls since this whole scandal was revealed, but it’s Farrer candidate, David Farley, says voters haven’t even mentioned Sean Black to him on the hustings. So while the attack is slick and it hits pretty low, do you think it will be effective?

Patrick Carlyon:

Look, I think Barnaby Joyce the other day actually blamed the choice to employ Sean Black for the slight dip in the polls. For the life of me, I can’t understand how anyone at One Nation thought that that would be okay. I think it’s certainly a factor. And I think there’s a lot of other factors floating around, whether it’s Donald Trump, whether the Nationals can actually sort of launch a campaign that actually addresses these issues that sort of have created this move to the right.

The reason One Nation has garnered so much support is, in a word, probably immigration. The fact that the major parties can’t seem to manage immigration and immigration is a cause of cost of living, it’s a cause of a perceived loss of social cohesion. Whether One Nation can keep that element within its grasp as opposed to the national sort of trying to take some back from them is what we’ll see in the next few weeks.

Caroline Marcus:

Colleen, I don’t know that Sean Black is front of mind for voters when they head to the polls. I think it does take some of One Nation’s credibility on things like law and order away because of how that whole issue was handled, but he is gone now from the party. But Patrick mentions Trump there and The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting GetUp! is aiming to spend at least $600,000 on its own campaign targeting Pauline Hanson and Farrer. And the left wing advocacy group is going to be targeting, in particular, her alignment with Trump and support for his war on Iran. They’re hoping regional voters will link her to those rising fuel and fertiliser costs. Do you think this tactic will work?

Colleen Harkin:

I think it’s just another example of the smarty-pants elite thinking that they can tell regional people how to live their life. I’ve never seen sort of GetUp! out in the country regions and in the rural areas being of any assistance to anybody. And I think that there’s a very good chance that this might actually backfire, because the average Australian is looking at what’s in front of them. As Patrick sort of said, it’s about immigration, it’s about the cost of living, but they’re not particularly interested in any kind of foreign entities to influence their vote in a thorough by-election. I sort of think it’s a bit wrongheaded.

The other component about the Nationals going hard at One Nation is curious to me because I understand it’s an existential crisis in this particular one-off by-election, but I’m not sure that they should be burning their bridges, because Nationals are the most exposed to a One Nation takeover and that in due course, which is not very far away for the next federal election, they may actually prefer to be pallying up and preferencing each other. So I’m not sure that that short-term view is actually to their long-term advantage.

Caroline Marcus:

Well, let’s talk about a shadow association which allowed members of the now banned Islamist hate group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, to still hire venues and run websites for events. It’s been cancelled after being exposed by The Daily Telegraph. The association, Public Forums Incorporated, was registered in 2013 by Anas Alwahwah, an activist for the group.

The newspaper revealed in February, Hizb ut-Tahrir members were using the association to trade under a corporate veil for a decade. Last month, Hizb ut-Tahrir was officially banned by the federal government as a hate group, prompting a fair trading to cancel the registration. Patrick, a good move, I think, but I think the authorities have been far too slow to act on this group and they’ve been operating in this kind of shady way for a long time, including on college campuses and playing a role in these public protests that we see in our city week on week.

Patrick Carlyon:

Absolutely. Look, good on The Daily Telegraph for exposing this, but I think the lesson here is eternal vigilance. You cut off one snake’s head when it comes to hate groups or homegrown terrorism, and another snake head is going to keep popping up. And this is a win, and I agree with you, Caroline. I think it took too long to close this down, but we’re going to have to keep on getting wins like this to preserve the safety of Australia, because this is an ongoing threat and it’s not going away.

Caroline Marcus:

Nine newspapers have published an editorial bemoaning Ben Roberts-Smith’s special treatment from New South Wales Corrective Services after he was released on bail. The paper says, “With a taxpayer funded convoy, the staff deliberately obstructed a public road in an attempt to stop the former Special Air Services soldier being photographed as he left Silverwater. The premier said on Monday that that measure was about ensuring safety. However, his departure turned into a chaotic situation that did not appear to be safe for Corrective Services staff or the media.” The editorial went on to argue, “Press freedom underpins a functioning democracy and any attempts to thwart that should be a concern.”

Colleen, I mean, this is the same media company that just happened to have half a dozen crews at Sydney Airport when the AFP arrested Ben Roberts-Smith in a public spectacle in front of his children. While I don’t think that Corrective Services should play a role in stopping the media from getting its shots, there has already been an abundance of Ben Roberts-Smith shots out there. I find this editorial quite tone-deaf.

Colleen Harkin:

Look, I mean, some of this is sort of standard procedures to ensure safety and to prevent a media circus. I mean, we have to remember that it is innocent until proven guilty, and this kind of media circus is creating the scenario of a narrative of a decision making process that seems to have already been made.

There is operational standard procedure, it’s common sense. And the real question is, if we go back to who gets access to what, when, how was it that Channel 9 cameras were able to be there at the point of arrest in the first place? So if we’re going to talk about standards, let’s look at the very initial part of this component and how are they there?

Caroline Marcus:

Yeah. Well, I think we’re still waiting on answers on that. Undoubtedly, there’s been a leak somewhere. Patrick Carlyon, Colleen Harkin, thank you. Still to come, left is losing it. Plus, is-

This transcript of Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia from 21 April 2026 has been edited for clarity.