Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia – 22 July 2025

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

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:

A child care centre on Sydney’s North Shore is under fire for forcing children as young as three to participate in daily Acknowledgement of Country ceremonies. And news bulletin sent out by Possums Corner Child Care Centre, which charges up to $165 per day per child. Now, this notice states that, “After the Acknowledgement of Country ceremony, the children then gather in a yarning circle to share stories, play music, and dance around a pretend campfire to help them connect with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.”

Joining me now is research fellow and director of the IPA Schools Programme, Colleen Harkin. Colleen, this isn’t isolated. Child care centres seem to be the new battleground for the left’s culture wars. How young is too young for indoctrination? We’re talking about toddlers here, three year olds.

Colleen Harkin:

Correct. We’re talking about children who are literally in nappies. So the Australian Children’s Education Care and Quality Authority. It’s a bit of a mouthful. The federal government regulator recommends that the Aboriginal flag is flown and that there is a daily Acknowledgement of Country in these child care centres.

Rita Panahi:

Wow.

Colleen Harkin:

So it is part of the framework of early learning centres that they follow these mandates. And there’s a document called Belonging, Becoming and Being that the IPA took a closer look at, and it talks about things like diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Rita Panahi:

Of course.

Colleen Harkin:

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. And so diversity, equity and inclusion in that particular document is mentioned 149 times. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is mentioned 87 times. And mother, father and parent are not mentioned at all.

Rita Panahi:

At all?

Colleen Harkin:

At all.

Rita Panahi:

The family unit is pretty much-

Colleen Harkin:

Set aside.

Rita Panahi:

… non-existent-

Colleen Harkin:

Correct.

Rita Panahi:

… but diversity, equity and inclusion-

Colleen Harkin:

Very much so.

Rita Panahi:

… more than a hundred times.

Colleen Harkin:

Correct.

Rita Panahi:

Who designs that and why is it being embraced or implemented in… Because I would say if parents had any idea about this, they would object. Many of them.

Colleen Harkin:

And this is the thing that is so objectionable about it. Most parents and their children off to these places thinking that they’re going to learn how to socialise with other kids, make a little playmate, for example. They’re not playing in the sandpit. These are activist environments from the very beginning, from the time a child enters there at six weeks old… These children are zero to five and it’s a very… The documents are clear. There’s no hiding this. It’s just that parents don’t know actually what goes on when they drop their child off.

Rita Panahi:

And I think a lot of parents would also hope the kid gets a head start in maths, in learning their alphabet, getting them prepared for prep and primary school, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, all those sorts of foundational skills outside playing with toys, physically manipulating things, all those things are really core foundational skills, but these children are sitting around being indoctrinated with information that is totally unnecessary and not even relevant to where they are.

Rita Panahi:

Not at all. Now, Manhattan Institute, senior fellow, Rob Henderson, he’s spoken out about how shockingly skewed the US curriculum is when it comes to the history of authoritarian regimes and their consequences. He had a fascinating series of posts on X where he talked about the American education system. He wrote, “In high school, you get 155 hours on Hitler, 3 minutes on Stalin, and nothing on Pol Pot. Nothing on Mao. Barely a mention of Fidel Castro. It’s striking that we don’t learn about Mao or Pol Pot despite the scale of their crimes. Mao killed more people than any dictator in history. Estimates range from 40 to 80 million deaths.”

Colleen, is the experience similar here in Australia? I have to say, I can’t recall in school learning too much about Pol Pot or Mao or Castro.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, our system is very similar to that. We are very selective about the authoritarian regimes that our students learn about. Of course, Nazi Germany is covered in year-

Rita Panahi:

Hugely relevant, of course.

Colleen Harkin:

… 9 and 10. And of course that’s really important, but Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, none of these people are covered in the curriculum. And so what’s happening with our students is that they don’t understand the history of how these things come about. They don’t understand our own form of government and what our democracy offers them. 38% of our year 10s don’t understand the basics of our democratic environment. And that’s resulted in a study that shows that 53% of our young Australians think that socialism is the best form of government-

Rita Panahi:

And socialism and communism, we know how closely aligned they are.

Colleen Harkin:

Correct.

Rita Panahi:

I mean, you look at someone like Pol Pot who killed somewhere from a quarter to a third-

Colleen Harkin:

A third of the nation.

Rita Panahi:

… of the country’s population in a very short period of time in four years, and kids don’t know that. They don’t know about the evils of communism.

Colleen Harkin:

Or even what’s promised and the realities of socialism.

Rita Panahi:

Are they at least reading Animal Farm still or has that been kicked off the curve?

Colleen Harkin:

I don’t think it gets much exposure. 1984 was on the reading list a couple of years ago. I can’t tell you if it’s still on there now, but the conversation around these things is what’s missing.

Rita Panahi:

Absolutely.

Colleen Harkin:

And again, that encouragement of critical thinking and analysing something that’s what’s missing in the education system as well.

Rita Panahi:

Colleen Harkin, thank you so much for your time today.

Colleen Harkin:

You’re welcome.

This transcript with Colleen Harkin talking on The Rita Panahi Show – Sky News Australia from 22 July 2025 has been edited for clarity.