Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia – 23 February 2026

Rita Panahi:

Joining me is News Corp Senior Writer, Patrick Carlyon, and Institute of Public Affairs Research Fellow Colleen Harkin. Patrick, I seem to recall Senator Hanson being taken to court, sued for saying something similar about Mehreen Faruqi of the Greens?

Patrick Carlyon:

Yes. That was probably the longest court case of all time. It went forever, didn’t it? That’s what happened.

Rita Panahi:

Very costly.

Patrick Carlyon:

Yes. And I think Senator Payman is trying to make a play on that obviously. If you watch some of the Senate hearings and you see Senator Payman talking about Pauline Hanson, she appears to absolutely hate her, like it is visceral.

Rita Panahi:

Which is so strange because when you are in Canberra at Parliament House, one of the things you notice is how loved Pauline is, Colleen, by the staff, you go to the canteen, but by just everyday people. The reaction she gets is so different to most other politicians. So this visceral hatred that Payman has, it’s a little bit unhealthy if you ask me.

Colleen Harkin:

Well, she always comes across to me as being quite unhinged. Look, and this issue of the definition of racism, I mean there’s nothing wrong with questioning our biosecurity measures. That’s not racism. The thing with Senator Payman I always find is that given where she’s come from, which you just sort of cited, what she should be doing is promoting our great country. And all she ever seems to do is either complain with grievances or promote this idea of multiculturalism. And I resent and I reject that because we are not a multicultural nation. We are multi-

Rita Panahi:

I don’t remember voting for that at any point, did we?

Colleen Harkin:

No. And we’re not-

Rita Panahi:

We could be multi-ethnicity.

Colleen Harkin:

We’re multi-ethnic.

Rita Panahi:

That’s fine, but we do have an Australian culture and Australian values and that counts for something. Now you mentioned this hatred. Let’s have a look at an example of that. That’s not the first time Senator Payman has attacked Pauline Hanson.

Fatima Payman:

If that is not racist, what is it? Oh, it’s not racist. Oh, somebody bring the dictionary because Senator Hanson does not know the definition of racism. The fact that you would say just weeks ago to Senator Faruqi, “Piss off back to Pakistan,” you are not just vindictive, mean, nasty. You bring disgrace to the human race. No dignity whatsoever as a senator in this prestigious place where we’re supposed to bring unity, where we’re supposed to have that freedom of expression, yes, but within boundaries and confinements of respect.

Rita Panahi:

Yes. So much respect there, Colleen. Senator Babet there trying to just hold it together.

Colleen Harkin:

Bite his tongue, yeah.

Rita Panahi:

I mean that performance, you said unhinged I think or deranged.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, yeah.

Rita Panahi:

Either works for that.

Colleen Harkin:

It’s very hard to watch.

Rita Panahi:

That’s just appalling. And it went on for several more minutes. I can’t play the whole thing. We don’t have time. And the example she was citing did not do her argument any favours. Why do you think she continually does this, Patrick? Because she seems to be a bit of an attention seeker. I remember talking about her when she said, “We have lessons to learn from Iran about how to treat women and women in the workforce.” I mean, are you kidding me?

Patrick Carlyon:

That was weird. That was really weird. And it got used by Iran State TV as propaganda.

Rita Panahi:

Of course.

Patrick Carlyon:

She could have came back and said, “Oh, that’s not what I meant.” But if you look at why she left the ALP, it was because they weren’t left enough on Palestine. She’s an activist and I think some of the Green politicians are the same. They’re not actually trying to build anything. They’re actually trying to undercut it.

Rita Panahi:

But that’s an indictment on the Labour Party, Colleen. They are the ones who selected her out of everyone in WA at the age of how old was she?

Colleen Harkin:

She’s still in-

Rita Panahi:

She was in her early twenties I think-

Colleen Harkin:

Twenties, yeah.

Rita Panahi:

… when they selected her to be a senator in the Australian Parliament. And it backfired on them, but she’s still in the Parliament.

Colleen Harkin:

And I think she’s up for election next time, isn’t she? So hopefully we won’t see too much more of her.

Rita Panahi:

I don’t think we will be, but for the time being, well done, Labour Party. Now, support for One Nation meanwhile is continuing to surge even right here in Victoria with fresh polling by Roy Morgan putting one nation at number one in the state’s primary vote at 26.5% ahead of Labour at 25. Look at the big dive there by Labour. Even a bigger dive by the Coalition falling to 21.5%. Colleen, the most left-wing state in Australia has One Nation leading in the polls in the primary vote. Did you ever think you’d see such a thing?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, I think we just saw why. When you see people like Senator Payman doing all of that, the average Australian is looking at and going, “This is not my country.” And that they have seen that over a long sustained period of time, One Nation have championed the causes of the average Australian and national pride and national security. So it’s not a surprise that they are rising in the polls the way they are. I think the Coalition has maybe literally weeks, a month or two to get their act together and to give a very strong message and claw back some of those votes if they’re going to be able to. But they’ve got to be quick because the average person is listening to all of this and going, “Where is my country? I want my country back.”

Rita Panahi:

And we’ve seen this trend elsewhere, Patrick, and it’s finally here. We’ve seen it in the US with Trump, the UK with Reform and Brexit. It’s all across South America. You’ve got countries going centre right from El Salvador to Argentina to Chile now and many parts of Europe as well. And people use the term populism in a pejorative way, but that’s democracy. Populism is the majority wanting something to happen that’s not happening.

Patrick Carlyon:

Look, I think Victoria is different because this government is so bad on so many levels. We saw it last week with the CFMEU stuff. There’s 15 billion missing. Let’s not look into that. And look, we are the most left-wing state and we have been for a long time and I think there is a pushback against that wokeness and about that ideological sort of veneer put over everything. We’re sick of it. We are absolutely sick of it.

Rita Panahi:

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the most left-wing state is also the most in debt and crippled economically. But on that $15 billion CFMEU scandal, the tactics of the Allan government last week just to come out and attack the report, to suggest that the report writer has some sort of sinister motivation or is an attention seeker, nothing about the substance of the report, which is some 130 pages long and very detailed, all just about this is just unsubstantiated, scuttlebutt, nothing to see here.

Patrick Carlyon:

I thought Allan was trying to sort of brazen her way through last week and it was disingenuous. And it misread the public terribly because people want answers. $15 billion is a huge amount of money. It’s like 15 new hospitals. It’s 150,000 forward ranges, as I wrote the other day. That’s probably where most of the money went. That’s our money and we’re hitting close to 200 billion in debt because we’re being mismanaged.

Rita Panahi:

Now let’s go to the Prime Minister. He’s come under fire for remarks he made during a speech at the Australian Education Union event saying he likes visiting schools because kids aren’t far right. Let’s have a listen to part of the speech.

Anthony Albanese:

I always love going into public schools as well because for those who with a rise in some of the far right ideological positions in recent times, one of the things about going, and it’s the same particularly whether it’s an early learning centre or into a primary school, kids don’t see race, religion, gender, anything else. They just see other kids. Hatred and division is something that’s learned. And so public schooling is so important.

Rita Panahi:

Dear me. Colleen, there you go. Only in a public school are you safe from right-wing extremism. Never mind the left-wing extremism that’s been normalised in the curriculum. And he says kids don’t see race and gender and sexuality. They’re taught to see that at school. They’re fed a diet of divisive racial gender politics from prep all the way to university.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. And look, I mean, what an insult to people who choose to send their children to non-government schools, first of all. But secondly, he needs to familiarise himself with the national curriculum because it promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion which divides people. It teaches the kids that we’re not all one nation. It is in government schools where we have children touching the ground and saying always was, always will be. It’s government schools where we’ve had children exposed to bestiality. It’s government schools where teachers wear keffiyehs and the Australian Education Union that we just saw promoted the voice of huge division in the nation. He really needs to actually go back and have a look at the curriculum that the government is responsible for. He’s right that children are not naturally hateful of each other and they are being taught it and they’re being taught to be anxious.

Rita Panahi:

They’ve been taught to hate themselves mainly.

Colleen Harkin:

Correct. Anxious about the world.

Rita Panahi:

They hate their country. They hate their history. To have this just endless black armband view of the country. Now I want to get to Peter Malinauskas because the South Australian election is underway and the Premier is facing criticism for this defence of mass migration. It’s a statement that’s been called racist.

Peter Malinauskas:

My message to One Nation voters is who’s going to feed you and bathe you and wipe your bum when you’re 90? Because it ain’t going to be your kids. Because if I get my way, they’re going to be working on submarines with high-paying jobs.

Rita Panahi:

Okay. The next day, Malinauskas doubled down.

Peter Malinauskas:

You would’ve heard me sort of say a few things that I don’t think too many other politicians in the country are saying right now because it’s what I believe. It’s what we all believe about the sort of society that we want to live in. In fact, I think it’s what we know. This state is a rich, diverse, multicultural society that celebrates the fact that we have that sense of inclusion and diversity. It’s what makes us so great.

Rita Panahi:

There you go, Patrick. Migrants are offered inclusion to wipe the bottoms of the elderly whose kids are off getting very well-paid jobs on submarines. I mean really, how he doesn’t see that’s a fairly, as the left like to say, problematic statement, I don’t know. It is, to me, it’s back to the days of slavery where we need someone to pick the cotton and we need someone to wipe our bottoms because God forbid our kids should have those terrible jobs.

Patrick Carlyon:

It was a misstep. It was a big misstep, and the fact he doubled down on it. And if you look at the longer clips there, he actually is very disingenuous. He’s saying, “I don’t want to throw fuel on the fire of the culture wars.” That’s exactly what he was doing.

Rita Panahi:

Exactly. Well, it’s never the culture wars when they’re fighting. It’s only when there’s any sort of defence of it. He’s actually announced another policy, which I’m interested on your take on this because I think this is actually a very interesting announcement for retirees. Some good points here, but a couple of big shortcomings too.

Peter Malinauskas:

If we win the election, we are going to abolish, if Labour, or we’re taking to this election a policy to abolish stamp duty for all downsizes on any new build. So if you are over the age of 60 and you’re in a big family home and you’re thinking about whether or not you want to downsize and stamp duty is a cost, well, we’re going to abolish stamp duty for anybody over the age of 60 who is downsizing to a smaller property if they’re building a new home.

Rita Panahi:

I don’t know why he’s in a muscle singlet at a petrol station while he’s making this announcement. But what do you think about that policy? It’s not a bad one, I think.

Patrick Carlyon:

Look, I can see how it could be popular certainly. And I do agree with you. Why is he announcing this? Was he holding the two pies in his other hand at the same time?

Rita Panahi:

He’s just relatable. He’s just figuring out that that’s how people work in social media. I don’t like this downsizing requirement though, Colleen, because what if you live in an expensive cottage in the inner city and you want to buy a much bigger property newly built in a regional area, why shouldn’t you qualify? Or do you qualify? Because he was emphasising downsizing several times.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, correct. I have a lot of questions over this having seen one sentence of what he’s announced. But to me it sounds like if I’m a retiree with a nice big home and I’m going to cash up and downsize, that I get a benefit. I’m going to be competing in the same market that the first home buyers are coming up into.

Rita Panahi:

That’s a good point.

Colleen Harkin:

So it’s just going to be creating competition and increasing the cost of living, the cost of housing for the people who we want to get up. It doesn’t seem make a lot of sense to me.

Rita Panahi:

That’s a good point. Yeah. It will probably result in a lot of significant homes being listed, but then so much more competition for the smaller properties.

Colleen Harkin:

You’re pushing it up at that level.

Rita Panahi:

Very good point. Colleen Harkin, Patrick Carlyon, thank you for your time.

This transcript of Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia from 23 February 2026 has been edited for clarity.