Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia – 26 January 2026

Rita Panahi:

Joining me now is Institute of Public Affairs Senior Fellow Colleen Harkin and PR Counsel Managing Director, Kristy McSweeney. Colleen, I’ll start with you. There appear to be two contenders for this job, Andrew Hastie and Angus Taylor. Who do you think will prevail or is it inevitable, are we getting ahead of ourselves? Could Ley hold on?

Colleen Harkin:

I don’t see how she can hold on in the longer term. She might in the shorter term because to do it too soon would make it look like they’ve acquiesced to the Nationals push. But I think there’s a bigger problem here. The Liberal Party in particular seem to have forgotten what the role of Opposition is. They’ve forgotten that their job is not to help Labour with bad legislation. Their job is to oppose and to hold them to account. And so now, regardless of whoever may or may not take over, in due course, we’re stuck with that legislation because the Liberals helped bring it to part. So in years to come, if they ever do get back into government, they’re stuck with this legislation because they were the people who helped get it across the line. There’s been an enormous amount of pushback, rightly so, about it. And in all of that context, I think the Nationals have held themselves well, although they’re starting to look shambolic again today and yesterday.

Rita Panahi:

It is just such a shame, Kristy, because it is terrible legislation. It’s one thing for the Opposition to back good legislation, but to forget that they’re Opposition, to forget that they’re supposed to stand up for liberal values. And then you’ve got someone like Hastie who was complicit in passing this legislation. So how is he going to prove to those disaffected liberal voters who have abandoned the party that they should come back when he passed these so called hate speech laws?

Kristy McSweeney:

Look, there’s many people in the conservative side of the Liberal Party, of which Andrew Hastie is one. And there was Michaelia Cash, Andrew Hastie, James Patterson, John O’Donovan, all conservatives. These people are hardly people that rally votes and policy positions for the moderate side of the faction. They are hardly people who are not free speech supporters. So they have taken a view that let’s not stop the perfect being the enemy of the good. However, there are deeper questions to answer about how this legislation is going to be enacted. I don’t think there was enough time for people to go through the bill and to make sure those amendments that were put forward and passed were adequate and amendments that the Liberal Party would probably support as a whole and come to a position where both factions could support it. However, that is what happens when you demand that Parliament be recalled and do not have a plan or a strategy of what you will do with your voice once Parliament is [inaudible 00:02:50], once you have won that fight.

Off the back of a couple of wins, calling the Prime Minister, forcing him to call a Royal Commission, and then forcing him to recall Parliament. Two wins there, and we hate putting this in the context of winning and losing over such tragic circumstances. However, losing that advantage once you have no strategy and no plan once you get what you want.

Rita Panahi:

Well, that is the indictment here, Colleen, because Sussan Ley demanded parliament to be recalled. She had no plan. And it seems like part of the reason these terrible laws were passed was so she could justify those calls because the prime minister did come out and say, “Why are you demanding parliament be recalled when you’ve really got nothing substantial to offer here?” And I think it’s just such a great shame for the country that we have an Islamist terror attack and what comes out of that is that the free speech of ordinary Australians is impacted in a negative way, including the ability to robustly talk about Islamism and mass migration and all sorts of other important issues.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, correct. The target that it was supposed to address has not been targeted, it’s not been addressed at all. We’ve got a high court challenge from the very group that’s supposed to have been shut down. Though it’s the ordinary Australian who will suffer here in the longer term, there’s no way, in my view, that those MPs could have done due diligence to 500 pages of legislation in the two days or whatever it was that they were looking at it. The consequences of this are enormous. And I think that they’re sort of all trying to backtrack and say it’ll all be okay, but I think everybody knows it’s bad legislation.

Rita Panahi:

Now let’s get back to the potential leadership challenge. There’s a lot being said about Hastie being from WA, Kristy. Can you have a leader from WA? We’ve only had one prime minister in Australia’s history who’s been from WA. It does seem to be a bit of an impediment.

Kristy McSweeney:

Look, and this is not my view on backing any candidate that has currently put their hand up or may do so in the future. However, Kim Beazley was from Western Australia.

Rita Panahi:

It didn’t work out well.

Kristy McSweeney:

Well, it did work out well, but he held the job for a long, long time. And of course, I’m sure Andrew Hastie will argue that Western Australia is now going to form a key part or key involvement in the Liberal Party’s policy platform going forward, should we ever get some policies around AUKUS, a significant investment there from the United States in housing and infrastructure in defence. I’m sure he’ll run the Western Australian line that WA contributes the most to the running of the national economy and underpins our standard of living in Western Australia. And so all of those things are hugely relevant and perhaps it might bring some attention to just how relevant Western Australia is as a proud Western Australian myself. However, as I say, he’s got a long, long way to go to convince many others of that, as does anyone who wants the job.

Rita Panahi:

Well, we are in the digital age. I think the issue of being from WA is a lot less than it was in the past.

Kristy McSweeney:

Of course.

Rita Panahi:

We’re all on our devices 24/7. You can speak to anybody anywhere and you can… I’m pretty sure Hastie has a setup in his home or his office. So he can do media interviews without leaving his electorate if he needs to. Now let’s talk about Australia Day. We’ve had the usual Invasion Day rally is all the hate and hysteria and division, but the polls continue to come in. People are overwhelmingly supportive. Another poll here by the News Corp papers has found an overwhelming majority of Australians would not support businesses that boycott Australia Day. Nearly 90% were less likely to support businesses that boycotted Australia, while only 3%, that’s the loud minority there, were more likely to support those businesses. 96% said they felt pride when they saw the Australian flag.

And this constant bickering over the date of Australia Day was also nominated as the worst thing about the national day. Now, Kristy, Lush is a company that is protesting Australia Day. They claim for Indigenous people, it is a day of mourning, survival, and remembrance, a stark reminder of the violence and dispossession that began with invasion and continues to echo through systems and lived experiences today. I mean, really Lush should concentrate on the hideous stench that emanates from their stores. I cannot even walk past one of their stores in a shopping centre without getting a headache. There’s some sort of a nuisance to that company, but this is pretty dumb marketing. Sure, you’re appealing to the 3%, but 90%, one, don’t want our corporations to get all political. And if they are getting political, don’t be on the wrong side of history.

Kristy McSweeney:

Oh, of course. And this replicates what we’ve seen from large corporates who have actively, publicly put out statements saying, “We are giving our staff the choice of celebrating another holiday and coming in to work on Australia Day and choosing to have a day off at another day of their preference.” This is ridiculous that corporates have gone to this extent thinking that that resonates with the majority of Australians. It doesn’t. Those numbers that you’ve pointed out are really, really clear. And I think we’re seeing a backlash of people who are just constantly sick of people not celebrating Australia.

Rita Panahi:

Absolutely.

Kristy McSweeney:

Our national day.

Rita Panahi:

And it’s not about the date, because if you’re actually familiar with the date, if you’re familiar with the date of the arrival, you wouldn’t be perturbed by January 26th. So learn your history first of all. It’s about Opposition to any celebration of Australia. You could change the date to whatever you like, whatever they suggest, and they will still have protests on that day. But on the corporate virtue signalling, we saw this last year, Colleen, we had a major hospitality group, more than 200 venues across Australia, Australian venues company. They were forced to apologise after they told their managers that there should be no acknowledgement of Australia Day or January 26th as they called it. Companies are starting to figure out there’s a price to pay because for a long time, as long as you were virtue signalling to the left, they felt pretty safe because the right kind of just [inaudible 00:09:36] it. But now the rest of the country, the silent majority is saying, “Nah, enough. We’ve had it.”

Colleen Harkin:

We saw it with Woolworths pay the price with the lack of shoppers attending their stores. Look, I mean, in any given year, there is Sorry Day, NAIDOC week, reconciliation week. Australians have recognised what’s happened in the past. We’ve said sorry. All Australians want to move on and celebrate our national day together. Kristy’s citing just there of the people who were given the choice of taking a different day of holiday. 18 to 24 year olds, IPA research will tell you that 83% of them say, “No, we want to celebrate it on Australia Day. We’re proud of our country. We’re proud of who we are.” The people who are doing this have no knowledge of history. They should come to the IPAschoolsprogram.org.au, download a unit about Captain Phillip, about the rule of law, how it was established, about how convicts were given rights. I mean, there’s just so much history that they’re not knowledgeable of and they need to do a bit of reading before they carry on with all of this.

Kristy McSweeney:

And not taught in schools.

Colleen Harkin:

Correct.

Kristy McSweeney:

And can I also add just to the corporate virtue signalling, that company, that hospitality group we were speaking about, is owned almost wholly by a Singapore investment company, by one Singaporean billionaire. I don’t think he really cares about celebrating Australia Day, Rita.

Rita Panahi:

Well, knowing how Singapore is run, I’d say that he’d be pretty upset about the corporate virtue signalling-

Kristy McSweeney:

Possibly.

Rita Panahi:

… from his senior managers and perhaps he’s moved them on in the last 12 months. Colleen Harkin and Kristy McSweeney, thank you so much for your time tonight.

Kristy McSweeney:

Thank you.

Colleen Harkin:

Pleasure.

This transcript with Colleen Harkin talking on The Rita Panahi Show – Sky News Australia from 26 January 2025 has been edited for clarity.