Colleen Harkin on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia – 7 July 2026

James Morrow:

Joining me now to discuss this and more is News Corp Senior Writer, Patrick Carlyon; and Institute of Public Affairs Research Fellow, Colleen Harkin. Patrick, I’ll start with you here. I thought that Albanese had stabilised the relationship with China. At least, that’s what he told me. This seems a bit destabilising, frankly.

Patrick Carlyon:

Look, Australia’s place in this was described by somebody as roadkill in the sense that there are much bigger issues here than Australia’s regional security and what’s happening in Fiji with Albanese over the past couple of days. I think the key word here is intercontinental, and that’s what this missile represents. It means China could actually hit the US mainland if it came to it. And I think Australia’s place in it is, I mean, our security is critical. If China’s going to set up military outposts on our doorstep, then that’s a massive deal. But we’re not the main story here. This is all about the US versus China.

James Morrow:

Absolutely. But Colleen, this is a disturbing thing to have happen just coincidentally when this pact has just been signed. Mike Pezzullo, the former intelligence chief, he has said that, “Well, we need to be sure that this wasn’t just a coincidence here. Such a test takes time to set up. There have to be ships down range to track it for telemetry and so on.” Do you think that this could have been a deliberate signal timed with intelligence China may have obtained about this deal being signed to also send a signal to the South Pacific and Australia about the growing security pacts that have been signed here in the Pacific?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, I mean, probably all of the above is an issue to concern ourselves with because to see a long-range missile in our neighbourly waters has got to be the warning shot to say that the old idea that our geographic and isolated location was somehow part of our security consciousness is … that has to end, that illusion has to end and we have to get much more serious about our security and our defence relationships with our alliances and our own sovereign defence mechanisms that we have. So, we seem to have been a bit laissez-faire for a very long time about what we consider we need or we don’t need. And I think this is an absolute warning shot to say we have to get serious about how we upskill our defence mechanisms.

James Morrow:

Well, and Patrick, I just want to stick with you for one second on this topic here, because it is I think very important. Richard Marles, the defence secretary and also acting PM while the PM is away, said that this just shows that we have to be ready. But the implication of his statement is that we are ready. I don’t think we’re anywhere near close to ready if China really decides to act up in the Pacific.

Patrick Carlyon:

We’re nowhere near it, are we, James? I mean, look, we might be getting three subs in, what, eight years’ time or something. China has been sabre-rattling throughout the Pacific for a long time. And this is an escalation. I think describe it as routine is silly. It brings a US into the equation and Australia’s place, as Colleen rightly pointed out, we’re not protected by our isolation anymore. This missile proves it. These are really dangerous times. We need to be talking about it and we need to have a defence budget that recognises the threat at our door.

James Morrow:

And yet, we didn’t see anything like that come out of that May 12 budget, which we’re still talking about. The only thing that it’s had the capability to blow up is house prices. But anyway, moving on, labour is down a bit of hot water after new data has revealed that Australia’s migration programme is, “Oh, who knew?” Actually, propped up by family members and not the skilled migrants or workforce needs.

Now, Colleen, I’ll start with you on this because the Institute of Public Affairs has done analysis, great analysis of the Department of Home Affairs data from 2024, ’25. We’ve got that in The Daily Telegraph today and found that of the 132,148 permanent skilled visas granted over a 12-month period, only about 33% actually went to someone approved as skilled. Colleen, what can you tell us about this? And shouldn’t we be focusing more on actually training Australians to get jobs rather than just simply looking overseas?

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. This is a great work of my colleague, Dr. Kevin You. 185,000 permanent skilled migrant visas, 71% of those. I think the average Australian thinks that that means that 71% of those people are the skilled migrants. And when you find out that well less than half of them are the skilled people and the rest of them is family members and people connected with, I think people are very surprised to understand how those stats work out. The other thing, little as a side issue here, 185,000 permanent visa given out in that year is still double what it used to be. We still used to have 100,000 immigrants every year for basically the whole of the 20th century until the end of the Howard era.

So, even at those numbers, it is still double what we had when we were considered ourselves a successful immigration cohort. But the average estimate, I’m sure, has no understanding about how those numbers are being manipulated. And it is genuinely a con. Because what we keep getting told is that we need these immigrants to fill these jobs, but we’re not importing skilled immigrants to fill whatever these jobs might happen to be. We still have huge vacancies in skilled areas and we have hundreds of thousands of people coming in who are not skilled.

James Morrow:

And not only that, we’re not doing enough to train our own local people here that we’re producing ourselves to become skilled workers themselves. But Patrick, this seems like it politically could have a lot of potency, because it gets the debate about migration off of the field of monoculture versus multiculturalism, which is quite contested and contentious and has, let’s be honest about it, a fair bit of baggage around it. This is very pragmatic data here that I think that if the Liberal Party wanted to hook into it would be a pretty powerful thing for them to campaign on.

Patrick Carlyon:

Absolutely. And look, I think the other point too is that the skilled migrant programme takes in something like 480 occupations in theory. And we like to think if we’re getting skilled workers, they’re going to be electricians or plumbers or carpenters, people who are going to build stuff. And I mean, the numbers are nowhere near where we thought they were. The political rhetoric has been, we’re bringing in all these skilled migrants. Well, less than half of those who come in on a skilled migrant visa are actually skilled workers. And a lot of them aren’t tradies. We need people to build stuff. This is very illuminating. It’s really interesting. Yes. It does play to the electorate, definitely.

James Morrow:

Look, I just think that when you have this idea that not only are the people doing the things that they’re supposed to, but that they’re bringing with them people who are further imposts on our infrastructure. I just think it’s so deadly for labour, but they seem to be getting away with it for now. But it is a good question though, how long? Because we’ve got other news that suggests that Australia is set for its longest stretch of subpar economic growth in more than 35 years. Deloitte Access Economics has downgraded its real economic growth forecasts for Australia to 1.3% for the financial year. And not only that, they say growth is going to stay below 2% for the longest period since the global recession of the early 1990s.

Colleen, this is just horrific news. We’ve also seen the news that, well, we’ve been in a per capita recession for 10 of the last 15 quarters, that our inflation is almost the highest in the developed world short of Iceland. We’re going to keep getting poorer and poorer every week so long as this goes on relative to the rest of the world, aren’t we?

Colleen Harkin:

Definitely. And I think the average person on the street can feel it. We can feel that our standard of living is decreasing. The cost of living is an extraordinary burden on people. And the shocking part about this is that we don’t have to be here. This is all self-inflicted. And so, I think that level of frustration amongst people and the desire to see change is growing stronger every day, because we used to have the cheapest energy in the world, we used to have one of the highest standards of living in the world, and we can feel that we are literally going backwards.

James Morrow:

Yeah. And Patrick, as you might know, I travel to the United States probably at least once a year. Every time I’ve gone back, it does feel like that country is getting richer compared to us that we are falling behind. Again, potent electoral material for a party that wants to talk about it.

Patrick Carlyon:

That’s right. And look, we consider ourselves the lucky country, but we have blown it in so many ways in recent years. If you don’t have growth, your standards of living are going to drop. It’s that simple. And we’re feeling it, as Colleen says, whether it’s power prices, we’ve got all this stuff in the ground that we export to the rest of the world, but we pay the highest prices in the world. This is certainly going to come to bear politically as it goes on because it shouldn’t be happening.

James Morrow:

Yeah. Indeed, you’re right. I’ve also been fascinated, too, by some of the goings-on that have come out of the big labour conference that they’ve just had. And we read today in The Australian that labour has dropped pressure on Hamas to disarm as well as pressure on the Palestinian authority to reform and guarantee Israel’s security in the latest draught of its official policy platform. And almost all the pressure, not surprisingly, in their new governing document, goes to the Democratic state of Israel. Again, not surprisingly.

Now, this is quite startling, Colleen, given that when they made that move to unilaterally recognise the Palestinian authority in the Palestinian state, they said, “Oh, no, no, no. We’re going to put all this pressure on.” But now it seems like the left of the party has just won and said, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. It’s okay. We’re just going to let them keep doing whatever they do and move on.”

Colleen Harkin:

It’s very worrying, because the early and inappropriately early recognition of the State of Palestine I think was an insight into how the factions within the Labour Party think. And to see the left side of that faction having won that argument effectively from a policy perspective is a great concern. Hamas is a terrorist organisation and there is nothing about Australia that should be recognising or feeling cosy with them no matter what political party or ideological perspective. We have to maintain our own security and having ambitions or conversations or thought bubbles that lean in that way are very worrying for our country.

James Morrow:

Well, it’s interesting to me, Patrick, because I know that at this conference, Anthony Albanese, although he is himself a man of the left, he always tries to fend off these very far left motions on Gaza and things like that or whatever the area is. But it seems like he’s failed to be able to control this now. We speak a lot about right-wing populism being a phenomenon around the world, but is Australia starting to catch a bit of the wave of left-wing populism that we’ve seen in places like say the United States where Democrat socialists are running rampant through the Democrat Party? Is this hard left vibe going to start to be a real problem? Not so much for the right of politics, but now for established labour?

Patrick Carlyon:

Oh, look, I think it’s already a problem for the Jewish people in Australia.

James Morrow:

100%.

Patrick Carlyon:

I mean, the fact that this has been going on for years now to be anti-Israel somehow makes it okay to be anti-Semitic, I would argue, in so many instances. And the two get confused. We’re talking about an Israeli government rather than the Jewish people of Australia. And I think the Jews have really suffered for that dreadfully. And part of that problem is a lack of leadership from people like the Prime Minister.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah.

James Morrow:

Yeah. No. That’s right. Hey, just want to just chat very quickly about some new revelations from Paul Kelly in The Australian. John Howard has opened up about what he called the failures of the Liberal Party, declaring that all three liberal prime ministers of the Abbot, Turnbull, Morrison era failed the leadership test. Now, he’s made these comments as part of Paul Kelly’s new book, The Twilight of Exceptionalism. Sorry. Colleen, does the form PM have a point?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, I think the real problem that the Liberal Party has experienced is a lack of conviction to policy. It’s not so much about leadership. I think people have been looking for the leaders to show the way about what the policies are. I think they lost courage about who they are and what they stand for. I know John Howard is a highly held previous prime minister and amongst Liberal Party members, he’s God-like, really. But I think he’s actually missing the point here.

The problem with the Liberal Party is not looking for a new Messiah. It doesn’t need a new leader. It actually needs, and for the last 10 years or so, has lost its courage, convictions about who it is and what it stands for and what its offering is to the electorate. So, the leader is obviously an important component. It’s the face of the brand and all of that kind of stuff, but I think the problems have been greater than just the leader.

James Morrow:

Well, I think there’s three words that sum up the problems with that turn in there. Malcolm Bligh Turnbull folks. I’m afraid the clock is telling me I’m going to have to let you have the last word Colleen on that. Thank you so much, Patrick and Colleen. I’ll speak to you soon.

This transcript of Colleen Harkin speaking on The Rita Panahi Show Sky News Australia from 7 July 2026 has been edited for clarity.