Colleen Harkin on The Weekly Wrap ABC Radio Melbourne – 4 July 2025

In this interview, Colleen Harkin appeared on The Weekly Wrap Mornings ABC Radio Melbourne and discussed the IPA’s research on welfare in Australia.

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.

Rafael Epstein:

You’re not going to be going to see Ye in Australia. Mind you, he wasn’t coming for a concert. Emma Dawson is with us. She’s the Executive Director of the Chifley Research Centre. Good morning, Emma.

Emma Dawson:

Good morning.

Rafael Epstein:

And Colleen Harkin’s with us as well Director of the Schools Programme at the Institute of Public Affairs. Good morning, Colleen.

Colleen Harkin:

Good morning to you both.

Rafael Epstein:

Have either of you ever listened to Kanye West?

Emma Dawson:

Well, no-

Rafael Epstein:

Never?

Colleen Harkin:

No.

Rafael Epstein:

There’s some good music in the past-

Colleen Harkin:

Well, inadvertently, right?

Rafael Epstein:

… dodgy music now.

Emma Dawson:

It’s been… But yeah, don’t like it but-

Rafael Epstein:

We’ll talk about separating the art from the artist later on. Let’s go to the significant things that we spoke about this week. We had a big discussion on Monday about aged care. Of course, the conversation around child care this week is in part a conversation about a series of really horrendous charges that are really difficult to talk about and we’re going to leave the courts to sort that out. But Tom Crowley from the ABC wrote a great piece that I used myself.

So in terms of talking about both child care and aged care, he was pointing out in child care, parents are paid a subsidy. In aged care, recipients have packages. In the NDIS, participants have budgets. In TAFE trainees, have supposedly fee-free courses but effectively that is a subsidy. In all of those cases, there are different ways of the government paying for a service. But the government doesn’t pay, the money comes through you then to the private provider.

So the government is actually far removed from the thing we would like them to regulate and control and moderate. So I might start with you, Colleen. That’s my overarching way of thinking about aged care and child care. But it’s not the only thing governments do. Let’s zero in on child care for a tick. What’s the right way for governments to respond given this thing’s still going to be contested in the courts?

Colleen Harkin:

Look, there’s so many layers to this. But as you might expect as a blanket rule, I’m not a fan of the government owning the space, right? So I’m supportive of private enterprise owning that space. I know Em will have a different view on that but government owning the private enterprise space is inherently objectionable in the large scale of things. But the regulation component of this, I don’t believe just putting layers and layers and layers of regulation will solve any of these problems. It’ll actually just make it more difficult, more expensive. The idea in child care, the four I’s component, excuse me, of having two people-

Rafael Epstein:

Two people.

Colleen Harkin:

… in a room with a child. I mean, it’s just not feasible to do that. The other thing that is objectionable about this is putting that tired brush on every worker in that space which is also a problem. My view of this is that when you employ somebody, you ought to be able to go and do proper due diligence of where they’ve worked before, where the gaps are in their employment. What happens at the moment is you apply for a job and they can only check on the one or two referees that you provide. So that, of course, they’re going to be friendly referrals and particularly in these environments-

Rafael Epstein:

And just to drill down to the detail of what you’re saying, you should be able to ring-

Colleen Harkin:

Well, if you-

Rafael Epstein:

So if Emma’s worked at ABC Childcare and DEF Childcare, I can just ring them both and say, “Hey, What was Emma like?”

Colleen Harkin:

I think you should be able to, right? Because there’s no real value in only talking to friendly referees. And particularly when you’re dealing with talking about the most vulnerable people in the community, we need to be sure that you can do proper search on the person. Just to actually really figure out who they are and are they a good and fit person to be working in that environment. So that’s an IR kind of work privacy-

Rafael Epstein:

And you can’t do that at the moment. I think privacy stops you doing that, doesn’t it? Yeah.

Colleen Harkin:

Privacy stops you from doing that. So if I apply for a job and I just say, “You can only speak to Raf,” that’s all they can speak to and that’s a big-

Rafael Epstein:

They should speak to Erin. She’ll tell them what’s really good. Erin’s our producer. Yeah.

Colleen Harkin:

It’s a big problem because it constrains the employer from actually having a good grip on who they’re employing.

Rafael Epstein:

Mm-hmm. So Emma, I’d like you to address two things there.

Emma Dawson:

Mm-hmm.

Rafael Epstein:

Have a go, first of all, on how much of my employment history you should be able to dig in. But Colleen is intrinsically opposed to giving the government more control in this space.

Emma Dawson:

Yeah. So in the spirit of always starting from a place where we can agree, Colleen-

Rafael Epstein:

Agree, disagree. Disagree agreeably. Yes.

Emma Dawson:

We can agree that no additional layers of regulation are going to fix this problem in the current system. It is time after 30 years of experimenting with the market provision of essential social care services to say that experiment has failed.

Rafael Epstein:

Failed.

Emma Dawson:

Failed. Everything you’ve talked about this week, I’m an avid 774 listener, from the difficulty of getting into aged care, people understanding what they’re entitled to, to people ringing up complaining that the services are not there in their local council anymore, to the crisis we’re seeing in aged care demonstrates to me, once and for all and it’s not news to me, that there should be no profit in care. It is fundamentally mismatched. And actually, our economic system admits that in other areas.

GDP does not count unpaid work and we recognise that these are what’s called non-market sectors. They are not tradable goods and, in many ways, they’re not tradable services. Under the guise of choice and control, and that’s language we hear around aged care, around the NDIS, around child care. We have moved the provision of essential education and care services to what is effectively a voucher system, which is the government saying, “We’ll give you money and you can go and buy it in the market-“

Rafael Epstein:

Which we don’t do with schools.

Emma Dawson:

We don’t do it with schools. All schools are non-profit. Early childhood education and care should be non-profit, if not some government provision and then non-profit. Because the profit motive is fundamentally-

Rafael Epstein:

So it’s not a no private sector, it is a no for-profit-

Emma Dawson:

It’s a no for-profit like it is with schools and I think we have to recognise… We saw it in the pandemic. What were the nursing homes… The old-fashioned language that had big disease outbreaks, they were for-profit centres where we do not see these kinds of regulatory failures happening in not-for-profit childcare centres. I heard a master student the other day say she had observed behaviour in these large childcare centres where they’re effectively flouting the regulations, keeping an eye on a room whilst some of them break-

Rafael Epstein:

So one person in the space between the two rooms-

Emma Dawson:

That’s right. So-

Rafael Epstein:

… to just keep up the pretence on the ratio.

Emma Dawson:

That’s right. And what we’re saying-

Colleen Harkin:

We don’t have the people. We just don’t have the people to do this-

Emma Dawson:

And you’re admitting, Colleen, that they can’t afford the people. That means-

Colleen Harkin:

Well, we don’t have the training of people. We don’t have-

Emma Dawson:

Because-

Colleen Harkin:

People are not going in even to be trained-

Emma Dawson:

Because the pay is so poor, because the conditions are so… Why would you say I’m going to divide… Other than most people do it because they love working with children and we take advantage of that mainly for women. But why would you say, “I’m going to go for a job where the most I’ll ever earn is $35 an hour? I can’t use my mobile phone. I’m going to be under constant CCTV surveillance-“

Colleen Harkin:

Would you support the idea of paying mums to stay home and look after their children or a couple of children in their own home-

Emma Dawson:

I don’t want to be paid to look after my own kid, right? I think that’s often a furphy. And then, we come back to, “Well, what we really want is for mothers to stay home with their children.” We can’t have it both ways. We can’t say this is-

Rafael Epstein:

Not that that’s not interesting-

Emma Dawson:

No, that’s not an interesting-

Rafael Epstein:

… but if you can both focus on how much the market should be involved in care. If I can ask-

Emma Dawson:

Competition’s not working, right?

Rafael Epstein:

So Emma said it failed, Colleen. Is she right?

Colleen Harkin:

Mm-hmm.

Rafael Epstein:

We’ve got proof it failed?

Colleen Harkin:

No, of course not. Of course not. There are thousands of great childcare centres out there. The idea that one beyond belief objectionable human being is… We can’t call him a human-

Rafael Epstein:

Well, we don’t know. We don’t know. That’s contested in the court-

Emma Dawson:

But-

Colleen Harkin:

That’s not just about this case though. It’s about thousands of children who are well looked after by terrific staff-

Emma Dawson:

But what we’ve heard repeatedly this week on this radio station is that the systems are in crisis. People can’t navigate them. They’re expensive. They’re not able to… Providers aren’t able to pay their staff adequately. They’re not able to pay enough staff or meet the regulatory requirements. And at the other end, parents or people with older relatives going to nursing homes are saying, “This is too expensive.” That is as clear as day a failed market experiment.

Rafael Epstein:

Can I just remind everyone who are listening to… Emma Dawson is here from the Chifley Research Centre and Colleen Harkins with the IPA. Colleen, can I just get you to respond to one thing Emma said because I’m not sure everyone gets it straight in their head. Emma’s not saying no private sector-

Colleen Harkin:

No.

Rafael Epstein:

… but she’s saying no for-profit sector. I mentioned the subsidies. The NDIS people, they don’t talk to the equivalent of a private school. They talk to a series of private contractors and they take their voucher to them. Do you see any merit in Emma’s idea about that-

Colleen Harkin:

I think they-

Rafael Epstein:

… the not-for-profit, we’re going to make it all not-for-profit?

Colleen Harkin:

No, I don’t think it should all have to be not-for-profit but I see merit in providing that service. You know what I mean? To have the choice. I just fundamentally think that every time the government gets involved in things, it makes it layers of red tape and regulation and it is slower to move. It’s more difficult to deal with. It comes with all of that territory-

Emma Dawson:

It is-

Colleen Harkin:

… so I’m not saying there should be none-

Emma Dawson:

The systems-

Colleen Harkin:

… but to have the choice.

Emma Dawson:

… are much more complex now than they were 35, 40 years ago before the Howard government reinvented the social care sector. It-

Colleen Harkin:

But aged care wasn’t really an issue 30 or 40 years ago. It was a new industry.

Rafael Epstein:

That’s not true.

Emma Dawson:

Aye. I worked in aged care.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah-

Rafael Epstein:

[inaudible 00:09:33], that’s mid ’90s. That’s 30 years ago-

Colleen Harkin:

Correct. That’s what I said, like this is a new industry 30 or 40 years ago-

Emma Dawson:

I worked in a nursing home in 1990. No, it’s not a new industry. I mean, there were-

Colleen Harkin:

30 or 40 years ago, aged care was a new industry.

Emma Dawson:

It was a new market industry because it had previously been provided by governments-

Colleen Harkin:

By-

Emma Dawson:

… by local councils and by state governments.

Colleen Harkin:

And home members-

Emma Dawson:

And family members but-

Colleen Harkin:

… like this commercialisation and the big industry-

Emma Dawson:

… again, we can’t have it both ways. We can’t create an economy that demands that women, and mainly women, second earners, get more into the workforce to pay for ever-increasing commodity prices and house prices and then say, “Oh, but you should stay home with the kids for five years-“

Colleen Harkin:

I agree with that. Most of this care falls on the women of the family.

Emma Dawson:

Mm-hmm.

Rafael Epstein:

Yeah. I guess what-

Emma Dawson:

It’s the voucher system that’s the problem. Georgie Dent from The Parenthood says-

Rafael Epstein:

What do we… We might-

Emma Dawson:

… “Fund the centres directly. Don’t fund the parents.” That is fundamentally a shift. Yeah.

Rafael Epstein:

It’s the difference from the voucher system so let’s end in that part there, at least some agreement. All right. Sixteen minutes past 10:00. 1300-222-774 is the phone number. I might talk about today’s news by actually asking Emma, you had something you wanted to mention as a smile, something that is… Someone, a person-

Emma Dawson:

I did-

Rafael Epstein:

… that is making you smile. Who?

Emma Dawson:

Zohran Mamdani who has just won the Democratic primary to be the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City-

Rafael Epstein:

What may I call pre-selection?

Emma Dawson:

Pre-selection, that’s right, over Andrew Cuomo, who’s close to 70s, got some fairly unsavoury, sexual harassment allegations in his past. This is a young, 33-year-old Muslim American, calls himself a democratic socialist. This is one of the most progressive cities in the world. It’s also got the largest Jewish population outside Israel. And what was so pleasing about this was for the first time people under 50, people under 40, outnumbered those over 65 in coming out to vote in this primary. And so-

Rafael Epstein:

Which mimics our election-

Emma Dawson:

Which mimics our election, right?

Rafael Epstein:

… but they’ve got a different [inaudible 00:11:30] party.

Emma Dawson:

Yes, that’s right. But what it’s showing is… And I don’t agree with everything Mamdani says, he can be pretty incendiary on some issues. But what it’s showing is young people going, “You know what? This system is not working for us anymore,” and he was particularly running… And I was in New York in April. Lucky enough to be there. If you’re an essential worker in New York, you can’t afford to live in the city you’re working in. A lot of them are commuting, not just from New Jersey and outside the city, but from homeless shelters. People working full-time on service wages. That’s not sustainable-

Rafael Epstein:

The public transport was important. We’ve actually got a little snippet. One of the things, he’s young. He’s really good at doing two things: going out and asking people what they think. But also, he’s just fantastic on social media.

Emma Dawson:

Yeah.

Rafael Epstein:

Here he is talking about how he’s cut through and what he has to do to cut through on his social media videos.

Zohran Mamdani:

My team says I move my hands too much in these videos. So for this one, they’re staying in my pockets. The other day on the subway, I met a New Yorker. But get this, they vote in California. I know this is true for many of you. You’re Democrats who have chosen not to vote here because you believe your vote counts more elsewhere. I get it. I do.

Zohran Mamdani Producer:

Keep them in your pockets.

Zohran Mamdani:

Especially after this last election. We all wanted to defeat-

Rafael Epstein:

It’s next level.

Emma Dawson:

Sounds fun.

Rafael Epstein:

The Americans, public speaking, and media performers. We’ll get into what’s happened in the overnight in the United States because the numbers are sort of difficult to think about or difficult to comprehend. But Chris has called about the care system from Geelong. What did you want to say, Chris?

Chris:

Yeah. Rough. Yeah. Look, I was a tradesman that decided wanted to give to the community and decided to go into the aged care sector. It was $19 an hour, casualized workforce. And because there’s no mandatory ratios, so if two people had to have 22 people within an hour, dressed, showered, shaved if it’s men, and ready for breakfast, now the residents would feel the stress within the culture. They didn’t want you to fall behind and that’s when you’re at risk of falls. It’s just really untenable. When COVID came around, there was all talk about, “Oh, we need to do ratios because…” And nothing’s changed. It’s just totally unsafe working environment. There are many requirements that-

Rafael Epstein:

Are you still doing it?

Chris:

No, no. I went back to my trade because it’s untenable. Now, there has been a pay increase I hear since but it’s still $32 an hour. That’s very hard to live on that.

Rafael Epstein:

Yeah. I hear you, Chris. Thank you. Thanks for the little window, important window. And Cliff’s in Oakley. What do you want to say, Cliff?

Cliff:

Hi, Raf. How are you doing?

Rafael Epstein:

I’m good. Go for it.

Cliff:

I work at $26 an hour in retail. Outdoors, no heaters, no rooms. If $35 an hour is too little for childcare, Elon Musk, something wrong somewhere.

Rafael Epstein:

Something wrong somewhere. Interesting. $25 an hour doing what? Can you tell me a bit more, Cliff?

Cliff:

Retail, outdoors, customer service, helping, whatever requires.

Rafael Epstein:

Thank you, Cliff. Oh, one day, we’ll get onto rates of pay. In a moment, we mentioned that new rising Democrat star in New York. The Congress has passed Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. It is a phenomenal amount of money. What does it mean for their politics and what does it mean for our politics and our economy as well? We’ll get back to that with Emma and Colleen.

The Big Bill, it took a bit of negotiating in the US Senate and in the Congress. The reason it’s important is it… Number one, it shovels a whole lot of money from the poor to the rich. It cancels a whole lot of social programmes, things like food programmes and medical insurance. Another way to think about it though is the cost of the bill. If you’ve ever heard of Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which was a really big spending bill encouraging investment in things like green energy and other industries, that was 500 to 800 billion American dollars. The Big Beautiful Bill, the cost of it is likely to be many times that. We’re talking sort of four or five, six times that so it may be close to $3.5 trillion. So that is a stupendously large amount of money. Colleen, is it noteworthy? Is it going to make a difference? What do you think of it?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, it’s clearly going to be noteworthy at $3.5 trillion. And whether you see it as being brutal or beautiful for Trump is I think it kind of comes down to the overriding values of this, right? So I’d sort of give it a bit of a cautious support with caveats because I think what they’re trying to do is set in place a pro-growth, pro-worker, pro-family, pro-security, all of those sorts of value-based things that I would generally support.

Rafael Epstein:

But does it do those things?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, I think it will. I mean, it has to be seen, right? There has to be time to see how this plays out-

Rafael Epstein:

And it’s..].

Colleen Harkin:

… but things like eliminating tips on tax in-

Rafael Epstein:

Tax on tips.

Colleen Harkin:

Sorry. Tax on tips, sorry, over time, that’s fantastic. That is absolutely fantastic and we should look at that. That’s one that-

Rafael Epstein:

If you can pay for it.

Colleen Harkin:

Chalmers should be doing that. Well, because those people are lower paid workers, they do tend to suffer from insecure employment and getting people into employment is the big ticket item, right? So-

Rafael Epstein:

Sure. Can I point out one flaw? There’s a limit on those. You can only get a tax exemption on those things, I think, up to about 25 grand American.

Emma Dawson:

That’s right.

Rafael Epstein:

There’s no limit on your tax cut if you are fabulously wealthy. That’s a bit unfair. That’s-

Emma Dawson:

You stole my best point Raf.

Rafael Epstein:

Oh, sorry. Sorry. Colleen?

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. No, so I think the idea… Because in May, for example, they had something like 2 million empty jobs going in low employment retail, hospitality-

Rafael Epstein:

Yeah. They have the same issue we have. Can’t get people to work.

Colleen Harkin:

Right? So getting people into employment is always good. Away from dependency is always a good thing. So it’s a bit… I don’t want to say, “Rah! It’s fantastic,” because there’s obviously question marks around it. But generally speaking, I think it’s heading in a direction that is helpful to those people to get away from government dependency.

Rafael Epstein:

Emma?

Emma Dawson:

I think it’s a big horrible bill and I think… When we look at the cost of it, I mean… And you were right to compare it to Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act which was pilloried by the right as being profligate and a waste of money. It’s actually investing in clean energy and in creating jobs and restoring manufacturing jobs in the area. The cost of this is primarily tax cuts for rich people. Where’s the money going? Back into the pockets of rich people. And they’re doing it by cutting access to Medicaid. Now, this is not a universal healthcare system like we have. This is the safety net for elderly people and it’s predicted that almost 12 million elderly people will lose that health cover because of this bill.

At the same time, they’re cutting SNAP which is a food programme that gives essential supplements to people that can’t afford a nutritious meal, because America’s welfare system is non-existent. And the tips thing is just… It’s a nod to those poor people who there’s no minimum wage in some of these industries in America and they live on tips which is, thank God, something we don’t have here. And so, no. It’s a terrible, terrible reverse Robin Hood way of implementing some pretty egregious attacks on the poorest and most vulnerable people. And it’s relevant to us because everything we’ve been talking about today is the same debate and it’s a fundamental ideological position to say, “Do we believe in paying taxes for our collective common good or do we think everyone should keep every dollar they earn and just be it’s dog eat dog in a free market world?”

Colleen Harkin:

But it isn’t keeping every single dollar that you earn. I mean, people pay tax. That is a given. You sort of-

Emma Dawson:

Yeah. But it’s an ideology that wants to reduce as far as possible-

Colleen Harkin:

Sure. But I’m hearing you sort of saying that all these people who are on stamps and all these people who are on these benefits are all going to lose it and that’s not the case. What’s happened is that the qualification has changed. So-

Rafael Epstein:

But millions of people wouldn’t get access-

Emma Dawson:

Millions of people will lose it-

Colleen Harkin:

Sure, sure-

Emma Dawson:

And where’s the money going?

Colleen Harkin:

Remember, [inaudible 00:19:50] population. How many people are on these in the first place?

Emma Dawson:

It’s overwhelmingly going to wealthy people, Colleen. It’s completely indefensible from a social justice position.

Colleen Harkin:

But I don’t like to use the term going to wealthy people because it’s going to business, so you can’t get employment-

Rafael Epstein:

It’s going to both, I think-

Emma Dawson:

Going to both-

Colleen Harkin:

Right? So yeah, you can’t have employment if you don’t have healthy businesses-

Emma Dawson:

Okay. But let’s look at what happened last time was Trump in-

Colleen Harkin:

So you have to make sure-

Emma Dawson:

… and he made this similar move with tax cuts and he said, “This is going to spur all this economic activity-“

Rafael Epstein:

And it didn’t.

Emma Dawson:

Zero. And what those businesses did was they engaged in share buybacks and executive bonuses with that money. None of it trickled down.

Rafael Epstein:

Just a 10-second response, Colleen, because I want to get to some calls. The final verdict.

Colleen Harkin:

I think it sort of has to play out a little bit but there are elements of it that I’m really supportive on. The idea of family, growth, security, national security, all of those things, I think, they are value base that I would support-

Emma Dawson:

Well, the rhetoric sounds good-

Rafael Epstein:

And we haven’t even got to what it means for their debt. Heather’s calling from Carlton though just on the childcare issues that we’ve been talking about all week. What did you want to say, Heather?

Heather:

Hi, Raf. I wanted to say I’m feeling nervous because I’m upset and, at the same time, very happy to hear Emma speak the most truth I’ve heard in this argument. So I’ve been in the field since I was 20 years old and I’ve worked at all levels but spent most of my time in tertiary. I’ve trained and educated early childhood educators for all of this time.

Rafael Epstein:

Right.

Emma Dawson:

Here’s an expert.

Heather:

What I know is that we have such blind spots about what we know in our hearts and what is the lived experience of children and families in this area. But let’s include… And I won’t talk about aged care at the same time. I was there when we decided to expand what was informal long day care into a business. And right from the beginning, it was a business and it was clear to me that industry were into it straight away seeing money for jam.

And so, what I’ve also noticed is that the voices from… Because the original push, very important to remember that this was about women having access to work, so it went into that world. And a friend of mine, a big business person said, “What families need,” this was at that time, “is a place to put the car and a place to put the child.” So when you start to unpack that but you see that now we’ve ended up with early years education-

Rafael Epstein:

Yes.

Heather:

… in education portfolios, we’ve got a double bind all the time here-

Rafael Epstein:

Is that what stops us unscrambling the egg?

Heather:

It’s not impossible if you begin where Emma is but it’s a very complex systems way of thinking. And the field, frankly, even though I heard Early Childhood Australia say, “We’re having conversations,” well, my own experiences, knowing lots of people in the field still, people are not ready to talk about systems.

Rafael Epstein:

No.

Heather:

They don’t understand these complexities so we continue, in the words of a mentor that I have, Kankhu Anagra, senior woman from the Kimberley, “We want to keep putting out spot fires. We don’t want to go to the big fire and see what’s driving it-“

Rafael Epstein:

What’s going on there. Look, Heather, thank you. Great contribution. I appreciate you giving us your… Well, Emma called you an expert so let’s say, yeah, I appreciate you giving us your expertise.

Colleen Harkin:

Well done, Em.

Emma Dawson:

Well done, Heather.

Rafael Epstein:

Something nice to end on from all of you. You can either give me something that made you smile or something that you want to share that we should read or watch. Colleen? Something to leave us here.

Colleen Harkin:

I think over the weekend I might try and go to the Lightscape at the Botanical Gardens which I’ve never been to before. But apparently, it is absolutely beautiful.

Rafael Epstein:

Mulled wine in the Thermos?

Colleen Harkin:

Oh, I’m a champagne girl.

Rafael Epstein:

Oh, champagne. Right. Okay. So-

Emma Dawson:

Even in the cold.

Colleen Harkin:

Even in the cold. Anytime.

Rafael Epstein:

… champagne even in the cold. I want to leave you with… Just before I get to Emma Dawson, in Norway, they made a conversion error. They contacted thousands of people and told them they had won the lottery but they got the amount wrong. Just have a listen to the BBC interview with one of the lottery winners was

Lottery winner:

I was at work when I got a message that I won a large amount of money. And I went in and it was 3.9 million instead of 390 Krone. Yeah. I got a text message this morning saying that it was a mistake and they apologised.

Rafael Epstein:

And just for the conversion, it’s like getting a text message one day, “Emma, Colleen, you’ve won 180 grand. Oh, whoops, sorry. No, not 180 grand, $18.” And they sent that out to I think tens of thousands of people.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, yeah. Oh, poor people.

Emma Dawson:

Who hadn’t had a few hours of thinking they were moving-

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, yeah-

Rafael Epstein:

No, it wasn’t… The correction came a lot later.

Emma Dawson:

Yeah. That’s right.

Rafael Epstein:

So you were spending the money in your mind-

Emma Dawson:

You were spending… You had already-

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. And what you were going to say to your boss tomorrow morning-

Rafael Epstein:

Yeah. That’s right-

Emma Dawson:

It’s like if you get a TattsLotto ticket and they say, “Guess what? You’re a winner,” and you go in and it’s Division 7, $2. And you think, “Let it ride-“

Colleen Harkin:

The world has changed.

Rafael Epstein:

And Emma, yours?

Emma Dawson:

I would like to recommend a bit of viewing for people’s weekend which is Hal & Harper on Stan. It’s a series. It plays like a long film and it’s really a reflection on grief and family and growing up and relationships. Mark Ruffalo plays dad, unnamed dad and his two children are played by young adults as young adults. But also, they then play themselves as children. It goes back to what’s happened to this family-

Rafael Epstein:

Hal & Harper.

Emma Dawson:

It’s beautiful. I cried a lot but I’m a crier anyway. But yeah, this-

Rafael Epstein:

You’re a cry-to-Telstra-ads sort of person?

Emma Dawson:

Yeah, yeah. Anything with a small dog, yeah. But no, it’s a really lovely piece of television.

Rafael Epstein:

Hal & Harper. And is it like long or it’s like only three, four hours something?

Emma Dawson:

Yeah. It’s nine half hour episodes, something like that.

Rafael Epstein:

Yeah. Okay. Hal & Harper on Stan?

Emma Dawson:

Yep.

Rafael Epstein:

Okay. Or Lightscape at the Botanical Gardens. Emma Dawson is with the Chifley Research Centre. Colleen Harkin is with the Institute of Public Affairs. Thank you to the both of you.

Colleen Harkin:

Thank you.

Emma Dawson:

Pleasure.

Rafael Epstein:

Appreciate you coming in. Let’s get-

This transcript with Colleen Harkin talking on The Weekly Wrap Mornings ABC Radio Melbourne 4 July 2025 has been edited for clarity.