Colleen Harkin on The Weekly Wrap Mornings ABC Radio Melbourne – 10 April 2026

Waleed Aly:

Our wrappers are here. Emma Dawson, executive director of the Chifley Research Centre, and Colleen Harkin, director of the Schools Programme at the Institute of Public Affairs. Welcome to both of you.

Colleen Harkin:

Good morning.

Waleed Aly:

I don’t know how to do this, Colleen, but maybe I should start by just asking you if you have to quit your party.

Colleen Harkin:

Easy ones first.

Waleed Aly:

I’m not doing this out of nowhere. So the background to this, we haven’t actually discussed this on the show, but it was the Victorian Liberal Party president … Sorry, Phil Davis spoke about this in an interview with The Age, said, “Everything that Peta Credlin runs about what is happening to the party comes from Colleen Harkin.” That’s you, Colleen.

Colleen Harkin:

That’s me.

Waleed Aly:

“Who is on my board and doesn’t understand she should quit. People in the party who are trying to drag us to be One Nation light fundamentally do not understand Victorian politics.” How do you plead?

Emma Dawson:

Not guilty, your honour.

Colleen Harkin:

No. Look, and this is obviously a free kick for Emma, but the unfortunate scenario in the Liberal Party at the moment is that like any other large organisation and a member-based organisation, there are very strong and different views a lot of the time, and they’re clearly not always aligned. And you’d like to think that all that sort of stuff stays behind closed doors, like a normal dysfunctional family.

Waleed Aly:

Yeah.

Colleen Harkin:

And-

Waleed Aly:

But when it’s so obviously publicly dysfunctional, it has to come out in public.

Colleen Harkin:

Well, look, and with respect to the President, he should not have done a media interview. The debacle that did happen with the Moira Deeming pre-selection, just a quick recap for your listeners, because they’re probably not engaged in the minutia of the Liberal Party, is that the sitting member was not endorsed, like a new candidate was put in place, and then that candidate fell over for terrible reasons. And then she was reindorsed. The party should have just let it lie, right? It just should have been just let put to bed and move on. And unfortunately, the President has put it back on the front page of the newspaper, which is kind of not where you want to be as the administrative component of an organisation. We’re supposed to be background hack work, not sort of providing public commentary.

Waleed Aly:

Some people might agree with the hack bit though.

Colleen Harkin:

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Waleed Aly:

But yeah, but should you quit?

Colleen Harkin:

Oh, definitely not. 100% not.

Waleed Aly:

Are you trying to make the party One Nation light?

Colleen Harkin:

No. No. And just for sort of general conversation here, I think you’ll find amongst Liberal Party members, the concern is that most people are not really sure what the Liberal Party stands for at the moment, and that being labour like the party’s being accused of being Labour light for quite some time, and that clearly hasn’t worked. We’ve sort of gone backwards over several years.

Waleed Aly:

Is that really what you think has happened, that the Liberal Party’s tried to be Labour light?

Emma Dawson:

Yeah, I don’t think that’s-

Waleed Aly:

But do you honestly believe that’s what happened?

Colleen Harkin:

Give me a couple of policies that you think are extreme right wing, because that’s what the Liberal Party gets been accused of.

Waleed Aly:

I don’t think it’s about extreme right wing. It’s more about tone and balance. So at the federal level, for example, what I’ve seen is more and more power being given to the Nats at the expense of the Libs and a movement towards Nats friendly policies. So actually I’d describe the Liberal Party then federal level at least more as Nats light than Labour light. I think at the state level, I’m not sure-

Colleen Harkin:

But isn’t that … Actually, it’s an interesting comment because that’s actually part of the problem. What is the Liberal Party?

Waleed Aly:

But you’ve just said it’s been Labour light and [inaudible 00:03:42].

Colleen Harkin:

No, no, no. Well, but that’s part of the issue is that the Liberal Party actually has lost its identity. The issues of what it really is supposed to stand for, free speech, for example, and it has acquiesced on a lot of the really big ticket items that the base, and I’m not trying to appeal to people who are never going to vote Liberal. They’re entitled to their views.

Waleed Aly:

Yeah, yeah.

Colleen Harkin:

But the very broad group of people who might vote Liberal are not really sure what it stands for at the moment. And that’s its challenge is to pinpoint exactly what are the three or four things that mum and dad in Box Hill or Merricks, or somewhere, will understand what is it that the party stands for and what would it do if it got government?

Emma Dawson:

Can I have my free kick?

Waleed Aly:

Can I just say, dear listener, the delight on Emma’s face and the eagerness to get in, can I limit you to 20 seconds? Because I know you could talk about this for an hour.

Emma Dawson:

[inaudible 00:04:38]. Yeah, no, you can try.

Waleed Aly:

Because you would be delighted.

Emma Dawson:

No, look, I’m not delighted. I don’t think dysfunction in our political parties is good for our nation. And I’d like to preface all of this by saying the thing I found most offensive about that was Phil Davis’s implication that neither yourself, Colleen, nor Peta Credlin could think for themselves. It’s a pretty sexist thing to say.

Having said that, my view on what the Liberal Party stands for and this problem of people not knowing what the party stands for, to me, that’s the wrong analysis. I think the problem for the Liberal Party is that those voters that are going to One Nation know exactly what the Liberal Party stands for, which is an economic model that has hollowed out their communities, and which is an extreme form of neoliberal capitalism that, as Andrew Hastie said on Insiders a couple of weeks ago, is standing for big corporations rather than small businesses, rather than farmers, rather than working people.

And so a lot of this disaffection, it is not unique to Australia. It’s what drove Brexit in the UK. It’s what’s driven Trump in America. It’s a growing recognition at last that that form of extractive neoliberal economics has left far too many people behind and they’re angry and they want to blow up the whole show. And it’s not unique to Australia.

Waleed Aly:

But that includes the Labour Party.

Emma Dawson:

That includes major parties around the world, right?

Waleed Aly:

Yeah. You’d have to say the Labour Party right now is the clearest voice in support of broadly liberal economics.

Emma Dawson:

I wouldn’t completely agree with that. And you would expect me to say that.

Waleed Aly:

Well, given the liberal Party’s divided over it.

Emma Dawson:

Well, the Liberal Party’s very divided over it.

Waleed Aly:

The Greens are certainly not that.

Emma Dawson:

Well-

Waleed Aly:

One Nation’s not that. Labour are the closest to it.

Emma Dawson:

Well, no, I would say … Well, okay, I run the Labour Party’s think tank and I have long spoken about the problems with the neoliberal economic model and how it has evolved to the point that it has today. And I think there are many people in the Labour Party that are aware of that.

And I think if you listen to what Jim Chalmers talks about, creating the fourth economy and not blowing up, it’s this idea that I think David Pearl wrote in The Australian last week when he was talking about Hastie that you can either be pro free market or you can be pro the state communism and there’s no third way, that’s nonsense actually. Australia was, and all of the things that we value in this country from the pharmaceutical benefits scheme to Medicare, to those social safety nets were delivered by socially democratic Labour governments that have said, “Yep, the market’s got a place, but it shouldn’t be in charge of everything.” And what a lot of people are seeing now is their local childcare centres shutting down, their doctors aren’t coming to the hospitals because everything’s been marketized and it’s gone too far.

Waleed Aly:

I would love to continue that conversation. I do however-

Colleen Harkin:

That’s a very long 20 seconds.

Emma Dawson:

Yeah, sorry. I told you you could try.

Waleed Aly:

It’s time dilation, Artemis, to, when you’re in space, all sorts of things happen.

Waleed Aly:

Shall we reset, shall we? 18 minutes past 10:00. I’m with Emma Dawson, Executive Director of the Chifley Research Centre. Colleen Harkin, Director of the Schools Programme at the Institute of Public Affairs. Let’s leave the Liberal Party behind for now because there’s other stuff going on in the world. Donald Trump’s doing stuff and saying stuff. My question is, what do we do? Colleen, let me start with you. Does this prompt at all a rethink? I mean, I would summarise it this way. He started a war in Iran that hasn’t met any strategic goals that I can discern from what he said for Israel perhaps. But for America and for the West, no, he’s alienated his allies. He’s threatened a genocide to wipe out a civilization, which sounds like a coded nuclear threat. He’s said these wild things, backtracked. It’s erratic. Should we do anything? Does it mean anything?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, and I don’t want to be seen as being ra-ra Trump, but I just want to reflect on your comments. I mean, he has a pattern of escalating something and then pausing and then negotiating. That seems to be the way he handles almost everything. Now, I’m not commenting on whether that’s a good way to be the President of the United States, but it does make it difficult to understand where he’s heading and what his intention is.

From an Australian perspective, I do find it very problematic about what do we do because our defence budget is 2% of our GDP. We could do nothing with that. If we were ever in any situation, we need friends. And so we do have to be careful about making sure that we don’t alienate ourselves from the people who we will need if and when. We’re told on the one hand all the time at the moment that it’s dangerous times and that uncertainty, global uncertainty. So we need to pally up to our allies and make sure that we have friends. And then we don’t increase our own defence force budget. So we are very vulnerable. If anything were ever to happen, Australia is an incredibly vulnerable situation. So he’s difficult to read. There’s no doubt it’s difficult to follow where he’s going and to be strongly aligned, but America is bigger than Trump. He’s only there for another two or three years.

Waleed Aly:

Well, do you believe he’s a blip or do you believe it’s actually an expression of the way America’s changed?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, I think his management style is a blip, right? I mean, because whoever comes in after him, I mean, he’s a big personality. Nobody could doubt that he is a big personality. And the way he handles things is different to most people. So I don’t think his style in… America’s style in three years time will change regardless. And that’s where the historical relationships matter, we can’t be here by ourselves.

Emma Dawson:

Let’s look at the people around Trump. Australia does need friends and allies. We are geopolitically isolated as a Western nation, us and New Zealand. The arguments that we should be taking, the line that Canada’s taking I think misunderstands a lot of those issues. But Trump and his circle are not trustworthy friends.

But what happens after Trump? I think this idea that it’s just Trump and he’s an aberration and he’ll go away ignores the fact that there’s a movement around him that has now embedded itself at the top of American governance. Pete Hegseth, who is the Secretary for War, believes in some kind of moral crusade in the Middle East. JD Vance has just been to Hungary to support Viktor Orban, who is an autocrat.

Waleed Aly:

But by all accounts an opponent of this war.

Emma Dawson:

By all accounts, but a lot of his domestic policies and other policies do not put him on the right side of history.

Waleed Aly:

It doesn’t matter though.

Emma Dawson:

It does, it does matter.

Waleed Aly:

Why do we need other nations’ domestic policies to be on the right side of history, whatever that might mean, in order for us to have a strategic alliance with them?

Emma Dawson:

We don’t. We absolutely can form strategic alliances with countries that we don’t agree with on everything. My point is that JD Vance going to stump for Viktor Orban shows a political ideology that is very threatening and that is present in the Vice President of the United States, who is likely to be Trump’s successor.

This idea that America will come back and everything will go back to normal when Trump is no longer president, I think is fanciful. There is a big shift in the international order and we have lost a lot of the rules. And this connects with all of what’s going on domestically as well, Waleed, because the breakdown of that international rules-based order also means the breakdown of the globalised economic system and our ability to rely on those trade routes and on those export import arrangements that have created our own economy, so it is a massive shift.

Waleed Aly:

Was it a big mistake then for the Albanese government to come out and support the war at the very start?

Emma Dawson:

I don’t know that what the Prime Minister said at the very start should be seen as support for the war. I think that-

Waleed Aly:

Oh, come on.

Colleen Harkin:

He did. He was pretty explicit.

Emma Dawson:

He was explicit about the need, the support for ensuring that Iran did not have weapons of mass destruction. Now that, in the end obviously, it’s not what this war is about. Would I have said? I’m not the Prime Minister-

Waleed Aly:

Well, we don’t-

Emma Dawson:

I don’t have to manage those relationships.

Waleed Aly:

We don’t know what the war was about because it kept changing.

Emma Dawson:

No one know-

Waleed Aly:

But nonetheless, if you’re right, Emma, that we rely on the rules-based order, that that’s crucial for our economic wellbeing, even our geostrategic wellbeing, if you were consistent to that, you would come out at the start of that and say, “We can’t support an invasion that violates every norm of international law and the rules-based order.”

Emma Dawson:

And we can focus on a comment made by the Prime Minister six weeks ago, or we can focus on what’s in front of us now. And I think the point that I would make-

Waleed Aly:

That’s convenient.

Emma Dawson:

The point that I would make is there are alliances now probably being driven by Macron and other European leaders to say, “We need to cooperate to get the Strait of Hormuz open. We need to try to bring our influence to bear, to literally try to calm these waters.” But America is very, very powerful. And I think a complete misadventure in the Middle East, we’re not going to cover that in the five minutes we’ve got left. The various tensions and reasons and beliefs that people hold that are quite irrational about the Middle East.

Colleen Harkin:

But why do you think that, for example, we don’t see any of the sort of protests or support for the Iranian people that we saw for the people of Gaza?

Emma Dawson:

I don’t know.

Colleen Harkin:

What’s that about?

Waleed Aly:

I just think the comparison makes no sense.

Emma Dawson:

It doesn’t.

Colleen Harkin:

Why?

Waleed Aly:

So many reasons. I mean, first of all, up at Spring Street, there are constant protests going on for the Iranian people and by the Iranian people. So that is going on. But secondly-

Colleen Harkin:

I mean, with Gaza, for example, there were 100,000 people who walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Waleed Aly:

Because they were responding to photos.

Colleen Harkin:

I work in Collins Street and there has been for a couple of years, literally hundreds of people going down Bourke Street Mall, unable to get into the shop sometimes.

Waleed Aly:

I don’t deny that because that’s a conflict that goes back 70 years. We are implicated in it because of our alliances with the United States, with Israel and so on. There was a specific thing happening to a group of people at that moment that those protesters, whether you agree with them or not, wanted alleviated via a ceasefire and whatever.

Colleen Harkin:

What about the Iranian people?

Waleed Aly:

But the Iranian people, they’re the ones being bombed.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, correct. So I’m drawing a comparison between the two situations.

Waleed Aly:

So they should be protesting against this war on behalf of the Iranian people?

Colleen Harkin:

Correct. But why aren’t they doing that?

Waleed Aly:

But there’s also a chunk of Iranian people that support it.

Colleen Harkin:

I know, but-

Waleed Aly:

So it’s just not a clear comparison.

Colleen Harkin:

Well, I’m looking at this and going, particularly for women, where all of the feminist women at this saying, “Yeah, we need the Iranian women in particular to be free.”

Waleed Aly:

Maybe they’re the same place all the feminist men who keep wanting to bomb these countries into liberation.

Emma Dawson:

This goes to the point the Prime Minister made in Parliament, which hasn’t had nearly as much attention as his comments about the start of the war, about the situation in Gaza and Israel, is that this is not a football competition. We should not be, you don’t mindlessly take sides and cheer your team. This is an incredibly complex, longstanding, dangerous situation. And again, I will say, neither of us are running a government. Neither of us are responsible, none of us are responsible for those international relationships, and it is an incredibly difficult time in world affairs.

I think the point Colleen’s wanting to make is a lot of leftists in the West that have been very vocal about the conditions imposed upon Palestinians by Israel have not been as vocal about the conditions imposed upon Iranians by their own regime. And I think there is a difference there because we’re saying a lot of people look at it and go, “Well, that’s their sovereign issue within their country.” I, as an imperial feminist, find it deeply disturbing the way that that regime has treated people over the last 50 years. But I don’t think the two things are directly comparable.

Waleed Aly:

And I mean, should we protest North Korea while we’re at it? I mean, I don’t know. Should we protest North Korea while we’re at it?

Emma Dawson:

Well, this is it, right? How much protests do you-

Waleed Aly:

It’s 28 minutes past 10:00. I do want to talk about what the other big story I think of the week delicate. So don’t get me in trouble here is what I’m asking. The arrests and then subsequent charges on war crimes of Ben Roberts-Smith. I’ve never seen this. I don’t think there is a case like this before. We’re talking about an Australian soldier, the most decorated in our country, charged with war crimes, not internationally in international court but under Australian law in an Australian court. Do you have any responses that are broadcastable in this-

Emma Dawson:

Well, if we care about the international rule of law, if we care about civilization, then we have to uphold these standards ourselves. There is a great deal of evidence now that has warranted Ben Roberts-Smith being charged, obviously with alleged war crimes. If those stories which were found to be true in the failed defamation case are proved to a criminal extent, then they are-

Waleed Aly:

Which is a higher standard of proof, we should say.

Emma Dawson:

A higher standard of proof, they are shocking and appalling, and we cannot hold any moral position about anything that’s going on anywhere in the world if we are not willing to subject our own people to our own standards.

Waleed Aly:

That said, very few countries seem to do this, Colleen.

Colleen Harkin:

Well, that’s part of my question mark of it. The case itself, he’s entitled to innocence before proven guilty. That’s absolute importance that that process runs out. But what I’m confused about is that the chain of command and the people who are above him, who have been given medals of distinction for command, and yet they seem to be given a blanket excuse. They’re excused from this process completely, so I don’t.

Waleed Aly:

Do we know that?

Emma Dawson:

I don’t think we know that.

Colleen Harkin:

Well, in the Brereton report… Yeah, the Brereton report has said that those people are not responsible, right? They did not have oversight, and yet they’ve been given medals of distinction for command. Now, you can’t have it both ways.

Waleed Aly:

Well, unless, and by the way, I want to make it clear, I’m not commenting on the Ben Roberts-Smith case at all when I say this, I’m talking theoretically. Unless what you are talking about is actions that are such rogue actions that have so little to do with anything to do with the chain of command or any instruction that you would say they are conceptually distinct. I’ll repeat, I’m not now talking about it.

Colleen Harkin:

And the other thing that bothers me about this, to be honest, is that why has it taken 10 years?

Waleed Aly:

Because it’s a big investigation.

Colleen Harkin:

But 10 years, really?

Emma Dawson:

Because you don’t bring charges like this without absolutely-

Colleen Harkin:

Of course. But 10 years is an extraordinary amount of time.

Waleed Aly:

So what would you say that it should have been done quicker or it means they shouldn’t have been done?

Colleen Harkin:

Absolutely. Should have been done quicker.

Waleed Aly:

Got it.

Colleen Harkin:

If there is a case to answer for and innocent till proven guilty, that it needs to be expert, these things need to be done expeditiously because it is inconceivable that you would allow that to happen and not investigate it.

Emma Dawson:

10 years isn’t that long. I mean, there were prosecutions for war crimes from the Second World War going on when I was a teenager in the 1980s. It’s not actually that long.

Colleen Harkin:

That’s entirely, I mean, even the amount of evidence that’s available, stuff that happened in World War II, for example, that’s a completely separate situation. The other thing that I think is a question mark is how did Channel 9 have their cameras there for a show of all of this? I think it was part of a sort of process to humiliate him, which again, that’s not the standard that I think we want.

Waleed Aly:

This is a really interesting question, and we’ve seen this sort of thing before. I remember seeing counter-terrorism raids happening, and I think in that case, it might have been Channel 7 had cameras there. Do we want this sort of relationship between-

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. I just don’t think it’s a standard that we should accept.

Waleed Aly:

It’s now 28 minutes to 11:00. I’ve got to say goodbye, but before I say goodbye, I have to ask you to share something cultural.

Emma Dawson:

Something cultural.

Waleed Aly:

By that, I don’t mean a dish from a [inaudible 00:13:26]. What have you been reading? What have you been watching? What have you been listening to apart from this show, of course?

Emma Dawson:

I have been watching a lovely series. I think it’s on Foxtel. I’ve been watching it on binge called The Other Bennet Sister, which relooks at Pride and Prejudice through the eyes of Mary, the forgotten middle sister. And it’s fluffy, but it’s quite lovely. Sunday evening viewing.

Colleen Harkin:

Very good. Well, I haven’t been to this yet, but I’m going to go, so I can’t recommend it so much as just alert people to it. It’s a thing called Body Worlds at Dock Lands, and it is about human anatomy, physiology, and health, and it apparently has got all its body parts, and it shows how your emotions like happiness physically shape your organs and things.

Emma Dawson:

Right.

Colleen Harkin:

It sounds really interesting.

Waleed Aly:

How did they show that?

Colleen Harkin:

Well, the images I’ve seen is like a heart and comparisons of actually physical things about.

Waleed Aly:

Have you just wandered into the medical school?

Emma Dawson:

It’s a good tip for the school holidays though.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. How your emotions actually physically change your body. So I think it sounds really interesting.

Emma Dawson:

Yeah.

Waleed Aly:

They’re two good recommendations.

Emma Dawson:

Take the kids along.

Waleed Aly:

Better you than me, I wouldn’t have given you anything useful. I think I was watching Drive to Survive or something at some point this week and then I stopped.

Emma Dawson:

No comment. Thanks.

Waleed Aly:

Thank you very much for dropping by.

Colleen Harkin:

Pleasure.

Waleed Aly:

I might see you again. Emma Dawson, Executive Director of the Chifley Research Centre, Colleen Harkin, Director of the Schools Programme at the Institute of Public Affairs.

This transcript of Colleen Harkin on ABC Radio Melbourne from 10 April 2026 has been edited for clarity.