00:00:02
Speaker 1: Peter Credlin, live from News 24.
00:00:08
Speaker 2: Good evening. Welcome to the program. Here's what's coming up on Credlin. A data breach that happened months ago. A prime minister that was told about it on the weekend. The poor old Australians only found out about it today. So time to reinstate the AI expert panel the prime minister dumped. We'll talk to one of the men on that panel in a moment. Yet more warnings about rent increases driven by Labor's tax hikes amid fears more Australians will end up in social housing as properties up for sale languish in a stagnant market. Fears the cost of diesel could top $ 4 a litre, as farmers warn they can't absorb another financial hit, nor too can the trucking sector. And never mind today's crime stats revealing a shoplifting epidemic in Victoria, the Premier now wants to throw open the doors to the pub until 3am.
00:01:00
Speaker 3: We're going to make sure, as an automatic right, the pubs can open to 3am. Today it's about supporting small businesses. They're in the heart of every community, pubs, publicans, more patrons means more jobs and a great local thriving economy.
00:01:19
Speaker 2: They call it bread and circuses in campaign times. That is what that is. First, revelations today that multiple Australian government systems were infiltrated by a leading US artificial intelligence company called OpenAI and should surprise no one.
00:01:37
Speaker 4: This incident occurred in June this year and involved an open AI agent gaining unauthorised access into the public-facing Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal.
00:01:52
Speaker 2: And no surprises. After all, the Albanese government's far more concerned with censoring what you can access on the internet than it is with protecting the sensitive information it holds online. and keeps safe from compromise.
00:02:06
Speaker 5: I note that the Prime Minister gave a keynote speech back in July on AI. He made a big song and dance about it. He did not even mention cyber defence and the importance of defence against AI attacks on our critical systems. He didn't mention it. It wasn't even part of his speech. Now we need better than that from this Prime Minister and we need better than that from his ministers.
00:02:33
Speaker 2: Later in the program, we'll speak with Professor Toby Walsh, one of Australia's foremost AI experts, to understand exactly what went wrong here and what should happen now to get ahead of the AI risks. But know this, Professor Walsh was appointed by the Prime Minister to join an expert AI panel to advise government about all of these very important cyber issues. It was an unpaid role that he thought was ongoing, a role he agreed to do because he cares about his country. Instead, the Prime Minister disbanded his own AI expert panel after only a couple of months. Without experts advising the Albanese government, Australia's flying blind as the rest of the world moves fast in the arms race of AI. And we are falling behind because of sheer incompetence, ignorance and likely lack of funding to put in place the cybersecurity architecture that Australia must have. That's because, yes, AI is a powerful tool for good, but there are also very real and significant risks. We know it will transform business. It'll reform productivity. But that will come at the cost of jobs as well as deliver economic gains. So we need to have our eyes wide open on all of this. As with the Industrial Revolution, we can probably now make a good fist at modelling the commercial gains from AI. But that's not where I'm focused. What's always concerned me here is the military and national security applications of AI. What happens when a rogue state or a terror group uses AI to create a deadly new biological weapon? Or perhaps a new explosive that can bring down aircraft that's not detectable when carried through airport security screening? Right now, the only real AI debate that Albanese is having is data centres and whether or not they use renewable power. I mean, overseas, they're laughing at us, trying to power AI with wind and solar and while they use our uranium to power high-end new reactors or our coal and gas, ensuring they have reliable baseload to run their AI, why we just muddle along, caught between a rock and a hard place, saying we're all for AI and net zero, when clearly you can't have both. It's critical that voters are not fooled here, because there's no doubt that Albanese wants to try and conflate the issue of AI safety And this example today of the Medicare hack is real with his digital duty of care legislation, but they are two very different things. AI safety and a properly resourced cybersecurity apparatus in Australia involving our spy and military intelligence agencies is a good thing. And in broad terms, I'd also support some sort of global guardrails provided they are sensible and limited. But they can't constrain good countries like Australia from developing as we must, given that bad actors will ignore all rules anyway. But Labor's digital duty of care legislation is not about any of this. Digital duty of care is about censorship. It's about restricting or stopping the information that adults can access, the information they get on their devices. And this was precisely what the Prime Minister admitted himself in comments yesterday at the United Nations.
00:06:11
Speaker 4: The truth is this is having an impact on our entire society and how it functions with misinformation, disinformation, with the increased polarisation that we're seeing as well in the political system where people are moving away from the centre and more and more to the extremes, be they of the left or the right.
00:06:34
Speaker 2: That line there about misinformation, disinformation, about the left and the right of politics is a killer. It shows Albanese's true motivation here. And the fact that the Prime Minister's office took those references out of his media transcript to try and stop us from noticing what he said, says it all. Something that Sarah Henderson was quick to pick up when speaking with me here last night.
00:07:00
Speaker 6: That speech that he gave today, they've now removed that damning extraordinary section from the transcript on the Prime Minister's media website. So talk about disinformation on the Prime Minister's own website.
00:07:15
Speaker 2: Yes, sensible regulation about the architecture of AI should be looked at with the caveat that, as always with Labor, the devil's in the detail. But banning content under yet to be defined definitions of harm at the whim of Labor's communications minister, Annika Wells, well, that must be opposed.
00:07:39
Speaker 6: The real story here is that the minister has unfettered powers to decide any category of harm that should be shut down. It is all about shutting down what people can say and see online. It's all about shutting down the political opponents of Labor.
00:07:56
Speaker 2: Don't buy the Albanese government's BS here. This is not about keeping children safe online. There are already a myriad of laws to do this now. Laws to ban kids under 16 from social media. Laws to deal with online child exploitation, child pornography. Laws against things like enabling acts of terrorism, like bomb making. Or as we saw yesterday with the arrest of Mohamed Bakhit, laws against the alleged membership of Islamic terror organisations and the spreading of online propaganda. We already have all of these laws. Now, if they're not tough enough, put them back into the parliament before Christmas and make them tougher. But we cannot allow the Albanese government to use these issues as cover to shut down legitimate debates that they don't want to have to stop you finding out the truth or to stop the media, at least some of the media, from holding the Prime Minister and his government to account. Labor's petrified at the way the online world has democratised information access. And the left blames online media for the rise of One Nation, for Trump and for reform in the United Kingdom as well. Now, for a long time, the left had a pretty cosy cartel with media players like the ABC that basically ran paid advertising for Labor and the left. Well, not so anymore, as people have turned away from news sources like that and pick up their devices and go digging on their own. Now, what that's done is it's exposed Labor's slick spin machine for what it is, and record low approval polls for the Prime Minister are the result. This is why Labor are panicking. That's why Albanese wants the whole show shut down. It's got nothing to do with children, It's about censorship and power. The other point I want to make in relation to the hack being put into the media domain today is the fact that the Prime Minister was told about this open AI break into Medicare on the weekend. Only you were told today. So why keep it a secret for much of the week? I'd say it's got a lot to do with this ridiculous award he picked up in New York overnight as some sort of international statesman when at home, clearly, he's a laughingstock. Labor hardheads would have thought, gee, this award comes at a shocking time for the government. Those appalling polls on Monday, the threat of a rate rise next week. Reports today too that diesel fuel will be rationed, some predicting it could hit as high as $ 4 a litre. So what better way to get the award off the front pages and for all the mocking to stop, but to throw out this story of a government systems hack. What's also telling is the fact the hack occurred back in June. It was only uncovered because the company fessed up. Our security systems in Canberra, they didn't pick it up. We only know about it because the company emailed the bureaucrats to tell them what had happened and And the Prime Minister then held off making this information public until he needed a distraction. What a joke. Now, I'll say this again. I don't think I've ever met, ever seen a more underwhelming individual occupy the highest office in this country. He's out of touch. He's intellectually out of his depth. And he lacks character. And there isn't a worse political trifecta than that. All right, let's get the headlines. That and more with our political reporter, Ruben Spargo.
00:11:49
Speaker 1: Good evening. The Australian government is launching a task force to counter AI cyber threats after a rogue open AI agent hacked into Medicare data. The rapid review will help determine whether current arrangements are fit for purpose to prepare for and respond to incidents. This is an unintended access, that's clear, but it definitely does raise questions about whether The law has been broken in respect of this. The opposition is calling for the Australian Signals Directorate's funding to be increased to better detect threats.
00:12:21
Speaker 7: We need to be significantly scaling up and upgrading our cyber defences and actually.
00:12:26
Speaker 1: The best tools to do that are artificial intelligence tools. One of the government's major concerns is the technology is moving so quickly it is outpacing Australia's ability to respond. The coalition is vowing to dismantle Labor's renewables policy if it wins the next election. A bill would be introduced to Parliament to remove the legislated target of net zero by 2050 and the safeguard mechanism designed to limit industry emissions.
00:12:52
Speaker 8: You can subsidise our industrial base to keep jobs onshore and pursue a renewables-only approach, as Labor is doing, or you can actually use the resources that are under our very feet that have made us a rich and wealthy nation.
00:13:06
Speaker 1: The plan would also scrap vehicle emission standards and shift the Australian energy regulator's focus to affordability.
00:13:14
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into that more. News24 contributor Carolee Katzenbarnes back with us after a pretty rugged few months and Deputy Executive Director at the IPA, Dan Wild. Carolee, as I said, you've been here on the program, I should say, but you've had a lot going on at home. You lost your beautiful husband, Peter. We gave him a terrific send-off on Friday, so we're delighted to have you back in the chair, mate. It's so good to have you here. Let's start with the AI data breach. A few points I want to note here. This happened in June, PM told on the weekend, but we only learn about it today. The notification about the breach didn't come from the government, it came from the company, and they had to email a public access point or an email box to tell us what was happening. I'll speak to an expert in a moment about what you can do now to turn this around. Surely, Dan... Labor needs that panel of experts to be rapidly reinstated.
00:14:14
Speaker 9: Well, that's right, Peter.
00:14:14
Speaker 10: There's a couple of things here for me. Firstly, the timing of it, as you alluded to in your monologue, has coincided with providing some space for Anthony Albanese's award. And now because things are going sour, as you know from your experience in politics, they keep these things in their back pocket. and roll it out when they want to change the topic of discussion in the news. Now, I know that sounds cynical, but unfortunately, that's often why. People at home wonder, why is this just coming out now? This is often the reason why. There's a very strong political reason for it. The other thing also, as you alluded to, was the government has taken its eye off the ball. When it comes to the internet, when it comes to the online world, they are not focused on things like AI security. They are focused on government censorship of Australians through their digital duty of care legislation. So this is a government that is not focused on the things that matter to our national interest. The other thing I would be very interested in, Peter, is why was that task force that you mentioned, why was it disbanded, I wonder? Was it disbanded because they were providing advice to the Prime Minister or to his ministers or senior advisers that was inconvenient and they did not want to hear? I wonder if that was one of the reasons.
00:15:31
Speaker 2: Well, we'll ask one of those experts in a moment. My point at the top of the show there about this conflation by the government between appropriate, and I'm saying appropriate, I don't want big regulation, but appropriate regulation of the AI environment, and then Labor's try-on with this digital duty of care, trying to put the two things together when I argue they're very, very different, Kerri-Lee. The debate about censorship, if we don't have sufficient laws to We've already got a range of mechanisms that we can improve. But this is about stopping Australians getting information that will send the Prime Minister's personal rating even lower. This is an election strategy. It's not about keeping people safe or children safe online at all. It's not.
00:16:17
Speaker 11: And Australians are being gaslit once again by Anthony Albanese in the Albanese government. I mean, the digital duty of care, it's nothing more than just a political censorship bill. And he's preying on the fears of parents and other caregivers. And as you say, conflating the two together. This is an extraordinary attack on free speech for Australians, but it's also extraordinary that this would give the communications minister completely unfettered power without a parliamentary oversight as to what they deem to be harmful and what they don't. And I think it's a bit rich of him to do this. And as Sarah Henderson pointed out last night, It's just extraordinary. But the problem is he is relying on merging the two together so that people don't know what will happen. But it's really good that you're pointing it out, because the more that we can point out to the Australian people that the digital duty of care is completely different to AI regulation, the better that it will be. And it's like communist China. This is not what should be happening in a Western democracy like Australia.
00:17:22
Speaker 2: They tried, didn't they, Dan, during the voice debate to shut us down. I know they tried the IPA to get you offline. They certainly tried a number of times with Bea about the Uluru Statement of the Heart. But this would succeed, that sort of move would succeed second time around if they had this legislation in place.
00:17:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
00:17:44
Speaker 10: This is a really good point because, as I mentioned the other week or the week before, this is really the third crack that the government has had. at trying to do this. They had the misinformation laws back in 2024. They had a crack at some hate speech laws earlier this year. Now they're having another crack at it now. Ever since they lost the voice to Parliament debate, this government has convinced itself that what they need to do, rather than explaining to people, right, this is the thing about this government, it has never won an argument with the Australian people. It doesn't take its policies to the people and try to convince them of the legitimacy of those policies. What it does is it either just shoves it through Parliament and guillotines debate, or it just tries to censor debate and not have a debate whatsoever. So this, and you'll remember after the voice vote, what did Albanese and the chief campaigners blame? They blamed misinformation. Either you voted no because you're too dumb or you voted no because you're a racist, right? That is how this government thinks. They don't understand. People voted no because they thought it was a bad idea and they didn't want it. So, yeah, the government's going to try and push ahead with censorship and it would have a massively negative effect on our ability to to debate things in this country.
00:18:52
Speaker 2: Let's go to this report today that the Australian Energy Market Operator, AEMO, the regulator, is basically, they've got a plan to put the $ 50 million cost of EV charger rollout onto everyone's power bill across the country, whether you want an EV charger, whether you have an EV charger or not. Kerri-Lee, how can this be justified? We can't pay our bills as it is. Well, it's incredibly unfair.
00:19:19
Speaker 11: And I noticed that Anna Collier, who's the chair of the Australian Energy Market Commission, she's actually said that it would add $ 1 a year to people's power bills, average power bills. This is another example of gaslighting. We had this when they introduced the negative gearing things in the budget where they said rents would only rise by $ 2 a week.
00:19:39
Speaker 2: That hasn't worked.
00:19:40
Speaker 11: This is appalling. I mean, this should be an industry thing. It is being run by private enterprise. They're putting their money, they're putting their things on.
00:19:49
Speaker 2: The line to do.
00:19:50
Speaker 11: This. To actually slug the Australian taxpayer, because about $ 20 billion worth is needed for proper infrastructure, is just not fair. Australian consumers will be at a disadvantage. And the problem is this all ties into Chris Bowen's energy plans, etc. They just cannot accept They cannot accept that they have not invested properly into infrastructure and now they want to slug the Australian taxpayer with more. I'm really sorry for Anna Collier to say it would add an extra $ 1 a year to the average Australian's power bill is an absolute insult. Poles and wires companies are monopoly and monopolies and we will all be paying the price for that.
00:20:28
Speaker 8: It's absolutely appalling.
00:20:31
Speaker 2: Dan, a quick one for you. Master Builders today issued a warning that rent increases are driving inflation. These are the ones out of the budget on the back of those tax hikes that are moving the rents, obviously. But those rent increases will send more people out of renting properties into social housing. We know, of course, the clearance rates on the weekend are very, very sluggish. In August, Sydney was at a six-year low in terms of, you know, how long properties were sitting there on the market and selling. It begs the question, I can't get a straight answer out of anyone in Canberra. What actually is the definition of social housing? Is this housing that we're subsidising as taxpayers? Talk me through what the truth is here.
00:21:15
Speaker 10: Well, in essence, yes, that's what it is. We now have almost a million Australians who are in social housing of some kind. Now, two-thirds roughly of that is in housing that is directly run and operated by the government itself. A few percent is in relation to Indigenous and then about 25 to 30 percent is through community organisations, many of whom receive government funding as well. So, yes, most of this is taxpayer funded housing that's then rented off to people who can't afford or can't find a rental property. Now, this is one of the great untold stories of the failure of this government's migration and housing programs, which is that there's many people who need social housing. If it weren't for social housing, they'd be on the street. But there's many people who have been forced into social housing because they literally cannot get a rental property. They just can't get one. So they have to stay with their parents or their grandparents or do whatever they have to do. Or if they don't have that support available, they've got to go into a social house. So this is what happens when you have a massive surge in demand that we've had from mass migration coupled with a complete failure of supply.
00:22:15
Speaker 7: And on top of that, as.
00:22:16
Speaker 10: You rightly say, these tax changes mean that fewer people are investing, rents go up even more. So Look, unfortunately, more people are going to find themselves in this situation.
00:22:26
Speaker 2: And it just grows the state. It makes us ever more reliant on government, which is not what we want in a country like Australia. Thank you to you both. As I said, Kerri-Lee, great to have you back. All right, let's go now to the breach today. Let's bring in a professional to unpick it for us now, Chief Scientist at the University of New South Wales AI Institute, Professor Toby Walsh. Professor, I've been waiting for you all day because there's so much chatter around and half of it doesn't add up to the next person who speaks. What happened? What have we learnt today about this breach?
00:23:03
Speaker 12: Well, the government got another lucky break here. Fortunately, it turned out it wasn't particularly serious. We didn't lose too much sensitive information here. But it shows that these companies need much better oversight, independent oversight from the government that they're not getting.
00:23:19
Speaker 2: So the PM, when he spoke about it, basically said that this was a front-facing information portal, so there was nothing there other than basically statistics. But it was behind, if I could call it, a firewall or some sort of security mechanism. Obviously, it was breached. It wasn't just this website, though, this information system. There were multiple. The one I was most concerned about was Medicare. But the persistence of this open AI technology agent, if I can call it that, that just kept going at it and breaking down all the protections the government had. The fact that the government's own back end didn't trigger some sort of alarm, that they were only told about this by the company, that's concerning. Yeah, it is.
00:24:08
Speaker 12: It's very concerning that we had to be told that this had happened. The information they got was public-facing information. All they said was about to be put in the public domain. it wasn't too harmful. And the sorts of things that the bots were doing, that sophisticated sort of things that I've actually done when I've been trying to get information out of the government's website, trying to guess what the pile names might be called for data for another year. But you're right, the persistence and the volume that comes out. We may be talking about hundreds or even sometimes thousands of these agents that come at you over weeks and it will eventually get through. So this time the government got lucky, nothing serious happened. But what's going to happen next time?
00:24:50
Speaker 2: And what about the response from OpenAI? Because I listened to one interview where they're not even sure how this happened. I mean, they know it was one of their agents. They're not dodging that. But the agent is thinking, I guess, faster and deeper and more autonomously than how they perhaps programmed it.
00:25:09
Speaker 12: Yeah, so it was entirely autonomous. There wasn't significant oversight of this.
00:25:13
Speaker 9: It is worrying.
00:25:14
Speaker 12: At best, it's incompetence for this company, this trillion-dollar company. has just failed the basic cybersecurity.
00:25:21
Speaker 9: Or at worst, it's carelessness.
00:25:23
Speaker 12: And I think really what we're going to have to do is hold the offices of these companies responsible. If a human was doing this to the vacuum, they would be facing prosecution.
00:25:31
Speaker 9: I don't think we could just get them away.
00:25:33
Speaker 12: They all gleefully tell us, oh, we've had another AI break into someone's system.
00:25:39
Speaker 9: And to talk up the capabilities of their system.
00:25:41
Speaker 12: All of the companies, not just Open AI, have been gleefully telling us this rather than being ashamed that they've actually lost control of their systems.
00:25:51
Speaker 2: Well, I listened to ministers today. I listened to the Prime Minister. I don't get a sense they've got a real handle on on any of these issues, the complexity of these issues. I read a report the other day, there's only about 10 employees in the government cyber AI unit. You were there on an expert panel for about a year. It was disbanded. Surely now's the time to bring it back.
00:26:16
Speaker 12: Well, I think the government needs more expertise all around. I mean, I'm very happy to continue to lend my expertise back to the government to help them understand where this very rapidly evolving field is going and where the risk is starting to emerge. But equally, at the AI Safety Institute, it needs to be much larger. The government's putting up 30 million or something for it. And that's a tenth of what the UK government's putting at it. And we can see the threats are only getting more significant and more challenging by the day.
00:26:46
Speaker 2: What worries me, Toby, is we're having a debate about data centres and their power source and where they're located and whether communities want them near them or not. But that's just the engine, basically, for the architecture that we're not even sure of the scale and scope. We're all saying it'll be transformative, it'll be great for the economy. But I used a couple of examples tonight. You know, wait till AI develops some sort of weapon to bring down an aircraft that can pass through security. Wait till AI has a very contagious, deadly biological agent and it's in the hands of a terror group or a rogue nation state. That's where I'm concerned. But I feel we're sort of two parts removed from the debate and we're behind the eight ball.
00:27:36
Speaker 9: We are a bit behind. I think the idea that AI is going to kill us all is a bit fantastical. But the idea that it could kill a few people.
00:27:41
Speaker 12: As you gave a few examples there, we saw already earlier this week about how Chinese EV cars can easily be hacked and taken over and you can turn the lights off and you can turn the brakes on and you can even control the steering. Those things, we've seen how dependent we are on these systems. Air traffic control systems in the United Kingdom keep on crashing. Well, what if the AI starts attacking the air traffic control systems?
00:28:06
Speaker 9: What sort of work is it going to do? We're really not addressing these issues at all.
00:28:11
Speaker 2: And also, I've read concern about home batteries or the lithium batteries that people are putting on the side of their homes to store the energy from their solar systems. Again, they've got a connectivity and a brain, if I can call it that. So if you were sitting there now, if you were the Prime Minister's ear, what would you say needs to happen in the short to medium term urgently on the back of what we've learned today?
00:28:33
Speaker 12: Well, in the short term, it's very clear that we have to increase our cyber defences, the cyber security has become a very significant issue.
00:28:42
Speaker 9: These new AI.
00:28:43
Speaker 12: Tools have significant side of the capability and we can't sit around. We need more expertise in government, more oversight. We need to invest much more time and effort in that. In the longer term, I think we've really got to think about how we properly regulate this industry.
00:28:55
Speaker 9: No other trillion dollar industry doesn't.
00:28:58
Speaker 12: Get any independent oversight.
00:29:01
Speaker 9: They're still marking their own homework.
00:29:02
Speaker 12: And as they've just demonstrated yet again, they're not marking their homework very well at all.
00:29:07
Speaker 9: They had it in late.
00:29:09
Speaker 12: They didn't really own up to all the mistakes they'd made and to the seriousness. They sent it to an obscure government email address. They just can't be trusted to look after their own homework.
00:29:20
Speaker 2: And just quickly, Toby, my point at the top of the show, that's not to mean, though, you conflate... regulation of the AI space, the architecture of artificial intelligence and the digital duty of care legislation that the government's got on the table that goes to the content that's available to people online. They're not the same thing.
00:29:42
Speaker 9: They're not the same thing.
00:29:43
Speaker 12: I mean, they're sort of mixed in the sense that the AI is also deciding how you see the content, and the algorithm is deciding which particular content you see. So it's a confused mixture of things that they're trying to do there with the digital duty of care.
00:29:59
Speaker 9: It does involve AI.
00:30:00
Speaker 12: Of course, it involves just the pure design of it, and it does involve, as you say, the content that you get to see.
00:30:06
Speaker 2: I'll leave it there. I hope you get a call from the Prime Minister. I hope he's desperate enough to admit he got it wrong and put you on the paddle. Toby Walsh, thank you. Professor Walsh there from the University of New South Wales. After the break, Jacinta Allen, hot seat at the Corruption Royal Commission. Will she give evidence before the state election? And crime data out today in Victoria, record levels of retail shoplifting. We'll get into that in a moment. Welcome back. Well, how are we going to keep the economy running with farmers set to fork out up to $ 4 a litre for diesel? We'll get into that in a moment, but now to reports that former Premier Jacinta Allen will be grilled by the Royal Commission over how she was never made aware of a key document that raised the alarm on big build corruption allegations, despite being directed to read the briefing. Here to discuss this and plenty more, including those crime stats out today, Shadow Police Minister Brad Batten. Brad, thank you. Just before we get into the, first of all, the Royal Commission started yesterday, but it was all the sort of preparatories. Before we get into the fact of these two premiers and whether we will see them before the election, the public interest immunity waiver, Labor love this. It stops them having to give a full and frank account to the Royal Commission. They can decline to hand over paperwork. You guys want that waived. You want it gone. You want this to be a fed income Royal Commission and you're voting on this in the Parliament right now.
00:31:38
Speaker 13: Yeah, we know for a fact already we've seen Daniel Andrews go in hearings before and he loves the I don't recall.
00:31:43
Speaker 2: No, I don't know. I can't remember.
00:31:44
Speaker 13: You can't remember all those. Now it'll actually be I don't have to and that's the biggest problem. This is giving him the authority effectively and just into Alan to hide documents, to say to them, We don't think this actually needs to be released. We're not going to release it. And the Royal Commission can't compel them to. And I just think it's too important.
00:32:01
Speaker 2: That's because they've got a provision in an active parliament in Victoria that we don't have for a federal Royal Commission. That's the best as I can understand it.
00:32:08
Speaker 9: That's correct.
00:32:09
Speaker 13: And we've got it here in Victoria. And it's literally, as we're sitting here right now, they're debating this in the parliament and the government have worked with the Greens to stop our amendment, to remove it so that the documents would have to be released and should be put up to the Royal Commission because we believe they should.
00:32:24
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I think Australians would say it's got, Victorians would say it has to. If you are elected at the end of the year in November, you've already said you're going to enlarge this Royal Commission, more terms, more expert commissioners, and clearly you'd put this through the parliament again.
00:32:40
Speaker 13: Yeah, and James Newbury's come out today and he's spoken very clearly on exactly how we're going to go through that process. Obviously, once the Royal Commission has started, some things can be complicated. We understand that. So James is working through that right now. to ensure that whatever we do, hopefully, post-November 28th, we'll sit till the end of the year to get as much through as we can, including that to ensure that the public get a guarantee that documents can be released in the Royal Commission that could be held to account to make sure people get the full story. Because the last thing we want is in five years' time them going, someone got away with it because we hid some documents.
00:33:13
Speaker 2: So call me cynical, right? I originally thought we're not going to see Jacinta Allen or Dan Andrews this side of the election. If the Greens vote with Labor... and keep this protection racket going, I bet she will front because she'll know it's safer to front with this protection racket in place rather than risk having to front should you win in November. Yeah, they'd be petrified.
00:33:37
Speaker 13: Like the Premier, as you said before, the then Premier, should have seen documents when she was the Minister. And if she hasn't, these are documents that have been noted and signed and They've gone through. You can't say that that much has gone through a minister's office and they weren't aware because there's only two things then. Either one, you know about it and you're involved, or two, you're incompetent. And either way, it's cost Victorians billions of dollars and someone needs to be held to account. If it's a director of a company, it should be treated the same as a minister of the Crown if they are knowledgeable of this and they know about it.
00:34:09
Speaker 2: Okay. Let's go to then the IBAC changes that the government's put on the table.
00:34:13
Speaker 9: Some.
00:34:14
Speaker 2: look sensible. I don't think they go far enough. Again, where are you sitting on those?
00:34:19
Speaker 13: Yeah, so we're going to say to them we won't oppose the legislation going through. There was four amendments put forward by James. We wanted to make sure that we could get the IBAC changes through as fast as possible. So that's why they're sitting tonight. And I think if I'm correct, and I haven't checked my phone in the last two minutes, but I think they would have gone through in the last few minutes. But again, the Greens and Labor have worked to ensure that any of our changes were stopped. They then took out a few of the changes themselves to get the eye back to make it stronger.
00:34:45
Speaker 2: OK, now I'll say this to people at home. The reason we're talking today and there's so much legislative focus, it's the last sitting day before the election on November 28. Talk to me about these crime stats today. Just record high numbers of retail theft. Victorians know it. You can't go to a supermarket anymore without having to pass through these doors and show receipts. And I was at Coles and I know 3OW has reported on this. There are literally theft stickers on a scotch fillet piece of steak. It's got that bad.
00:35:15
Speaker 13: The theft in retail stores is huge. And we've seen the statistics. We don't even see all the statistics. Coles and Woolworths will tell you that there's so much that still goes unreported here in Victoria, whereas in other states it's online. So we're not seeing all of it at the moment. That's probably the scariest part. But it's also now it's staff at risk. Like if I speak to Coles, Woolworths, Bunnings, the big retailers, they're all talking about body-worn cameras for 16-year-olds. Because people aren't just grabbing it and stealing it. They're happy to actually assault a staff member or abuse a staff member on the way out while they're stealing it because they know there's no consequences for it.
00:35:49
Speaker 2: What about this rumbling today, and of course it's grand final on Saturday, that the AFL has long talked about for media rights purposes and to make more money, to do a night grand final, and that Jess is reported to have been Quick to say, well, I'm not so sure about that. I think Victorians like the tradition of an afternoon match. I listened to an interview from the boss of the AFL, Andrew Dillon, this morning on 3OW, and he basically intimated he's going to sit close to her at the footy and teach her different. Let's have a listen.
00:36:25
Speaker 14: Look, that's something that's only just come to my attention, but I'm looking forward to seeing Jess at the footy on Saturday and we'll have a good chat then.
00:36:33
Speaker 2: Okay, where do you stand, night game or day game?
00:36:35
Speaker 13: Look, I have to be honest, I love the day game. I do like the tradition. We're going through a discussion right at the moment. It's not a policy at the moment. It's obviously got out there, but it is something we have spoken about. And I hope Andrew has, you can put his point forward, but also we have to think about the people who make football. And that's not the AFL. That's actually the people out there, the supporters, the punters that go. And let's be honest, I'm a Geelong supporter, so I've been lucky over the last few years to have a few wins.
00:36:59
Speaker 2: Don't rub it in. I'm rich.
00:37:00
Speaker 13: And there's nothing, well, you beat us in 2020. And there's nothing better after a win to go out with your mates and have a celebration or come into Melbourne and see the players get presented. If you finish your game at 11 o'clock at night, that's all gone. That's a Sunday issue. And then, let's be honest, players want to go and celebrate. Sunday's a whole different game.
00:37:17
Speaker 2: It's also really important for all the businesses that hang off sport. And I think there's been a lot of criticism with this Friday public holiday in Victoria. That used to be a big day for restaurants and other businesses in town, and that's been lost to them. Yeah, it's a challenge.
00:37:31
Speaker 13: The grand final public holiday, as we've already said, we're not changing, but the reality is at the moment it has put some challenges out there for particular businesses in Victoria.
00:37:39
Speaker 11: All right.
00:37:39
Speaker 2: Last day of Parliament. This means you're hitting the campaign hustings, Brad Batten.
00:37:42
Speaker 5: Thank you.
00:37:42
Speaker 13: I'm out there ready to roll and loving it out in Berwick and out in the southeast. And I can tell you I'll be looking forward to coming back here November 29th because I reckon the southeast is ready for a change.
00:37:51
Speaker 2: And the mullet's going to stay for the campaign?
00:37:53
Speaker 13: Not to my wife's pleasure, but yes.
00:37:55
Speaker 2: I'm with the wife on this one. That mullet's got to go. All right, leave it there. Quick break. After the break, we'll get into diesel, $ 4 a litre. Goodness me. Welcome back. International panel coming up. But now to deepening concerns over the cost of fuel with diesel expected to go through the roof as our ag sector battles to survive financial hits. Of course, too, it'll impact transport, but they are more likely to be able to pass it on than our farmers. Joining me now, Head of Energy Research at MST Financial, Saul Kovonick. Saul, talk of $ 4 a litre I filled up today. It was just on $ 2. 98, I think very close to $ 3. $ 4, though, how real is that?
00:38:42
Speaker 7: Well, just as six months ago the idea of $ 3 a litre would have been unheard of, I'm afraid $ 4 is very much a number that could be on the cards. given the developments that are going on both in the Middle East and now potentially in the US and the ramifications from that. Australia is actually the most vulnerable nation in the world when it comes to diesel imports. We're the largest diesel importer by a long way because of our large agricultural and mining sectors. Australia only accounts for about 1% of global fuel demands, but we account for 10% of the global seaboard diesel trade. And so that means when you start to see shortages in diesel around the world, we are one of the most susceptible at the end of that supply chain.
00:39:28
Speaker 2: Okay, so how do we compare to the other big ag nations like United States, Canada, parts of Europe? Do they make their own diesel onshore? Do they refine their own product? Or are they heavy importers like us?
00:39:44
Speaker 7: So those other nations you mentioned are largely self-sufficient in both actually their oil production and in refining or can get their refined product from their neighbours. Now, the risk we face here is twofold. First of all, the war in the Middle East is still in an escalatory trajectory and it's broadening to provide two choke points, not just in the Strait of Hormuz, but also through the Red Sea, which is the one way Saudi Arabia has been getting its fuel out of the Middle East by passing the strait. But the second thing now is the potential for the United States to restrict its diesel exports, precisely because it's facing political pressure from the farming Republicans within the US and their farmers who are pacing higher diesel prices right into the midterm elections. And if the US cuts off its diesel exports, which account for a third of the world's seaborne trade, you could then see Europe also look to protect their own first and cut off their diesel exports. Russia already has. China's done it before earlier this year and could do it again. And so if you don't have your sovereign supply chain you're left at the end. And that puts you in a precarious situation.
00:40:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, the talk was about a 90-day ban and that would take them across and through the midterms. And I hear your point about the Republicans and the farming states there. So how real do you think that is? And two, if there was to be a spike in fuel costs here, diesel particularly, diesel more than petrol, when are we likely to see it? This side of Christmas, after Christmas? And what about demands do you think from the government to cut the excise again?
00:41:18
Speaker 7: So at this point, it's looking more likely than not that the US will look to restrict diesel to at least a degree ahead of the early November midterms. That would start to flow through. If they announce that, that would flow through immediately on diesel prices, but would really start to crunch potentially from as early as late October. That has both a pricing implication, but it has much more an implication on what that would mean for our agricultural sector. And if you recall, the government has... It previously disbanded its fuel security taskforce, but that could have to be reinstated because the whole point of Australia potentially going to stage three and stage four of rationing is to protect our agricultural sector in addition to our other critical sectors. So that means diverting diesel away from many of us who need it in the cities to making sure at least our farmers can get it. Hopefully these things don't play out in that worst case scenario, but I'm actually more worried now than I've been at any point since the war began about the potential for us to go to rationing for diesel.
00:42:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with you. I heard warnings within the Canberra bureaucracy that they were preparing for rationing. So if that sort of discussion's happening, that's pretty real to me. Saul, I'm sorry I've got to leave it there. I do want to catch up with you, though, about fuel and energy policy broadly. There's coalitions put their policy out yesterday, but we'll do that next week. Certainly. Thanks for joining me tonight. All right, let's go. Quick break. International panel after the break. international panel. It's Thursday and they're here with me in the studio, News24 contributor Kosha Garda, Labor MP Michael Damby. Welcome to you both. Hey, I want to go to this award that Albo got, Global Citizen of the Year or whatever it is, from the Atlantic Council, Michael. It's interesting. I went digging around. Lo and behold, who is on the International Advisory Board for this mob but Kevin Rudd?
00:43:15
Speaker 14: I'm surprised most members of the Atlantic Council wouldn't know who Albo was but At least there was someone there who knew where he was and that's probably why he got it.
00:43:23
Speaker 2: He got it for, amongst many things, AUKUS. But Scott Morrison should have got the award for AUKUS and didn't. I said today that, you know, this digital hack that he found out about on the weekend was held over kosher just because they needed a distraction. This is terrible optics. For a prime minister struggling as he is at home, talk of interest rates next week rising, fuel prices out of control. This is a bad look.
00:43:51
Speaker 15: Very bad look. And he, in general, doesn't come across as somebody that can speak tech or explain what's going on and how is a government that increasingly is demanding more and more of our digital footprint to be loaded into the system. How is it equipped for cybersecurity or any of that stuff? So it's not helpful, but he came out and gave a statement and off we go.
00:44:10
Speaker 2: Xi Jinping arrived into the US and on the tarmac waiting was the president and the first lady. That's very unusual, right? For any world leader, any head of state to greet another head of state, it's usually lower order protocol that someone else is there. But I guess it signals that the president wants a good relationship with his Beijing counterpart.
00:44:34
Speaker 14: Yes, he regards himself and Putin as the sort of three equals of the world. A US president hasn't done this since 1962 when Kennedy went out to greet Harold Macmillan. But I think Xi wants a quiet, stable summit. He wants nothing to happen. He doesn't want any military fighting breaking out. Ructions over Taiwan. Certainly ructions over Taiwan. His red line is going to be to try and get Trump to sell out Taiwan. But I can't believe that John Lyons was saying on the ABC that Chinese haven't been providing satellite intelligence to or energy precursors to the Iranians. They just get away with blue murder and the ABC's there to megaphone them.
00:45:13
Speaker 2: If he had not gone out to the tarmac, he would have been criticised. He's been criticised by Democrats for going out to the tarmac. Where would Americans, the general public, be on this, given we've got midterms coming up? Would it even be on their political radar?
00:45:29
Speaker 1: Not really.
00:45:30
Speaker 15: I think they're just so focused on the domestic issues and feel that that's been inadequately served. That's where he's been slipping in the polls and in the support. But as it relates to China, the Trump doctrine has always been he wants to get along with everybody, even adversaries, even rivals.
00:45:45
Speaker 2: The... Jaw, jaw, not wall, wall.
00:45:47
Speaker 15: Yes. And the agenda is very contained, as you said, for this. There might be a little bit of a trade truce or an extension of that trade truce, but it's broadly symbolic pageantry to say we are the world order. And we, it was also deliberate that he did not, Xi Jinping did not go to the UN, which is happening in that same week, skipped it, went straight to Washington. So they're sort of telegraphing that we are the world order, not the UN, and we have to normalise relations.
00:46:08
Speaker 2: Okay. Talk to me about Ukraine. We saw Vladimir Zelensky, meeting a number of leaders, including obviously Prime Minister Albanese. When and how does this Ukraine-Russia war end?
00:46:21
Speaker 14: Well, the end is, in the short term, is quite obvious. This is what Zelensky is going for. And the US administration, at least Rubio seems signed up to, and that is a ceasefire in place. Now, the Ukrainians reckon that the Russians won't stop killing their civilians in the cities. So they've invented these new drones which shoot down Russian drones. They've also decided to hit all Russian infrastructure, including refineries, as far away as Siberia, hoping that the Russians will lose export income and give up. And finally, they've really pushed the Russians in the northern Donbass and reconquered 200 square kilometres near Lyman. So the Ukrainians force it but have a reasonable demand ceasefire in place.
00:47:08
Speaker 2: And then President Trump invites him, Putin, to the G20 in December.
00:47:14
Speaker 15: Yes, in Miami, obviously raises eyebrows, but it goes back to the previous point with Xi, where he does view that, that no matter who you are, adversary, rival, competitor, we want to normalise relations, certainly with a nuclear power.
00:47:26
Speaker 9: Even Mamdani is meeting.
00:47:27
Speaker 15: Yes, even Mamdani and a nuclear power, which is Russia. So it is about re-engaging on the stalled negotiation talks, but it also is about normalising relations. That is Trump's doctrine, and that's why he invited him to Alaska last year, and he's inviting him again here.
00:47:39
Speaker 2: Quick one, media ban, White House media ban.
00:47:42
Speaker 15: The judge ruled this was expected, that you can't do that because of the First Amendment, and I think Trump will just spin it as, well, they deserved it, needed to teach them a lesson, and that's part of, I think, his act and his forte.
00:47:54
Speaker 2: So they'll come back in, but he will be slow to give questions perhaps.
00:48:01
Speaker 15: And he will be insulting, which some would say they deserve.
00:48:04
Speaker 14: He thinks they'll be chastened.
00:48:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:48:07
Speaker 9: All right.
00:48:07
Speaker 2: We'll see if they are. Thank you very much.
00:48:10
Speaker 1: All right.
00:48:10
Speaker 2: Have a lovely weekend, everybody. Enjoy your break. Enjoy the footy of whatever type you like to watch. Up next, of course, James McPherson. I'll see you Monday.
Speaker 1: Peter Credlin, live from News 24.
00:00:08
Speaker 2: Good evening. Welcome to the program. Here's what's coming up on Credlin. A data breach that happened months ago. A prime minister that was told about it on the weekend. The poor old Australians only found out about it today. So time to reinstate the AI expert panel the prime minister dumped. We'll talk to one of the men on that panel in a moment. Yet more warnings about rent increases driven by Labor's tax hikes amid fears more Australians will end up in social housing as properties up for sale languish in a stagnant market. Fears the cost of diesel could top $ 4 a litre, as farmers warn they can't absorb another financial hit, nor too can the trucking sector. And never mind today's crime stats revealing a shoplifting epidemic in Victoria, the Premier now wants to throw open the doors to the pub until 3am.
00:01:00
Speaker 3: We're going to make sure, as an automatic right, the pubs can open to 3am. Today it's about supporting small businesses. They're in the heart of every community, pubs, publicans, more patrons means more jobs and a great local thriving economy.
00:01:19
Speaker 2: They call it bread and circuses in campaign times. That is what that is. First, revelations today that multiple Australian government systems were infiltrated by a leading US artificial intelligence company called OpenAI and should surprise no one.
00:01:37
Speaker 4: This incident occurred in June this year and involved an open AI agent gaining unauthorised access into the public-facing Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal.
00:01:52
Speaker 2: And no surprises. After all, the Albanese government's far more concerned with censoring what you can access on the internet than it is with protecting the sensitive information it holds online. and keeps safe from compromise.
00:02:06
Speaker 5: I note that the Prime Minister gave a keynote speech back in July on AI. He made a big song and dance about it. He did not even mention cyber defence and the importance of defence against AI attacks on our critical systems. He didn't mention it. It wasn't even part of his speech. Now we need better than that from this Prime Minister and we need better than that from his ministers.
00:02:33
Speaker 2: Later in the program, we'll speak with Professor Toby Walsh, one of Australia's foremost AI experts, to understand exactly what went wrong here and what should happen now to get ahead of the AI risks. But know this, Professor Walsh was appointed by the Prime Minister to join an expert AI panel to advise government about all of these very important cyber issues. It was an unpaid role that he thought was ongoing, a role he agreed to do because he cares about his country. Instead, the Prime Minister disbanded his own AI expert panel after only a couple of months. Without experts advising the Albanese government, Australia's flying blind as the rest of the world moves fast in the arms race of AI. And we are falling behind because of sheer incompetence, ignorance and likely lack of funding to put in place the cybersecurity architecture that Australia must have. That's because, yes, AI is a powerful tool for good, but there are also very real and significant risks. We know it will transform business. It'll reform productivity. But that will come at the cost of jobs as well as deliver economic gains. So we need to have our eyes wide open on all of this. As with the Industrial Revolution, we can probably now make a good fist at modelling the commercial gains from AI. But that's not where I'm focused. What's always concerned me here is the military and national security applications of AI. What happens when a rogue state or a terror group uses AI to create a deadly new biological weapon? Or perhaps a new explosive that can bring down aircraft that's not detectable when carried through airport security screening? Right now, the only real AI debate that Albanese is having is data centres and whether or not they use renewable power. I mean, overseas, they're laughing at us, trying to power AI with wind and solar and while they use our uranium to power high-end new reactors or our coal and gas, ensuring they have reliable baseload to run their AI, why we just muddle along, caught between a rock and a hard place, saying we're all for AI and net zero, when clearly you can't have both. It's critical that voters are not fooled here, because there's no doubt that Albanese wants to try and conflate the issue of AI safety And this example today of the Medicare hack is real with his digital duty of care legislation, but they are two very different things. AI safety and a properly resourced cybersecurity apparatus in Australia involving our spy and military intelligence agencies is a good thing. And in broad terms, I'd also support some sort of global guardrails provided they are sensible and limited. But they can't constrain good countries like Australia from developing as we must, given that bad actors will ignore all rules anyway. But Labor's digital duty of care legislation is not about any of this. Digital duty of care is about censorship. It's about restricting or stopping the information that adults can access, the information they get on their devices. And this was precisely what the Prime Minister admitted himself in comments yesterday at the United Nations.
00:06:11
Speaker 4: The truth is this is having an impact on our entire society and how it functions with misinformation, disinformation, with the increased polarisation that we're seeing as well in the political system where people are moving away from the centre and more and more to the extremes, be they of the left or the right.
00:06:34
Speaker 2: That line there about misinformation, disinformation, about the left and the right of politics is a killer. It shows Albanese's true motivation here. And the fact that the Prime Minister's office took those references out of his media transcript to try and stop us from noticing what he said, says it all. Something that Sarah Henderson was quick to pick up when speaking with me here last night.
00:07:00
Speaker 6: That speech that he gave today, they've now removed that damning extraordinary section from the transcript on the Prime Minister's media website. So talk about disinformation on the Prime Minister's own website.
00:07:15
Speaker 2: Yes, sensible regulation about the architecture of AI should be looked at with the caveat that, as always with Labor, the devil's in the detail. But banning content under yet to be defined definitions of harm at the whim of Labor's communications minister, Annika Wells, well, that must be opposed.
00:07:39
Speaker 6: The real story here is that the minister has unfettered powers to decide any category of harm that should be shut down. It is all about shutting down what people can say and see online. It's all about shutting down the political opponents of Labor.
00:07:56
Speaker 2: Don't buy the Albanese government's BS here. This is not about keeping children safe online. There are already a myriad of laws to do this now. Laws to ban kids under 16 from social media. Laws to deal with online child exploitation, child pornography. Laws against things like enabling acts of terrorism, like bomb making. Or as we saw yesterday with the arrest of Mohamed Bakhit, laws against the alleged membership of Islamic terror organisations and the spreading of online propaganda. We already have all of these laws. Now, if they're not tough enough, put them back into the parliament before Christmas and make them tougher. But we cannot allow the Albanese government to use these issues as cover to shut down legitimate debates that they don't want to have to stop you finding out the truth or to stop the media, at least some of the media, from holding the Prime Minister and his government to account. Labor's petrified at the way the online world has democratised information access. And the left blames online media for the rise of One Nation, for Trump and for reform in the United Kingdom as well. Now, for a long time, the left had a pretty cosy cartel with media players like the ABC that basically ran paid advertising for Labor and the left. Well, not so anymore, as people have turned away from news sources like that and pick up their devices and go digging on their own. Now, what that's done is it's exposed Labor's slick spin machine for what it is, and record low approval polls for the Prime Minister are the result. This is why Labor are panicking. That's why Albanese wants the whole show shut down. It's got nothing to do with children, It's about censorship and power. The other point I want to make in relation to the hack being put into the media domain today is the fact that the Prime Minister was told about this open AI break into Medicare on the weekend. Only you were told today. So why keep it a secret for much of the week? I'd say it's got a lot to do with this ridiculous award he picked up in New York overnight as some sort of international statesman when at home, clearly, he's a laughingstock. Labor hardheads would have thought, gee, this award comes at a shocking time for the government. Those appalling polls on Monday, the threat of a rate rise next week. Reports today too that diesel fuel will be rationed, some predicting it could hit as high as $ 4 a litre. So what better way to get the award off the front pages and for all the mocking to stop, but to throw out this story of a government systems hack. What's also telling is the fact the hack occurred back in June. It was only uncovered because the company fessed up. Our security systems in Canberra, they didn't pick it up. We only know about it because the company emailed the bureaucrats to tell them what had happened and And the Prime Minister then held off making this information public until he needed a distraction. What a joke. Now, I'll say this again. I don't think I've ever met, ever seen a more underwhelming individual occupy the highest office in this country. He's out of touch. He's intellectually out of his depth. And he lacks character. And there isn't a worse political trifecta than that. All right, let's get the headlines. That and more with our political reporter, Ruben Spargo.
00:11:49
Speaker 1: Good evening. The Australian government is launching a task force to counter AI cyber threats after a rogue open AI agent hacked into Medicare data. The rapid review will help determine whether current arrangements are fit for purpose to prepare for and respond to incidents. This is an unintended access, that's clear, but it definitely does raise questions about whether The law has been broken in respect of this. The opposition is calling for the Australian Signals Directorate's funding to be increased to better detect threats.
00:12:21
Speaker 7: We need to be significantly scaling up and upgrading our cyber defences and actually.
00:12:26
Speaker 1: The best tools to do that are artificial intelligence tools. One of the government's major concerns is the technology is moving so quickly it is outpacing Australia's ability to respond. The coalition is vowing to dismantle Labor's renewables policy if it wins the next election. A bill would be introduced to Parliament to remove the legislated target of net zero by 2050 and the safeguard mechanism designed to limit industry emissions.
00:12:52
Speaker 8: You can subsidise our industrial base to keep jobs onshore and pursue a renewables-only approach, as Labor is doing, or you can actually use the resources that are under our very feet that have made us a rich and wealthy nation.
00:13:06
Speaker 1: The plan would also scrap vehicle emission standards and shift the Australian energy regulator's focus to affordability.
00:13:14
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into that more. News24 contributor Carolee Katzenbarnes back with us after a pretty rugged few months and Deputy Executive Director at the IPA, Dan Wild. Carolee, as I said, you've been here on the program, I should say, but you've had a lot going on at home. You lost your beautiful husband, Peter. We gave him a terrific send-off on Friday, so we're delighted to have you back in the chair, mate. It's so good to have you here. Let's start with the AI data breach. A few points I want to note here. This happened in June, PM told on the weekend, but we only learn about it today. The notification about the breach didn't come from the government, it came from the company, and they had to email a public access point or an email box to tell us what was happening. I'll speak to an expert in a moment about what you can do now to turn this around. Surely, Dan... Labor needs that panel of experts to be rapidly reinstated.
00:14:14
Speaker 9: Well, that's right, Peter.
00:14:14
Speaker 10: There's a couple of things here for me. Firstly, the timing of it, as you alluded to in your monologue, has coincided with providing some space for Anthony Albanese's award. And now because things are going sour, as you know from your experience in politics, they keep these things in their back pocket. and roll it out when they want to change the topic of discussion in the news. Now, I know that sounds cynical, but unfortunately, that's often why. People at home wonder, why is this just coming out now? This is often the reason why. There's a very strong political reason for it. The other thing also, as you alluded to, was the government has taken its eye off the ball. When it comes to the internet, when it comes to the online world, they are not focused on things like AI security. They are focused on government censorship of Australians through their digital duty of care legislation. So this is a government that is not focused on the things that matter to our national interest. The other thing I would be very interested in, Peter, is why was that task force that you mentioned, why was it disbanded, I wonder? Was it disbanded because they were providing advice to the Prime Minister or to his ministers or senior advisers that was inconvenient and they did not want to hear? I wonder if that was one of the reasons.
00:15:31
Speaker 2: Well, we'll ask one of those experts in a moment. My point at the top of the show there about this conflation by the government between appropriate, and I'm saying appropriate, I don't want big regulation, but appropriate regulation of the AI environment, and then Labor's try-on with this digital duty of care, trying to put the two things together when I argue they're very, very different, Kerri-Lee. The debate about censorship, if we don't have sufficient laws to We've already got a range of mechanisms that we can improve. But this is about stopping Australians getting information that will send the Prime Minister's personal rating even lower. This is an election strategy. It's not about keeping people safe or children safe online at all. It's not.
00:16:17
Speaker 11: And Australians are being gaslit once again by Anthony Albanese in the Albanese government. I mean, the digital duty of care, it's nothing more than just a political censorship bill. And he's preying on the fears of parents and other caregivers. And as you say, conflating the two together. This is an extraordinary attack on free speech for Australians, but it's also extraordinary that this would give the communications minister completely unfettered power without a parliamentary oversight as to what they deem to be harmful and what they don't. And I think it's a bit rich of him to do this. And as Sarah Henderson pointed out last night, It's just extraordinary. But the problem is he is relying on merging the two together so that people don't know what will happen. But it's really good that you're pointing it out, because the more that we can point out to the Australian people that the digital duty of care is completely different to AI regulation, the better that it will be. And it's like communist China. This is not what should be happening in a Western democracy like Australia.
00:17:22
Speaker 2: They tried, didn't they, Dan, during the voice debate to shut us down. I know they tried the IPA to get you offline. They certainly tried a number of times with Bea about the Uluru Statement of the Heart. But this would succeed, that sort of move would succeed second time around if they had this legislation in place.
00:17:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
00:17:44
Speaker 10: This is a really good point because, as I mentioned the other week or the week before, this is really the third crack that the government has had. at trying to do this. They had the misinformation laws back in 2024. They had a crack at some hate speech laws earlier this year. Now they're having another crack at it now. Ever since they lost the voice to Parliament debate, this government has convinced itself that what they need to do, rather than explaining to people, right, this is the thing about this government, it has never won an argument with the Australian people. It doesn't take its policies to the people and try to convince them of the legitimacy of those policies. What it does is it either just shoves it through Parliament and guillotines debate, or it just tries to censor debate and not have a debate whatsoever. So this, and you'll remember after the voice vote, what did Albanese and the chief campaigners blame? They blamed misinformation. Either you voted no because you're too dumb or you voted no because you're a racist, right? That is how this government thinks. They don't understand. People voted no because they thought it was a bad idea and they didn't want it. So, yeah, the government's going to try and push ahead with censorship and it would have a massively negative effect on our ability to to debate things in this country.
00:18:52
Speaker 2: Let's go to this report today that the Australian Energy Market Operator, AEMO, the regulator, is basically, they've got a plan to put the $ 50 million cost of EV charger rollout onto everyone's power bill across the country, whether you want an EV charger, whether you have an EV charger or not. Kerri-Lee, how can this be justified? We can't pay our bills as it is. Well, it's incredibly unfair.
00:19:19
Speaker 11: And I noticed that Anna Collier, who's the chair of the Australian Energy Market Commission, she's actually said that it would add $ 1 a year to people's power bills, average power bills. This is another example of gaslighting. We had this when they introduced the negative gearing things in the budget where they said rents would only rise by $ 2 a week.
00:19:39
Speaker 2: That hasn't worked.
00:19:40
Speaker 11: This is appalling. I mean, this should be an industry thing. It is being run by private enterprise. They're putting their money, they're putting their things on.
00:19:49
Speaker 2: The line to do.
00:19:50
Speaker 11: This. To actually slug the Australian taxpayer, because about $ 20 billion worth is needed for proper infrastructure, is just not fair. Australian consumers will be at a disadvantage. And the problem is this all ties into Chris Bowen's energy plans, etc. They just cannot accept They cannot accept that they have not invested properly into infrastructure and now they want to slug the Australian taxpayer with more. I'm really sorry for Anna Collier to say it would add an extra $ 1 a year to the average Australian's power bill is an absolute insult. Poles and wires companies are monopoly and monopolies and we will all be paying the price for that.
00:20:28
Speaker 8: It's absolutely appalling.
00:20:31
Speaker 2: Dan, a quick one for you. Master Builders today issued a warning that rent increases are driving inflation. These are the ones out of the budget on the back of those tax hikes that are moving the rents, obviously. But those rent increases will send more people out of renting properties into social housing. We know, of course, the clearance rates on the weekend are very, very sluggish. In August, Sydney was at a six-year low in terms of, you know, how long properties were sitting there on the market and selling. It begs the question, I can't get a straight answer out of anyone in Canberra. What actually is the definition of social housing? Is this housing that we're subsidising as taxpayers? Talk me through what the truth is here.
00:21:15
Speaker 10: Well, in essence, yes, that's what it is. We now have almost a million Australians who are in social housing of some kind. Now, two-thirds roughly of that is in housing that is directly run and operated by the government itself. A few percent is in relation to Indigenous and then about 25 to 30 percent is through community organisations, many of whom receive government funding as well. So, yes, most of this is taxpayer funded housing that's then rented off to people who can't afford or can't find a rental property. Now, this is one of the great untold stories of the failure of this government's migration and housing programs, which is that there's many people who need social housing. If it weren't for social housing, they'd be on the street. But there's many people who have been forced into social housing because they literally cannot get a rental property. They just can't get one. So they have to stay with their parents or their grandparents or do whatever they have to do. Or if they don't have that support available, they've got to go into a social house. So this is what happens when you have a massive surge in demand that we've had from mass migration coupled with a complete failure of supply.
00:22:15
Speaker 7: And on top of that, as.
00:22:16
Speaker 10: You rightly say, these tax changes mean that fewer people are investing, rents go up even more. So Look, unfortunately, more people are going to find themselves in this situation.
00:22:26
Speaker 2: And it just grows the state. It makes us ever more reliant on government, which is not what we want in a country like Australia. Thank you to you both. As I said, Kerri-Lee, great to have you back. All right, let's go now to the breach today. Let's bring in a professional to unpick it for us now, Chief Scientist at the University of New South Wales AI Institute, Professor Toby Walsh. Professor, I've been waiting for you all day because there's so much chatter around and half of it doesn't add up to the next person who speaks. What happened? What have we learnt today about this breach?
00:23:03
Speaker 12: Well, the government got another lucky break here. Fortunately, it turned out it wasn't particularly serious. We didn't lose too much sensitive information here. But it shows that these companies need much better oversight, independent oversight from the government that they're not getting.
00:23:19
Speaker 2: So the PM, when he spoke about it, basically said that this was a front-facing information portal, so there was nothing there other than basically statistics. But it was behind, if I could call it, a firewall or some sort of security mechanism. Obviously, it was breached. It wasn't just this website, though, this information system. There were multiple. The one I was most concerned about was Medicare. But the persistence of this open AI technology agent, if I can call it that, that just kept going at it and breaking down all the protections the government had. The fact that the government's own back end didn't trigger some sort of alarm, that they were only told about this by the company, that's concerning. Yeah, it is.
00:24:08
Speaker 12: It's very concerning that we had to be told that this had happened. The information they got was public-facing information. All they said was about to be put in the public domain. it wasn't too harmful. And the sorts of things that the bots were doing, that sophisticated sort of things that I've actually done when I've been trying to get information out of the government's website, trying to guess what the pile names might be called for data for another year. But you're right, the persistence and the volume that comes out. We may be talking about hundreds or even sometimes thousands of these agents that come at you over weeks and it will eventually get through. So this time the government got lucky, nothing serious happened. But what's going to happen next time?
00:24:50
Speaker 2: And what about the response from OpenAI? Because I listened to one interview where they're not even sure how this happened. I mean, they know it was one of their agents. They're not dodging that. But the agent is thinking, I guess, faster and deeper and more autonomously than how they perhaps programmed it.
00:25:09
Speaker 12: Yeah, so it was entirely autonomous. There wasn't significant oversight of this.
00:25:13
Speaker 9: It is worrying.
00:25:14
Speaker 12: At best, it's incompetence for this company, this trillion-dollar company. has just failed the basic cybersecurity.
00:25:21
Speaker 9: Or at worst, it's carelessness.
00:25:23
Speaker 12: And I think really what we're going to have to do is hold the offices of these companies responsible. If a human was doing this to the vacuum, they would be facing prosecution.
00:25:31
Speaker 9: I don't think we could just get them away.
00:25:33
Speaker 12: They all gleefully tell us, oh, we've had another AI break into someone's system.
00:25:39
Speaker 9: And to talk up the capabilities of their system.
00:25:41
Speaker 12: All of the companies, not just Open AI, have been gleefully telling us this rather than being ashamed that they've actually lost control of their systems.
00:25:51
Speaker 2: Well, I listened to ministers today. I listened to the Prime Minister. I don't get a sense they've got a real handle on on any of these issues, the complexity of these issues. I read a report the other day, there's only about 10 employees in the government cyber AI unit. You were there on an expert panel for about a year. It was disbanded. Surely now's the time to bring it back.
00:26:16
Speaker 12: Well, I think the government needs more expertise all around. I mean, I'm very happy to continue to lend my expertise back to the government to help them understand where this very rapidly evolving field is going and where the risk is starting to emerge. But equally, at the AI Safety Institute, it needs to be much larger. The government's putting up 30 million or something for it. And that's a tenth of what the UK government's putting at it. And we can see the threats are only getting more significant and more challenging by the day.
00:26:46
Speaker 2: What worries me, Toby, is we're having a debate about data centres and their power source and where they're located and whether communities want them near them or not. But that's just the engine, basically, for the architecture that we're not even sure of the scale and scope. We're all saying it'll be transformative, it'll be great for the economy. But I used a couple of examples tonight. You know, wait till AI develops some sort of weapon to bring down an aircraft that can pass through security. Wait till AI has a very contagious, deadly biological agent and it's in the hands of a terror group or a rogue nation state. That's where I'm concerned. But I feel we're sort of two parts removed from the debate and we're behind the eight ball.
00:27:36
Speaker 9: We are a bit behind. I think the idea that AI is going to kill us all is a bit fantastical. But the idea that it could kill a few people.
00:27:41
Speaker 12: As you gave a few examples there, we saw already earlier this week about how Chinese EV cars can easily be hacked and taken over and you can turn the lights off and you can turn the brakes on and you can even control the steering. Those things, we've seen how dependent we are on these systems. Air traffic control systems in the United Kingdom keep on crashing. Well, what if the AI starts attacking the air traffic control systems?
00:28:06
Speaker 9: What sort of work is it going to do? We're really not addressing these issues at all.
00:28:11
Speaker 2: And also, I've read concern about home batteries or the lithium batteries that people are putting on the side of their homes to store the energy from their solar systems. Again, they've got a connectivity and a brain, if I can call it that. So if you were sitting there now, if you were the Prime Minister's ear, what would you say needs to happen in the short to medium term urgently on the back of what we've learned today?
00:28:33
Speaker 12: Well, in the short term, it's very clear that we have to increase our cyber defences, the cyber security has become a very significant issue.
00:28:42
Speaker 9: These new AI.
00:28:43
Speaker 12: Tools have significant side of the capability and we can't sit around. We need more expertise in government, more oversight. We need to invest much more time and effort in that. In the longer term, I think we've really got to think about how we properly regulate this industry.
00:28:55
Speaker 9: No other trillion dollar industry doesn't.
00:28:58
Speaker 12: Get any independent oversight.
00:29:01
Speaker 9: They're still marking their own homework.
00:29:02
Speaker 12: And as they've just demonstrated yet again, they're not marking their homework very well at all.
00:29:07
Speaker 9: They had it in late.
00:29:09
Speaker 12: They didn't really own up to all the mistakes they'd made and to the seriousness. They sent it to an obscure government email address. They just can't be trusted to look after their own homework.
00:29:20
Speaker 2: And just quickly, Toby, my point at the top of the show, that's not to mean, though, you conflate... regulation of the AI space, the architecture of artificial intelligence and the digital duty of care legislation that the government's got on the table that goes to the content that's available to people online. They're not the same thing.
00:29:42
Speaker 9: They're not the same thing.
00:29:43
Speaker 12: I mean, they're sort of mixed in the sense that the AI is also deciding how you see the content, and the algorithm is deciding which particular content you see. So it's a confused mixture of things that they're trying to do there with the digital duty of care.
00:29:59
Speaker 9: It does involve AI.
00:30:00
Speaker 12: Of course, it involves just the pure design of it, and it does involve, as you say, the content that you get to see.
00:30:06
Speaker 2: I'll leave it there. I hope you get a call from the Prime Minister. I hope he's desperate enough to admit he got it wrong and put you on the paddle. Toby Walsh, thank you. Professor Walsh there from the University of New South Wales. After the break, Jacinta Allen, hot seat at the Corruption Royal Commission. Will she give evidence before the state election? And crime data out today in Victoria, record levels of retail shoplifting. We'll get into that in a moment. Welcome back. Well, how are we going to keep the economy running with farmers set to fork out up to $ 4 a litre for diesel? We'll get into that in a moment, but now to reports that former Premier Jacinta Allen will be grilled by the Royal Commission over how she was never made aware of a key document that raised the alarm on big build corruption allegations, despite being directed to read the briefing. Here to discuss this and plenty more, including those crime stats out today, Shadow Police Minister Brad Batten. Brad, thank you. Just before we get into the, first of all, the Royal Commission started yesterday, but it was all the sort of preparatories. Before we get into the fact of these two premiers and whether we will see them before the election, the public interest immunity waiver, Labor love this. It stops them having to give a full and frank account to the Royal Commission. They can decline to hand over paperwork. You guys want that waived. You want it gone. You want this to be a fed income Royal Commission and you're voting on this in the Parliament right now.
00:31:38
Speaker 13: Yeah, we know for a fact already we've seen Daniel Andrews go in hearings before and he loves the I don't recall.
00:31:43
Speaker 2: No, I don't know. I can't remember.
00:31:44
Speaker 13: You can't remember all those. Now it'll actually be I don't have to and that's the biggest problem. This is giving him the authority effectively and just into Alan to hide documents, to say to them, We don't think this actually needs to be released. We're not going to release it. And the Royal Commission can't compel them to. And I just think it's too important.
00:32:01
Speaker 2: That's because they've got a provision in an active parliament in Victoria that we don't have for a federal Royal Commission. That's the best as I can understand it.
00:32:08
Speaker 9: That's correct.
00:32:09
Speaker 13: And we've got it here in Victoria. And it's literally, as we're sitting here right now, they're debating this in the parliament and the government have worked with the Greens to stop our amendment, to remove it so that the documents would have to be released and should be put up to the Royal Commission because we believe they should.
00:32:24
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I think Australians would say it's got, Victorians would say it has to. If you are elected at the end of the year in November, you've already said you're going to enlarge this Royal Commission, more terms, more expert commissioners, and clearly you'd put this through the parliament again.
00:32:40
Speaker 13: Yeah, and James Newbury's come out today and he's spoken very clearly on exactly how we're going to go through that process. Obviously, once the Royal Commission has started, some things can be complicated. We understand that. So James is working through that right now. to ensure that whatever we do, hopefully, post-November 28th, we'll sit till the end of the year to get as much through as we can, including that to ensure that the public get a guarantee that documents can be released in the Royal Commission that could be held to account to make sure people get the full story. Because the last thing we want is in five years' time them going, someone got away with it because we hid some documents.
00:33:13
Speaker 2: So call me cynical, right? I originally thought we're not going to see Jacinta Allen or Dan Andrews this side of the election. If the Greens vote with Labor... and keep this protection racket going, I bet she will front because she'll know it's safer to front with this protection racket in place rather than risk having to front should you win in November. Yeah, they'd be petrified.
00:33:37
Speaker 13: Like the Premier, as you said before, the then Premier, should have seen documents when she was the Minister. And if she hasn't, these are documents that have been noted and signed and They've gone through. You can't say that that much has gone through a minister's office and they weren't aware because there's only two things then. Either one, you know about it and you're involved, or two, you're incompetent. And either way, it's cost Victorians billions of dollars and someone needs to be held to account. If it's a director of a company, it should be treated the same as a minister of the Crown if they are knowledgeable of this and they know about it.
00:34:09
Speaker 2: Okay. Let's go to then the IBAC changes that the government's put on the table.
00:34:13
Speaker 9: Some.
00:34:14
Speaker 2: look sensible. I don't think they go far enough. Again, where are you sitting on those?
00:34:19
Speaker 13: Yeah, so we're going to say to them we won't oppose the legislation going through. There was four amendments put forward by James. We wanted to make sure that we could get the IBAC changes through as fast as possible. So that's why they're sitting tonight. And I think if I'm correct, and I haven't checked my phone in the last two minutes, but I think they would have gone through in the last few minutes. But again, the Greens and Labor have worked to ensure that any of our changes were stopped. They then took out a few of the changes themselves to get the eye back to make it stronger.
00:34:45
Speaker 2: OK, now I'll say this to people at home. The reason we're talking today and there's so much legislative focus, it's the last sitting day before the election on November 28. Talk to me about these crime stats today. Just record high numbers of retail theft. Victorians know it. You can't go to a supermarket anymore without having to pass through these doors and show receipts. And I was at Coles and I know 3OW has reported on this. There are literally theft stickers on a scotch fillet piece of steak. It's got that bad.
00:35:15
Speaker 13: The theft in retail stores is huge. And we've seen the statistics. We don't even see all the statistics. Coles and Woolworths will tell you that there's so much that still goes unreported here in Victoria, whereas in other states it's online. So we're not seeing all of it at the moment. That's probably the scariest part. But it's also now it's staff at risk. Like if I speak to Coles, Woolworths, Bunnings, the big retailers, they're all talking about body-worn cameras for 16-year-olds. Because people aren't just grabbing it and stealing it. They're happy to actually assault a staff member or abuse a staff member on the way out while they're stealing it because they know there's no consequences for it.
00:35:49
Speaker 2: What about this rumbling today, and of course it's grand final on Saturday, that the AFL has long talked about for media rights purposes and to make more money, to do a night grand final, and that Jess is reported to have been Quick to say, well, I'm not so sure about that. I think Victorians like the tradition of an afternoon match. I listened to an interview from the boss of the AFL, Andrew Dillon, this morning on 3OW, and he basically intimated he's going to sit close to her at the footy and teach her different. Let's have a listen.
00:36:25
Speaker 14: Look, that's something that's only just come to my attention, but I'm looking forward to seeing Jess at the footy on Saturday and we'll have a good chat then.
00:36:33
Speaker 2: Okay, where do you stand, night game or day game?
00:36:35
Speaker 13: Look, I have to be honest, I love the day game. I do like the tradition. We're going through a discussion right at the moment. It's not a policy at the moment. It's obviously got out there, but it is something we have spoken about. And I hope Andrew has, you can put his point forward, but also we have to think about the people who make football. And that's not the AFL. That's actually the people out there, the supporters, the punters that go. And let's be honest, I'm a Geelong supporter, so I've been lucky over the last few years to have a few wins.
00:36:59
Speaker 2: Don't rub it in. I'm rich.
00:37:00
Speaker 13: And there's nothing, well, you beat us in 2020. And there's nothing better after a win to go out with your mates and have a celebration or come into Melbourne and see the players get presented. If you finish your game at 11 o'clock at night, that's all gone. That's a Sunday issue. And then, let's be honest, players want to go and celebrate. Sunday's a whole different game.
00:37:17
Speaker 2: It's also really important for all the businesses that hang off sport. And I think there's been a lot of criticism with this Friday public holiday in Victoria. That used to be a big day for restaurants and other businesses in town, and that's been lost to them. Yeah, it's a challenge.
00:37:31
Speaker 13: The grand final public holiday, as we've already said, we're not changing, but the reality is at the moment it has put some challenges out there for particular businesses in Victoria.
00:37:39
Speaker 11: All right.
00:37:39
Speaker 2: Last day of Parliament. This means you're hitting the campaign hustings, Brad Batten.
00:37:42
Speaker 5: Thank you.
00:37:42
Speaker 13: I'm out there ready to roll and loving it out in Berwick and out in the southeast. And I can tell you I'll be looking forward to coming back here November 29th because I reckon the southeast is ready for a change.
00:37:51
Speaker 2: And the mullet's going to stay for the campaign?
00:37:53
Speaker 13: Not to my wife's pleasure, but yes.
00:37:55
Speaker 2: I'm with the wife on this one. That mullet's got to go. All right, leave it there. Quick break. After the break, we'll get into diesel, $ 4 a litre. Goodness me. Welcome back. International panel coming up. But now to deepening concerns over the cost of fuel with diesel expected to go through the roof as our ag sector battles to survive financial hits. Of course, too, it'll impact transport, but they are more likely to be able to pass it on than our farmers. Joining me now, Head of Energy Research at MST Financial, Saul Kovonick. Saul, talk of $ 4 a litre I filled up today. It was just on $ 2. 98, I think very close to $ 3. $ 4, though, how real is that?
00:38:42
Speaker 7: Well, just as six months ago the idea of $ 3 a litre would have been unheard of, I'm afraid $ 4 is very much a number that could be on the cards. given the developments that are going on both in the Middle East and now potentially in the US and the ramifications from that. Australia is actually the most vulnerable nation in the world when it comes to diesel imports. We're the largest diesel importer by a long way because of our large agricultural and mining sectors. Australia only accounts for about 1% of global fuel demands, but we account for 10% of the global seaboard diesel trade. And so that means when you start to see shortages in diesel around the world, we are one of the most susceptible at the end of that supply chain.
00:39:28
Speaker 2: Okay, so how do we compare to the other big ag nations like United States, Canada, parts of Europe? Do they make their own diesel onshore? Do they refine their own product? Or are they heavy importers like us?
00:39:44
Speaker 7: So those other nations you mentioned are largely self-sufficient in both actually their oil production and in refining or can get their refined product from their neighbours. Now, the risk we face here is twofold. First of all, the war in the Middle East is still in an escalatory trajectory and it's broadening to provide two choke points, not just in the Strait of Hormuz, but also through the Red Sea, which is the one way Saudi Arabia has been getting its fuel out of the Middle East by passing the strait. But the second thing now is the potential for the United States to restrict its diesel exports, precisely because it's facing political pressure from the farming Republicans within the US and their farmers who are pacing higher diesel prices right into the midterm elections. And if the US cuts off its diesel exports, which account for a third of the world's seaborne trade, you could then see Europe also look to protect their own first and cut off their diesel exports. Russia already has. China's done it before earlier this year and could do it again. And so if you don't have your sovereign supply chain you're left at the end. And that puts you in a precarious situation.
00:40:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, the talk was about a 90-day ban and that would take them across and through the midterms. And I hear your point about the Republicans and the farming states there. So how real do you think that is? And two, if there was to be a spike in fuel costs here, diesel particularly, diesel more than petrol, when are we likely to see it? This side of Christmas, after Christmas? And what about demands do you think from the government to cut the excise again?
00:41:18
Speaker 7: So at this point, it's looking more likely than not that the US will look to restrict diesel to at least a degree ahead of the early November midterms. That would start to flow through. If they announce that, that would flow through immediately on diesel prices, but would really start to crunch potentially from as early as late October. That has both a pricing implication, but it has much more an implication on what that would mean for our agricultural sector. And if you recall, the government has... It previously disbanded its fuel security taskforce, but that could have to be reinstated because the whole point of Australia potentially going to stage three and stage four of rationing is to protect our agricultural sector in addition to our other critical sectors. So that means diverting diesel away from many of us who need it in the cities to making sure at least our farmers can get it. Hopefully these things don't play out in that worst case scenario, but I'm actually more worried now than I've been at any point since the war began about the potential for us to go to rationing for diesel.
00:42:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with you. I heard warnings within the Canberra bureaucracy that they were preparing for rationing. So if that sort of discussion's happening, that's pretty real to me. Saul, I'm sorry I've got to leave it there. I do want to catch up with you, though, about fuel and energy policy broadly. There's coalitions put their policy out yesterday, but we'll do that next week. Certainly. Thanks for joining me tonight. All right, let's go. Quick break. International panel after the break. international panel. It's Thursday and they're here with me in the studio, News24 contributor Kosha Garda, Labor MP Michael Damby. Welcome to you both. Hey, I want to go to this award that Albo got, Global Citizen of the Year or whatever it is, from the Atlantic Council, Michael. It's interesting. I went digging around. Lo and behold, who is on the International Advisory Board for this mob but Kevin Rudd?
00:43:15
Speaker 14: I'm surprised most members of the Atlantic Council wouldn't know who Albo was but At least there was someone there who knew where he was and that's probably why he got it.
00:43:23
Speaker 2: He got it for, amongst many things, AUKUS. But Scott Morrison should have got the award for AUKUS and didn't. I said today that, you know, this digital hack that he found out about on the weekend was held over kosher just because they needed a distraction. This is terrible optics. For a prime minister struggling as he is at home, talk of interest rates next week rising, fuel prices out of control. This is a bad look.
00:43:51
Speaker 15: Very bad look. And he, in general, doesn't come across as somebody that can speak tech or explain what's going on and how is a government that increasingly is demanding more and more of our digital footprint to be loaded into the system. How is it equipped for cybersecurity or any of that stuff? So it's not helpful, but he came out and gave a statement and off we go.
00:44:10
Speaker 2: Xi Jinping arrived into the US and on the tarmac waiting was the president and the first lady. That's very unusual, right? For any world leader, any head of state to greet another head of state, it's usually lower order protocol that someone else is there. But I guess it signals that the president wants a good relationship with his Beijing counterpart.
00:44:34
Speaker 14: Yes, he regards himself and Putin as the sort of three equals of the world. A US president hasn't done this since 1962 when Kennedy went out to greet Harold Macmillan. But I think Xi wants a quiet, stable summit. He wants nothing to happen. He doesn't want any military fighting breaking out. Ructions over Taiwan. Certainly ructions over Taiwan. His red line is going to be to try and get Trump to sell out Taiwan. But I can't believe that John Lyons was saying on the ABC that Chinese haven't been providing satellite intelligence to or energy precursors to the Iranians. They just get away with blue murder and the ABC's there to megaphone them.
00:45:13
Speaker 2: If he had not gone out to the tarmac, he would have been criticised. He's been criticised by Democrats for going out to the tarmac. Where would Americans, the general public, be on this, given we've got midterms coming up? Would it even be on their political radar?
00:45:29
Speaker 1: Not really.
00:45:30
Speaker 15: I think they're just so focused on the domestic issues and feel that that's been inadequately served. That's where he's been slipping in the polls and in the support. But as it relates to China, the Trump doctrine has always been he wants to get along with everybody, even adversaries, even rivals.
00:45:45
Speaker 2: The... Jaw, jaw, not wall, wall.
00:45:47
Speaker 15: Yes. And the agenda is very contained, as you said, for this. There might be a little bit of a trade truce or an extension of that trade truce, but it's broadly symbolic pageantry to say we are the world order. And we, it was also deliberate that he did not, Xi Jinping did not go to the UN, which is happening in that same week, skipped it, went straight to Washington. So they're sort of telegraphing that we are the world order, not the UN, and we have to normalise relations.
00:46:08
Speaker 2: Okay. Talk to me about Ukraine. We saw Vladimir Zelensky, meeting a number of leaders, including obviously Prime Minister Albanese. When and how does this Ukraine-Russia war end?
00:46:21
Speaker 14: Well, the end is, in the short term, is quite obvious. This is what Zelensky is going for. And the US administration, at least Rubio seems signed up to, and that is a ceasefire in place. Now, the Ukrainians reckon that the Russians won't stop killing their civilians in the cities. So they've invented these new drones which shoot down Russian drones. They've also decided to hit all Russian infrastructure, including refineries, as far away as Siberia, hoping that the Russians will lose export income and give up. And finally, they've really pushed the Russians in the northern Donbass and reconquered 200 square kilometres near Lyman. So the Ukrainians force it but have a reasonable demand ceasefire in place.
00:47:08
Speaker 2: And then President Trump invites him, Putin, to the G20 in December.
00:47:14
Speaker 15: Yes, in Miami, obviously raises eyebrows, but it goes back to the previous point with Xi, where he does view that, that no matter who you are, adversary, rival, competitor, we want to normalise relations, certainly with a nuclear power.
00:47:26
Speaker 9: Even Mamdani is meeting.
00:47:27
Speaker 15: Yes, even Mamdani and a nuclear power, which is Russia. So it is about re-engaging on the stalled negotiation talks, but it also is about normalising relations. That is Trump's doctrine, and that's why he invited him to Alaska last year, and he's inviting him again here.
00:47:39
Speaker 2: Quick one, media ban, White House media ban.
00:47:42
Speaker 15: The judge ruled this was expected, that you can't do that because of the First Amendment, and I think Trump will just spin it as, well, they deserved it, needed to teach them a lesson, and that's part of, I think, his act and his forte.
00:47:54
Speaker 2: So they'll come back in, but he will be slow to give questions perhaps.
00:48:01
Speaker 15: And he will be insulting, which some would say they deserve.
00:48:04
Speaker 14: He thinks they'll be chastened.
00:48:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:48:07
Speaker 9: All right.
00:48:07
Speaker 2: We'll see if they are. Thank you very much.
00:48:10
Speaker 1: All right.
00:48:10
Speaker 2: Have a lovely weekend, everybody. Enjoy your break. Enjoy the footy of whatever type you like to watch. Up next, of course, James McPherson. I'll see you Monday.
