00:00:08
Speaker 1: Good evening and welcome to the show. I'm Jamie Rogers in for Peter Credlin. She is back tomorrow. Here's what's coming up tonight. Three years since the horrors of October 7, tonight, how the world failed the Jewish community in the years that followed and why anti-Semitism has been allowed to become frighteningly normal. Labor's primary vote crashes to a record low 25%. Could Labor power brokers be considering a leadership challenge for a prime minister under pressure? Plus, the fallout from the ban of credit card surcharge grows with the tax commissioner forced into an emergency meeting as small businesses fight back. New South Wales coal mines could be forced to account for emissions overseas in a landmark climate ruling. But has the High Court crossed the line from interpreting the law to making it?
00:01:06
Speaker 2: The way the Australian law has typically worked in the past is that Australian governments, Australian companies are responsible for the emissions they generate in Australia. Traditionally, the emissions that are generated when that product is sent overseas They count towards that country's emissions rather than Australia's emissions. That's how the whole Paris Agreement works.
00:01:28
Speaker 1: Well, today marks three years since Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel, murdering more than 1,200 people, taking 251 hostages. Families were slaughtered in their homes. Young people hunted down at a music festival. And three years later, look at what's happened. Australia and much of the world has failed the Jewish community. October 7 should have been a moment of absolute moral clarity that we stand with our ally against terrorism. But instead, October 7 became the breeding ground for a new wave of anti-Semitism that's left the Jewish community constantly threatened and attacked. Somehow Hamas disappeared from the story. And instead, much of the world's fury was directed at Israel. And we've watched it happen. This distinction between attacking Israel, attacking Zionism and attacking Jews has become dangerously blurred. In Australia, anti-Semitic incidents have run at more than five times the pre-October 7 average. Across the country, we've seen Jewish businesses, synagogues and even cars defaced. But still, it got worse. On December 14 last year, Jewish Australians gathered at Bondi Beach to celebrate Hanukkah, and 15 people were murdered. So what must it feel like to be a Jewish Australian today? The relentless protests, security at children's sporting matches, police outside schools, security at community events, security outside synagogues. And for many Jewish Australians, These aren't extraordinary precautions anymore. They're normal life. Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Rivchen summed that up on 2GB.
00:03:27
Speaker 3: This is why even on a day like this in a country like ours, when Jewish people have to meet, it's under ridiculous levels of police security because that's the world that we live in, sadly.
00:03:40
Speaker 1: But how the hell do we allow that to become normal in Australia? But the failure didn't stop at protecting Jews here at home. Look at what happened to the international narrative. Israel saw traditional allies, including Australia, turn their pressure towards them. With accusations of genocide, Israel became increasingly isolated internationally. And Benjamin Netanyahu called out what he described as the lies being told about his country in his recent address to the United Nations.
00:04:12
Speaker 4: What genocidal regime gives a million polio vaccinations to the enemy's population. What genocidal regime enables the distribution of two million tons of food into Gaza? That's a ton for every person. Accusing Israel of genocide is the greatest lie of the century.
00:04:37
Speaker 1: And here's the extraordinary thing. In the battle for the international narrative, Hamas succeeded in shifting the world's attention away from their atrocities and instead onto Israel's response. But how is Israel meant to manage the propaganda war when even Australia's foreign minister uses the world stage to direct her condemnation towards them?
00:05:01
Speaker 5: In the West Bank, the situation is worsening. In the first six months of this year alone, settler violence has driven more than 15,000 children from their homes.
00:05:11
Speaker 1: And just days ago, Britain's Green Party went even further. It formally adopted a policy declaring Zionism a form of racism. And it backed the establishment of a single democratic state across historic Palestine, rather than Israel and a Palestinian state existing side by side. So think about where this conversation has ended up. A mainstream British political party has adopted a policy declaring the ideology behind the existence of the Jewish state racist.
00:05:46
Speaker 6: It's not acceptable in my view and in the view of a lot of other people here in the UK. It's shocking, you know, what's actually, I think this has made the Green Party into an explicitly anti-Jewish party because all that Zionism means is the right of the Jewish people to their own homeland. It just means Jewish sovereignty, Jewish self-determination. And if you're a political party that defines yourself against one form of sovereignty, no other, just the Jewish one, that makes you racist in my view. You're singling out the Jewish people and Jewish nationhood for demonisation.
00:06:18
Speaker 1: And while Israel became the focus of global condemnation, Jews were paying the price. In 2025, across seven of the world's largest Jewish diasporas, more than 23,000 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded. It was the deadliest year for anti-Semitic violence in more than three decades. And in the US, a 2025 FBI report revealed that nearly two thirds of all religious based hate crimes were directed at Jews. And what this shows is anti-Semitism isn't a temporary surge. It's a sustained global crisis. And that brings me to what we saw on our streets today and currently right now. Protests in Sydney, Wollongong and Melbourne. Just listen to the words used by the organisers. Stand with the resistance in Palestine. Don't let Israel steal the date. But I'm sorry, Israel didn't steal October 7. Hamas did. And to me, what we saw today wasn't about mourning Palestinians. It was deliberately provocative. And Alex Rivchen didn't mince his words.
00:07:33
Speaker 3: They do it on this day because they choose to do it. They want to do it. They relish inflicting trauma and pain on their fellow Australians. They get a sick thrill out of it. These are the same people who, as October 7 was unfolding, and the good and decent were mortified and shocked by what they were seeing. These people jumped on social media and celebrated and organized the first rally to mark what they called the humiliation of Israel. So They want this day. They want to claim this day. Any decent person would disassociate from it, but they're doing the exact opposite. And in previous years, I was asked what message I have for these people, and I appealed to their sense of shame and their sense of empathy and humanity, and I realized they have none of those things. So if people want to go off and do that and celebrate this day and hold anti-Israel protests on the day that 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered and 250 were dragged off to captivity, let them be exposed and let them be damned for it.
00:08:29
Speaker 1: And organisers were urged to choose another date. And they didn't. And that choice matters. New South Wales opposition leader Kelly Sloan also condemned today's protests. Looking away is not an option.
00:08:46
Speaker 5: And on this day, can I just say shame on you to the people who held protests on this day.
00:08:53
Speaker 1: Of all days. Ms Sloan is right. It is shameful. There are 364 other days to protest. October 7 belongs to the victims of October 7. And if we continue to excuse hatred, normalise intimidation and look the other way, we should be deeply concerned about the country we are. More unintended consequences tonight from a government that doesn't understand how business works. The government wanted the headline, Ban credit card surcharges and save consumers money.
00:09:32
Speaker 7: Every time you tap, those little surcharges add up. Right now, they're costing Aussies $ 1. 6 billion each and every year. But from today, they're banned, saving you money every time you tap. So whether you're at the supermarket paying bills or buying a cup of coffee, the price you see is the.
00:09:50
Speaker 8: Price you pay.
00:09:53
Speaker 1: But here's the problem. They haven't made the card transactions free. They've just decided businesses should wear the cost instead of taking up the fight with the bank and payment providers. And now the cracks are really showing. The ATO will stop accepting credit card payments from November 30. They say they can't afford to absorb the merchant fees. You couldn't make this up. But the backlash is now so serious, the ATO Deputy Commissioner for Small Business, Rowan Fox, was forced to chair a meeting today with more than 20 small business representatives. But one attendee in the meeting has spoken with the Daily Telegraph and said the ATO was completely unwilling to move on the decision and hypersensitive about the way they've buggered up the change. While another said, we basically got nowhere and there are a lot of bleep off people. We need Treasurer Jim Chalmers or the Finance Minister to sort these guys out. Now, Deputy Leader Jane Hume said the ATO should have already met with small businesses before announcing these changes.
00:11:05
Speaker 5: I would have thought that this perhaps would have happened before the announcement was made, before the decision was made. I think that that speaks volumes of what the priorities of government are.
00:11:16
Speaker 1: But today's meeting exposed another serious problem. Small businesses already have payment plans in place with the ATO that allows them to repay their tax debts by credit card. And now with the ATO refusing to accept credit cards, these businesses are now forced to find another way to meet repayments or potentially risk defaulting on their payment plans. So businesses that did the right thing, negotiated a repayment plan, now have the rules changed underneath them. And the consequences also now flow onto renters. Macquarie Bank ended credit card payments through its DEF system, a platform many Australians use to pay their rent. And Macquarie itself said there was no like-for-like alternative for customers who rely on credit to make those payments. Then came the schools. Some private schools have announced that fees will no longer be able to be paid by credit card. And credit cards are the second most common way that parents pay school expenses, with a third of families relying on them at some point. Last night, a small business owner contacted me and said Westfield will no longer accept their rental payments by credit card. Do we see the seriousness of what these changes have done? This is what happens when policy is announced Without understanding how people and businesses actually manage their money in the real world, the government wanted to eliminate a surcharge. And for a small business already operating on wafer-thin margins, it could be the difference between making payroll and not. Because cash flow isn't an accounting technicality, it's survival. Well, let's head to Canberra now for tonight's political headlines with political reporter Cam Redden.
00:13:10
Speaker 9: Good evening. The High Court has delivered a significant judgment, the first of its kind relating to the consideration of greenhouse gas emissions for fossil fuel projects.
00:13:19
Speaker 2: Now this seems to be a novel decision from the High Court and it will take a little bit of time to understand its implications.
00:13:26
Speaker 9: The court ruled on Wednesday that the NSW Planning Commission had made an error in approving the expansion of a Hunter Valley coal mine operated by Mack Energy. The error, they say, was placing inadequate conditions on the project to consider what's known as Scope 3 emissions, that is, emissions produced from Australian coal that's exported and burned overseas. As a result, the expansion cannot proceed unless Mack Energy starts its application process from scratch.
00:13:53
Speaker 6: I mean, what is going to be next?
00:13:54
Speaker 9: Is the High Court or any court of Australia going to shut down our entire mining industry? The Coalition is ruling out further carve-outs for in-demand sectors as it promises the biggest slash to migration in Australian history.
00:14:07
Speaker 6: Every time you provide carve-outs, there are people in this country who've made a business model out of gaming systems.
00:14:13
Speaker 1: Well, sure, but you've got control of that, don't you, Jono? I mean, you could say if you were on the skills list and you have studied that explicitly, we're going to give you a carve-out.
00:14:22
Speaker 6: I do not accept that this is going to somehow cause a skills crisis.
00:14:26
Speaker 9: Cameron Redden, News 24, Canberra.
00:14:31
Speaker 1: Well, for more now on that dramatic decline for Labor and a better understanding of exactly what's led to it, let's bring in our Wednesday panel, Senior Fellow at the Menzies Research Institute, Nick Cater, and Head of Advocacy at Women's Forum Australia, Stephanie Bastian. Welcome to you both. Well, Nick, let's go through these numbers. Labor has dropped 9.6% since the election. That's nearly 1.5 million Australians who will no longer put a one next to Labor as it stands. Talk us through what you think some of the key drivers are here, because I feel like there's a lot of things to pick at here, but what for you is the driving force?
00:15:11
Speaker 10: Well, I think they're clearly losing votes to One Nation principally. And that remains, I think, the case that this is over immigration. Energy prices, of course, a big one. General running of the economy and the effect of these broken promises on property investors, largely mum and dad investors who invest for their retirement. So these are the people that are moving to One Nation. But I think what we're seeing now is a movement of Labour voters to the Greens with the new leader, David Shoebridge, who made that explicit appeal. He said he wanted to become the default party of the centre left. Of course, anybody on the left of the Labour Party will be tempted to move over to the purer party. So this is a terrible, terrible situation for Labour to find itself in, attacked at both ends. If it moves to one constituency, it loses the other and vice versa.
00:16:07
Speaker 1: You know, Stephanie, there's so much commentary around how it's so dire for the coalition at the moment. They're sitting there at 21%. But Labor, they really need to be looking at their numbers as well because they're in a world of pain. What do you think they need to be doing to start clawing some of these voters back and stopping them from going over to the Greens or One Nation?
00:16:30
Speaker 5: Look, you know, Jamie, I'm not sure if it's possible. Labor used to be the party of the worker. Now they're the party of the elites. You look at climate change, for example. They're bought into that hook, line and sinker. Yet people in Labor held seats haven't had, you know, I know of people who haven't had peeing this winter because they're still paying off last year's electricity bill. There are mums and dads on two income topping up their pantry at food bank. Labor is so out of touch. But what is going on in these communities? I mean, sport, another issue. I've spoken to so many parents in the last week where their girls are being at risk of being injured by male players or they're losing their spots to male players in sport. We obviously had the big judgment, the high court refused to overturn or have a hearing for Sal Grover's case. And so now we have a situation where girls do not have the legal right to single sex sports and spaces and they don't want to deal with this. They are so out of touch. They are locked in with their elite groups and their powerful lobby groups and they are ignoring the fact that Australians are suffering not only from these social issues but also in the economy as well. I don't think they can fix this.
00:17:38
Speaker 1: Well, let's take a look now at the migration policy that was unveiled yesterday by the Coalition. And, Nick, it's a real line in the sand moment. You know, we've obviously been calling for this policy for a little while. And Pauline Hansard then today lifted the stakes by releasing some modelling showing that her policy will save renters between $ 2, 000 and just under $ 4, 500 a year. We now have three very clear different choices here. The decision now is who's going to be able to prosecute the most and get the cut through, and ultimately who voters will back.
00:18:14
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think the Coalition's policy seems to me to hit the ball straight down the middle of the park and get this right. They're focusing on skilled workers. They're focusing on people who will be net contributors to the Australian economy and will therefore be net taxpayers to the Australian economy and will have a minimal effect actually on the economic outlook. But we have never had a guest worker policy in this country, not since 1788. We've always emphasised skill migration. And what we have now is a lot of people coming in for lower skilled jobs, filling up those kind of jobs. That is not the way we've run immigration up to now. And if we go down that path, we end up where we are with far too many migrants. I think that the One Nation's modelling, well, broadly, you'd think it's correct. If you reduce migration, you will reduce rental prices. But I wouldn't be putting too much store on those numbers. I see they've modelled those in-house, as it were. So I'd like to see how they got to those figures, because I don't think we should put any great faith in the accuracy of those.
00:19:19
Speaker 1: Well, Steph, we do have Senator Nampochimpa Price coming on shortly, but the Coalition has said that they're going to cut it down to 100,000 for two years. And there has been criticism regarding the skilled visa holders having to leave the country and then reapply. Do you think the Coalition should create some carve out so that the industries that we really need here aren't leaving and then having to come back?
00:19:45
Speaker 5: Look, I think any immigration policy needs to be seamless in how it's executed. That is certainly something that they should consider. If there are issues with people having to come and go, it then becomes very messy and it becomes a message that they can't sell very well. I think what the Coalition will have to grapple with, though, is that it's very obvious that One Nation's led the debate on immigration and they're well and truly committed behind the eight ball in delivering something tangible to voters. But what they need to do is they need to get their backbench in line because you have, you know, for example, Andrew McLaughlin and Paul Scar and these other Liberals leaking and briefing outlets like The Guardian when Angus Taylor does come forward with an immigration policy. So I think the public then lose faith that they're actually going to be able to deliver on this.
00:20:34
Speaker 11: So.
00:20:35
Speaker 5: In terms of the coalition being able to present something that the public are going to have faith in, they're going to have to really clean up their back room.
00:20:45
Speaker 1: Nick, today marks the third anniversary of the horrific attacks in Israel. Yet protesters have picked today to hold vigils for Gaza. Israel's ambassador to Australia is amongst those that are fiercely condemning these protests. There's one right now that's happening in Sydney. What do you make of organisers choosing today of all days to be out protesting?
00:21:12
Speaker 10: These are sick fanatics. That's all I can say about them. I mean, we remember the shock of October 7th and we know why we were shocked because of the terrible... events that happened in Israel by Hamas, by Palestinians, at the hands of Palestinians, brutal, sadistic, you know, well, we know what they were. And to be out there trying to claim this day as somehow sort of a liberation day for Palestine or whatever else they're carrying on with. These people have got no sensitivity. They've got no knowledge of history, no understanding of the complexity of the situation in the Middle East. And quite frankly, I think they should just pack up their banners and go home and leave the streets for people who just want to observe this peacefully and for people that are attending services this evening in memory of those terrible events.
00:22:00
Speaker 1: And Steph, what are your thoughts about what you're seeing? We have got some live vision playing now for our viewers at home. But it's a shameful, shameful day, I think, that we've got protesters who decide today is the day to be out there.
00:22:15
Speaker 5: Oh, absolutely. I think Nick summed it up perfectly. But I mean, we all saw what happened on October 7th. Over a thousand people murdered, hundreds taken hostage, rape used as a weapon of war against women. It was an absolute travesty what happened. And these people have hijacked the capital cities week after week for years since this has happened. And to hijack today of all days while a community, the Jewish community, is still grieving is just a disgrace.
00:22:43
Speaker 1: It really is, and we'll keep everyone at home up to date on those protests. Steph and Nick, thank you so much for your time tonight. All right, well, back to the Coalition's migration policy that was unveiled by Angus Taylor yesterday, and there were promises to offer a pathway out of the record intake and the pressure on housing and households. Here to discuss it is Shadow Minister of Skills and Training, Jacinta Nampochimpa-Price. Senator, welcome. It was definitely a long time coming, but we have got those numbers that has been released by your team. One of those, it's the pledge to allow 100,000 for the first two years and then progressively increase the intake after that. There's been some business groups that have warned the cuts could potentially worsen some workforce shortages, in particular the aged care and essential sectors. What do you make about some of those criticism?
00:23:41
Speaker 12: Yeah, look, The Coalition, we have worked very hard because what we want to do is ensure that we are delivering the biggest cut in immigration in our country's history and off the back of the fact that we have dealt with immigration as the Coalition in government previously very successfully and we want to continue that success going forward. So what we want to do is ensure that we are... What we've set out to do in this particular policy is address those problems those concerns in particular in terms of workforce shortages around the country, which we have listened to with small business right around the nation. So it's about strengthening our economy, delivering in terms of the workforce and improving on our social cohesion in our country. off the back of the fact that we've had a Prime Minister who has brought in 1.5 million more immigrants into our country. That's roughly the population of Adelaide, where our infrastructure has suffered as a result, our social cohesion has suffered as a result. But we want the skilled workforce, which is really important, especially where those workforce shortages exist. So we are effectively addressing those issues through.
00:24:55
Speaker 1: This migration, immigration program. that we are delivering.
00:25:00
Speaker 12: And also, as the Shadow Minister for Skills and Training, I know how important it is that this is one measure through our immigration, but that we also have to ensure that our Australian homegrown workforce is grown.
00:25:15
Speaker 1: Another area where there has been.
00:25:16
Speaker 12: A huge, this has been hugely disappointment from the current government, who has managed to shrink the workforce, which is why we've got these shortages that exist. So if we can do that in terms of immigration, as well as grow our workforce, a homegrown workforce in Australia, that is the aim going forward. But in terms of immigration, we are effectively addressing those issues. We have had the PBO analyse our policy to determine to make sure that we are supporting our economy going forward and those workforce shortages.
00:25:52
Speaker 1: Senator, I want to look now at this backlash over the surcharge charges. Small business owners, they've been going on the attack and so they should going hard on social media. I even had one business owner reach out to me last night saying Westfield's now not going to accept credit card payments for their rent. What are you hearing from small business about the impact that this is going to have on them?
00:26:18
Speaker 12: Look, small business has been doing it incredibly tough under the Albanese government. You know, in the last 12 months, almost 40% of small businesses paid themselves less than $ 40, 000 or close to nothing in terms of their own wages. We're seeing an increase in insolvencies by the day, by the week going forward. And this is yet another kick in the guts for small businesses. where they have to absorb those costs somehow and for the ATO to then turn around and say that they're not going to accept credit card payments is a cash flow issue effectively for small business because they need to utilise their own credit card payment system to pay for things like to deal with BAS, to deal with PAYG and other tax obligations that they're affected with. So The government really needs to sort this out. The ATO needs to sort this out because the uncertainty is causing an environment whereby small businesses are looking to close the doors. In the coming 12 months, I've spoken to a lot of small businesses who are saying, you know, we've got to the point where we're likely going to shut the doors. We don't even want to pass on our business to our children because it's just too difficult. And they're talking about advising their kids to go on and get a government job. I mean, it's a terrible situation when the private sector's big competitor, the biggest competitor is the government itself, when the government should be getting out of the way and making life easier for small businesses to get on with employing Australians, providing apprenticeships and providing opportunity. It's just a really disappointing time right now.
00:28:05
Speaker 1: And reports coming out of this meeting today with the ATO and those 20 small businesses, And they've said that the ATO aren't going to be reversing their plans to stop credit card payments. What can the Coalition do? What can you do to get Labor to at least talk to people and consider pulling this back? Because it feels to me that it's an element of them not understanding the severity of what they've done. So how do we make them realise and get them to... Look, they've changed their position before. How do we get them to do it again?
00:28:38
Speaker 12: Look, Jamie, I think it's worse than that. I think it's not that they don't understand. They understand exactly what they are doing. It's the fact that they just don't care about small business. And, you know, we would absolutely scrap Labor's toxic taxes, ensure that these decisions are overturned. We're going to back in small business and continue to fight the government. We've got Senate estimates coming up very shortly. I'll be putting questions to the ATO and to the government on what they're effectively doing. We've seen backflips occur already in other policy areas. We're going to make sure that we fight hard for small business to get this overturned because it shouldn't be this difficult. But like I said, we will get rid of Labor's toxic taxes. We will scrap, we'll slash regulation where we know that it's unnecessary and it's causing a burden to small business. And we want to make sure that we get out of the way. A coalition government would get out of the way of small business and create an environment where it's going to support them to get on with the work that they need to do.
00:29:45
Speaker 1: That's what we would do. Well, Senator, small businesses, they certainly need you to be standing up for them and fighting for them. So keep up the great work. We'll chat to you again soon. All right, after the break, we will cross to Tel Aviv to see how Israelis have commemorated the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks. That's next. Welcome back. It's great to have your company. Coming up, we'll cross to Perth for a closer look at the Land Forces exhibition. But now to the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks in Israel, a day of terror that sparked a new era of warfare for the Middle East and an alarming rise of anti-Semitism around the world, including here in Australia. David Ehrlich grew up in suburban Melbourne but moved to Israel in the mid-90s. He now lives in a district that's about 10 kilometres east of Tel Aviv. We spoke to him last year when he was forced into bomb shelters as Iran launched its missile attacks on Tel Aviv. I'm pleased to say he joins us again. David, welcome. It's a sad time for Jewish Israelis and indeed the entire nation. Three years on, what's the mood like on the ground?
00:31:06
Speaker 11: I would say this... People are very, very solemn. There's a lot of emotion. There's a bit of grief. There are a lot of mixed feelings. People are asking questions still as how this happens. People are still digesting it, not understanding what went on and how it got through, you know, one of the toughest security systems in the world. Solemnity, emotion, grief and optimism for the future too.
00:31:31
Speaker 1: And I know just last week you visited many of the sites where these attacks took place. including what's now a car cemetery. So all the vehicles that were targeted that day are now all together. Tell us about this place.
00:31:46
Speaker 11: It's quite a remarkable place, the car cemetery. It became a car cemetery actually I think by accident because what happened is there were a lot of burnt out cars. There were people in the cars who were murdered by the terrorists and then the terrorists set the cars on fire with the dead people in them and they started bringing them to this lot and often it was very, very difficult to identify people in the cars because there was nothing left but ash. Sorry, I'm saying such terrible things on the show, but that's what it is. Anyway, someone had the idea to aggregate all the cars and put them together and create it as a memorial. Most of the cars are totally burnt out as you saw in the background. Some of them, there was a little bit of them left, so they put them in the front so people could see. They actually also had one of the vans of, terrorists, which was absolutely creepy and chilling to see, you know, amongst all these Israeli cars, which you can see are bullet-ridden, burnt out, no one in them survived, nothing. And then you see this big black terrorist car further down. You just have feelings of revulsion when you see it. You think there were people in those cars. They were once cars, made people happy. Horrific, horrific feeling. The stories behind them are absolutely brutal.
00:33:06
Speaker 1: And it would be so confronting standing there looking at all of those cars in front of you. The Bibas family, David, I really struggle looking at videos of those children. I'm a mum of two young boys and I find it really difficult looking at what happened to them. But there has been a memorial that's been set up. Can you please tell us about that?
00:33:28
Speaker 11: Yes, the memorial is... Well, as we went to visit it last week, and as our tour guide says, it leaves you with a box in your stomach. It's the footprints of the mother, her actual footprints and the actual footprints of her two children. And he set them in concrete because he said when they were kidnapped, their footprints were in sand and he didn't want the footprints to blow away. He wanted them to be immortalized forever. He took, I think, models of their shoes and made their footprints. So the footprints are actually 100% authentic. And with the baby, you can see this four footprints because when babies crawl, they sort of, their feet face backwards. So he set it as with the hands on the ground, as you can see, and then the feet facing backwards, because that's how a baby crawls. And he set it in concrete so it would never be blown away. The concentric circles are supposed to mark the passage of time. So the closest circle around the footprints represent now. And his idea was that as time passes and the circles, you know, go out, each circle is another year, another year, another year, another period, another epoch, that their memory will always remain intact. So they should never be forgotten. That was the idea behind the artist who did it, the sculptor who did it. When you look at it, you just look. You can't say anything. You know there were these two little children and their mother. You remember the redhead child there. Quite confronting. You just look at it and you don't see anything. There's nothing you can see.
00:35:01
Speaker 1: No, even just looking at it then, I find it even just quite confronting and emotional just looking at it through the TV. But tell us about the memorial at the Nova Music site. And you've said that the landscape there is actually quite similar to Australia and, in fact, poppies grow there seasonally.
00:35:18
Speaker 11: That is correct. The Western Negev, which is the southern western part of Israel, is full of eucalypt trees and the area looks very much like Australia with sort of same coloured sand and that sort of thing. During the winter, after the red, no sorry, just after the winter, come spring, the area is full of red poppies because the area is quite fertile. The sculptor there, the artist there, put these metal red poppies down and in the middle of them he put black poppies. He put the red poppies to symbolise hope and to symbolise what the area usually looks like. And he put black poppies in the middle to symbolise, you know, the burning and the suffering and the slaughter which had happened there. When you look at the Nova site, you see pictures, posters with little scan QR codes on them.
00:36:13
Speaker 5: And.
00:36:14
Speaker 11: then you can get the story behind each person. And instead of seeing a person, a live person, what you see is just this poster with a stake in the ground. And you read about this person. People just, they see a eucalypt tree very much reminiscent of Australian landscape. People just read about the people and you just walk through it. You have nothing to say. What they did in this picture is at the actual party, there were Coca-Cola freezers. And as you see, and they glued the bottles together that people were drinking, be it Coke, be it Corona, be it beer, whatever it happened to be, and left them on the fridges and on the tables as they were when the terrorists came. So I think you see a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of wine, a bottle of Coke, whatever it happens to be there. It's just like time is frozen, absolutely frozen. I mean, what was a very pastoral and very touristy sort of site, a very picnic-y site, a very family site, has just been turned into a, well, a harrowing experience, quite frankly. And the interesting thing is it's actually near the Anzac, the Australian Anzac Memorial, which is probably about a five-minute drive, if that, from there. So we often used to go and visit the Anzac Memorial, especially around Anzac Day. We used to take the kids there. Now you're confronted with this and that, and you remember the bravery of those soldiers, and then you see the actual sorrow of what these people were trying to defend once upon a time, you know, in the First World War. It's quite a contrast.
00:37:43
Speaker 1: And David, before I let you go, what is your hope for Israel now three years on from this devastating attack?
00:37:51
Speaker 11: That's a nice question, a very good question. Israel is here to stay. On a personal level, Israel, you know, every year they have the happy countries in the world. Israel, year after year after year, is voted in the top 10 happy countries of the world, up there with the Scandinavian countries and that sort of thing. Regardless of the fact that they're suffering this terrorist attack and what the Iranians did and this sort of thing, people are full of hope. People are full of cooperation. People get on with each other. There's a lot of intergenerational living. There's a lot of support. And if it's public support, private support, there's the we... mentality as opposed to the me mentality. And that's what makes Israel a very, very happy place at the end of the day. And I hope that that is what is going to conquer all this sorrow. And that is what's going to continue and be a light to the nations and infect other countries to make other countries happy too. The spirit of cooperation that goes on here and that is not going to be destroyed by this horrific terrorist attack. The terrorists are the ones who need to be punished, and the general population of Israel and of the world, peace-loving and good-loving people, fun-loving people, will keep going on forever. But I think that's the message. That's my message. Those are my thoughts.
00:39:20
Speaker 1: Well, it's a lovely message to end on. David, I really appreciate your time on what's a very tricky day.
00:39:25
Speaker 11: Thank you very much. Thank you for your amazing work. It's holy work that you do.
00:39:29
Speaker 6: Thank you.
00:39:30
Speaker 1: Thank you, David. Well, after the break, we'll cross to Perth, which has this week hosted the Land Forces Exhibition and not without controversy. That's next. Welcome back. Coming up is Week with Kel Richards with words. But first, tributes have flown for the father, an aspiring Army medical technician who died in the Northern Territory on Monday. Corporal Brendan Hannam. was a junior non-commissioned officer with the 5th and 7th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment and died as a result of a single vehicle rollover. Here to discuss this and more, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry and Defence Personnel, Phil Thompson. Phil, welcome. Corporal Hannam's death shows that men and women in uniform put their lives on the line even when they're not on a mission and no doubt his death will be widely felt, won't it?
00:40:32
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
00:40:33
Speaker 13: And my heart is with his family and his brothers. You know, this is a tragic accident that has occurred, but it reminds the nation that our brave men and women, whilst training, are also putting themselves at risk. The Australian Defence Force does dangerous things cautiously and it's always sad when tragedy strikes and we lose someone during training.
00:41:01
Speaker 1: Do you think Defence does enough to prevent training deaths like this one?
00:41:06
Speaker 13: I think that Defence has a lot of guardrails up in general, but we've got to also remember that we want people to train how they will fight. And being in the ADF, being in the Army, it is inherently risky. I know from my time in one area, based in Townsville, You do risky things, you do dangerous things cautiously and sometimes tragedy happens and sometimes people get injured and in this case someone has lost their life and that is something that no one will ever forget and his unit, his friends, his family, they'll always be with them in their heart. We want to make sure that when we are training we are doing it in a manner that is safe or safe enough what it can be for military training. But right now my focus is on providing any support that is needed to those that he's served with and his family.
00:42:09
Speaker 1: Well, Phil, you've been in Perth where the Land Forces exhibition has been hosted and we've seen protesters yet again, although they weren't as many as what we saw last time when it was in Melbourne. But organisers, they were ready this time around. But just tell us why this convention is so important.
00:42:29
Speaker 13: Well, it's important to showcase military defence industry from not just Australia, but around the world. And we as a small island nation need to have a very capable defence industry and defence force. We have the bravest, most equipped and smartest men and women that I think in any military around the world. But I want to make sure that they have the best equipment because if the balloon goes up, whether it's overseas or on our shore, they need to be able to fight. They need to be able to win. They need to be the most lethal on the battlefield. So having defence industry showcase what they could have or what they could have that is different I think, is extremely important. But it's more important that the end user, the warfighter, the person that uses the equipment, is on the ground looking at it and saying, this is what we would like. It was a bit disappointing to see Richard Miles and Pat Conroy, the Labor ministers in charge, run up and down the corridor very quickly and then get out of there. They didn't spend much time on the ground speaking to the end user or to defence industry. And I think That highlights what defence industry has been telling me and my colleagues like James Patterson and Leah Bly that the money seems like it's tied up elsewhere. And that's quite disappointing.
00:43:50
Speaker 1: Well, tell us, when you have been at this expo, is Australia leading the pack here in any area when it comes to Arsenal or any of the machinery that people can learn from us?
00:44:05
Speaker 13: Yeah, definitely around some areas. some drone defence side. We have some very capable organisations that have worked around the world in defence of drones and drones are the the new frontier at the moment on the battle space. So I would like to see more of these organisations used by the Australian Defence Force and through the Minister's office rather than other nations picking up these contracts. But these defence industry capability shows, you know, very large ones, showcase the SMEs, the small businesses who are the experts, all the way to the primes. But it's really great to see them when they start working together and putting the end user at the forefront of any decisions.
00:44:51
Speaker 1: Just quickly, Phil, it seems as though some momentum is shifting on Labor's unpopular fire sale of these defence assets. Do you think there's a chance that Victoria Barracks and some of these other sites, like HMAS Penguin and Lancer Barracks, could be saved?
00:45:06
Speaker 13: Well, I'd hope so. I think Richard Miles, Labor's Defence Minister, made some terrible comments that are very uneducated and something that is quite unbecoming of the Defence Minister, calling... Victoria Barracks, an old wine cellar. You know, this is our history that he's talking about. This is something that shouldn't be at a fire sale to rush out the door to prop up a bad budget. I'd hope that they will listen to the Coalition and to veterans and Defence Force members around the country and stop this fire sale of our Defence Force estates.
00:45:36
Speaker 1: And for all the viewers out there, there is a rally to save HMAS Penguin on Sunday in Balmoral and Senator Paterson has a petition on his website. And I had a look this afternoon and there's been more than 100,000 people that have signed it. So the fight is certainly not going to stop. Phil Thompson will speak to you again soon.
00:45:54
Speaker 9: All right.
00:45:55
Speaker 1: After the break, there is plenty of words to get through with Kel Richards. All right, let's get into it with our resident wordsmith and News24 presenter, Kel Richards. Kel, welcome. I've had a little bit of a look and there's some great, great words in here. Let's start off with Bruce wants to know the meaning behind back in a jiffy and why we say it.
00:46:22
Speaker 8: Well, it all revolves around the idea of using the word jiffy to mean a very short period of time. It was suggested to me it might come from Jiffy Firelighters, which is a lovely idea, but they were only invented, I have to tell you, in 1972. And the word Jiffy for a short period of time goes back to 1780, well before that. It started off as... Now, there are a whole lot of theories. I've got to say that other people will give you different theories. This is the one that appeals to me and I think is right. It started off as thieves slang for lightning. Lightning. So a thief who was very quick at nipping in and out of a house would say, I'll be in and out like lightning or in and out in a jiffy. Jiffy meaning lightning. So something very fast and very brief, like a flash of lightning. And I think it migrated from thief slang into our our main language. And the electronics industry has these days given it a specific number. According to the electronics people, a jiffy is now exactly 1 60th of a second. So when you're offering to do something in a jiffy, you know how long you're offering to do it in.
00:47:23
Speaker 1: Oh, I love it. The other one's from Graham, and he said that he spotted a beer called a brouhaha. Now, obviously a bit of a play on words, but what's the story behind it?
00:47:32
Speaker 8: A brouhaha is interesting. It's been in French since the 16th century, but only came into English around 1890 in a book by Oliver Wendell Holmes. And in French, it was used in drama on stage. And when the devil appeared on stage, his cry would be brouhaha. And there are two theories. One is, and the one that I think is correct is, it probably comes from a Hebrew word, which meant welcome. And it was the idea of the devil welcoming you or inviting you into his realm. The alternative suggestion, which I don't, I think it's unlikely. It says it comes from the bull baiting arena and was a taunt at the bull and is based on the Spanish-Italian word bravo. But I like the other explanations. It started off as the devil doing this brouhaha. Consequently, anything which is a riotous mess is a bit of a brouhaha. And the idea of a brewing company labelling their brew a brouhaha is just really, really clever. Well done.
00:48:27
Speaker 1: Well, Kel, love it. Thank you for those words tonight. It is now time for The Bolt Report.
Speaker 1: Good evening and welcome to the show. I'm Jamie Rogers in for Peter Credlin. She is back tomorrow. Here's what's coming up tonight. Three years since the horrors of October 7, tonight, how the world failed the Jewish community in the years that followed and why anti-Semitism has been allowed to become frighteningly normal. Labor's primary vote crashes to a record low 25%. Could Labor power brokers be considering a leadership challenge for a prime minister under pressure? Plus, the fallout from the ban of credit card surcharge grows with the tax commissioner forced into an emergency meeting as small businesses fight back. New South Wales coal mines could be forced to account for emissions overseas in a landmark climate ruling. But has the High Court crossed the line from interpreting the law to making it?
00:01:06
Speaker 2: The way the Australian law has typically worked in the past is that Australian governments, Australian companies are responsible for the emissions they generate in Australia. Traditionally, the emissions that are generated when that product is sent overseas They count towards that country's emissions rather than Australia's emissions. That's how the whole Paris Agreement works.
00:01:28
Speaker 1: Well, today marks three years since Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel, murdering more than 1,200 people, taking 251 hostages. Families were slaughtered in their homes. Young people hunted down at a music festival. And three years later, look at what's happened. Australia and much of the world has failed the Jewish community. October 7 should have been a moment of absolute moral clarity that we stand with our ally against terrorism. But instead, October 7 became the breeding ground for a new wave of anti-Semitism that's left the Jewish community constantly threatened and attacked. Somehow Hamas disappeared from the story. And instead, much of the world's fury was directed at Israel. And we've watched it happen. This distinction between attacking Israel, attacking Zionism and attacking Jews has become dangerously blurred. In Australia, anti-Semitic incidents have run at more than five times the pre-October 7 average. Across the country, we've seen Jewish businesses, synagogues and even cars defaced. But still, it got worse. On December 14 last year, Jewish Australians gathered at Bondi Beach to celebrate Hanukkah, and 15 people were murdered. So what must it feel like to be a Jewish Australian today? The relentless protests, security at children's sporting matches, police outside schools, security at community events, security outside synagogues. And for many Jewish Australians, These aren't extraordinary precautions anymore. They're normal life. Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Rivchen summed that up on 2GB.
00:03:27
Speaker 3: This is why even on a day like this in a country like ours, when Jewish people have to meet, it's under ridiculous levels of police security because that's the world that we live in, sadly.
00:03:40
Speaker 1: But how the hell do we allow that to become normal in Australia? But the failure didn't stop at protecting Jews here at home. Look at what happened to the international narrative. Israel saw traditional allies, including Australia, turn their pressure towards them. With accusations of genocide, Israel became increasingly isolated internationally. And Benjamin Netanyahu called out what he described as the lies being told about his country in his recent address to the United Nations.
00:04:12
Speaker 4: What genocidal regime gives a million polio vaccinations to the enemy's population. What genocidal regime enables the distribution of two million tons of food into Gaza? That's a ton for every person. Accusing Israel of genocide is the greatest lie of the century.
00:04:37
Speaker 1: And here's the extraordinary thing. In the battle for the international narrative, Hamas succeeded in shifting the world's attention away from their atrocities and instead onto Israel's response. But how is Israel meant to manage the propaganda war when even Australia's foreign minister uses the world stage to direct her condemnation towards them?
00:05:01
Speaker 5: In the West Bank, the situation is worsening. In the first six months of this year alone, settler violence has driven more than 15,000 children from their homes.
00:05:11
Speaker 1: And just days ago, Britain's Green Party went even further. It formally adopted a policy declaring Zionism a form of racism. And it backed the establishment of a single democratic state across historic Palestine, rather than Israel and a Palestinian state existing side by side. So think about where this conversation has ended up. A mainstream British political party has adopted a policy declaring the ideology behind the existence of the Jewish state racist.
00:05:46
Speaker 6: It's not acceptable in my view and in the view of a lot of other people here in the UK. It's shocking, you know, what's actually, I think this has made the Green Party into an explicitly anti-Jewish party because all that Zionism means is the right of the Jewish people to their own homeland. It just means Jewish sovereignty, Jewish self-determination. And if you're a political party that defines yourself against one form of sovereignty, no other, just the Jewish one, that makes you racist in my view. You're singling out the Jewish people and Jewish nationhood for demonisation.
00:06:18
Speaker 1: And while Israel became the focus of global condemnation, Jews were paying the price. In 2025, across seven of the world's largest Jewish diasporas, more than 23,000 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded. It was the deadliest year for anti-Semitic violence in more than three decades. And in the US, a 2025 FBI report revealed that nearly two thirds of all religious based hate crimes were directed at Jews. And what this shows is anti-Semitism isn't a temporary surge. It's a sustained global crisis. And that brings me to what we saw on our streets today and currently right now. Protests in Sydney, Wollongong and Melbourne. Just listen to the words used by the organisers. Stand with the resistance in Palestine. Don't let Israel steal the date. But I'm sorry, Israel didn't steal October 7. Hamas did. And to me, what we saw today wasn't about mourning Palestinians. It was deliberately provocative. And Alex Rivchen didn't mince his words.
00:07:33
Speaker 3: They do it on this day because they choose to do it. They want to do it. They relish inflicting trauma and pain on their fellow Australians. They get a sick thrill out of it. These are the same people who, as October 7 was unfolding, and the good and decent were mortified and shocked by what they were seeing. These people jumped on social media and celebrated and organized the first rally to mark what they called the humiliation of Israel. So They want this day. They want to claim this day. Any decent person would disassociate from it, but they're doing the exact opposite. And in previous years, I was asked what message I have for these people, and I appealed to their sense of shame and their sense of empathy and humanity, and I realized they have none of those things. So if people want to go off and do that and celebrate this day and hold anti-Israel protests on the day that 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered and 250 were dragged off to captivity, let them be exposed and let them be damned for it.
00:08:29
Speaker 1: And organisers were urged to choose another date. And they didn't. And that choice matters. New South Wales opposition leader Kelly Sloan also condemned today's protests. Looking away is not an option.
00:08:46
Speaker 5: And on this day, can I just say shame on you to the people who held protests on this day.
00:08:53
Speaker 1: Of all days. Ms Sloan is right. It is shameful. There are 364 other days to protest. October 7 belongs to the victims of October 7. And if we continue to excuse hatred, normalise intimidation and look the other way, we should be deeply concerned about the country we are. More unintended consequences tonight from a government that doesn't understand how business works. The government wanted the headline, Ban credit card surcharges and save consumers money.
00:09:32
Speaker 7: Every time you tap, those little surcharges add up. Right now, they're costing Aussies $ 1. 6 billion each and every year. But from today, they're banned, saving you money every time you tap. So whether you're at the supermarket paying bills or buying a cup of coffee, the price you see is the.
00:09:50
Speaker 8: Price you pay.
00:09:53
Speaker 1: But here's the problem. They haven't made the card transactions free. They've just decided businesses should wear the cost instead of taking up the fight with the bank and payment providers. And now the cracks are really showing. The ATO will stop accepting credit card payments from November 30. They say they can't afford to absorb the merchant fees. You couldn't make this up. But the backlash is now so serious, the ATO Deputy Commissioner for Small Business, Rowan Fox, was forced to chair a meeting today with more than 20 small business representatives. But one attendee in the meeting has spoken with the Daily Telegraph and said the ATO was completely unwilling to move on the decision and hypersensitive about the way they've buggered up the change. While another said, we basically got nowhere and there are a lot of bleep off people. We need Treasurer Jim Chalmers or the Finance Minister to sort these guys out. Now, Deputy Leader Jane Hume said the ATO should have already met with small businesses before announcing these changes.
00:11:05
Speaker 5: I would have thought that this perhaps would have happened before the announcement was made, before the decision was made. I think that that speaks volumes of what the priorities of government are.
00:11:16
Speaker 1: But today's meeting exposed another serious problem. Small businesses already have payment plans in place with the ATO that allows them to repay their tax debts by credit card. And now with the ATO refusing to accept credit cards, these businesses are now forced to find another way to meet repayments or potentially risk defaulting on their payment plans. So businesses that did the right thing, negotiated a repayment plan, now have the rules changed underneath them. And the consequences also now flow onto renters. Macquarie Bank ended credit card payments through its DEF system, a platform many Australians use to pay their rent. And Macquarie itself said there was no like-for-like alternative for customers who rely on credit to make those payments. Then came the schools. Some private schools have announced that fees will no longer be able to be paid by credit card. And credit cards are the second most common way that parents pay school expenses, with a third of families relying on them at some point. Last night, a small business owner contacted me and said Westfield will no longer accept their rental payments by credit card. Do we see the seriousness of what these changes have done? This is what happens when policy is announced Without understanding how people and businesses actually manage their money in the real world, the government wanted to eliminate a surcharge. And for a small business already operating on wafer-thin margins, it could be the difference between making payroll and not. Because cash flow isn't an accounting technicality, it's survival. Well, let's head to Canberra now for tonight's political headlines with political reporter Cam Redden.
00:13:10
Speaker 9: Good evening. The High Court has delivered a significant judgment, the first of its kind relating to the consideration of greenhouse gas emissions for fossil fuel projects.
00:13:19
Speaker 2: Now this seems to be a novel decision from the High Court and it will take a little bit of time to understand its implications.
00:13:26
Speaker 9: The court ruled on Wednesday that the NSW Planning Commission had made an error in approving the expansion of a Hunter Valley coal mine operated by Mack Energy. The error, they say, was placing inadequate conditions on the project to consider what's known as Scope 3 emissions, that is, emissions produced from Australian coal that's exported and burned overseas. As a result, the expansion cannot proceed unless Mack Energy starts its application process from scratch.
00:13:53
Speaker 6: I mean, what is going to be next?
00:13:54
Speaker 9: Is the High Court or any court of Australia going to shut down our entire mining industry? The Coalition is ruling out further carve-outs for in-demand sectors as it promises the biggest slash to migration in Australian history.
00:14:07
Speaker 6: Every time you provide carve-outs, there are people in this country who've made a business model out of gaming systems.
00:14:13
Speaker 1: Well, sure, but you've got control of that, don't you, Jono? I mean, you could say if you were on the skills list and you have studied that explicitly, we're going to give you a carve-out.
00:14:22
Speaker 6: I do not accept that this is going to somehow cause a skills crisis.
00:14:26
Speaker 9: Cameron Redden, News 24, Canberra.
00:14:31
Speaker 1: Well, for more now on that dramatic decline for Labor and a better understanding of exactly what's led to it, let's bring in our Wednesday panel, Senior Fellow at the Menzies Research Institute, Nick Cater, and Head of Advocacy at Women's Forum Australia, Stephanie Bastian. Welcome to you both. Well, Nick, let's go through these numbers. Labor has dropped 9.6% since the election. That's nearly 1.5 million Australians who will no longer put a one next to Labor as it stands. Talk us through what you think some of the key drivers are here, because I feel like there's a lot of things to pick at here, but what for you is the driving force?
00:15:11
Speaker 10: Well, I think they're clearly losing votes to One Nation principally. And that remains, I think, the case that this is over immigration. Energy prices, of course, a big one. General running of the economy and the effect of these broken promises on property investors, largely mum and dad investors who invest for their retirement. So these are the people that are moving to One Nation. But I think what we're seeing now is a movement of Labour voters to the Greens with the new leader, David Shoebridge, who made that explicit appeal. He said he wanted to become the default party of the centre left. Of course, anybody on the left of the Labour Party will be tempted to move over to the purer party. So this is a terrible, terrible situation for Labour to find itself in, attacked at both ends. If it moves to one constituency, it loses the other and vice versa.
00:16:07
Speaker 1: You know, Stephanie, there's so much commentary around how it's so dire for the coalition at the moment. They're sitting there at 21%. But Labor, they really need to be looking at their numbers as well because they're in a world of pain. What do you think they need to be doing to start clawing some of these voters back and stopping them from going over to the Greens or One Nation?
00:16:30
Speaker 5: Look, you know, Jamie, I'm not sure if it's possible. Labor used to be the party of the worker. Now they're the party of the elites. You look at climate change, for example. They're bought into that hook, line and sinker. Yet people in Labor held seats haven't had, you know, I know of people who haven't had peeing this winter because they're still paying off last year's electricity bill. There are mums and dads on two income topping up their pantry at food bank. Labor is so out of touch. But what is going on in these communities? I mean, sport, another issue. I've spoken to so many parents in the last week where their girls are being at risk of being injured by male players or they're losing their spots to male players in sport. We obviously had the big judgment, the high court refused to overturn or have a hearing for Sal Grover's case. And so now we have a situation where girls do not have the legal right to single sex sports and spaces and they don't want to deal with this. They are so out of touch. They are locked in with their elite groups and their powerful lobby groups and they are ignoring the fact that Australians are suffering not only from these social issues but also in the economy as well. I don't think they can fix this.
00:17:38
Speaker 1: Well, let's take a look now at the migration policy that was unveiled yesterday by the Coalition. And, Nick, it's a real line in the sand moment. You know, we've obviously been calling for this policy for a little while. And Pauline Hansard then today lifted the stakes by releasing some modelling showing that her policy will save renters between $ 2, 000 and just under $ 4, 500 a year. We now have three very clear different choices here. The decision now is who's going to be able to prosecute the most and get the cut through, and ultimately who voters will back.
00:18:14
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think the Coalition's policy seems to me to hit the ball straight down the middle of the park and get this right. They're focusing on skilled workers. They're focusing on people who will be net contributors to the Australian economy and will therefore be net taxpayers to the Australian economy and will have a minimal effect actually on the economic outlook. But we have never had a guest worker policy in this country, not since 1788. We've always emphasised skill migration. And what we have now is a lot of people coming in for lower skilled jobs, filling up those kind of jobs. That is not the way we've run immigration up to now. And if we go down that path, we end up where we are with far too many migrants. I think that the One Nation's modelling, well, broadly, you'd think it's correct. If you reduce migration, you will reduce rental prices. But I wouldn't be putting too much store on those numbers. I see they've modelled those in-house, as it were. So I'd like to see how they got to those figures, because I don't think we should put any great faith in the accuracy of those.
00:19:19
Speaker 1: Well, Steph, we do have Senator Nampochimpa Price coming on shortly, but the Coalition has said that they're going to cut it down to 100,000 for two years. And there has been criticism regarding the skilled visa holders having to leave the country and then reapply. Do you think the Coalition should create some carve out so that the industries that we really need here aren't leaving and then having to come back?
00:19:45
Speaker 5: Look, I think any immigration policy needs to be seamless in how it's executed. That is certainly something that they should consider. If there are issues with people having to come and go, it then becomes very messy and it becomes a message that they can't sell very well. I think what the Coalition will have to grapple with, though, is that it's very obvious that One Nation's led the debate on immigration and they're well and truly committed behind the eight ball in delivering something tangible to voters. But what they need to do is they need to get their backbench in line because you have, you know, for example, Andrew McLaughlin and Paul Scar and these other Liberals leaking and briefing outlets like The Guardian when Angus Taylor does come forward with an immigration policy. So I think the public then lose faith that they're actually going to be able to deliver on this.
00:20:34
Speaker 11: So.
00:20:35
Speaker 5: In terms of the coalition being able to present something that the public are going to have faith in, they're going to have to really clean up their back room.
00:20:45
Speaker 1: Nick, today marks the third anniversary of the horrific attacks in Israel. Yet protesters have picked today to hold vigils for Gaza. Israel's ambassador to Australia is amongst those that are fiercely condemning these protests. There's one right now that's happening in Sydney. What do you make of organisers choosing today of all days to be out protesting?
00:21:12
Speaker 10: These are sick fanatics. That's all I can say about them. I mean, we remember the shock of October 7th and we know why we were shocked because of the terrible... events that happened in Israel by Hamas, by Palestinians, at the hands of Palestinians, brutal, sadistic, you know, well, we know what they were. And to be out there trying to claim this day as somehow sort of a liberation day for Palestine or whatever else they're carrying on with. These people have got no sensitivity. They've got no knowledge of history, no understanding of the complexity of the situation in the Middle East. And quite frankly, I think they should just pack up their banners and go home and leave the streets for people who just want to observe this peacefully and for people that are attending services this evening in memory of those terrible events.
00:22:00
Speaker 1: And Steph, what are your thoughts about what you're seeing? We have got some live vision playing now for our viewers at home. But it's a shameful, shameful day, I think, that we've got protesters who decide today is the day to be out there.
00:22:15
Speaker 5: Oh, absolutely. I think Nick summed it up perfectly. But I mean, we all saw what happened on October 7th. Over a thousand people murdered, hundreds taken hostage, rape used as a weapon of war against women. It was an absolute travesty what happened. And these people have hijacked the capital cities week after week for years since this has happened. And to hijack today of all days while a community, the Jewish community, is still grieving is just a disgrace.
00:22:43
Speaker 1: It really is, and we'll keep everyone at home up to date on those protests. Steph and Nick, thank you so much for your time tonight. All right, well, back to the Coalition's migration policy that was unveiled by Angus Taylor yesterday, and there were promises to offer a pathway out of the record intake and the pressure on housing and households. Here to discuss it is Shadow Minister of Skills and Training, Jacinta Nampochimpa-Price. Senator, welcome. It was definitely a long time coming, but we have got those numbers that has been released by your team. One of those, it's the pledge to allow 100,000 for the first two years and then progressively increase the intake after that. There's been some business groups that have warned the cuts could potentially worsen some workforce shortages, in particular the aged care and essential sectors. What do you make about some of those criticism?
00:23:41
Speaker 12: Yeah, look, The Coalition, we have worked very hard because what we want to do is ensure that we are delivering the biggest cut in immigration in our country's history and off the back of the fact that we have dealt with immigration as the Coalition in government previously very successfully and we want to continue that success going forward. So what we want to do is ensure that we are... What we've set out to do in this particular policy is address those problems those concerns in particular in terms of workforce shortages around the country, which we have listened to with small business right around the nation. So it's about strengthening our economy, delivering in terms of the workforce and improving on our social cohesion in our country. off the back of the fact that we've had a Prime Minister who has brought in 1.5 million more immigrants into our country. That's roughly the population of Adelaide, where our infrastructure has suffered as a result, our social cohesion has suffered as a result. But we want the skilled workforce, which is really important, especially where those workforce shortages exist. So we are effectively addressing those issues through.
00:24:55
Speaker 1: This migration, immigration program. that we are delivering.
00:25:00
Speaker 12: And also, as the Shadow Minister for Skills and Training, I know how important it is that this is one measure through our immigration, but that we also have to ensure that our Australian homegrown workforce is grown.
00:25:15
Speaker 1: Another area where there has been.
00:25:16
Speaker 12: A huge, this has been hugely disappointment from the current government, who has managed to shrink the workforce, which is why we've got these shortages that exist. So if we can do that in terms of immigration, as well as grow our workforce, a homegrown workforce in Australia, that is the aim going forward. But in terms of immigration, we are effectively addressing those issues. We have had the PBO analyse our policy to determine to make sure that we are supporting our economy going forward and those workforce shortages.
00:25:52
Speaker 1: Senator, I want to look now at this backlash over the surcharge charges. Small business owners, they've been going on the attack and so they should going hard on social media. I even had one business owner reach out to me last night saying Westfield's now not going to accept credit card payments for their rent. What are you hearing from small business about the impact that this is going to have on them?
00:26:18
Speaker 12: Look, small business has been doing it incredibly tough under the Albanese government. You know, in the last 12 months, almost 40% of small businesses paid themselves less than $ 40, 000 or close to nothing in terms of their own wages. We're seeing an increase in insolvencies by the day, by the week going forward. And this is yet another kick in the guts for small businesses. where they have to absorb those costs somehow and for the ATO to then turn around and say that they're not going to accept credit card payments is a cash flow issue effectively for small business because they need to utilise their own credit card payment system to pay for things like to deal with BAS, to deal with PAYG and other tax obligations that they're affected with. So The government really needs to sort this out. The ATO needs to sort this out because the uncertainty is causing an environment whereby small businesses are looking to close the doors. In the coming 12 months, I've spoken to a lot of small businesses who are saying, you know, we've got to the point where we're likely going to shut the doors. We don't even want to pass on our business to our children because it's just too difficult. And they're talking about advising their kids to go on and get a government job. I mean, it's a terrible situation when the private sector's big competitor, the biggest competitor is the government itself, when the government should be getting out of the way and making life easier for small businesses to get on with employing Australians, providing apprenticeships and providing opportunity. It's just a really disappointing time right now.
00:28:05
Speaker 1: And reports coming out of this meeting today with the ATO and those 20 small businesses, And they've said that the ATO aren't going to be reversing their plans to stop credit card payments. What can the Coalition do? What can you do to get Labor to at least talk to people and consider pulling this back? Because it feels to me that it's an element of them not understanding the severity of what they've done. So how do we make them realise and get them to... Look, they've changed their position before. How do we get them to do it again?
00:28:38
Speaker 12: Look, Jamie, I think it's worse than that. I think it's not that they don't understand. They understand exactly what they are doing. It's the fact that they just don't care about small business. And, you know, we would absolutely scrap Labor's toxic taxes, ensure that these decisions are overturned. We're going to back in small business and continue to fight the government. We've got Senate estimates coming up very shortly. I'll be putting questions to the ATO and to the government on what they're effectively doing. We've seen backflips occur already in other policy areas. We're going to make sure that we fight hard for small business to get this overturned because it shouldn't be this difficult. But like I said, we will get rid of Labor's toxic taxes. We will scrap, we'll slash regulation where we know that it's unnecessary and it's causing a burden to small business. And we want to make sure that we get out of the way. A coalition government would get out of the way of small business and create an environment where it's going to support them to get on with the work that they need to do.
00:29:45
Speaker 1: That's what we would do. Well, Senator, small businesses, they certainly need you to be standing up for them and fighting for them. So keep up the great work. We'll chat to you again soon. All right, after the break, we will cross to Tel Aviv to see how Israelis have commemorated the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks. That's next. Welcome back. It's great to have your company. Coming up, we'll cross to Perth for a closer look at the Land Forces exhibition. But now to the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks in Israel, a day of terror that sparked a new era of warfare for the Middle East and an alarming rise of anti-Semitism around the world, including here in Australia. David Ehrlich grew up in suburban Melbourne but moved to Israel in the mid-90s. He now lives in a district that's about 10 kilometres east of Tel Aviv. We spoke to him last year when he was forced into bomb shelters as Iran launched its missile attacks on Tel Aviv. I'm pleased to say he joins us again. David, welcome. It's a sad time for Jewish Israelis and indeed the entire nation. Three years on, what's the mood like on the ground?
00:31:06
Speaker 11: I would say this... People are very, very solemn. There's a lot of emotion. There's a bit of grief. There are a lot of mixed feelings. People are asking questions still as how this happens. People are still digesting it, not understanding what went on and how it got through, you know, one of the toughest security systems in the world. Solemnity, emotion, grief and optimism for the future too.
00:31:31
Speaker 1: And I know just last week you visited many of the sites where these attacks took place. including what's now a car cemetery. So all the vehicles that were targeted that day are now all together. Tell us about this place.
00:31:46
Speaker 11: It's quite a remarkable place, the car cemetery. It became a car cemetery actually I think by accident because what happened is there were a lot of burnt out cars. There were people in the cars who were murdered by the terrorists and then the terrorists set the cars on fire with the dead people in them and they started bringing them to this lot and often it was very, very difficult to identify people in the cars because there was nothing left but ash. Sorry, I'm saying such terrible things on the show, but that's what it is. Anyway, someone had the idea to aggregate all the cars and put them together and create it as a memorial. Most of the cars are totally burnt out as you saw in the background. Some of them, there was a little bit of them left, so they put them in the front so people could see. They actually also had one of the vans of, terrorists, which was absolutely creepy and chilling to see, you know, amongst all these Israeli cars, which you can see are bullet-ridden, burnt out, no one in them survived, nothing. And then you see this big black terrorist car further down. You just have feelings of revulsion when you see it. You think there were people in those cars. They were once cars, made people happy. Horrific, horrific feeling. The stories behind them are absolutely brutal.
00:33:06
Speaker 1: And it would be so confronting standing there looking at all of those cars in front of you. The Bibas family, David, I really struggle looking at videos of those children. I'm a mum of two young boys and I find it really difficult looking at what happened to them. But there has been a memorial that's been set up. Can you please tell us about that?
00:33:28
Speaker 11: Yes, the memorial is... Well, as we went to visit it last week, and as our tour guide says, it leaves you with a box in your stomach. It's the footprints of the mother, her actual footprints and the actual footprints of her two children. And he set them in concrete because he said when they were kidnapped, their footprints were in sand and he didn't want the footprints to blow away. He wanted them to be immortalized forever. He took, I think, models of their shoes and made their footprints. So the footprints are actually 100% authentic. And with the baby, you can see this four footprints because when babies crawl, they sort of, their feet face backwards. So he set it as with the hands on the ground, as you can see, and then the feet facing backwards, because that's how a baby crawls. And he set it in concrete so it would never be blown away. The concentric circles are supposed to mark the passage of time. So the closest circle around the footprints represent now. And his idea was that as time passes and the circles, you know, go out, each circle is another year, another year, another year, another period, another epoch, that their memory will always remain intact. So they should never be forgotten. That was the idea behind the artist who did it, the sculptor who did it. When you look at it, you just look. You can't say anything. You know there were these two little children and their mother. You remember the redhead child there. Quite confronting. You just look at it and you don't see anything. There's nothing you can see.
00:35:01
Speaker 1: No, even just looking at it then, I find it even just quite confronting and emotional just looking at it through the TV. But tell us about the memorial at the Nova Music site. And you've said that the landscape there is actually quite similar to Australia and, in fact, poppies grow there seasonally.
00:35:18
Speaker 11: That is correct. The Western Negev, which is the southern western part of Israel, is full of eucalypt trees and the area looks very much like Australia with sort of same coloured sand and that sort of thing. During the winter, after the red, no sorry, just after the winter, come spring, the area is full of red poppies because the area is quite fertile. The sculptor there, the artist there, put these metal red poppies down and in the middle of them he put black poppies. He put the red poppies to symbolise hope and to symbolise what the area usually looks like. And he put black poppies in the middle to symbolise, you know, the burning and the suffering and the slaughter which had happened there. When you look at the Nova site, you see pictures, posters with little scan QR codes on them.
00:36:13
Speaker 5: And.
00:36:14
Speaker 11: then you can get the story behind each person. And instead of seeing a person, a live person, what you see is just this poster with a stake in the ground. And you read about this person. People just, they see a eucalypt tree very much reminiscent of Australian landscape. People just read about the people and you just walk through it. You have nothing to say. What they did in this picture is at the actual party, there were Coca-Cola freezers. And as you see, and they glued the bottles together that people were drinking, be it Coke, be it Corona, be it beer, whatever it happened to be, and left them on the fridges and on the tables as they were when the terrorists came. So I think you see a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of wine, a bottle of Coke, whatever it happens to be there. It's just like time is frozen, absolutely frozen. I mean, what was a very pastoral and very touristy sort of site, a very picnic-y site, a very family site, has just been turned into a, well, a harrowing experience, quite frankly. And the interesting thing is it's actually near the Anzac, the Australian Anzac Memorial, which is probably about a five-minute drive, if that, from there. So we often used to go and visit the Anzac Memorial, especially around Anzac Day. We used to take the kids there. Now you're confronted with this and that, and you remember the bravery of those soldiers, and then you see the actual sorrow of what these people were trying to defend once upon a time, you know, in the First World War. It's quite a contrast.
00:37:43
Speaker 1: And David, before I let you go, what is your hope for Israel now three years on from this devastating attack?
00:37:51
Speaker 11: That's a nice question, a very good question. Israel is here to stay. On a personal level, Israel, you know, every year they have the happy countries in the world. Israel, year after year after year, is voted in the top 10 happy countries of the world, up there with the Scandinavian countries and that sort of thing. Regardless of the fact that they're suffering this terrorist attack and what the Iranians did and this sort of thing, people are full of hope. People are full of cooperation. People get on with each other. There's a lot of intergenerational living. There's a lot of support. And if it's public support, private support, there's the we... mentality as opposed to the me mentality. And that's what makes Israel a very, very happy place at the end of the day. And I hope that that is what is going to conquer all this sorrow. And that is what's going to continue and be a light to the nations and infect other countries to make other countries happy too. The spirit of cooperation that goes on here and that is not going to be destroyed by this horrific terrorist attack. The terrorists are the ones who need to be punished, and the general population of Israel and of the world, peace-loving and good-loving people, fun-loving people, will keep going on forever. But I think that's the message. That's my message. Those are my thoughts.
00:39:20
Speaker 1: Well, it's a lovely message to end on. David, I really appreciate your time on what's a very tricky day.
00:39:25
Speaker 11: Thank you very much. Thank you for your amazing work. It's holy work that you do.
00:39:29
Speaker 6: Thank you.
00:39:30
Speaker 1: Thank you, David. Well, after the break, we'll cross to Perth, which has this week hosted the Land Forces Exhibition and not without controversy. That's next. Welcome back. Coming up is Week with Kel Richards with words. But first, tributes have flown for the father, an aspiring Army medical technician who died in the Northern Territory on Monday. Corporal Brendan Hannam. was a junior non-commissioned officer with the 5th and 7th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment and died as a result of a single vehicle rollover. Here to discuss this and more, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry and Defence Personnel, Phil Thompson. Phil, welcome. Corporal Hannam's death shows that men and women in uniform put their lives on the line even when they're not on a mission and no doubt his death will be widely felt, won't it?
00:40:32
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
00:40:33
Speaker 13: And my heart is with his family and his brothers. You know, this is a tragic accident that has occurred, but it reminds the nation that our brave men and women, whilst training, are also putting themselves at risk. The Australian Defence Force does dangerous things cautiously and it's always sad when tragedy strikes and we lose someone during training.
00:41:01
Speaker 1: Do you think Defence does enough to prevent training deaths like this one?
00:41:06
Speaker 13: I think that Defence has a lot of guardrails up in general, but we've got to also remember that we want people to train how they will fight. And being in the ADF, being in the Army, it is inherently risky. I know from my time in one area, based in Townsville, You do risky things, you do dangerous things cautiously and sometimes tragedy happens and sometimes people get injured and in this case someone has lost their life and that is something that no one will ever forget and his unit, his friends, his family, they'll always be with them in their heart. We want to make sure that when we are training we are doing it in a manner that is safe or safe enough what it can be for military training. But right now my focus is on providing any support that is needed to those that he's served with and his family.
00:42:09
Speaker 1: Well, Phil, you've been in Perth where the Land Forces exhibition has been hosted and we've seen protesters yet again, although they weren't as many as what we saw last time when it was in Melbourne. But organisers, they were ready this time around. But just tell us why this convention is so important.
00:42:29
Speaker 13: Well, it's important to showcase military defence industry from not just Australia, but around the world. And we as a small island nation need to have a very capable defence industry and defence force. We have the bravest, most equipped and smartest men and women that I think in any military around the world. But I want to make sure that they have the best equipment because if the balloon goes up, whether it's overseas or on our shore, they need to be able to fight. They need to be able to win. They need to be the most lethal on the battlefield. So having defence industry showcase what they could have or what they could have that is different I think, is extremely important. But it's more important that the end user, the warfighter, the person that uses the equipment, is on the ground looking at it and saying, this is what we would like. It was a bit disappointing to see Richard Miles and Pat Conroy, the Labor ministers in charge, run up and down the corridor very quickly and then get out of there. They didn't spend much time on the ground speaking to the end user or to defence industry. And I think That highlights what defence industry has been telling me and my colleagues like James Patterson and Leah Bly that the money seems like it's tied up elsewhere. And that's quite disappointing.
00:43:50
Speaker 1: Well, tell us, when you have been at this expo, is Australia leading the pack here in any area when it comes to Arsenal or any of the machinery that people can learn from us?
00:44:05
Speaker 13: Yeah, definitely around some areas. some drone defence side. We have some very capable organisations that have worked around the world in defence of drones and drones are the the new frontier at the moment on the battle space. So I would like to see more of these organisations used by the Australian Defence Force and through the Minister's office rather than other nations picking up these contracts. But these defence industry capability shows, you know, very large ones, showcase the SMEs, the small businesses who are the experts, all the way to the primes. But it's really great to see them when they start working together and putting the end user at the forefront of any decisions.
00:44:51
Speaker 1: Just quickly, Phil, it seems as though some momentum is shifting on Labor's unpopular fire sale of these defence assets. Do you think there's a chance that Victoria Barracks and some of these other sites, like HMAS Penguin and Lancer Barracks, could be saved?
00:45:06
Speaker 13: Well, I'd hope so. I think Richard Miles, Labor's Defence Minister, made some terrible comments that are very uneducated and something that is quite unbecoming of the Defence Minister, calling... Victoria Barracks, an old wine cellar. You know, this is our history that he's talking about. This is something that shouldn't be at a fire sale to rush out the door to prop up a bad budget. I'd hope that they will listen to the Coalition and to veterans and Defence Force members around the country and stop this fire sale of our Defence Force estates.
00:45:36
Speaker 1: And for all the viewers out there, there is a rally to save HMAS Penguin on Sunday in Balmoral and Senator Paterson has a petition on his website. And I had a look this afternoon and there's been more than 100,000 people that have signed it. So the fight is certainly not going to stop. Phil Thompson will speak to you again soon.
00:45:54
Speaker 9: All right.
00:45:55
Speaker 1: After the break, there is plenty of words to get through with Kel Richards. All right, let's get into it with our resident wordsmith and News24 presenter, Kel Richards. Kel, welcome. I've had a little bit of a look and there's some great, great words in here. Let's start off with Bruce wants to know the meaning behind back in a jiffy and why we say it.
00:46:22
Speaker 8: Well, it all revolves around the idea of using the word jiffy to mean a very short period of time. It was suggested to me it might come from Jiffy Firelighters, which is a lovely idea, but they were only invented, I have to tell you, in 1972. And the word Jiffy for a short period of time goes back to 1780, well before that. It started off as... Now, there are a whole lot of theories. I've got to say that other people will give you different theories. This is the one that appeals to me and I think is right. It started off as thieves slang for lightning. Lightning. So a thief who was very quick at nipping in and out of a house would say, I'll be in and out like lightning or in and out in a jiffy. Jiffy meaning lightning. So something very fast and very brief, like a flash of lightning. And I think it migrated from thief slang into our our main language. And the electronics industry has these days given it a specific number. According to the electronics people, a jiffy is now exactly 1 60th of a second. So when you're offering to do something in a jiffy, you know how long you're offering to do it in.
00:47:23
Speaker 1: Oh, I love it. The other one's from Graham, and he said that he spotted a beer called a brouhaha. Now, obviously a bit of a play on words, but what's the story behind it?
00:47:32
Speaker 8: A brouhaha is interesting. It's been in French since the 16th century, but only came into English around 1890 in a book by Oliver Wendell Holmes. And in French, it was used in drama on stage. And when the devil appeared on stage, his cry would be brouhaha. And there are two theories. One is, and the one that I think is correct is, it probably comes from a Hebrew word, which meant welcome. And it was the idea of the devil welcoming you or inviting you into his realm. The alternative suggestion, which I don't, I think it's unlikely. It says it comes from the bull baiting arena and was a taunt at the bull and is based on the Spanish-Italian word bravo. But I like the other explanations. It started off as the devil doing this brouhaha. Consequently, anything which is a riotous mess is a bit of a brouhaha. And the idea of a brewing company labelling their brew a brouhaha is just really, really clever. Well done.
00:48:27
Speaker 1: Well, Kel, love it. Thank you for those words tonight. It is now time for The Bolt Report.
