TRANSCRIPT - NEWS24 - TUESDAY, 1 SEPTEMBER 2026

ASHLEIGH GILLON, HOST: Joining me live from Canberra is the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Patrick Gorman. Appreciate your time, thank you. Firstly, just on that last story we saw there – buyers are deserting the property market, Australian house prices have fallen for a fifth straight month. Was that the intended result of your Government's Budget?

PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER: What we know, Ashleigh, is that when it comes to house prices, they are determined by supply, demand, interest rates, global economic factors. And we do see in the competitive housing market that Australia has – we do see price growth and sometimes a bit of contraction. We saw that in 2018/2019. We saw it again in 2022 when interest rates went up. What our policies are designed to do is to help more first home buyers into the housing market. That has been a challenge that governments have shied away from for too long. We stepped up to the plate. We have decided to do something about it. Not just with the tax changes that we introduced in the May Budget, but also with the 5 per cent deposit scheme helping people get into the housing market, along with the significant measures when it comes to increased supply.

Because what I want to see is that those who are currently renting but want to own their own home – and when they've got a good job, a stable income – I want to be able to see them get a home of their own. And I want to be able to see the next generation feel like they've got a shot in the housing market, not be locked out of it forever.

GILLON: Surely you acknowledge that your tax changes in the Budget has spooked the market. We're hearing that from economists every day.

GORMAN: Well, as I said before, there's a range of things that impact on house prices. We know that when it does come to global economic factors, that has an impact. We know that interest rates have an impact. And we know that we have seen significant price growth in recent times. And so, just like we saw in 2022, just like we saw in 2018/2019, it's not unusual to see the demand and supply in the market result in some price increases and very small price decreases that we're seeing right now.

GILLON: Okay, I'm keen for your view on this escalating war of words we're seeing between your Labor Party and One Nation. Do you agree with the Attorney-General that Pauline Hanson needs to take a good look at herself and her own party before accusing others of inciting political violence?

GORMAN: Firstly, let me say there is no place for political violence. One of the great things about Australia's democracy is that we decide things peacefully at the ballot box. That is the democracy I participate in. And I think that all of us as political leaders, whether you be a junior Assistant Minister like me, or the Leader of a major political party like Senator Hanson, we all have a role to play in how we conduct ourselves and how that plays out in the communities that we represent and talk to.

Now, I do agree with the Attorney-General that some of the decisions that One Nation have made in the past, I don't think have brought Australians together. But I think what I'm hopeful for is we're going to see something different from Senator Hanson. We are going to see a new, kinder, more considerate type of politics from Senator Hanson. I think that would be a good thing and I would welcome it if that's the case.

GILLON: What specific examples can you give us when you talk about decisions that the party has made in the past, what are you concerned about, particularly?

GORMAN: Don't take it from me. I saw something on Senator James Paterson's website about some of the extremists that Malcolm Roberts has been doing podcast interviews with. I think about some of the encouragement that Senator Hanson gave to podcasters, not even in Australia, but international podcasters who have been pinged for stalking, intimidation and all sorts of things.

I would really hope that we see a little bit more consideration from One Nation about some of the people they choose to associate with. And if your viewers don't believe it from me, I'd also note that even Senator Hanson herself had to come out and express concern that the One Nation branches that she's been starting up are being infiltrated by extremists. So, these are serious issues. I think we've got to treat them seriously. But I really hope that we can raise the standard of what we're seeing from One Nation.

GILLON: And do you worry that extremism is becoming more widespread among One Nation supporters, or that there are just a handful of isolated cases? We know that all political parties over the years have attracted people who perhaps wouldn't stand for the core values of that party.

GORMAN: Let's be clear: extremism and political violence has no place in any political party in Australia. And even outside of our political parties. It is just completely unacceptable, un-Australian behaviour. And what I want to see is a place where we can debate things thoroughly, disagree robustly, but that that doesn't come with a threat of violence or intimidation. It is not acceptable for any Australian to threaten any member of Parliament, or indeed political aspirant. It's just not. Just hardline unacceptable. No matter who it is, no matter what you disagree about, it is not part of the Australian democratic project and it never should be.

GILLON: This debate has flared up after One Nation's win over the weekend in your home state of Western Australia. At that state Secret Harbour By-election. Your WA colleague, the Minister Madeleine King, initially seemed to pin blame for the loss on social media and misinformation. She walked that back today - just have a listen.

[CLIP PLAYS] 

MADELEINE KING, MEMBER FOR BRAND: I don't think I actually said that and I apologise if that's how it was taken. What I think I said – and I'm sorry I don't have my own transcript with me, is that social media is different to what it might have been a few years ago. And there are bots and there are other influences on social media. And I'm not saying that that's why Labor lost the seat of Secret Harbour, but I am saying that in social media there is this incredible participation from others, be they bots or some automated systems - that's not local communities. It's not local communities actually registering – some local community, but a lot of it is really not true.

[CLIP ENDS] 

GILLON: Patrick, we saw the WA Premier, Roger Cook, he's also accused bots and trolls from the east coast of creating momentum behind One Nation's win. How influential do you think that online space was in that contest? And as someone who's a former State Director for Labor in Western Australia, who's across the campaign space, what does that mean for future contests?

GORMAN: The digital campaign space has changed significantly. We have seen that election on election, and I did find some of the things that were appearing online being shared quite widely to be, not only clearly lacking in any fact or substance, but also some of it was a bit disgusting, to be honest. Some of the accusations were made about various candidates and things. I'm not going to repeat them, other than to say I found them disgusting.

One of the pieces that I think about is that we recognise that when it comes to the digital realm, it's not just the local community who are engaging. It might be people from other parts of the country, or indeed other nations. And those threats have been openly debated for a long period of time. Obviously, I don't want to see anyone other than the voters in individual electorates holding the power. I don't think people should let AI decide their vote. I don't think they should let AI-generated memes decide their vote. And we've got to keep having this discussion about how do we have a good, robust, fact-based democracy.

Now when it comes to some of these issues – I do think Facebook or Meta and Elon Musk's Twitter and others, they've all got a role to play because they share all of this content, they provide a platform for it, and they used to moderate it a bit more. They seem to have walked away from that. That concerns me. I think that just to be good corporate citizens, the social media giants need to step up a lot more than they are at the moment.

But finally, just to your question about what's influencing these things, when it comes to this particular by-election. I think it's too early to say that it was one singular factor that changed the result in Secret Harbour. There'll be a range of different factors in that result, and we'll need to look at that.

GILLON: And in terms of looking more closely at those results – I mean, I'm sure you've had a little look booth by booth with your previous State Director hat on. We know that those booths inside the electorate held by the Federal Resources Minister, Madeleine King, for example, did show those massive swings away from Labor to One Nation. In terms of how those results should be, could be, extrapolated out at a federal level. What is your view on how worrying it is for Labor that those voters are actually happy to switch their vote on an election day to One Nation, not just in the polls?

GORMAN: Well, I'll put the counterfactual to you, Ash. I came in at a by-election in 2018. It was a by-election where the Liberal Party, despite having contested the seat of Perth very passionately just a couple of years earlier, the Liberal Party chose not to run. If you were to take my by-election result in 2018, you would have come to the conclusion that Labor was going to win very strongly at the 2019 federal election. That, as we know is a matter of history, did not happen.

Similarly in Western Australia, the Darling Range By-election in 2018 – Labor lost that seat at a by-election. People were rushing to write off Mark McGowan after that result. And as history shows, Mark McGowan then came back at the 2021 election and had his strongest ever result. I say all of that just to be clear that you have to learn from by-elections. Political parties normally do learn from them, but it would be wrong to sit and say anything other than, there are some lessons there, there's a message from voters, we need to hear it and we need to learn from it. To run too far, to extrapolate the next election, or the one after and beyond would be an overreaction or a true stretch of analysis.

GILLON: Okay, so what is the key lesson that you're taking away from that result?

GORMAN: I think some of it comes back to the truisms that we've known for a long time. There is no such thing as a safe seat. I don't subscribe to the safe seat hypothesis. The reality is that in every electorate across Australia, Australians make a decision at that election, about what's in their interests and what they've heard from various parties. And again, another example on that is – probably you could have thought that Peter Dutton was very safe leading into the last election. He wasn't just a long-term local member, he was the leader of his political party. And as we know, he did not hold on to that seat. And congrats to the team who elected Ali France in his place. It has been great to serve in the Parliament with her.

There will be a range of lessons. And the Premier has already said very clearly that in Western Australia the WA branch of the Labor Party will do a review about what happened in this seat and what the lessons are. But also, I've said really clearly, we hear from the voters of Secret Harbour that they wanted something different when it came to who was their state representative. And I think anyone in politics, anywhere, in any party needs to recognise that when voters are sending a message, you should tune in and hear it. But also recognise that there were always, as there always is, very specific local circumstances to that campaign – including the one that I thought was really extraordinary, which was One Nation putting out all of these ads on Facebook and Instagram talking about how good a friend they are of Medicare. Now I'm here in Parliament at the moment, I don't hear One Nation talk a lot about Medicare when they're here. They definitely didn't like our Medicare Urgent Care Clinics. Senator Hanson said that Labor's Medicare Urgent Care Clinics were “spin.” But now when it comes to an election, all of a sudden – 

GILLON: I think this can go two ways, can't it, Patrick Gorman? Because when we look back at, say look at 2016, the 'Mediscare' campaign as well, prosecuted by Labor – I mean, would you clarify that as misinformation in the context of these sort of discussions about how political parties prosecute these arguments in an election campaign and particularly on social media?

GORMAN: If we were to have a fact-based discussion about Medicare, and who's been a friend of Medicare, and who's set up a Medicare privatisation task force, which is what happened in the lead up to the 2016 campaign – and remember prior to that in 2014 it was the Liberal Party under now Liberal Party President Tony Abbott - let's remember, Tony Abbott, the architect of the Medicare co-payment, is now the boss of the Federal Liberal Party. I am happy to have that contest. But I'm also happy to call out One Nation when they're saying one thing in a by-election about how good a friend they are of Medicare. But then when they come here to Canberra, they criticise Medicare Urgent Care Clinics. And they even had that extraordinary Bill from Senator Hanson in 2019 where she wanted to have the requirement you have to have your photo ID to use your Medicare card. I mean, can you imagine having to not just rock up with your Medicare card, but having to take your passport just to see your local GP? That is Pauline Hanson's stated policy. That is not being a friend of Medicare.

GILLON: Well, Patrick Gorman, I have Rod Caddies, the One Nation Leader, just outside the studio waiting to come in, so I'll be putting a few of those assertions to him. Really appreciate you joining us, there from Canberra. Thank you so much. 

GORMAN: I will tune in. Thank you. 

ENDS