TRANSCRIPT - NEWS24 AFTERNOON AGENDA - MONDAY, 5 OCTOBER 2026

TOM CONNELL, HOST: Welcome back. One Nation for the first time is genuinely a chance to form some form of government in a mainland Australian election. That's the Victorian election, of course, happens next month. They did have a pretty large launch over the weekend. It did. This includes some controversial comments, including from one candidate who said if he had his way, he'd have Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan in jail by Christmas. Joining me live now is our panel, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister Patrick Gorman and former Liberal MP Jason Falinski. Thanks both for your time. What do you make of these comments, Jason? There's a sense that One Nation can sort of say anything at the moment. Is, is this going to be a moment for voters wondering if this is a serious pitch for government?

JASON FALINKSI, FORMER LIBERAL MP: Yeah, it's a good question, Tom. I mean, The Rest is History has been doing a series on the French Revolution and the terrors and I think Pauline Hanson would do a passable impersonation of Maximilian Robespierre. And I can see Barnaby Joyce's Henri Sanson with basket in hand. I just, I mean, if we're going to start with the principle that politicians can send their enemies to jail, then, you know, we're going to need to build a lot more jails for the incoming Gorman Regime where I think there will be a lot of people behind bars.

CONNELL: Pat, I'm not sure what you should respond to there. I do wonder if Victoria -

PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER: Yeah, we've gone from deep history to fantasy fiction for the future there, Jason.

FALINSKI: Come on, Pat. I have faith.

CONNELL: One more on this for you, Jason. Is this the sort of thing that does resonate or does this still have voters, conservative voters, chuckling, going, ‘oh, that's pretty funny, yep.’ And not worried about, you know, consequences of talking about a political enemy like that. What's your view on it?

FALINSKI: Well, my honest view on this is that I think most people hear that sort of stuff - sorry. I think the Australian electorate is well and truly fed up. They're finding themselves in a financial position that they never thought they would. And four or five short years ago they were in the best financial position that they've ever been in. And that's not just me saying that, that's what the official figures bear out. So, we have a situation where in four or five years they're in real trouble. And interest rates, because debt is so much higher for households, have never been this high. So, even at the end of the ‘80s when there were 18, 19 per cent, real household disposable income is being more impacted by interest rates at the moment than they were at the end of the ‘80s. So, that's how bad it is. And they hear this sort of stuff and they think ‘a pox on both your houses. She doesn't seriously mean it, she's just saying something to get attention and that's the case.’

But to date, One Nation in a lot of these places, it's been possible to be kind of like a free vote. Voting for them in Farrer was not going to change the government. Voting for them in South Australia, Malinauskas was always expected to win. Ditto with Secret Harbour in Western Australia. But this is the first election where there is something really on the line which is, you know, what direction Victoria is going to go in for the next four years. There's a well held belief in the community that this has been a rotten, corrupt government that needs to be replaced. So, a vote for One Nation could end up, might end up keeping Labor in power. So, the vote will mean something this time. And how One Nation does under those circumstances and the sort of stirring and shit talk that has been happening from One Nation now means something. And it will be interesting to see how the electorate responds to that. Tom.

CONNELL: And good afternoon to all our children watching on a public holiday. Patrick, as to the conditions, I suppose that you could argue cement -

FALINSKI: - Just keeping it real, Tom [inaudible] -

CONNELL: Yeah, yeah, thanks for that. There goes my pay for the huge mortgage I've got to clock up as well, so double thanks. Patrick, is this a lesson for Labor in terms of the drift that's happened in Victoria? Massive debt and suddenly at the last minute, new leader, all these new policies. ‘Oh, sorry, we didn't mean to, you know, spend all this money on some of these infrastructure projects. We're going to cancel land tax.’ You can't drift. The economy's in a pretty bad state right now. If you want to be in a better place in 18 months, some tough decisions need to be made, including no more, presumably, cost of living help with one hand that turns into inflation with the other.

GORMAN: Tom, there's a lot in that question. So, if I can just maybe start with the matter that Jason got two answers on, which is these odd and inappropriate comments about overriding the rule of law in the state of Victoria based on an election outcome.

Now, I would encourage all members of Pauline Hanson's One Nation to go and look at the case in Queensland of a Queenslander called Pauline Hanson who had to appeal a case in, I think it was 2003. Which that person, Pauline Hanson themselves, described as, quote, ‘a witch hunt.’

And that was ultimately, from that person's point of view, a politically motivated political jailing. And Senator Hanson herself found herself in jail and then released on appeal. I think we should be very careful when we talk about these things. And I would have thought that Senator Hanson, given her lived experience, would set a higher standard than the one that was set on the weekend.

Government is serious. It's not a game of Mario Kart. And it's important that we take these things seriously. I take the challenges that are ahead of us as a government seriously. That is everything from the pressures that are on household budgets across Australia, through to the global economic circumstances in which we find ourselves governing.

We will respond in a serious, measured way and continue the work that we have done as the Albanese Government to reduce spending. We have found some $180 billion of savings since we came to office -

CONNELL: You've increased spending, we've gone through this. Percent of GDP, you've increased spending. You can talk about savings measures -

GORMAN: And I will.

CONNELL: But 26.9%, it's going up. Sure. But the percent, the spending percent overall is going up. The total amount of spending in dollars is going up. They're both going up.

GORMAN: But the amount of money that would have been spent had the Coalition continued on their trajectory and then taken the various policies, including the $600 billion nuclear policy they took to the last election, would have only put more pressure on the Commonwealth budget. And again, if we want to talk about comparing the offers in front of us -

CONNELL: - but you're, you're the government. I mean, it's four, four and a half years ago. 

GORMAN: Yes, $180 billion in savings –

CONNELL: Surely the time now is to go the decisions you make each year over the past two to three budgets -

GORMAN: - over those four and a half years, Tom.

CONNELL: Yes, but if you're spending more money, they're not net savings. Is it true or false that the last two budgets have seen number of dollars gone up and the percent of GDP spending - the number doesn't lie - go up. That's true, isn't it?

GORMAN: What is also true is that you've seen this government, the Albanese Government, deliver two surpluses. That is two more than Scott Morrison, two more than Malcolm Turnbull, two more than Tony Abbott. I mean, we can choose whichever way you want to slice -

CONNELL: But it’s a structural deficit.

GORMAN: And we have acknowledged the challenges that are in the budget. It is one of the reasons that we brought forward important changes -

CONNELL: Which is spending challenges. Your spending keeps going up.

GORMAN: One of the reasons we brought forward important changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme and we argued for a difficult set of changes led by Minister Mark Butler.

It is one of the reasons that we took difficult decisions in the budget to make sure we had a more effective tax system that treated different appreciating assets in the same way.

And indeed, even S&P, in their assessment of the Australian credit rating, where they said that we have got a stable credit rating at AAA, noted that some of those changes we made in the budget contribute to the strong credit rating that Australia has.

CONNELL: Jason, haven't forgot you there. I know you've been itching to come at this lately. Let me ask you, from this point of view, your good mate Tim Wilson, who's the Shadow Treasurer, how serious is he, do you think, about tackling spending? Because the alternative vision would be: ‘we're going to bring spending right down and here's how, here's the spending measures. Specifically, here are the cuts we'll have.’ Do you think he's ready to do that? And are voters ready for that tough medicine to be actually told that before an election and support it when it comes to voting?

FALINSKI: Tom, yes, I think, is the short answer. I mean, I, I think what Australians really need, and Patrick alluded to this in his own answer, which is that Australians now more than ever are really looking for accountable, competent government that makes rational decisions. And that's not what we had from the Labor Party for a very, very long time. And so, I mean, even the two budget surpluses that Patrick talks about at the same time that these accounting surpluses were occurring, because they put things like Snowy Hydro 2.0 into a into a separate, what they call -

GORMAN: Same budget accounting standards as when you were in office, Jason.

FALINSKI: Yeah, off-spending, but off budget spending, which of course, you know, Patrick has, has accused me of being flippant, but I'm not when I say that this is exactly the same accounting trick that Enron played in the early 2000s. 

GORMAN: Oh, come on. 

FALINSKI: That's what we're doing. So, the Office of Financial Management in Australia, when Jim -

GORMAN: No, Jason, you cannot compare the country of which you are a citizen to a company like Enron which went bust because it was trading on the weather. I mean, give us a break. Come on. The viewers of this program might tolerate a bit of silliness from you and I from time to time, but they deserve better than that.

FALINSKI: Thank you. I'm not accusing that. I'm accusing your budget and some of the accounting tricks played in that budget as misrepresenting the true financial nature of the situation that the Australian Government finds itself in. And specifically I will point to the Snowy Hydro 2.0 scheme which has seen its spending off budget so it's not included in the budget accounts. Which means that at the same time that Jim Chalmers was claiming that he had run two budget surpluses, the Australian Office of Financial Management saw its debt load, that is the Australian Government's debt load, go up by $109 billion. Now this should not be, to anyone listening to this program, news. Richard Holden and others have made this point over and over again -

CONNELL: Snowy Hydro is a strange example, Jason.

FALINSKI: From the [inaudible] in the Daily Telegraph.

CONNELL: Didn't Malcolm Turnbull put that off budget?

FALINSKI: He sure did. Well, more specifically, Scott Morrison did that as Treasurer and he shouldn't have done it, Tom. And just because Scott Morrison did it doesn't mean that it should continue. And just because it was done then doesn't mean -

CONNELL: Yeah, but sure. For our viewers though, that point's a fair one to make -

FALINSKI: Well, if you want to know the full history of this – 

CONNELL: Well, hang on, let me finish. Because the big example you put out there was something the Coalition began as a policy and put it off the books. So, you're saying, ‘how outrageous Labor didn't put it back on the books’?

FALINSKI: Well, no, what I'm saying is, is that let's be honest about the financial position of the Australian Government and the budget that it brought down, which is that it was in deficit and the reason that it was able to be presented to the Australian people as not being in deficit is because there was all this off budget spending that occurred. And yes, there were specific projects and this began under the Rudd Government and the NBN and it was a bad precedent to set and frankly, Scott Morrison should not have continued that with Snowy Hydro -

GORMAN: Jason, the NBN is holding up pretty well for [inaudible] connection.

FALINSKI: But since the election of the Albanese Government, hundreds of projects have been put into that same bucket. Sorry, I finished it.

CONNELL: I'm going to move on to one more topic. Pat can have his little aside there. Just stick with me on this. Just give me 30 seconds each on this because I'm going to get in trouble otherwise. Pre COP, Pat, this was supposed to be building momentum. It's clearly not, is it? Everyone admits it's a disappointment on who's going and therefore sort of commitments and getting them locked in, it's just not going to happen.

GORMAN: We have got about 4,000 delegates coming to the pre COP meetings, some 50 nations represented. We are really proud to be putting a spotlight on the Pacific and I would just note, for everyone in the Coalition who is about to have a flick at the costs of doing this, we have got a little receipt.

This is a transcript from Angus Taylor back in 2021 when he was at COP in Glasgow announcing some 2,000 million dollars of spending for the Pacific. We are really proud of the work we are doing in the Pacific and I would hope that on this the Coalition can put themselves above politics and recognise that we should talk our region up, not talk it down.

CONNELL: Jason, very quickly, the Coalition, is it willing these talks to fail? I mean, there has been a huge change, probably underreported on that there is no mechanism now under the Coalition proposal to reduce emissions. It's gone totally, and Dan Tehan said ‘up to companies’ to do it themselves. That's sort of, that's walking away from emissions reduction, essentially, isn't it?

FALINSKI: Well, Tom, specifically what you've asked is a question that will need to be answered between now and the election, there's no doubt about that. And what that mechanism will be. I know there's been indication that that is being worked on as we speak. But to your other question, which is, Pat, it's all well and good for all these meetings to occur, but emissions have not gone down substantively under your government. Subsidies to coal companies have gone massively up and the fact is that we don't even know how much this is costing, because just as the budget that we were just talking about, this is a government that won't tell us how much money is being spent on what and by whom. And that is really what Australians are objecting to. And that's why One Nation is doing so well these days. 

CONNELL: Got to leave it there. Appreciate you joining me on a public holiday. I would say owe you a coffee, but, Jason, you reminded me of the dire conditions I face having recently taken out a fresh mortgage. So, we will just -

FALINSKI: My apologies. 

CONNELL: I'll make you a tea in the office kitchen and we'll have a chat. 

FALINSKI: Thank you.

CONNELL: Jason, Patrick, thank you.

GORMAN: Thank you, Tom.

ENDS