Tell us what David Shoebridge's election means for the Greens and what does it tell us about the current political moment, particularly on the left?

I guess the first thing to note was this wasn't a leadership change that anyone planned.

You know, Russell Waters' resignation this week came as much of a shock to her team and to her colleagues.

So it's not part of any grand strategy for the Greens.

That being said, there has been a lot of commentary, conversation and debate for most of this year, both within the party and also outside it, about what you know, what they're doing, basically.

We've seen success of some of these kind of populist left leaders overseas in somewhat analogous contexts, the chief of those being the election of Zoran Mamdani, for example, in the US, and then a period of polling success overseas which it's worth noting has come down a bit in the UK under Greens leader, Zach Polanski.

The question people have asking has been, well, why haven't the Greens capitalized on this kind of broad voter dissatisfaction with the major parties anti-establishment vibe in the way that One Nation have? And what we've seen with the Greens is them remain relatively stagnant around a 12% share of the federal vote over the last two elections.

Andy Burnham has really ground them down.

I just want to ask, what are the main visa classes that Labor is proposing to restrict?

Yeah, so I think what's, just to go back one step, I think what's interesting is that reduction in the migration program by 75,000 people is already kind of baked into the budget.

That's already the forecast.

So at the moment, the annual overall net migration intake is about 300,000 people.

The budget papers say this is going to get down to 225,000 people within two years' time.

So the lower number is there and has been there for a while.

The issue is that Labor never meets the lower number.

They're ads which say if you sign up, we'll give you a $50 bonus.

Tass, what were the major policy points that were up for grabs this year?

I think if we look at issues that have been dividing the party for a while, we've got things like Israel-Gaza, AUKUS.

These have kind of been long-running debates in Labor more recently.

I think a gas tax has become a big issue.

And the most recent is around AI and safeguards for workers, creatives and so forth as we move towards an AI world.

So with AI, for example, you saw the government get ahead of that one with Albanese's speech the other day.

So front running some of these debates, looking like they're on top of it, a bit of a pressure valve for people to air their views, stop that one blowing up, you know, on the floor of conference or becoming too similar thing actually with gambling reform.

But what was his central political message?

This is

the long-awaited gambling reform package for Labor.

You know, they had a go at it in the last term of Parliament.

It didn't really go anywhere.

Albanese unveiled a couple of months ago at the National Press Club what the government planned on doing.

But very controversially, it's full response to what's known as the Murphy Report, which was an inquiry from the last term of parliament in 2023 by the late Labor MP Peter Murphy that recommended quite like a strong and wide ranging crackdown.

It took the government a thousand days, more than a thousand days to respond to.

I think

They're sort of a compromise, but then they're pleasing few people, it seems.

This is the long-awaited gambling reform package for Labor.

You know, they had a go at it in the last term of Parliament.

It didn't really go anywhere.

Albanese unveiled a couple months ago at the National Press Club what the government planned on doing.

But very controversially, its full response to what's known as the Murphy Report, which was an inquiry from the last term of Parliament in 2023 by the late Labor MP, Peter Murphy, that recommended quite like a strong and wide-ranging crackdown, took the government 1,000 days, more than 1,000 days, to respond to, and it controversially responded to that report on the day of the budget when everyone was in lockup and looking at other things.

So this, I, I feel like this gambling stuff's been quite sensitive for the government.

I mean, what, what, what is his cut-through like in-

So that's obviously hugely frightening for a lot of people, isn't it?

There's definitely a lot of, and I think there's been anxiety among Australians with a disability for the last three years ever since that kind of Bill Shorten, when he was minister, did set out this scheme needs a reboot and it needs to be returned to its original purpose.

I think from that point there has been an assumption that...

People will be removed from the scheme eventually if it's going to do that.

And a lot of those people will probably be that large group of people with autism who have a different level of need or a lower level of need to others on the scheme.

And so that anticipation, I think, has really been bubbling for a few years now.

The crux, I guess, of the concern is that now that we know that, you know, at least 160,000 people based on today's figures, up to 300,000 people based on forecasts, because until things change, people will keep joining the scheme every quarter.

So tell

But it costs taxpayers.

And the other big one in health is the centrepiece of the Albanese government's re-election campaign, which was a $8.5 billion investment in Medicare rebates, as well as pharmaceutical copayment, so medicine copayment being brought down to $25.

So Labor has explicitly campaigned on those huge increases in spending in health, which is one part.

And then the other part of health is You know, for example, in the case of public hospitals, the government only at the end of last month finalised a deal with the states after it dragged on for months and months and months.

Because state hospitals, which gets to the urgent care clinic issue as well, but state hospitals are being overwhelmed.

And the states have been asking the federal government to cough up more money because the states don't have enough money to meet that extra demand.

And so you had...

Yeah, I think the

What are the actual facts on our migration figures?

Well, if you look at the last two decades, so since about 2004 in the Howard era, you've had a pretty steady approach to migration where the population has generally grown between 1% and 2% every year.

And since 2004, migrants have contributed more to population growth than natural increase, which refers to the number of people being born minus the number of people who died.

So migrants have made up...

the kind of majority of population growth for the last 20 years.

The big...

Anomaly, I suppose, as Paul said, happened during COVID.

How can politicians or how are the politicians at a federal level responding to this sort of creep of extremism into the mainstream debate,

I just, I don't think I've ever heard anything like that in our politics previously.

And he was, you know, pointing to the site of the massacres as well.

It did not beat around the bush.

I think it's, you know, on the one hand, there is an impression that perhaps people have expected more of Albanese.

You know, there hasn't been the image of him consoling the community or families or, you know, with people.

He's kind of painted a bit of a solitary figure image.

He went early on Monday, the morning after to lay flowers at Bondi, but at that point he was kind of on his own.

Is Susan Lee being crowded out a little bit by these former liberal figures?

Sorry, I just love the idea of all the journalists going, what? What does a business class flight even cost? And what does a first class flight even cost? And I think everyone was

also like, first class flight tomorrow, only $16,000.

Worth it? I don't know.

But what was interesting, I think, then in her, because it's more just like, I think the reason it became a story was that it didn't make clear sense.

No.

When you kind of benchmark typical flight prices.

And so I think it was an interesting decision that given there was then so much speculation, for example, like was it a first class flight? Because that tends to be kind of toward the higher end of first class flights, those prices.

And also it's protecting children and people always want to do that.

Did Senator Price have any sort of strategy he had tasked, do you think, when she called this press conference that she didn't have to call and refused to apologise repeatedly? Was she sort of directly issuing a challenge, do you think, to Susan Lee's leadership?

The particular position of Jacinta Price in the parliament and in the Liberal Party is very interesting.

I think she was under an immense amount of pressure from her colleagues last week.

But the unique thing about Senator Price is that unlike almost all of her colleagues, her kind of support and power doesn't come from within the parliamentary Liberal Party.

Her support and power comes from this huge social media following she has, this huge conservative base, the kind of fundraising money she draws for the Liberals.

And there were competing demands from those two groups.

She's also, you know, backed by people like Tony Abbott.

So migration's not going away as an issue, but this... saga has exposed the need for the Liberal Party to try and find palatable language to speak to the public about this issue because there is an underlying sentiment that's not going away.

What are the actual facts on our migration figures?

Well, if you look at the last two decades, so since about 2004 in the Howard era, you've had a pretty steady approach to migration where the population has generally grown between 1% and 2% every year.

And since 2004, migrants have contributed more to population growth than natural increase, which refers to the number of people being born minus the number of people who died.

So migrants have made up...

the kind of majority of population growth for the last 20 years.

The big anomaly, I suppose, as Paul said, happened during COVID.

So we were on track at that kind of steady rate of growth between 1% and 2%.

How can politicians or how are the politicians at a federal level responding to this sort of creep of extremism into the mainstream debate, Tars?

Tass, can you just refresh us on what happened after that in terms of the takeover?

Yeah, so Peter Dutton last year appointed three men as administrators to run that New South Wales division after the local government bungle and a period of dysfunction for that New South Wales division of the Liberal Party.

Now, two of them were from Victoria, which caused some consternation up in Sydney.

And then you had this episode a couple of weeks ago in a post-federal election context kind of all been wiped out of major cities and suffered a bad defeat in New South Wales again, where one of the administrators, former Victorian Treasurer Alan Stockdale, joked that, you know, in this conversation about women in the Liberal Party, that women were now sufficiently assertive that we might even need to consider reverse quotas for men.

And that did not go down well.

He's ideologically opposed, you might say, to quotas, but he did seem sort of open to them, didn't he?

Yeah, this is an interview with another publication called The Nightly.

He said, you know, quotas are an ethmo if you're talking about merit, but our position among women is so bad that maybe we need to or we should revisit that conversation.