Topics: Controversial American streamer let in Australia, RBA rates, Royal Commission into antisemitism public hearing

SHARRI MARKSON: Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has serious questions to answer tonight after American streamer known as Sneako, a man recorded praising Hitler, pushing antisemitic bio, and being banned from major social media platforms was given a visa to enter Australia. This is the same government that has blocked Israeli figures like Simcha Rothman, Hillel Ford, and Ayelet Shaked from coming here. Yet somehow this extremist man, along with others, has made it through the visa vetting system and is now traveling the country. And it gets worse. One of the first people Sneako met with here was Ahmed Harachi, known as the Muslim Undertaker. He's the father of a convicted ISIS terrorist, Burhan Harachi. Burhan is currently serving 34 years in Goulburn Supermax for offenses including a horrific racial attack on a white Australian ex-soldier in prison. He carved the ISIS slogan 'eye for eye' or 'eye for eye,' meaning 'eye for eye,' into his victim's forehead with a razor after waterboarding him with hot water and breaking his sternum. The images are online and they're horrific. Now, to be clear, there's no suggestion of any wrongdoing by his father Ahmed for actions that— from his son, with whom he says he lost contact a long time ago. But when someone with Sneako's history lands in Australia, Australians are entitled to ask who he's meeting, what he's doing here, and why Tony Burke's department let him in at all. Now, my understanding is that Tony Burke's office is reviewing the decision, but no outcome yet. Well, joining me now to discuss is Liberal Senator Dave Sharma. Dave, great to see you. Thank you for being here.

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DAVE SHARMA: Good evening.

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SHARRI MARKSON: Now, the hypocrisy compared to the mainstream Israelis who've been cancelled is quite staggering.

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DAVE SHARMA: It's staggering. I mean, Tony Burke and his department and his office seem to vet every former Israeli member of parliament or prominent Israeli public figure that comes here, and they've got an opinion on them, and they take an active decision whether to issue them a visa or not. Now, I have no difficulty in scrutinising the conduct of people coming to Australia, making sure they're not stirring up social division, but that needs to be applied equally. How can someone like Sneako, who's been banned from YouTube— I mean, YouTube has said you can no longer operate on our channels and platforms— But here's Tony Burke's department giving him a platform across our entire nation. And he's not the first. I mean, we've had at least two, by my counts, radical hate preachers being allowed into Australia by Tony Burke's department, given a visa, whose visas have only been cancelled after a public outcry. That's simply not good enough.

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SHARRI MARKSON: Mike Pezzullo was on the show last night and he said— well, he said that he thought that the intelligence division within Home Affairs had been dismantled. Do you think this needs to be examined to see whether that's true? Or whether the current visa vetting process is just failing.

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DAVE SHARMA: Well, I'm just not sure if they— I mean, they seem to work when— if you apply for a visa from Israel, the intelligence division at Home Affairs seems to do its job right. Why is it not being used to target people coming from other areas with equally or potentially more abominable views? I mean, I think this is a question of priority and direction from the minister. He's got a vast department. The Home Affairs department is vast. It seems to be able to do its job properly in some situations. Why is it continually to drop the ball in these sorts of scenarios.

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SHARRI MARKSON: Although when you say do its job properly, I mean, you could argue that they're the wrong decisions made.

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DAVE SHARMA: Oh yeah, I would disagree with them, but they seem to be able to scrutinize people before they come to Australia when it suits them. But when these sorts of people come in, they only fess up after a public outcry begins, and they only review the facts of the case and the circumstances after people, you know, like your show, like other journalists, raise concerns and say, what's just been allowed to happen?

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SHARRI MARKSON: And maybe that's why they're not cancelling it, because at the moment It's only Sky News reporting this. No one else is, no other media outlets reporting this. Maybe Tony Burke's office just think they can get away with it. I don't know.

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DAVE SHARMA: It seems to be that the only thing that gets action out of his office on these issues is sustained media pressure.

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SHARRI MARKSON: Yeah. I want to turn to the rate rise today. You heard what Michelle Bullock had to say. Do you think there is concern that the government's handouts, as detailed by Matthew Cranston in The Australian today, could be inflationary?

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DAVE SHARMA: I think there's no doubt they are inflationary, and Michelle Bullock has been saying very diplomatically but very clearly over the past 12 to 18 months that public demand, as she describes it, government spending in parts of the economy, is a big part of the inflation problem. Now, while we've had another rate rise today, why in fact we've had 15 rate rises under this Labor government now, you know, interest rates have gone up by 4 whole percentage points since Labor came to office, is because government spending has been too high. I mean, it's the highest it's ever been outside the pandemic in 40 years. The last budget, government spending was growing at 4 times the rate of the economy. That is having a huge inflationary impact, bidding up the prices of goods, of labour, of essential services. And that's what the Reserve Bank is having to manage. And that's well before this oil shock from the Middle East. I mean, as Michele Bullock said today, inflation was already a problem in Australia and all that's happening in the Middle East now is just making that issue worse.

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SHARRI MARKSON: But she kind of said really it was only the third rate rise we might not have had the Iran war not happened. I'm just interested though that it seems like the government handouts could be inflationary in two ways. One, government spending, but also obviously the impact of stimulus putting more money in people's pockets at the very time as, you know, the rate rises are meant to be, you know, curbing some of that spending.

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DAVE SHARMA: No, very true. And look, it— I mean, we argued against the way the government did this fuel excise levy cut recently because We as Liberals supported cutting the fuel excise levy, but we wanted to offset it with savings elsewhere in government spending so the net impact would not be inflationary. The government ignored that view. They just put the money straight into the economy, bid it up inflation. It depends on how they choose to pay for this, but if it's adding to government debt, I mean, it's adding to all of our interest repayments, and if there's no offsetting savings measures, then the net impact will be, yes, more inflation and making the Reserve Bank's job harder.

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SHARRI MARKSON: Very difficult for the Coalition though to argue against handouts that will make ease the cost-of-living crisis. I mean, it puts the Coalition in a very difficult political decision, political situation.

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, but I mean, I accept, yes, the politics might not be easy and it depends what the government comes up with. But I think the Australians they want a government and an alternative government that is honest with them about the problems. I mean, Labor's busy handing out Band-Aids to try and staunch a wound that is not mending. And the wound is not mending because spending is too high. And I Australians know you might give me $300 think today, but if I'm pushed into I'm going to move into a higher tax bracket next year because of bracket creep. If my electricity bills continue to rise by 25%, if I'm paying an average Australian is paying $30,000 more a year in interest on their mortgage. What's $300?

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SHARRI MARKSON: Nothing. It gets even worse. Very, very quickly. Before you go, I want to ask you about the Royal Commission. As you know, I just played so many of the emotional comments from today. One thing I didn't mention is that Jewish children, we also heard evidence today that they're being drilled on how to survive a terror attack at one particular school. I mean, this is a shocking sign of where our country is at. And Dave, even though we, you and I, know this, hearing it laid out like this, it is, it is very confronting.

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DAVE SHARMA: It is. It's heartbreaking, some of the things you hear. And I think, people who are familiar with these schools, who have had children there or know the community well, know this has been the lived reality now for some time. But I think this is one of the important facets of the Royal Commission, that everyday Australians who have no direct experience of this are thinking, 'Wow, imagine if my children had to go to a school and live like that and had to put up with this,'. And I think they should be learning to recognize, as we all should, that it cannot be acceptable that Jewish Australians have to live in an entirely different mindset and with an entirely different set of fears and insecurities and anxieties than every other Australian. It's just not right. It's just not Australian.

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SHARRI MARKSON: Dave, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate your analysis as always. Thank you.

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DAVE SHARMA: Thanks so much, Sharri.

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