‘World of pain’: Murray slams Labor’s climbing immigration amid cost-of-living crisis

In Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States, it has just broken 6am. As you know, four and a half hours ago, a cargo ship smashed into the city's major bridge and it collapsed. Local authorities claim that there may well be as many as 20 people in the water. There are some reports that there was also a roadworks crew, but nobody's confirming that at this moment in time. The bridge was built in the 1970s, but it was hit by a cargo ship that I believe was branded from Singapore. I'll double check that, it's either Singapore or the Philippines as the hour rolls on. There's also some breaking news which is taking place out of London, where it has just gone 10am, and in 30 minutes time, the High Court of London, of the UK rather, is going to make the final decision on whether or not Julian Assange is going to be able to fight his extradition to the United States. Now, we don't know whether that judgement is going to be one where the decision will just be simply announced and then the details will follow, or whether the court will take its time to explain its reasons and then get to its reasons. So, the plan for the hour is that we are, the moment there are any developments in either of those stories, we will go live to both so you can hear the latest. As the sun starts to come up in Baltimore, obviously, and with people in the water for four and a half hours, the suggestions from locals there is that it is a mass casualty event, as Shari's been covering in the past hour for you, and also that situation from London. We get to all of that and we will do so a little bit later, but till then I'm trying to jam in as much news as possible. We're also going to have Nigel Farage on the show, and a great debate as always. So, sit down, don't move. You've got an hour in front of you of pretty interesting stuff, including today. The headlines are not great for the Prime Minister, the headlines are not great for the Labor Party. The headlines read that the Prime Minister's personal ratings have fallen this week. Labor is heading towards minority government, according to a news poll, and the Roy Morgan poll today came out and said 50-50. Add to that the Essential poll, which comes out in the Turnbull Times, otherwise known as the Guardian, and they've got a real problem. Because while the Coalition's vote is only ever so slightly up from the last election, according to this poll, now, after tax cuts, after everything else, the Labor Party's primary vote is down 3.6 per cent from the election. Now, they were able to form a government off the lowest primary vote in the best part of a century. Even lower means Greens will take seats off them. Now, even though the Greens are slightly down, still, that more than compensates for the problem that is happening inside the Labor Party right now. Interestingly, two polls in a row show us that there has been a two-point jump since the election for one nation. Now, interestingly, in the Essential poll, they still keep counting the United Australia Party, who are down from the last election. But to see that there is the best part of 10 per cent of the vote, now, if 10 per cent of the vote follows the preference discipline towards the LNP that it did in 2019, this thing's going to be close. If it goes 50-50 or it splurts around like it did in 2022, then yes, Albo gets re-elected. So your preferences matter. It's a message I'm going to start saying every day between now and whenever that election's going to be, because your preferences will determine whether Albanese gets a majority or a minority or one heck of a historical shock. But the numbers, well, what's behind them? Well, let's have a look at male voters. Male voters, well, the primary vote of the LNP is up to 40 per cent. The Labor Party is down to 28 per cent, so even worse than with overall. Now, of course, we keep being told that the Liberal Party has a problem with women. The only problem is somebody should tell the pollsters, because believe it or not, the Liberal Party is currently out-polling the Labor Party when it comes to women. Now, these are fractions of fractions of a sample size, and nobody's going to pretend that this is what an election is going to be. But that's why narrative is important. As long as I've been talking to you, I've tried to talk about the difference between news, what's going on, and narrative, who's the good guy, who's the bad guy. And often politics is about covering the narrative. That's why they avoid the bad news, and they only cover the certain narratives that they want. Now, this is why the Liberal Party has a problem with women, is something that is constantly drilled into people. Now, regardless of whether or not you think there are enough Liberal MPs that are females, enough candidates that are women, the very reason why the Labor Party and the media say things like this over and over again is because they need women to back Labor, otherwise the lead that the Libs have with men would result in an election victory. Seem incapable of recognising that 50% of the population are female, and that the Parliament should represent the people. The Liberal Party has the lowest number of Liberal women in their parliamentary ranks since 1993. The Liberal Party is in the middle of a debate about how it recruits and treats women. The dramatic departure of Julie Bishop from Parliament is being seen this morning as yet another sign the Liberal Party has a problem with women. The LNP will host its International Women's Day event at a men's only club in Brisbane. As the Minister for Women, does the Prime Minister think this is right? Over and over and over and over and over and over. Now of course it all crescendoed at the last election and resulted in the Teals being able to take seats in the Parliament. Now whether people are voting on identity, policy or narrative is always the chief fight of those that are trying to move your vote in one direction or the other. But right now, based off the failures when it comes to cost of living, men are well and truly walking away from the Labor Party and right now statistically women are too. Now also we know from these polls that for the ninth month in a row Australians are telling us that we are heading in the wrong direction. It's the same with men, it's the same with women, it's the same with almost every demographic group. 49% of the country say we are headed in the wrong direction, hence why the Prime Minister's polls are where they are. Now this, as I said, is the ninth month. Now the Prime Minister and his supporters, well they may well end up clinging to the idea that he is the preferred Prime Minister. But again, the essential poll, the one in The Guardian, is telling us that 47% of people disapprove of his leadership right now, 47%. This is next to 49% in the Resolve poll. We know that he is underwater with again more people disapproving than approving in News Poll. So multiple polls, well they start to prove a trend. With a trend built to a narrative and the narrative informs the news, well we all wait and watch together. But of course one of the reasons why the Government is in the problems that they are right now is because of the ridiculous Ministers that he has put on the front line of changing the country, of trying to make the Twitter fantasies of a certain group come true. Now of course Chris Bowen was the one in the fire today and I've got plenty to say about how the media fell for spin and rubbish today, no back down please. But we know this bloke, he wants to tell you what car you can drive. Of course there's no-one forcing you to do it, they're just going to essentially put a tax on top of all the cars that aren't electric vehicles, not to mention the luxury car tax that they have put onto hybrid vehicles. Then there's the other Ministers, like the Home Affairs Minister, the one who is of course in charge of our borders. She is more senior than the Immigration Minister but it certainly matters because she has been put at the front about population. We were told in December of last year that this Government was going to be pulling back on what was a near record year of people coming into the country. That was the announcement in December, the only problem was 100 and something thousand people ended up coming through in January, I'll double check that number, but there was certainly the biggest number in nine years, my apologies, the biggest number in nine years came through in January of this year. Then we see today that based off that big January number and the expectations between now and the end of the financial year, that 375,000 people will come into the country by June. Now if that's the case we're going to end up with even more people in the country than last year's near record numbers. Last year it was 659,000, well we can all put 375 together with 375 and it ends up as more than 659,000 people. So they announced they're going to cut back but every indication is that we are still being supercharged to too many people coming into the country and that's not a statement about race. Yes, I noticed that little passive aggressive whack on Q&A last night. It's about our capacity to deal with having more people. Literally people die in the back of ambulances in Australia because there are not enough hospital beds. There aren't enough doctors. There aren't enough nurses. The hospitals aren't big enough. They're not new enough. Our population supercharges that now in the state of Victoria, just before their last state election, 33 people died because the triple 0 system didn't work. Record ramping and again deaths in places like South Australia and don't even get me started about the health system that the now Premier, Roger Cook, has driven into the ground in Western Australia. You add more people, you add more problems. You add more surge to it, let alone the problems of people being able to find rental accommodation or the competition that comes for those that are trying to buy their first, second or forever house. That's why immigration matters. So again, no surprise that this is a government that's in a world of pain.