We speak with well respected Australian liberal academic, Dr William Coleman about Australian Federation in 1901 and Australian nationalism more generally.

Our discussion centres around Dr Coleman's book, "Their Fiery Cross of Union - A Retelling of the Creation of the Australian Federation, 1889-1914", which is critical of federation project and many of those involved.

Topics we cover include:

• Whether there were really any practical alternatives possible?
• Whether the Australian constitution is really as flawed as claimed and how it could have been better?
• Whether Dr Coleman is too hard on the Australian Founders (compared to the American Founders and other nationalist leaders)?
• Whether our national immigration and foreign trade policies implemented at Federation, which liberals bemoan, were necessary at the time and important for the development of Australia?
• The relevance of Australia's founding to today's discussions about nationalism and importance of nation-state, trade, and immigration policies, being conducted as part of the "national conservative" movement in US, Europe and elsewhere.

We interview former NSW Police Minister Carl Scully who together with Assistant Commissioner Mark Goodwin are the authors of an important new book "The Cronulla Riots - The Inside Story".

We discuss:

- What actually went on in December 2005 and how the true significance of these events has been misunderstood

- How the aftermath and revenge attacks were far more serious that what took place on Cronulla Beach and how the police responded

- How both the media and academics misunderstood and mischaracterised these events

- Some very positive elements that came out of the events in 2005 and how this reflects well on the Australian community

- What in his view it takes to make immigration a success

We interview Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) www.cis.org and a nationally recognised and influential expert on immigration issues in the United States

Among other things we discuss:

• What exactly is going on in Springfield, Ohio and why it matters more than whether cats and dogs are being eaten
• What problems the US has with illegal immigration that Australia has been able to avoid
• Why US centre-right has until recently talked very differently about immigration than in Australia
• Why legal immigration is the problem as well as illegal immigration
• Where we go from here.

Interview with academic Dr John Lee, senior consultant for the US Dept of Defense and former national security adviser to Australian Government.

Among other things we cover:

1. Australian treasurer Jim Chalmers upcoming trip to Beijing

2. What Australia's trade and investment relationship should be like with China

3. How Xi Jinping doesn't really differ that much from his predecessors

4. Ideology v culture in foreign policy

Regular catch up on contemporary issues between Jordan Knight, founder of Migration Watch Australia and Dan Ryan, Executive Director of The National Conservative Institute of Australia.

My guest today is John Roskam who is the the former long-time executive director and now senior fellow of the Institute for Public Affairs (IPA), a well-known centre-right think tank based in Melbourne, Australia. He writes a regular column for the Australian Financial Review, which he has done for over 20 years.

In this episode we discuss:

• How the philosophy of the Institute of Public Affairs has changed over the years and why it originally supported tariffs among other things
• His views on Australia's Federation and the "Australian Settlement" and whether the criticism from liberal free market types is justified
• Why he thinks the "Washington Consensus" has changed and what this means for the Canberra bipartisan consensus and how it might need to change going forward.
• His current views on foreign policy, immigration, trade and much, much more.

Interview with Gerard Rennick, Senator for the State of Queensland, Australia. Always interesting chatting to Gerard who is, whatever you may think about particular policy positions, a very authentic guy and has given a great deal of thought to where Australia is going.

We cover issues such as (a) how government decisions actually made both in Australia and internationally (b) what explains why governments across the world increasingly seem to move in lockstep (c) his criticism of the bipartisan consensus on trade, foreign policy, and immigration.

Interesting discussion/debate with Dr Zachary Gorman in-house professional historian at the Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne. www.robertmenziesinstitute.org.au

We cover issues such as (a) how Australian Liberal Party different from British version (b) how Australian Liberal Party differs at all from other centre-right parties in other Anglo nations (c) whether many academic liberals have a spiteful view of the Australian Settlement and Australia history more generally and whether that is fair (d) whether liberalism can be seen as a destructive political philosophy and what restrictions can or should be placed on it.