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I'm Mike Boris and this is Straight Talk.
Roanox, welcome to Straight Talk.
Thanks so much for having me on the podcast.
You know, I'm one of your constituents.
And I've been driving around for, I don't know, maybe, I've been driving around forever around here,
but I've been driving around the last two months and I see this photograph of you everywhere alongside others.
And, you know, I'm thinking about the battle that you are,
and engaging and trying to win back the seat for the Liberal Party.
And I thought to myself, I don't really know this person.
I've known previous sitting candidates, sitting members for the area,
and I thought, well, it would be good to get you on and talk to Roanox and ask her about herself.
And, I mean, I could have Googled you, I guess, but this is our Google environment.
This is much more fun.
Yeah, much more fun.
This is real Google.
So, Liberal candidate for Wentworth.
A highly regarded, long-standing, until more recently, Liberal seat.
For all the obvious reasons.
We're all lucky enough to live in a, what would be considered socioeconomically to be a high number
in terms of representation of wealth in the country.
Not all of us grew up there or went to school there, but nonetheless, we're living there.
And so, we're sort of lucky and very blessed, and most of us have a fair bit of gratitude for that.
And we shouldn't expect it to be a Liberal seat just by virtue of that.
And it isn't at the moment.
It belongs to the Teals.
And I thought, well, let's start there.
You're in politics.
You understand this game better than I do.
Why are they called Teals?
So, I think the concept behind Teals was to say,
that they're Liberals, but they also have green policies.
So, they're blue and green.
So, they put blue and green together.
But Teal is actually a dark green.
In your view, I get it.
Well, I think, actually, the definition is that it's actually a dark green.
If we go full Pantone, it's actually a dark green.
That's quite clever.
And Allegra Spender, who's your opposition, she's a city member for Wentworth.
And we will ask, I will ask you in a moment,
just to define what you're saying.
I'm going to ask you in a moment.
But she's about as Liberal as I can imagine, in terms of her, how she grew up.
Her mother was Carla Zempatti.
Her father was John Spender, the Attorney General for New South Wales.
State government Liberal.
You know, a wealthy family.
I imagine she grew up in sort of the best possible conditions.
Yet, she becomes an independent.
And forms part of this Teal group.
Can you explain to your constituents, why does someone do that?
I mean, what's the deal?
Yeah, look, I don't really understand the motivation, because I'm always a person that
if you want to change something, you've got to do it from the inside.
And you know, I also worked in New York for a long time, and culture change can happen
at organizations.
But you've got to do it from the inside.
I think the view was...
She wanted to do something that was going to make a big sort of media splash, which
of course it did.
And I think the great thing about being an independent is you're not accountable.
So you don't actually ever have to deliver anything.
Because you don't have a party to talk to.
You don't have a party to talk to, but you also don't really have to deliver for your
Because you can just say, oh, I'm working across the floor, I'm voting on issues that
are important to our community, without actually having to stand up and have a piece of legislation
that goes through the parliament.
So the Teals haven't had one private member's bill that's been put through the parliament.
And I would have thought sort of a key KPI of a member of parliament is to have legislation
So not one has been put through.
So I think it's quite appealing in some ways, because you can also promise everything.
You don't have to get anything costed out by treasury.
You don't have to then actually put it into the budget and get it delivered.
And I think that that's quite appealing sort of space to be in, in the world that we're
in at the moment.
And she's so driven by marketing and talking and not actual delivery.
I notice on her strapline it says, your values, your voice.
But I guess people who are voting for a candidate like that would like to know what her values
are and for her to use her voice to pursue her values, and hopefully her values are equivalent
or somewhat similar to mine.
What are the values of these mob?
Like, what do you see as your values?
How many people are from another зап?
I've never really found out.
Yeah, so I think it's very hard to exactly tell,
but if we can maybe one indicator, it's just sort of voting records.
So on legislation, which I always think is a way of measuring MPs,
Allegra's voted 71% of the time with Labor,
70% of the time with Greens, and 27% of the time with the Coalition.
So if you look at that sort of mix, that feels very much more like values
that are more aligned with the Labor and Greens party
than with the Liberal Party.
Is that the reason they don't actually get up and say what their values are?
Well, I think it's easy just to have these big sort of motherhood
and apple pie sort of statements.
It's much easier than saying this is what I stand for,
this is what I'm going to deliver, I think,
if you just speak in very broad statements.
I also find it quite interesting, a lot of Teal voters that I talk to,
they're all about their own values and they want their own values represented.
And I actually have a real problem with that
because I think your Member of Parliament,
of course they must advocate for the community,
but they should also be thinking much more broadly about Australia.
They've got a spot at the table to help the whole country
and I don't think it should just be representing voice
of a very small number of people.
I don't think that's the right way to be a Member of Parliament.
That's very interesting.
And that's not about Allegra.
I now want to talk about Roe and Knox.
I've often wondered what Roe stands for.
It's actually Roanne.
So my parents both had very strong views on which name they'd come up for
and then they just, I think Mum was probably exhausted,
and so they just put together this name and I have never been called,
I hardly ever get called Roanne.
I don't think I've ever heard that name, Roanne.
No, I think it's a bit of a made-up name.
It is naturally a very nasty industrial town in France,
so maybe they didn't quite check that at the time.
But I never get, I always get called Roe or Roe.
Never get called Roanne.
So let's take a little bit of a trip now.
So where did, you talked about your parents.
Where did you grow up?
What did your parents do?
Yeah, so I grew up on the Mornington Peninsula,
but Mum and Dad are actually both from New South Wales,
I'm not a Victorian, strictly.
That's all right.
And Dad was an engineer who started his own company,
so very much a small business owner, which became a big business.
And obviously at that time, when he was building the business,
they were fighting the unions.
So that was sort of part of my DNA, this we should have freedom of enterprise.
I always remember Dad talking about that.
And Mum was a physio.
She's half Swedish, so her mother's family were all Swedish.
So, Mark, if you can imagine, a lot of sport, a lot of fish,
a lot of health, and a very warm, I had a very warm upbringing,
but Mum also has a very steely core.
And I think some of that steely, strong pace has been really,
really helpful during this campaign.
Yeah, I was going to ask you about the campaign a little bit later,
actually, because I'm always constantly thinking to myself,
I wonder if they knew what they were getting themselves into,
because it looks like it's been pretty hectic for everybody.
But have you got brothers and sisters?
I do have a brother who I'm very close to.
He's a school principal in Melbourne.
And my kids always joke that he's clearly the favourite child.
Why, why, why, why?
Because he's just so good.
He's one of those people that's ridiculously good at everything.
Oh, no, nothing more annoying.
Yeah, sickening, sickening.
And he's also a really nice guy.
It's very annoying.
That's not my brother.
He's good at everything.
My younger brother's good at everything.
Yeah, it's very annoying, very frustrating.
Good at, like, taller than me, better swimmer than me,
better student than me, better everything, everything.
But I got the wood on him because I'm older than him,
so I'm actually, that's the only thing.
And he still looks at me as he's,
he's older, brother.
So where'd you go to school down there?
So I went to Tourette College in Mount Eliza,
and I was head of my school down there.
It was a great childhood.
The beach is down there, obviously a lot colder than up here.
But we, mum and dad had a beach house up at Crescent Head
on the central coast.
I love Crescent Head, oh, my God.
Yeah, so we spent, I spent a huge amount of time up there.
That was sort of my whole childhood.
They actually just sold it a couple of years ago
because they thought they couldn't quite make the drive now.
From Melbourne to?
From Melbourne, yeah.
It's a bit of a drive from Melbourne.
But not too bad from Sydney.
I know, it's bad.
And now with the road, so much better.
Yeah, the road is, and where do you live in Sydney?
We live in, we've been in Paddington for over 20 years.
So we love Paddington.
So you're married?
I am married to John.
We actually met at university, and we actually started going out
because he was one of the only people at college that didn't like me,
and I was intrigued.
I was completely intrigued.
So he was very much the sporty, hardcore boy kind of contingent.
So you played hard to get.
Well, I think so.
Well, I'd like to get his story from him.
So you went through school.
What were you like as a student?
Look, I was a pretty big personality, but I was also a hard worker,
and I loved the academic side of school.
So, yeah, I loved it.
But I was also definitely not the teacher's pet, I would say.
Was it a girl's school?
It was an all-girls school.
So does that mean you spoke your mind?
I did speak my mind, but I think also a little bit of class clown, actually, Mark.
A lot of easy jokes from the back row.
Well, that's interesting to have a politician who can actually pull off a good joke.
So leaving school, what happened after that?
So then I went to Melbourne University.
I did a law degree at Melbourne University and an arts degree
because we used to do them together.
Yeah, so you know how they used to do that combo.
And I went to Ormond College where I was chairman of the Ormond College Students' Club.
So I was the second female chair of that.
So people always say, oh, this politics stuff must be really hard.
Try living with people, you know, because at college some of the things we had to sort of
behaviourally put in place and you're living with people.
But that was absolutely fantastic, and I've still,
my closest friends still come from that time.
So you come out of university with an arts law degree.
Did you, I don't know what they do down in Victoria,
but I presume they're the College of Law down there.
The College of Knowledge after university?
Yeah, so I'd actually been to Israel as part of my law degree
because Melbourne University used to have an exchange
and I sort of fancied myself as a very glamorous international lawyer.
As in humanitarian or international law?
International law, and I thought I'd maybe go and work in the Hague
or, you know, be around Europe just loving it.
And so I went to Israel, but it was that time in Israel
where it was all about entrepreneurship.
So they'd just started this amazing Yotam firm,
and it was all about innovation, and the whole campus was saying,
why would you go back and do law, go and do business?
So I finished my law degree and then went straight into management consulting.
So did you work for one of the management consultants?
I did, and my first project was actually in Chicago,
and as my mum said, that is a bit of a commute, which it was.
So then after Chicago, John, who was my boyfriend at the time,
and I moved to New York, and then I worked with Deloitte Consulting
and their strategy group in New York.
Oh, you were saying you worked for Deloitte.
So that is interesting.
Angus, Tata has somewhat of a similar story to you in some respects.
In terms of management consultant for those people
who don't quite live in that world, what are those, you know,
the Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte, et cetera,
what do they do when it comes to management consultants?
What's that mean?
Yeah, I think it can be somewhat of an esoteric concept.
So I arrived in New York in 98.
It was all about the growth story.
So all the financial services organisations were trying to deal with this thing
called the internet.
They were trying to make sure that their staff were really motivated.
They were launching new products.
And then, of course, by 2000, every project I was doing was all cost-cutting.
Like how can we get rid of all those staff that we just hired?
Because the tech boom died.
And then obviously it was September 11th.
And in the US that was a massive, massive recession,
particularly in financial services.
So but in terms of skills, what are you all going to bring to, you know, work skills?
What are you going to bring to parliament?
So what are the sort of things you would learn and experience?
So you 100% understand how businesses work.
And then I went from there to start a small VC firm where we were backing start-ups.
So venture capitalists.
And it was very small.
It was small numbers.
So we were sort of between angel investors and Series A.
And we'd go in and actually run the company.
But I think from management consulting, you learn the discipline.
You learn the rigor around financial modeling and what businesses work and what don't.
And you also have to be a super, super quick study.
Because the clients are expecting good advice from you.
And you have to be able to learn their business very quickly.
And work long hours.
Extraordinarily long hours.
And I used to work crazy hours in New York.
But the guy who is the managing director of the office,
when you had your very academic interview with him,
he'd also take you for a drink.
And you didn't get the job unless he sort of liked you.
So the culture he created was extraordinary.
I loved going to work.
Because we had a great time.
And with a venture capital business, that is a fund that someone has raised money to invest in.
In your case, you were talking about start-ups or early stage, pre-seed, seed, et cetera.
This is in America, by the way.
Yeah, it was all US-based.
So what sort of businesses were you...
Were you sort of tending towards...
Because I don't know if the tech boom had started up again or what was going on in those days
or whether the so-called internet of things had kicked off
and everyone was talking about that in terms of sensory stuff.
Where were you guys concentrating your efforts on?
So we'd all come from the financial services strategy group.
So all our first businesses were all around financial services.
So this is really going to age me, Mark.
But we had a debit card for kids.
And this was when debit cards were just coming out.
And it was called...
My Plash, My Plastic Cash.
And the idea was then the parents could load money onto the card, but it was capped.
And the reason why we did that is one of our friends was a partner
and his daughter had taken...
This could only happen in Manhattan...
Had taken his black Amex with no limit on it.
So that was sort of the genesis of the idea.
We had the biggest market share, that business.
And it was one of the first businesses.
And now they still have Spriggy and things are still...
Those businesses are still existing.
What do you learn?
What are some of the skills that you get out of being involved in those environments?
I mean, including the manager consultancy, but importantly into the venture capitalist
environment where you've got like small business people who sort of come out with a great idea,
but they've got no money.
They need to get some capital to bring this thing to life.
I mean, what are the sort of things you learn that might be relevant to why someone should
vote for you, for example?
So I think the biggest one you learn is, as you know, is you can have absolutely...
Zero arrogance because the idea is only as good as it's how hard you work.
And I think the second thing that I really, really learned in that space, which is why
I find the whole teal value proposition very problematic, is we used to say to some of
our entrepreneurs, you know, Ro has 50 ideas when she's brushing her teeth.
It doesn't matter.
What can we execute?
And I really, really learned the value of execution.
And then the other thing is, as you would know, when you're...
When you're at that seed stage, you're actually investing in the entrepreneur.
So you're investing in the person.
And so I also am a very, very good judge of character.
And I learned a lot around that and not to do business with people that don't have anything
You've always got to be high integrity.
Your word has to mean something.
Otherwise, people don't want to do business with you.
They won't give you money.
And obviously, learn how to work like crazy.
And I think they're all...
I think that's a good one too, that being able to judge someone's character, but also
these startups are using someone else's money.
So to some extent, you've got to make a judgment as to whether or not do they actually perceive
there's any downside and what is the downside that they're concerned about, that they'll
work hard towards not happening.
And that sort of judgment's a hard one.
That's a tough judgment.
Well, not government.
You're not in government.
You're in parliament.
In parliament, do you come across those sorts of characters?
Do you think you'll come across those sorts of characters who have got nothing to lose
and therefore don't care?
And I also think that's why business background's so important.
So just on this campaign, I always say to the team, any piece of money that we've raised,
someone's earned $2.
They've earned $2 to give us...
Because they had to pay tax.
That's exactly right.
To give us the $1.
And I think that's something that should be in the mindset of every single person that's
sitting in parliament.
Any of these budgetary things, you're taking money from really hardworking Australians,
so you'd better be spending it in the most effective way possible.
That's a point that's sort of been sort of griping on me a little bit.
So when I see the cash splash that's sort of been second nature to the campaign that
Well, the campaign that was...
It wasn't announced, but it definitely started in January, but it was announced much later
The amount of money that's being thrown around as a person who comes...
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From your background, what do you think of that?
I think it's really bad.
And I'm really, because it's the young people that are going to bear the brunt of that debt.
I mean, some of the numbers are they're going to have a trillion dollar debt if they keep
spending like this.
I think it's $425.
They've already spent over the period in government and then in future commitments.
And to me, that's very, very serious to have that sort of debt level.
And also just the lack of analytical examination of where that money's going.
And I think that's the management consultant part of me, that they're just throwing money
Nothing's means tested.
So we're not even giving some of this money to the people that need it the most.
For example, the electricity.
The rebate has been given to everyone.
You're getting it.
And if you've got 10 houses, you're getting it.
Still getting it.
I mean, you're saying in terms of that being an idea, the execution of the idea is not
very good because it probably should be restricted to just one group.
Well, one group maybe perhaps should get more.
That's exactly right.
And the other group should get less.
Or maybe even more fundamentally, why don't we deal with why the energy costs have gone
Let's deal with the problem instead of dealing with sort of the symptom and throwing money
But you just mentioned something quite interesting that what would be the assumed levels of debt
that are going to come forward over the next period.
And one thing is for sure, and I think even the Labor Party would admit this, and they
did talk about it, they had two years of surpluses, but now they're going to have 10 years of
And deficits are going to be funded from somewhere.
Either taxpayers are going to have to pay more tax or alternatively they have to borrow
And it looks like they haven't said that they're going to get that.
Not yet, but under the current government, it's more likely they're going to have probably
some combination of the two.
We don't know whether they're going to impose more taxes on the community, but we'll soon
And capital's certainly not cheap at the moment.
And capital's very expensive.
One of the things you might be able to explain to our listeners is I saw, and you come from
this world, I saw some reference to Standard & Poor's looking at Australia's AAA rating.
So just to be clear.
Australia has a AAA rating, as does New South Wales.
Credit rating, yes.
Credit rating, which is rated by independent rating agencies, one of which is called Standard
They're global organisations.
These decisions are made after long, hard examination of the finances of the country.
And a lot of people in our electorate might say, well, who gives a damn?
Well, maybe you will give a damn if you understand the consequences of losing your AAA rating
as a result of borrowing too much money.
And then borrowing becomes a lot more expensive.
And as a result of losing the AAA rating, the cost of money to the government and to
the country becomes much more expensive.
And it doesn't take much to tick up a lot of ongoing interest rate, extra interest rate,
which sometimes can end up getting compounded and then your debt just gets greater and greater
It's a bit like if you go and buy a house and the bank lends it to you at 5% and then
all of a sudden, for some reason, they don't think you're very rich.
You don't have very good credit, your credit rating goes down and they say, well, you're
I've got to put your interest rate up.
So as a person, and therefore, and you can't pay it, so you just keep adding to the amount
of money you owe.
As someone who comes out of this sort of world, what do you think about the money that's getting
thrown around this campaign in terms of the downside, potential downsides for us?
So I think there's huge downside by the sort of money that Labor's throwing out.
And this, particularly the AAA credit rating, is so important.
And obviously, when the Liberals were in government for nine years, that credit rating was maintained.
And it has, as you said, it has massive implications for the cost of financing future debt.
It has massive implications for our international standing.
I also thought it was very disturbing that the Prime Minister criticised Standard & Poor's
And he said that they shouldn't be saying it.
And he was criticising sort of a very neutral entity that also has longstanding in this
And I think that that also was pretty distressing, that he was attacking sort of an institution
like Standard & Poor's.
Well, and they operate under the no fear, no favour.
They're a global organisation.
They couldn't give a damn who you are.
But also incredibly accredited.
Because investors around the world, including Australia, rely on the rating of the country
that we might, an investor might be asked to invest in.
So you might have some mob in America who's, you know, PIMCO, one of the big super fund
managers over there, let's call, they're not called that over there, but let's call
them something like that, who, if Australians are borrowing money to fund deficits, they
go to organisations like this and PIMCO doesn't care how good a talker the Prime Minister
is or how good a talker Dr. Jim is, they're interested in what's Dan and Paul say because
they live by ticking boxes and making sure that the money is invested into certain mandates.
And by design, those organisations are completely independent.
Their job is to give the credit rating.
And that credit rating and then that money gets priced favourably.
We've been so lucky in Australia for so long to have favourable ratings like AAA.
And I've actually never really thought this through like we are having this conversation
But if you put Stan and Paul's offside as a result of running long, long lasting deficits,
you actually put every single taxpayer in the country at risk.
That's exactly right.
And it's more likely that they're going to raise the money they now need.
Instead of borrowing it, they're going to put taxes up because they'll be seduced into thinking that.
That's exactly right.
And I also think, which we've seen under this government, we haven't had growth in the economy
and part of that is a reticence of multinationals to invest and also local businesses to invest
in the economy because they perceive labour to be anti-business.
And to me, this is another indication of that.
And if we lose this credit rating, it's going to be even harder for us to attract
people to want to invest in Australian businesses.
Ro, it's interesting, and you and I can sit and have this conversation, but do you think
your constituents in Wentworth care or would you want to say to them something that will
Do you think they care?
Do you think voters today, I mean, I've just been watching Australian behaviour, Australians
behaviour and thinking about it a lot.
And, you know, Peter Dutton's been getting hammered and a lot of good stuff's coming
out, but I wonder whether Australians just get so confused.
They say, look, that's not my problem.
I've got my house.
It's in Walkloose.
It's in Edgecliff.
Don't have any debt.
I've got a little bit of debt.
I've got a pretty good job.
Unemployment's low.
It's like, it's beyond me.
I'm not going to worry about this stuff.
And do you think they say that?
And if so, maybe you might want to say why they should be.
Thinking about these things, why it is potentially a problem.
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So I think also because it feels like a hypothetical, so it's hard for voters to understand what
the implication of that's going to be.
What I'll say though in Wentworth, and I've spoken to thousands of people.
everyone is feeling cost of living pressures without doubt. And that's right across the seat
sort of in slightly different ways because it's also quite a leveraged seat. So people do have
mortgages. So the fact that sort of the average mortgage has gone up by over 50,000 under this
government with interest rates, if you amplify that into some of the bigger mortgages, mortgage
positions in Wentworth, it's a big issue. So I think cost of living is definitely a massive issue.
It's whether people can then understand that this is going to heighten that even further.
But I would say small businesses in Wentworth certainly understand the implications of this
and so do entrepreneurs because they're already saying access to capital has shrunk so much under
this government. And it's interesting too, like what most people don't realise, even though the
government will have to borrow or does borrow from globally from overseas, banks do too. 40%
of all bank funding comes from overseas. And those,
So Australia's credit rating is really important in terms of the cost of money to the banks
and banks in this country, because, you know, five banks control the joint.
Those five banks in this country will just pass that extra cost on.
Absolutely. I think part of though Labor understands this sugar heat sort of strategy does work
and Wentworth voters are very sophisticated, but there is a portion of people that just
think, oh, that's great. We're getting that and they're doing this and they're taking the
They don't think about the implication of that further down the road. And I think that that's
something everyone needs to be thinking about as they're going into the ballot box.
So something I can't avoid talking about, but for our area is, of course, the Israel-Palestine
issue. And of course, there was a large Jewish contingent in our area.
I might imagine as big as anywhere in Australia.
What does Roe-Knox and the Liberal Party want to say to that community?
So we actually have the biggest number of Jewish people in our electorate of any electorate in
Australia. And I obviously studied in Israel, as my children tell me very kindly, in the early
Middle Ages. Thanks, kids. And I was in Israel actually in December last year and met with
a whole series of startups, which was incredible. They have the most unbelievable startup,
It was great meeting with them and obviously also then going down to the October 7th attacks
on the Gaza envelope. So I've been extraordinarily proud to be a Liberal during this time. We've
been so consistent right from October 7th through to the riots on the Opera House on
October 9th. Peter Dutton then was calling for a National Cabinet and both Allegra Spender
and the Prime Minister at the time said it was a stupid idea. It was politicising. There
was no anti-Semitism.
And of course, we saw when the guardrails got moved and there was such weak leadership,
that's when we saw all this behaviour and obviously a lot in Wentworth. We had firebombs
of cars. We had graffiti. We've had a huge number of posters, my posters in particular,
this election that have been graffitied with Nazi symbols.
Yeah. Absolutely unprecedented amounts of those this election. And I think there's
no doubt the Jewish community in Wentworth have felt abandoned. They also felt they
were very, very upset by the fact that Allegra Spender signed the letter to restore the ANWR
funding when Israel and 22 countries around the world had already said that they were
physically involved in the October 7th attacks. So the Jewish community very much feels insecure
at the moment. They're very, very concerned of the possibility of a Labor Greens minority
government, extremely concerned. And I've been very proud to be a Liberal. We've been so strong.
And even a couple of weeks ago, Peter has signed on, Peter Dutton has signed on to the ECHA's 15
point plan to counter anti-Semitism. And the Prime Minister's not going to do that.
So is that something that if Liberal get in, that's something that they will
Yes. And it sort of deals with anti-Semitism where it lives. So universities, national security,
arts organizations, and also we have to not only be prosecuting people, we've also going to be
driving education.
And that's pretty important.
It's massively important.
So where does your area extend to? Obviously it goes from, okay, I'll leave it to you. Tell me.
I know where it goes from here. You tell me.
So it's Clovelly, sort of the border. We've actually now got a piece of Randwick, which came
from Kingsford Smith. And we've added, so we've added this piece of Randwick and then we have,
Potts Point, Woolloomooloo, and Darlinghurst. So parts of Sydney have also come into the seat.
A very different environment. So you've got sort of like a little bit of inner Sydney.
We do. We do. Yes.
How do you go there? Because generally speaking, they don't go Liberal,
also probably don't go Labor to some extent. They do like the Greens.
Yeah, they do like the Greens. So I'd say Randwick's great for us. We've got a lot of
small business owners who are really feeling the pain of this government of the last three years.
And because they're small business, they're not going to go to the Greens. They're going to go to the
So to them, the Teals proposition just doesn't make any sense because they want to see what's
actually happened, which is obviously not a huge amount. And so that's a great area for us. Potts
Point's really good. We've got a lot of empty nesters there, a lot of very engaged members of
the political, very engaged in politics in Potts Point. Woolloomooloo's actually fascinating. I've
spent quite a lot of time there. So there's a lot of housing commission there and these are really
hardworking people. And to them, they feel quite let down. They're traditional Labor voters
and they feel very let down. I was speaking to a woman the other week who was working three jobs
so her daughter could go to St. Vincent's in year 11 and year 12. And I mean, these are the Australians
we should be supporting. They should be rewarded for working so hard. And I think we'll get quite
a few of those Labor voters who want to come. They're the sort of Howard's quintessential
Australian battlers. And then darling,
Hearst is green and quite brutal.
That is brutal, Randy.
Yeah, it's pretty brutal.
So I'm going to ask you what I've asked all the other politicians who've been in this process.
Why vote for Roe Knox in the seat of Wentworth?
Yeah. So I think in Wentworth, we need real action. I've obviously spent my whole career
delivering businesses, delivering outcomes. And that's very core to my DNA. I don't just talk
about things. I like to get things done. I like to get things done. I like to get things done.
And from my standpoint, for a seat like Wentworth to have sort of an adjacent politician who's not
in the party room, who's not influencing policy is a waste of a vote. And that's why I think
people have to vote Liberal this time in Wentworth.
That's interesting. A waste of vote.
I think it is because I think the Teals are off running an agenda. They haven't put one
piece of legislation through. They haven't been able to influence the politics or the policies of
the day. And to me, Wentworth should absolutely, given the seat that we have, we should absolutely
be helping Australia be a better place to live. Well, just following you now is going to be Peter
Dutton. And I have heard that he said that Roe Knox could be someone who gets a ministerial
position if he wins government. That sounds pretty exciting.
It does sound exciting. I have to say, Mark, I'm not focused on that at all. It is such a battle.
We will need every single vote. And I'm just...
So you're focused on getting to Saturday and delivering this seat for Peter Dutton, actually.
Well, good luck on the upcoming election on Saturday. I guess you're up against it. You
are probably the underdog in this fight. And it's going to be interesting to see whether or not
a Liberal gets back in to run its constituency in the seat of Wentworth.
Thanks very much, Roe Knox.
Thank you so much for having me.
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