Episode 169: New Cabinets, Old Wounds, and Wacky Ted: This Week on Wednesday

Van Badham (on her own while Ben’s away!) explores Australia’s new parliament, a record-breaking Labor majority, and freshly shuffled cabinet - but the real news? Susssssan Ley may be the Liberals’ new leader, but is she flying the Liberal plane straight into the glass cliff? Meanwhile, the Greens are fighting amongst themselves (again) about putting the “landlord” into “leadership” and Captain Carry On - aka, Andrew Hastie - role plays as the Aussie Pete Buttigieg… if Pete were right-wing, allergic to universities and not very fun at a party. Van also asks: if a National Party leadership challenge is taking place, does it make a sound? And the answer appears to be no. No, it does not. Meanwhile, there’s a surge in diversity on Labor’s benches worth celebrating as well as - YES, OMG - real wage growth that’s outpacing inflation as the actual business of government somehow manages to roll on. And if that weren’t enough good news, there’s been a breakthrough in the breakdown of forever chemicals, by jiminy! It may be one woman talking to herself for 45 minutes, but we hope you enjoy it!

You can listen to Episode 169: New Cabinets, Old Wounds, and Wacky Ted: This Week on Wednesday online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Episode 169: New Cabinets, Old Wounds, and Wacky Ted: This Week on Wednesday is an episode from "The Week on Wednesday" with Van Badham & Ben Davison by Ben Davison.

This episode is 44:57 long.

This episode was published on May 14, 2025.

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