Speaker 1: Him Boris and this is straight talk.
Speaker 2: We've never seen anything like this in human history where
Speaker 2: a search engine is so utuly dominant on how we
Speaker 2: put our information, and so it's unprecedented and terrifying in
Speaker 2: a sense that whatever you type in it's been controlled.
Speaker 1: Then English straight talk made great to be here. If
Speaker 1: you're the editor in chief of the Daily Telegraph or
Speaker 1: All Things Telegraph, what does ben English actually do?
Speaker 2: You're doing the meeting things at once. That's the way
Speaker 2: it is with a modern newspaper. We don't hold anything back.
Speaker 2: The industry that's actually in the fight of its life
Speaker 2: against an onslaught of social media that has no interest
Speaker 2: in Australian society, has no interest in our welfare. And
Speaker 2: it's just interesting. The attention economy, very untrusting in politicians.
Speaker 2: There's got to be something. What's the hidden agenda here?
Speaker 1: That would be the least trusted people I think in
Speaker 1: next country.
Speaker 2: Maybe next to me, But yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: Been English finally well and straight talk made great to
Speaker 1: be here. And I think the last time we caught
Speaker 1: up was in It's like I'm skuting was in Vegas?
Speaker 1: Is that a great restaurant? Actually? Nick was holding a
Speaker 1: put together a little gathering of people for a Greek
Speaker 1: restaurant in the Greek restaurant in Vegas and a number
Speaker 1: of people there, but we won't disclose it was there,
Speaker 1: but you and I were there, and I remember Nick
Speaker 1: went to a lot of trouble with the I don't
Speaker 1: call him the chef or whatever it is. And I
Speaker 1: think it was lost on a lot of people because
Speaker 1: one of the guests who was sitting there, actually I
Speaker 1: didn't want to eat some of the food and all
Speaker 1: he wanted to eat was steak and chips.
Speaker 2: You guess who that was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And poor Nick, he was like a kid to
Speaker 1: know what to say. Look on his face. I don't mean,
Speaker 1: don't worry. Let him have it. It doesn't matter. But
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of trouble.
Speaker 3: I I he puts thorts into things, and like you
Speaker 3: wonder how people that and then you deal with these
Speaker 3: people like obviously you have the burdocks in your life,
Speaker 3: but these individuals are.
Speaker 1: So incredibly busy and so incredibly successful and so wealthy.
Speaker 1: Yet they here's a small dinner which probably was getting
Speaker 1: organized for three days. The detail, like you know, I
Speaker 1: someone like Nick, and we're talking about Nick Politus, otherwise
Speaker 1: known as Uncle Nick, the chairman of the Rooster's team club.
Speaker 1: He told me, it's very interesting. Ronnie Coot, as you know,
Speaker 1: was recently inducted into the NRLs call or actually as
Speaker 1: an immortal, as an immortal at fourteenth or something like that,
Speaker 1: I know which one he was. But and it was
Speaker 1: a long time coming coming for Ronnie cult and of
Speaker 1: course Running played for the Roosters and he played for
Speaker 1: Souse and which is a pretty big transition between the
Speaker 1: two clubs. But Nick told me, I said to Nick
Speaker 1: after announced, literally the day after it was announced, have
Speaker 1: you got Ron's new number? Because he's not answering my text.
Speaker 1: Turn out I saw a run on the weekend of
Speaker 1: the reason in an answer my text, he told me
Speaker 1: it's because he's got four hundred text. He just overwhelming
Speaker 1: and Ronnie's just ton eighty. But Nick told me the
Speaker 1: day after that he'd already written a letter and Senator
Speaker 1: to ron he wrote a letter, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: why would you runt out to write a letter? Who
Speaker 1: reads letters these days? And you know when you can
Speaker 1: go on text? Well, actually, if a letter arrives at
Speaker 1: me and I've got four hundred texts, but if I
Speaker 1: get a letter, I'll read a letter. And I thought, wow,
Speaker 1: how insightful is that. I don't hopefully I'm giving him
Speaker 1: his dues and I'm not over over egging the whole
Speaker 1: of his situation. But for me, I thought, that's a
Speaker 1: pretty thoughtful process.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the art letter writing is rapidly getting lost, but.
Speaker 1: It becomes much more special because of that.
Speaker 2: Totally. It's the same with me. I remember the letters
Speaker 2: that I received, handritch letters. There's sometimes some that you
Speaker 2: don't want to read, but there's there's some really special
Speaker 2: ones I've received over the years and they stick out
Speaker 2: in my mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm the same I and I. When my parents
Speaker 1: love I used to always make sure I wrote something
Speaker 1: to them, like Father'sday, Monsday, with those types, birthdays, Christmas.
Speaker 1: Made sure I wrote something in there, even if it
Speaker 1: was one or two paragraphs. You come from this world,
Speaker 1: the world of communicating through text, because you're the editor
Speaker 1: in chief of the Daily Telegraph for all things Telegraph,
Speaker 1: because a Daily Telegraph today incorporates the Sunday Telegraph too,
Speaker 1: So everything everything that the Telegraph Group produces a digitally
Speaker 1: and the physical form too. Well, it is your fault,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about not being able to
Speaker 1: get hands on well, the phasing out of newspapers, because
Speaker 1: I actually still like to get a newspaper you're not alone,
Speaker 1: at least once a week. I like to read it
Speaker 1: once week if possible. If I'm an aeroplane, I actually
Speaker 1: like to thumb through the paper on the aeroplane, mainly
Speaker 1: because harder to get off your your device. But as
Speaker 1: the editor of the group, what does Ben English actually do? So?
Speaker 1: Is it like the old I think his name is
Speaker 1: Peter Finch in the remember that movie what was it
Speaker 1: called The Network? He's sort of sitting there and they're
Speaker 1: all in the room and you're sitting down and saying, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to write a story about that, and your
Speaker 1: story is crap. You know, what does the editor do?
Speaker 1: What do you do physically? Do there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is a bit of that, still still a
Speaker 2: bit of that. Yeah, I mean I'm not I'm on
Speaker 2: the tools from about when I say on the tools,
Speaker 2: I'm actually looking at the pages on a screen from
Speaker 2: about five pm till eight pm and we go to
Speaker 2: we go to press. But you know, you're doing a
Speaker 2: million things at once. That's the way it is with
Speaker 2: a modern newspaper's of my time.
Speaker 1: You used to have your deadline, and it was because
Speaker 1: you had to print the paper. Obviously you had to
Speaker 1: get all the stories actually loaded up onto the print
Speaker 1: or whatever it was in the print. So the used bit,
Speaker 1: I don't five or six o'clock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you it's it's really similar.
Speaker 1: But now but now it's sort of a bit more continual.
Speaker 1: Because there's something new comes up at nine o'clock, you've
Speaker 1: got to put it up.
Speaker 2: We don't hold anything back, right, so there's not a story.
Speaker 2: It's funny. The only it's because it's a complete anachronism
Speaker 2: to hold the story back for print. Yeah, basically because
Speaker 2: it just gets ripped off anyway and put up some
Speaker 2: radio whatever. It just gets ripped off. So we've given
Speaker 2: up that long ago. We don't hold anything back for
Speaker 2: the paper. The only time we do is when we're
Speaker 2: required to by say, if we get a what we
Speaker 2: call a drop, So we get a story from the
Speaker 2: government or from another source and they said it's embargoed
Speaker 2: right until five am, which means you can, you know,
Speaker 2: you can put it to print and it hits the
Speaker 2: streets at five am. But you can't put it up online.
Speaker 2: And the reason they do that is because they haven't
Speaker 2: caught up with us. I mean, we're one hundred percent
Speaker 2: digital and we basically reverse publish, if you like, back
Speaker 2: into print. Everything's front loaded into digital. And now the
Speaker 2: next sort of evolution is into video. So we are
Speaker 2: breaking our stories now by video.
Speaker 1: How do you mean like it's more like television.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean we've got our own Wi frame
Speaker 2: on our app now, which is called DTTV. And you
Speaker 2: know there's a little button on your app click on
Speaker 2: it and there's a whole there's thirty three stories which
Speaker 2: get refreshed quite frequently. We've got a five o'clock bulletin
Speaker 2: a video and we break news of video. Our reporters
Speaker 2: are not only writing stories, but they're actually presenting them
Speaker 2: on videot But.
Speaker 1: It's competing with television then to some extent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it is. It's competing with appointment media, yes,
Speaker 2: six PM users, so yeah, we have a loderate five
Speaker 2: But we're also breaking news on video throughout the day.
Speaker 2: But we're not necessarily trying to disrupt some of them
Speaker 2: so much as to disrupt ourselves before we get disrupted.
Speaker 2: If we just stand still, we'll get run over. So
Speaker 2: we have to keep on evolving our storytelling.
Speaker 1: And they are too, by the way, they're using digital
Speaker 1: to keep breaking stories themselves. There waiting to the six
Speaker 1: Scotch News. Oh yeah, they're going to have the nine
Speaker 1: apt for example. And by the time I get home,
Speaker 1: and if I get home in time for the six
Speaker 1: scock News, I've already seen it all you have either
Speaker 1: through you guys, through news dot com or through the
Speaker 1: nine news whatever is on you know apput and I
Speaker 1: got seven, I've got all of them. Yeah, and there
Speaker 1: are other places, by the way, break news like the
Speaker 1: Daly Os. Yes, for example, we've been doing it for
Speaker 1: a long time. They break it in text, that's right,
Speaker 1: which sort of like for a period there during COVID,
Speaker 1: I was actually very interested in what they were doing.
Speaker 1: But I must say I do prefer to get the
Speaker 1: video version now.
Speaker 2: Oh you know, increasingly that's how people need to want
Speaker 2: to digest it, need to digest it. It doesn't mean
Speaker 2: we give up on text. It just becomes more multilayered.
Speaker 2: What we've discovered is two things. Number One, our journos
Speaker 2: are actually really good on camera. We never expected that
Speaker 2: Prince jurnos would actually be pretty good. They're quite articulate.
Speaker 2: I would say that our print yurnos have a deeper subject,
Speaker 2: better knowledge. So that's their comparative advantage over not disparaging
Speaker 2: TV journals at all. But a lot of the time
Speaker 2: they've got, you know, they move from subject to subject
Speaker 2: and since you've got a scripted product that they're presenting,
Speaker 2: whereas our print heurnos, they go deep and so that's
Speaker 2: what they've got. So my remit to them is to say, listen,
Speaker 2: just just talk to the camera as you're talking to me.
Speaker 2: If you're briefing me about a story, what's really going on,
Speaker 2: so you know, just lift the kimono on whatever this
Speaker 2: story is. And the second thing is that our readers
Speaker 2: love it because we're sort of taking inside a newsroom
Speaker 2: and there's still a fascin with that. People still want
Speaker 2: to know. Like you said, your first question off the
Speaker 2: that is what do you do? Like how does it work?
Speaker 2: And I still haven't answered that yet. I will, I've
Speaker 2: been waiting for you. I'll get there. But but but
Speaker 2: we take them inside the news room and so we've
Speaker 2: shown our conference. So that's another important element of every day,
Speaker 2: we sit down with our key leaders and there's probably
Speaker 2: about eight or ten of us and we talk through
Speaker 2: we've got it. We've got what we call a topic plan.
Speaker 2: We go through those stories and how do you mean.
Speaker 1: Use is okay? Politics? Sport? Business? Is that what you're
Speaker 1: talking about?
Speaker 2: All of that?
Speaker 1: You've got crime crime?
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: So you've got the categories they actually like actually probably
Speaker 1: de marked in other words, this is category one. We
Speaker 1: must cover sport. And then within sport there are Rugby
Speaker 1: League and AFL and all of the n LW or whatever,
Speaker 1: and you do that like really structured way.
Speaker 2: We do so, yeah, it is structured. You know, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of chaos and there's stories coming at you
Speaker 2: all the time, but you have to have that structure.
Speaker 2: You have to have a lot of planning. There's a
Speaker 2: hell of a lot of planning that goes into what
Speaker 2: we do.
Speaker 1: So is your time spent on the planning side of
Speaker 1: things or is it more the tactical stuff sort of
Speaker 1: saying shit, there's an newstry. We better talk about that
Speaker 1: both both. So do you see pretty much everything?
Speaker 2: Yep?
Speaker 1: It goes up on a dashboard or something, does it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: where do you guys have it, or you'd have a
Speaker 1: dashboard or your teams have a dashboard.
Speaker 2: Yes, we have Data Insights dashboard, which is a bit
Speaker 2: of IP we've got called Verity, and that tells us
Speaker 2: in real time what all of our readers are reading,
Speaker 2: how long they're reading it, for what they're reading next,
Speaker 2: and so that gives us some insights into where the
Speaker 2: appetite is. Is a tool, it's not the only thing.
Speaker 2: We've also got to use our own judgment because you know,
Speaker 2: our acumen and judgment can sometimes still outstrips the computer,
Speaker 2: if you like. In some respects used to be called
Speaker 2: the tummy compass. So it's just sort of a combination
Speaker 2: of both of those things. But increasingly where we're looking
Speaker 2: to the data tools to help guide us in meeting
Speaker 2: our consumer needs.
Speaker 1: So Verity is it does Verity then also look at
Speaker 1: everything else. Everything else that's up on the digital platforms,
Speaker 1: for example, might look at something in the AFRs writing
Speaker 1: it doesn't so.
Speaker 2: We've got that as well. So and everyone's got these things.
Speaker 2: They've got other tools called chart beat, chart Beast, there's
Speaker 2: Adobe tools that give you a snapshot of what's happening elsewhere.
Speaker 2: But you know, that's not as accurate as your internal tools.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, Ben, So, for example, if
Speaker 1: somebody else another one of your competitive competitors, and there's
Speaker 1: not that many, there's only really one in print, for example,
Speaker 1: and there's an group, but do you does do you? Well,
Speaker 1: that's a good story. We're not talking about it. Do
Speaker 1: you then? Does then, Ben English, go to someone over
Speaker 1: the Can you go and chase that story? Do you
Speaker 1: get to that level of detail it? Or do is
Speaker 1: your system your dashboard actually direct so and so over there?
Speaker 1: Go and do it anyway?
Speaker 2: No, it's not there yet, right, but AI is coming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's more an AI thing. In other words,
Speaker 1: this story has got a lot of gravity. It looks like,
Speaker 1: you know, so many thousand people have sure read it
Speaker 1: somewhere else, and it knows that, you know, buzz Phil
Speaker 1: Raffil should be writing about it because he's he's sort
Speaker 1: of sent me a retired buzz. But whoever is checking
Speaker 1: his place? And where Michael, Yeah, g chase it. Well,
Speaker 1: he probably already knows about it anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah he does. So sometimes you'll you'll have to make
Speaker 2: a judgment if the story is big enough, if if
Speaker 2: it's if actually it's you know, it's a seismic yarn
Speaker 2: and you can't ignore it. Then you go, okay, we've
Speaker 2: got it. We've got to beat them at it. We're
Speaker 2: going to come up with an angle that takes it forward.
Speaker 2: You can't just regurgitate what they're doing. If it's a
Speaker 2: so so story, we'll ignore it. And because you know,
Speaker 2: we'll try and we'll try and make our mark with
Speaker 2: our own stories, and they do the same, they'll you know,
Speaker 2: we might come up with some you know, compelling stories
Speaker 2: and they'll ignore it because you know, we've already made
Speaker 2: the ground with it. I think there should be more
Speaker 2: of us supporting each.
Speaker 1: Other as opposed to competing with each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think in many respects, I think it does.
Speaker 1: It's amazing for for someone coming out of news Corp.
Speaker 4: Too.
Speaker 1: I've never thought to hear that collaboration not collaboration, but
Speaker 1: whatever the word is, because you guys have been so
Speaker 1: over the years, and let's face it, nine verses. Let's
Speaker 1: go right Backpacker versus Murdock. Yeah, that has been an
Speaker 1: age age long that generations goes back forever. Yeah, and like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, down to pitch battles on the Prince side.
Speaker 4: Totally actually real, Yeah, totally for sure, real, like like
Speaker 4: real battles of physic example, legurary. So it so it's
Speaker 4: got to But.
Speaker 1: Here you are saying, you know, maybe I don't know
Speaker 1: who your equivalent is at nine, but you know, unless
Speaker 1: maybe we should perhaps collabor not collaborate, but work together
Speaker 1: a bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm friends with them and we talk all the time.
Speaker 2: And I mean you've got to think about you were
Speaker 2: talking about, you know, our only competitor in print is
Speaker 2: is a Herald But of course, and that's true right
Speaker 2: in Sydney at least, but it's our competitors, our competitors,
Speaker 2: they go way beyond that.
Speaker 1: It's all it's all the digital and time organizations.
Speaker 2: Time is a competitor.
Speaker 1: It competes with everybody. Yeah, yeah, my time, my media audience,
Speaker 1: my time, because not only do you have lots of
Speaker 1: other people putting the same stories, but.
Speaker 2: You've got it. But coming back to sorry, it's coming
Speaker 2: back to collaboration. We attack each other too much a
Speaker 2: right time as guilty of it. We're all guilty of it.
Speaker 2: The public doesn't. They just see attacks basically undermining the media.
Speaker 2: Now we're in the fight of our life.
Speaker 1: I don't think they care, by the way, they don't.
Speaker 1: They don't care less about nine versus seven, or you
Speaker 1: who's done what at seven or nine? You know, this
Speaker 1: allegation about the head of news or you know, like
Speaker 1: I won't say it's a but went on recently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, if there's serious workplace issues that
Speaker 2: are at stake here, I think, you know, there's no
Speaker 2: problem with reporting on that. I guess what I'm talking
Speaker 2: about is just having it. Taking cheap shots of each
Speaker 2: other is not helpful to an industry that's actually in
Speaker 2: the fight of its life against an onslaught of social
Speaker 2: media that has no interest in alien society, has no
Speaker 2: interest in our welfare. And it's just interesting. The attention
Speaker 2: economy is rapacious, is actually gouging revenue, not paying back.
Speaker 2: And you know, if we want journalism to exist, and
Speaker 2: I think we all do, I think we. I think
Speaker 2: even people who kind of you know, resent the media
Speaker 2: at different times would recognize that the fourth estate plays
Speaker 2: a vital role in maintaining a functioning, functioning community with democracy,
Speaker 2: with a democracy at its heart, you need a functioning
Speaker 2: you need a vital and you know, healthy media sector.
Speaker 1: So when you say the fourth state, you're talking about media. Media.
Speaker 2: That's an old fashioned term for the fourth state. It
Speaker 2: goes back to the French Revolution.
Speaker 1: But you're not referring to the big Titans. No, you're
Speaker 1: not talking.
Speaker 2: I'm talking more traditional mainstream Yeah, yeah, right, because we're
Speaker 2: the ones who, like you know, we have for a
Speaker 2: long time taken as part of our mission serving the
Speaker 2: public interest and whatever that may be, you know, and
Speaker 2: we may be misguided in what we think the public
Speaker 2: interest is, but at least we pursue that, whereas I'm
Speaker 2: not sure that well, I'm certain that that's not the
Speaker 2: case with those social media giants.
Speaker 1: So you take me through that then. So I quite
Speaker 1: enamored by the fact that you said serving the public interest,
Speaker 1: and that's quite a thoughtful comment. Is that mandated to
Speaker 1: you from above? Does Lachlan say that, How does it work?
Speaker 1: Or is it your shareholders? I mean, who says this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean when you say, man, in a sense,
Speaker 2: it's mandated above, in the sense of you know, the
Speaker 2: Murdoch ethos, which goes back to Keith Murdoch Gallipoli and
Speaker 2: then then what he did and you know, building from
Speaker 2: the you know, the papers in Melbourne, and then Rupert
Speaker 2: took up the cudgels of the News in Adelaide and
Speaker 2: then the extraordinary career he's had sort of you know,
Speaker 2: coursing through the ventricles of our country, of our company.
Speaker 2: Is it is a set of values, set of principles,
Speaker 2: and that informs us. That's the mandate from above that
Speaker 2: I would I would be talking about. Those values would include,
Speaker 2: but are not limited to, a skepticism of authority.
Speaker 1: Would you call it indie authority?
Speaker 2: I would say, yeah, that's reductive, But yeah, I would
Speaker 2: say that's that's right. Yeah, definitely, definitely, definitely We're not
Speaker 2: closing up to elites. That's something that that you know,
Speaker 2: Lachlan's grandfather certainly embraced. Certainly again going back to the
Speaker 2: Glipoli letters, it was about.
Speaker 1: You take me through the Glipolar letters.
Speaker 2: Well, it was Keith Murdock who actually lifted the lid
Speaker 2: on the Glipolar campaign and reported back to our government
Speaker 2: and it certainly, you know, I wrote some letters that
Speaker 2: were pivotal in actually challenging the efficacy of that campaign
Speaker 2: and basically saying that our kids, our young men, were
Speaker 2: lamps the slaughter.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so in other words, as they're getting off
Speaker 1: the various boats and things like coming landing on the beach.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as you said, it was an ill conceived campaign.
Speaker 2: It was very poorly executed, et cetera, etcetera. It's quite controversial,
Speaker 2: but it was historical in the sense that and I
Speaker 2: think this is one reason why Gallipoli is so so
Speaker 2: you know, figure so large in the hearts of Australians
Speaker 2: and also in the sense in our sense of nationhood,
Speaker 2: is that it was the first time with forward as
Speaker 2: a nation under under our flag. And it was also
Speaker 2: there was that chism, There was that sense of happen
Speaker 2: a minute, I was serving the empire here and have
Speaker 2: we been betrayed of you know, you know, have we
Speaker 2: been just led into this slaughterhouse? And so it was
Speaker 2: the first time there was a sense of separatism, and
Speaker 2: you know, Keith Murdock was was pivotal to all that,
Speaker 2: and it was sort of those values of challenging orthodoxy,
Speaker 2: challenging the those who are in authority or ordained to
Speaker 2: be an authority that still is, you know, very much
Speaker 2: at the forefront of our value system today.
Speaker 1: You said something very interesting, you know, like I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say'm anty sorry but I don't like the system just
Speaker 1: because it's a system. I tend to push against it.
Speaker 1: You said, use the words elite or allitias. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but the self appointed elites, which you know, it's a
Speaker 1: big issue in America at the moment. So and you
Speaker 1: know we've got we know what murder opposition is on that.
Speaker 1: And and you know Republics first, the Democrats, and like
Speaker 1: funny enough, you can go right back to the Civil War.
Speaker 1: The Democrats come out of there from the South. They
Speaker 1: come out of the Civil War, and the Republicans, so
Speaker 1: they should because it actually was that's that's the slavers,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of where that whole game originated. And
Speaker 1: and I we're just moving along for because we want
Speaker 1: to talk about Australia, your job. But but we have
Speaker 1: something not too dissimilar Australian. I do remember the movie
Speaker 1: Breaking Rain whatever, the first great Australian movies about the
Speaker 1: Boll War, and which is when we got seent in
Speaker 1: there to do someone was a bidding Gallipli's not dissimilar,
Speaker 1: absolutely the same deal. And now I'm getting I'm getting
Speaker 1: all energized by talking about this because you've hit me
Speaker 1: right on a spot which is quite tender for me
Speaker 1: in terms of the elites and who appoint themselves of
Speaker 1: the so called self appointed moral dieticians of our society.
Speaker 1: And that's how sweet spots too, And they prosecute the
Speaker 1: ship out of it, and they make you feel guilty
Speaker 1: if you're not part of the movement.
Speaker 2: And that's like, I mean, that's what that's what we
Speaker 2: rele against. That give us, that's that's what gives us
Speaker 2: our purpose is actually exposing the hypocrisy because there's always
Speaker 2: self interested at the heart of it. It's a lot
Speaker 2: of we call them virtue signalers, you know, and there's
Speaker 2: there's a lot of there's a lot of what I
Speaker 2: call can't there's a lot of hypocrisy.
Speaker 1: And as you see more.
Speaker 2: Of it, it's industrialized. Yea, it looks like it's aroduction
Speaker 2: line to me totally. And it's been monetized. So you
Speaker 2: see that with various causes that people can see, well,
Speaker 2: there's there's not to make a lot of money here.
Speaker 1: So would you, I mean, I know, I don't know this.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just you know, you're the editor in
Speaker 1: chief that you know what we all read every day
Speaker 1: in New South Wales, Queensland through Corey Mail and Victoria
Speaker 1: through the Herald Sun. The share the stories are all
Speaker 1: shared pretty much. It's just one syndication that he writes, right.
Speaker 2: Do you.
Speaker 1: Are you interacting? I don't know if this is right
Speaker 1: wrong on a daily basis with your your global chairman? Ah,
Speaker 1: how does that work regularly?
Speaker 2: Not on a daily basis?
Speaker 1: So he doesn't say a mate, you know, this is
Speaker 1: the We're just covering the election in the US. We
Speaker 1: need much much more push or the strain lection which
Speaker 1: is coming up with much more push against let's say
Speaker 1: the Labor Party.
Speaker 2: Interesting. A lot of people ask me that they wonder
Speaker 2: about it. There's a sort of we call it Murdock
Speaker 2: arrangement syndrome.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Does he ring up and say listen, I don't like that.
Speaker 2: I don't like that brief on page eight No or
Speaker 2: Lackland to that matter. But I do speak to Lachlan
Speaker 2: a light because he's passionate about news. He's passionate about
Speaker 2: Sydney and Australia. But I have to say a hand
Speaker 2: on hard. He's never given me writing instructions on you
Speaker 2: will have this position. He's more just curious about how we,
Speaker 2: you know, what our take is on it. I think
Speaker 2: what they're most passionate about is that we're running the
Speaker 2: paper well and that the business has been run professionally,
Speaker 2: and that we're actually, you know, in sync with our audience.
Speaker 2: I think that and I don't think Rupert was any different.
Speaker 2: Are we actually serving our audience?
Speaker 1: So how do you work out what your audience wants?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: I mean, because I've wondered about this, is that are
Speaker 1: you is the media forging and molding public opinion and
Speaker 1: serving it to the public, or is the public making
Speaker 1: those decisions and requiring you to deliver what decision they've made?
Speaker 2: A great question. I think it's both. I think the
Speaker 2: way that we best influence sentiment opinion is by breaking stories,
Speaker 2: you know, like by exposing things and which otherwise wouldn't
Speaker 2: be known. That that is what shapes opinion. And then
Speaker 2: and then of course the emphasis we give on different
Speaker 2: stories that also shapes opinion too. So the front page.
Speaker 2: I know that people, you know, talk about the decline
Speaker 2: of print, but the front page still is an readibly
Speaker 2: powerful instrument.
Speaker 1: Is it as powerful on the digital version? So for example,
Speaker 1: and I get I subscribe as outa teleograph. I actually
Speaker 1: don't look at the front page. I mean, I see
Speaker 1: what you say. You go some stories from the top
Speaker 1: stories and assigned by newsletter, and I get that each
Speaker 1: day and then constru I get two I get two emails,
Speaker 1: ones from you, not to me, I mean as you
Speaker 1: send everybody. But it's the sort of the same with
Speaker 1: the stories after. And there's another one which is the
Speaker 1: actual newspaper. But the front page is not that important
Speaker 1: to me anymore. Yeah, digitally I'm talking about Yeah, digitally.
Speaker 2: We it's interesting. COVID was a bit of a game
Speaker 2: changer in terms of how people interact with the paper. Right,
Speaker 2: so a lot more people started reading the paper. So
Speaker 2: as it's printed online, so it's called we call it
Speaker 2: a digital print edition. And you know, on your app
Speaker 2: down the bottom it says today paper you click on
Speaker 2: it up comes the paper as it was printed. So
Speaker 2: so a lot of people do do that.
Speaker 1: But I don't find that compelling.
Speaker 2: The front page it's not as compelling, no, because there's
Speaker 2: something about the tactile paper. Right, it's big for a start,
Speaker 2: it's a lot bigger than you can then you can
Speaker 2: get on your phone.
Speaker 1: Or you're right, Yeah, I use the phone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So so it doesn't have the same impact,
Speaker 2: but we're still making money from the printed product. Wow,
Speaker 2: good money on it, right, So.
Speaker 1: Is that more cost control and it's opposed a lot
Speaker 1: of career control.
Speaker 2: But but also you know, there's you know, there's still
Speaker 2: healthy advertising in print and it's still making a profit.
Speaker 1: Well, Katie Page is being very generous to you, guys.
Speaker 2: She's a great Katie you listening. She's a great person,
Speaker 2: passionate about print. Obviously it works for her, so thank you,
Speaker 2: for sure it does. And so look, obviously, and this
Speaker 2: is no secret print you know circulation is in a
Speaker 2: steady decline. It has been for thirty years actually, but
Speaker 2: it's still still sell a lot of papers. The trick,
Speaker 2: of course, and this is what everyone's trying to do
Speaker 2: around the globe, is as that's declining, you get you
Speaker 2: ramp up your digital engagement and consumption so that when
Speaker 2: print runs out, you're still firing.
Speaker 1: Do you think there will be a day? Because I
Speaker 1: remember when Amazon came along and every bookstore in the
Speaker 1: world closed down, and then all of a sudden, mysteriously
Speaker 1: the bookstores started up. In fact, Amazon, that's so true.
Speaker 1: Do you think there will come a day where we'll
Speaker 1: have no newspaper physical or do you think that. I
Speaker 1: don't want to call it romance, but whatever it is,
Speaker 1: the tactile nature of having a newspaper will sort of
Speaker 1: hit a level where it won't go below, maybe won't grow,
Speaker 1: but a base level. Yeah, baseline.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, the brutal comics will tell you that probably
Speaker 2: there's no papers in twenty.
Speaker 1: Years because there's no point in having that base on
Speaker 1: because the cost of running the baseline. But you can't
Speaker 1: do it anymore.
Speaker 2: You've got all these fixed costs that you literally can't
Speaker 2: justify it unless you say, well, it's a vanity product
Speaker 2: that we do for brand or some marketing purposes. But
Speaker 2: I think that when you get to that point, you're
Speaker 2: going to by all means, you can create the DPE,
Speaker 2: but you don't have to actually send it to the
Speaker 2: print the print site. I think it'll be after I'm gone.
Speaker 2: I think the papers are here for quite some time yet.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, eventually it'll get to you know, three
Speaker 2: a week, two a week, one a week, But that's
Speaker 2: that's a way off.
Speaker 1: Do you know I mean, I guess you do know this,
Speaker 1: but do you have a an analytical sense or your
Speaker 1: business doesn't have an analytical sense of the age and
Speaker 1: end or generation is actually physically stood by the paper.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of bitter about the Newsagian. I
Speaker 1: feel sorry for news, but they don't click the data
Speaker 1: for you. I mean you would know in terms of
Speaker 1: what guests. We've got a pretty good idea. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: how do you work that out? I mean it's I
Speaker 1: mean not how do you work it out? But what
Speaker 1: are you finding out? Are you finding out people over
Speaker 1: sixty what we're looking at?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's over sixty five? Yeah. I think the average
Speaker 2: age print reader is about sixty eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, sometimes my age.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But look, you've got the project to keep them alive, right,
Speaker 2: project one hundred.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want them to go to one hundred and eight.
Speaker 2: Well, we've got we need to support you in that.
Speaker 1: Now, I'd like you to support me in that because
Speaker 1: we actually together have the same the same interest toographic totally,
Speaker 1: but because but what I'm really interested I know too,
Speaker 1: by the way, is because Project one hundred is not
Speaker 1: just about old people living to long ages, about younger
Speaker 1: people become much more aware of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know one of the things is really
Speaker 1: important to us is younger people understanding how much money
Speaker 1: they need to earn to live to one hundred, not
Speaker 1: you know, because you know the current modeling and I'm
Speaker 1: yet about to organize a actually to do this analysis
Speaker 1: for me. But the current modeling as I understand the
Speaker 1: model and inputs to the model, is that there's an
Speaker 1: assumption someone's going to retire sixty five years of age
Speaker 1: on an average income has for the last thirty five
Speaker 1: years or since compulsory superinnovation we've got introduced by Keating
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties, has been putting away in variable
Speaker 1: amounts but between nine now twelve percent of their wages
Speaker 1: into their employee's been doing this into a super fund.
Speaker 1: Their super funds is assumption that they're earning eight percent
Speaker 1: perannimal but of some other number. And the assumption is
Speaker 1: that you die at eighty one, and the output is
Speaker 1: that how much money do I have to have between
Speaker 1: sixty five and eighty one to have nothing at the
Speaker 1: day I die or enough to pay my funeral? And
Speaker 1: that money's coming out of what I put away on
Speaker 1: the assumption that had earned so much over that thirty
Speaker 1: odd period period. And of course if all of a
Speaker 1: sudden we now lived to one hundred, anyone who's lives
Speaker 1: beyond ninety one is not going to have any money.
Speaker 1: And I'm really passionate about that. And that's a big
Speaker 1: education program.
Speaker 2: It's enormous.
Speaker 1: So what does say someone like your organization become passionate
Speaker 1: about in terms of education programs for your readers, what
Speaker 1: are you trying to educate them about? Are you trying
Speaker 1: to educate them about democracy, how important democracy still is,
Speaker 1: or you're trying to educate them about how important challenging
Speaker 1: the elites is.
Speaker 2: I think it's about certainly those things, but it's also
Speaker 2: about enabling them to live their lives to the best
Speaker 2: of their abilities.
Speaker 1: So it's informing it's gone beyond where you used to
Speaker 1: be very much. How can you live? Ben English are saying,
Speaker 1: for example, to me a consumer mark, we will give
Speaker 1: you stories absolutely that'll help you live longer and live
Speaker 1: better and you and perhaps have a better life with
Speaker 1: your family. And these are the things you need to know.
Speaker 2: So it's such a great question, and it's something we've
Speaker 2: been grappling with for some time. Is it how do
Speaker 2: we how do we justify someone to subscribe to our product,
Speaker 2: and it's not enough just to tell them what happened,
Speaker 2: because you can get that anywhere, get that anyway. It's commoditized. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: so we've got to start increasingly tell them why, how,
Speaker 2: and what's next?
Speaker 1: Sunday. You used to have a mad dog yes section, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the health yeah healthy, got the barefoot investor. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: got him as well, Scott Scott Scott, So that's true,
Speaker 1: that's true.
Speaker 2: Right. So the papers have always served that, They've always
Speaker 2: had that breadth, but we've got to reflect that in
Speaker 2: our digital products as well. And that's why I love
Speaker 2: your project one hundred. I think it's a fabulous concept.
Speaker 1: It's a step beyond what those guys are doing.
Speaker 2: Although I'm not paid to say that, genuinely think.
Speaker 1: Thank good, but it is a step beyond that. And
Speaker 1: we're working on getting a producer all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: Are you seeing you? That's a pretty altruistic position for
Speaker 1: you guys to take.
Speaker 2: But it's not out of I mean, there's a selfishness
Speaker 2: to it. And the selfishness is that unless we do that,
Speaker 2: then people are not going to subscribe.
Speaker 1: So so in other words, it's becoming nearly compulsory absolutely.
Speaker 2: People are so demanding. They're so and they're promiscuous when
Speaker 2: it comes to how they how.
Speaker 1: They don't you jump from one to the other.
Speaker 2: So we've got to give them a reason to come
Speaker 2: back to us frequently. So we've got to do much
Speaker 2: better with health.
Speaker 1: Wealth, education. Are they really emerging?
Speaker 2: They are? Yeah, people are people are wanting this. They
Speaker 2: want what we call it's what we call breadth of
Speaker 2: subject matter. You know, Like I said, you know, everyone
Speaker 2: knows us to be fantastic in our coverage of NRL politics,
Speaker 2: showbiz and particularly crime, but we absolutely need to offer
Speaker 2: a lot more than that our consumers. Is to the
Speaker 2: people who are actually subscribing to a sex sophisticated they're
Speaker 2: informed and they're demand rightly more information, that more insights.
Speaker 1: So in terms of the education piece, which I mean
Speaker 1: and you know, who would think of a newspaper becoming
Speaker 1: educational or an educator, But and I don't mean it
Speaker 1: in a condescen any way. For newspapers that telling people, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's more about because there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are not sophisticated and traditionally a lot of those
Speaker 1: people bought the telling Yeah, and they just want to
Speaker 1: know about the local robbery or sure of whatever it
Speaker 1: was in the footy.
Speaker 2: Well that's changed, and I think so yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean I think if you go back twenty thirty years,
Speaker 2: the you know, where you could go for information was
Speaker 2: so much more limited. It's what I call linear. It's
Speaker 2: basically what you were saying. You know, there's a very
Speaker 2: few owners of the information, and they fed it down
Speaker 2: to the market, and now it's been completely flattened, it's
Speaker 2: been atomized. And so how do we justify our continuing existence.
Speaker 2: We're no longer or we're less so much of a
Speaker 2: mass market daily. It's more we're actually increasingly serving a
Speaker 2: not niche, but a dedicated readership. And as those readership
Speaker 2: levels have declined, the level of sophistication and education has
Speaker 2: gone up. So those people who might have been buying
Speaker 2: the paper, you know, when we're selling six hundred thousand copies,
Speaker 2: you know, forty years ago, they're getting all the information
Speaker 2: on Facebook or Insta. A lot of those people who
Speaker 2: no longer buy the paper, the people who are buying
Speaker 2: the paper are subscribing to the paper. They're actually very
Speaker 2: well informed and very well engaged, leaning into the debates.
Speaker 1: And so if you does that mean crime with crime
Speaker 1: selves in terms still does doesn't mean crime. Those starts
Speaker 1: to take it in terms of what you guys produced.
Speaker 1: It starts to take less of a frontline position. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, we still want to be the best
Speaker 2: at it, and we have the best, but I think
Speaker 2: we've got to, like it's got to be part of
Speaker 2: a broader offering, you know. So that's where we're leaning
Speaker 2: in towards me. We won't ever drop crime because you know,
Speaker 2: you're right people rightly or wrongly. And I love reading about.
Speaker 1: It, and I know it's one of the most watched podcasts.
Speaker 1: Whenever I have a crime guest, it pumps.
Speaker 2: People love it.
Speaker 1: They love it. Crime, sex and sport. Generally, crime and
Speaker 1: sex kill it big time. What do you think do
Speaker 1: you think that health, longevity, blah blah blah, just a
Speaker 1: better life? Because you know, you guys have been wrighting
Speaker 1: about this for a long time, but it hasn't emerged
Speaker 1: above crime and hasn't emerged above sport. It has emerged
Speaker 1: about politics. But do you think as we as nation
Speaker 1: we age and we become more wealthy because you know,
Speaker 1: by the way, anyone who ow is probably in those
Speaker 1: countries as over fifty is now wealthy and they're looking
Speaker 1: for how can I hang out longer? Do you think
Speaker 1: those aspects that you guys have been playing with and
Speaker 1: covering but haven't promoted will become will emerge up there?
Speaker 1: It's equivalent.
Speaker 2: Look, they're not as explosive obviously literally or not. But
Speaker 2: I do think I do believe people will subscribe for
Speaker 2: that subject if the information is compelling enough, if it's engaging,
Speaker 2: it's interesting. We tell stories as imaginatively as we do
Speaker 2: and other, you know, as we tell our crime stories,
Speaker 2: and I think it will engage.
Speaker 1: I think that's I think that's the key.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it is too because your crime.
Speaker 1: Stories are good headlines. You've got really good journalists. If
Speaker 1: you've got too good journals writing it, and the you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's captivating it, especially if he puts the imagery
Speaker 1: up about it.
Speaker 2: But like, if not, it's like anything right, it's like
Speaker 2: anything mark, You've got to humanize it, right, And so
Speaker 2: I mean TikTok sort of saying, oh, you know, it's
Speaker 2: all about peer to peer. It's always been about peer
Speaker 2: to peer. It's always been like going back, you know,
Speaker 2: we started in eighteen seventy nine. The best story is
Speaker 2: always ones which you could put a face to. What's
Speaker 2: the illustration? How we know what's the picture? Where's the picture?
Speaker 2: We're visual creatures, not just visual, but we also want
Speaker 2: to hear the story personally. So if you told a
Speaker 2: Bland story about hey, if you take this cod liver concoction,
Speaker 2: then you know, statistics say you're going to live this.
Speaker 1: Who cares?
Speaker 2: Right? But if you've got someone who said, hey, I
Speaker 2: was on death Store and I started taking this and
Speaker 2: now I'm actually doing fifty press ups a.
Speaker 1: Day, probably read that, especially if it was in a video.
Speaker 2: Yeah, video even better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it was someone who was known because because
Speaker 1: you know, I was only prior to you coming in.
Speaker 1: I did a podcast with a chap and he's got
Speaker 1: this unbelievable new app in his very excepts for doing
Speaker 1: these things as a technologist. But he was talking to
Speaker 1: me about dementia and for people over sixty years of age,
Speaker 1: and that's a big part of Australia, and I dare
Speaker 1: say probably a lot of your subscribers are over sixty.
Speaker 1: The most searched illness on the through all search engines
Speaker 1: is dementia. Yeah, right, people is terrified of it. They
Speaker 1: are actually terrified of it.
Speaker 2: Well, going back to what you were saying, right, I
Speaker 2: don't think many people actually anticipate they're going to die
Speaker 2: at eighty one now, So the chances are you're going
Speaker 2: to have some form of outzheimers of dementia if you're
Speaker 2: going to live longer. So there's there's anxiety around, and
Speaker 2: am I going to have enough dough? There's anxiety around,
Speaker 2: and am I going to have my family around and
Speaker 2: my friends?
Speaker 1: There's going to be one mass my kids.
Speaker 2: It's pretty much it.
Speaker 1: And you say to your kids, it's nice to them,
Speaker 1: of cook, they might all say, no, I got four
Speaker 1: sons and their dad's stuff that. But there are important
Speaker 1: questions I think for us. But I want to ask
Speaker 1: you this question. You were a journalist originally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I still consider myself one.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but you're more you know, like sitting at
Speaker 1: the top of the tree sort of making more decisions
Speaker 1: in relation to the strategy around the business and then
Speaker 1: probably looking over oversight on tactics. Sure, but do you
Speaker 1: still have a hankering to be a journalist, like actually
Speaker 1: want to write a story?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Have you written any rate recently, I did an
Speaker 2: interview with Jas Packer, which was a thrill.
Speaker 1: Yep, I read it, did you Okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I did it as a Q and A,
Speaker 2: which I think, you know, I really enjoyed it. I
Speaker 2: thought he was fascinating. Did you have to go overseem
Speaker 2: I didn't know. We just did it, you know, basically online,
Speaker 2: and you know, it was tremendous and he was so candid. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I thought it was the feedback spent incredibly candid, incredibly
Speaker 2: yeah on him.
Speaker 1: I felt like James was purging a little bit, like
Speaker 1: it did, feel like getting it off his chest.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I thought it was cathartic in some way, very cathartic,
Speaker 2: you know, and it was really I was really heartened
Speaker 2: by you know, he seems in a good, much better
Speaker 2: place now. But anyway, I digress. So, yeah, that's got
Speaker 2: the blood pumping a bit. But there's a thrill in
Speaker 2: actually editing a paper and editing the sites, and that's
Speaker 2: like there's a bigger canvas there and actually coming up
Speaker 2: with ideas and then getting them executed is sort of
Speaker 2: a different sort of thrill.
Speaker 1: But how does it work? Does a journalist put the
Speaker 1: story up and I mean the old days, someone would
Speaker 1: have gone and corrected that.
Speaker 2: I don't do that. But it's more like I said,
Speaker 2: we come back to in the morning. We all get
Speaker 2: together and the chief of staff's come in and they'll
Speaker 2: talk about they'll have this topic plan, and they'll go
Speaker 2: through what they're pitching. They'll pitch right, and there's probably
Speaker 2: fifty stories they'll talk about, and I'll and the other
Speaker 2: leaders will say, well, hang on, a man, what about this.
Speaker 1: Physical meeting? Physical meaning like you're all sitting in.
Speaker 2: It's very old fashioned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that's where particularly the morning one. There's a
Speaker 2: morning one, there's afternoon one, and in fact there's meetings
Speaker 2: well before that. Like they start at six. People start
Speaker 2: getting in at five their first sort of meeting talking
Speaker 2: about content from about seven. The time we have our
Speaker 2: main conference is ten. But everything's been up and running
Speaker 2: for a long time. And that first conference is where
Speaker 2: you have that really full and frank exchange of ideas,
Speaker 2: you know, where you throw stuff around and people will
Speaker 2: pipe up and say, do I think that's crap? So
Speaker 2: what about this? And you know, and.
Speaker 1: There is a consensus type where is it you.
Speaker 2: A bit of both? Look, you know, you know, they
Speaker 2: someone's talking about it as a benevolent sometimes not so
Speaker 2: a benevolent dictatorship. But I certainly try to cultivate a
Speaker 2: lot of voices in that room and try and get everyone,
Speaker 2: you know, because that's how people get motivated, if they're
Speaker 2: relevant and they're part of the process. Yeah, and herd.
Speaker 2: And once you get that going, it's fantastic, you know,
Speaker 2: and then people are fired up. The best newsroom are
Speaker 2: the ones where the best newsrooms are the ones where
Speaker 2: people are just like just leaning into stuff and excited
Speaker 2: and chasing something that they think is a you know,
Speaker 2: a really good thing to go after.
Speaker 1: And you and I guess the reward is getting a
Speaker 1: story up. Absolutely then for them to get a story up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, there's there's all sorts of
Speaker 2: different things, Like there's there's chasing a scoundrule and you're
Speaker 2: trying to trying to get at the current to get
Speaker 2: their image. There's you know, there's a minister gone you know,
Speaker 2: gone sour and so you're chasing the political story around that,
Speaker 2: or there's a scandal involving a cover up or whatever.
Speaker 2: There's so many different flavors to it. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: there's a like last week we did the Bush Summit
Speaker 2: in Orange and unbelievable luck for as we're concerned is
Speaker 2: that literally four days before the summit, the federal Environment
Speaker 2: Minister cans a one billion dollar gold mine just up
Speaker 2: the road from where we were holding the summit. And
Speaker 2: so so that was just a gift because then we
Speaker 2: could just absolutely.
Speaker 1: This is the goal mine. Yeah yeah, business business that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, song lines yeah, and so we inside the business. Well,
Speaker 2: let's have a lot of fun with that, you know.
Speaker 2: And what that means is let's just go for it
Speaker 2: and find every angle and you know, just and the
Speaker 2: way you the way you have fun with it is
Speaker 2: by exposing details is going after it and digging into
Speaker 2: the story about well, what was the process, Who did
Speaker 2: the minister speak to or didn't speak to? What about
Speaker 2: the mine operator? Did they engage with the local Aboriginal community.
Speaker 2: And it's in digging up those facts that the fund
Speaker 2: has had because you expose the gaps just been.
Speaker 1: English to the journalist or the journalists, Okay, you go
Speaker 1: and find out, you know, whether the labor party above
Speaker 1: the particular minister is an agreement with this outcome, both
Speaker 1: at state and do you do allocate jobs.
Speaker 4: That?
Speaker 2: Sometimes I'll just say what about you know, one of
Speaker 2: my reporters, I might say, what's odoity doing? Could he
Speaker 2: do that? But it's more me. It's the chief of staffs.
Speaker 2: They're in charge of the staff, right. I leave that
Speaker 2: to them. I won't prescribe that because otherwise I'll screw
Speaker 2: it up. Because they've got enough. They're juggling a lot
Speaker 2: of balls. They'll know who they can allocate to it.
Speaker 2: But what the most important thing each day is prioritizing.
Speaker 2: You need to know what you're going after, and that's
Speaker 2: maximum two or three stories that you really go after
Speaker 2: and you throw your resources into. There's an old saying
Speaker 2: that you know, if you've got the front page sign
Speaker 2: up and everything else takes care of itself. It's not
Speaker 2: quite like that, but it's pretty close. If you get
Speaker 2: that main story right, then the rest of the paper
Speaker 2: sort of you know, it usually is a good paper.
Speaker 1: How do you know how long to go after something?
Speaker 1: I mean, when something sort of run out of runt.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I don't.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I'm still obsessed with it. In people it's like, hey,
Speaker 2: it's over all, it's over Yeah, you know, I'm like
Speaker 2: that Japanese soldier on the island in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: But so, you know, that's why you have, you know,
Speaker 2: a good sort of counsel of minds around you, saying
Speaker 2: so pulling you.
Speaker 1: Up and do you you you're in terms of your
Speaker 1: team workers, I guess that's what you're referring to. Do
Speaker 1: you tend to have people around you in that regard, like,
Speaker 1: let's call it, you're in house counsel I mean lawyers,
Speaker 1: but counselors, counselors or whatever the word is. Do you
Speaker 1: rely on people that you've always known, you've worked with
Speaker 1: in the past for a long time, You trust, they trust.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's there's a there's a small group
Speaker 2: of guys and girls in our office who are brilliant.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm extremely blessed. A lot of people say
Speaker 2: this about their teams, but I've just genuinely got a
Speaker 2: great team around me, and I heavily rely on them.
Speaker 2: You know, there's only about five or six of them
Speaker 2: who you know, you bring him and you often will
Speaker 2: have what we call a crisis meeting, was sort of
Speaker 2: we'd love to call it a crisis meeting. And sometimes
Speaker 2: it's six PM and go, Okay, what are we doing here?
Speaker 2: It's still a mess, and you work through it, and
Speaker 2: you know, you work through that on longer term projects.
Speaker 2: You work through it on something you've got to turn
Speaker 2: around the next half hour.
Speaker 1: Where do you see and I don't mean in terms
Speaker 1: of hard copies newspapers versus digital newspapers, but where do
Speaker 1: you see news organizations like yours, like massive ones in
Speaker 1: ten years time? Do you see? And hopefully they will
Speaker 1: be listening. But you know, staff don't get nervous about this.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying replacing stuff, but AI will have a
Speaker 1: big part of all this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll play.
Speaker 1: Big, and particularly the editorial stage that the stories we
Speaker 1: want to chase, there'll be some sort of you might
Speaker 1: even have it be some sort of software that'll be
Speaker 1: looking at what's going on in the world and saying,
Speaker 1: this is what everyone's talking about, is what readers want
Speaker 1: to know about, and it will determine what the editorial
Speaker 1: bent will be for the day or the week of
Speaker 1: the month.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, we do you see it. It's
Speaker 2: gonna it's going to be it's going to be massive.
Speaker 2: But look, I'm more glass huffle. I see it as
Speaker 2: liberating our finest minds, our best journals to actually do
Speaker 2: what they do best, which is, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: uncover and expose and and bring home stories that matter.
Speaker 2: A lot of the time, there's an incredible amount of
Speaker 2: unglamorous activity involved in actually putting a paper out and
Speaker 2: actually pulling a story together. A lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of calls that are not answered, a lot of emails
Speaker 2: that are ignored, a lot of doors that are knocked
Speaker 2: on that go unanswered as well. AI won't replace that,
Speaker 2: but AI will go a long way to helping that.
Speaker 1: Process more an enhancement.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So it's going to be and it's going to
Speaker 2: be a tool in ways that we haven't imagined yet,
Speaker 2: but the ways that I already know about is going
Speaker 2: to be a fantastic aid to us. You know, it
Speaker 2: can go, it can wade through. You might have a
Speaker 2: hand side, say for example, or in Parliament.
Speaker 1: Or the Deparliament record inquiries.
Speaker 2: That committees have done, and you can you can basically
Speaker 2: far more efficiently way through that council meetings, you know,
Speaker 2: which we don't have enough reporters to go out of
Speaker 2: the council meetings. Now there's no replacement for actually physically
Speaker 2: being there, but certainly I can help with that. It
Speaker 2: can also help I'll give you an example as well,
Speaker 2: chat gpt, Right, So we just did it as an experiment.
Speaker 2: We said, okay, we want to send a cadet to
Speaker 2: and we imagine that there's been a drowning on the
Speaker 2: central coast. And we said, okay, chat ChiPT, here's here
Speaker 2: are the facts. A boy twelve has drowned at your
Speaker 2: minor beach at ten am. His body was found face
Speaker 2: down in the in the surf. Ask five questions, and
Speaker 2: so chatchpt came up with questions like, you know, what
Speaker 2: was his name? Okay, okay, that's fine. Ask us another
Speaker 2: five questions. Chat cheapt says, well, was there anyone on
Speaker 2: else on the beach, whether any surf life savers there?
Speaker 2: Ask another five questions. And but the time we got
Speaker 2: to the twentieth, and by the way, it's taken about
Speaker 2: three minutes, it's asking questions that we didn't anticipate. So
Speaker 2: that's story gathering, right, that that's a story gathering tool
Speaker 2: that could be really useful for young reporters to hone
Speaker 2: their craft about asking the right questions at a press conference.
Speaker 2: As an example, there's so many things that it can
Speaker 2: do that are going to help us. Yes, it's a
Speaker 2: threat to but there's going to be there's going to
Speaker 2: be some help along the way.
Speaker 1: And do you think that there's going to be? I mean,
Speaker 1: for me, for example, there's a survey one but that's
Speaker 1: why I have until I have I should ask chat GBT.
Speaker 1: But because I consume, because I have the ability to
Speaker 1: consume so often and so fast local news. So let's
Speaker 1: take the Bondi Junction Westfield drama. It was everywhere and
Speaker 1: pretty much everyone had the same information at that stage,
Speaker 1: so I felt as though I had seen it all
Speaker 1: and read it all. I did sort of give myself
Speaker 1: a bit of an uppercut because that night, I won't
Speaker 1: say I lost interest in it, but my interest had
Speaker 1: been completely filled. My cup was filled. I couldn't get
Speaker 1: any more information. So I started watching global news. Now
Speaker 1: I don't know whether I'm an unusual survey, but I
Speaker 1: was then became more interested in what was happening in
Speaker 1: the US and a little bit to this and to
Speaker 1: the UK, which is my sort of too important areas
Speaker 1: that I like to know about inter the news. Do
Speaker 1: you think that news will become more local? And sorry,
Speaker 1: less local and more global. Over time, our consumers becoming
Speaker 1: more interested in what's going on around in the world,
Speaker 1: far more is if I'm a weight attached to that
Speaker 1: than has been in the past, or do you think
Speaker 1: people just really want to know what's going on locally?
Speaker 2: I think it's the latter. I think you're you're a
Speaker 2: really well educated person. You know, you've traveled the world,
Speaker 2: You're a worldly person. I'm not saying most people aren't
Speaker 2: like that, but my experience is that hyper local is
Speaker 2: where people are at. They want to know what's happening
Speaker 2: in their world. It doesn't mean they don't also want
Speaker 2: to know about what's happening in the States, But there's
Speaker 2: no point me focusing resources on that because I will
Speaker 2: never do it as well as anyone else. What I can,
Speaker 2: what I do have a comparative advantage in is hyper
Speaker 2: local and owning this town.
Speaker 1: So talking about him globally, let's talk about him Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: former president or I think they're still call it a
Speaker 1: bunch of presidents President President Trump the next election, so
Speaker 1: no doubt, you know you're going to be covering you
Speaker 1: guys are covering at all. Is camally going to beat Donald?
Speaker 1: What would you think of that? I mean that do
Speaker 1: you think that was like an unbelievable cute move in
Speaker 1: terms of timing.
Speaker 2: It is incredible. I think that the well, I don't
Speaker 2: interest in your thoughts, but I thought the Democrats time
Speaker 2: that debate to give them options. I think what the
Speaker 2: Democrats have done to reimagine her is unbelievable.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. Her social media is and Craig has got nothing,
Speaker 1: but it's ridiculously good.
Speaker 2: It's the Signefeld candidate, right, yeah, totally. You know she's
Speaker 2: at about nothing, but it's the vibe the book. But
Speaker 2: it's amazing how suddenly Trump's the old guy. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: he looks at it. Yeah. And he hasn't worked it
Speaker 2: out yet. Do you think he hasn't worked out how
Speaker 2: to what the narrative is? You know, he's it's not
Speaker 2: working for him to attack her personally yet.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: I think I think if he sticks to policies and
Speaker 2: he's every chance. I haven't answer your question whether she'll win,
Speaker 2: I reckon.
Speaker 1: I mean, the poll's got right ahead at the moment,
Speaker 1: slightly they do. No. Is it a popularity contest though,
Speaker 1: like I mean as America, Yeah, there is. I'm moved
Speaker 1: away from policy to popularity because we're talking about a
Speaker 1: voting of a present. We're not trying to talk about
Speaker 1: voting for a party versus another party. It's now, okay,
Speaker 1: this is where where I think that.
Speaker 2: I think that if Trump successfully positions her as part
Speaker 2: of the current administration, and he sticks to policies, he
Speaker 2: just talks about immigration, cost of living, and getting America
Speaker 2: moving again, and then he wins. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: he can. I'm sure if he's capable of it. And
Speaker 2: I think the other problem is that people look at
Speaker 2: him and they go, maybe we don't want to move
Speaker 2: on from all the rancor, and maybe this is our
Speaker 2: chance to break from that, whether rightly or wrong. We
Speaker 2: maybe he's associated with that. But if you had a
Speaker 2: gun to my head, I say Trump wins just I
Speaker 2: think he just gets over the line. I think he
Speaker 2: gets Georgia. I think he wins. He still wins Arizona
Speaker 2: and Nevada and maybe one of the rus states, maybe Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: and he gets there. Does it make a difference, That's
Speaker 2: a great question, That's a great I think it's off
Speaker 2: and overstated what difference it makes? I really do? I mean,
Speaker 2: people talk about Trump like, oh my god, if Trump
Speaker 2: comes in, it's just going to be armageddon. Kind of
Speaker 2: wasn't when he was president. In fact, on a foreign
Speaker 2: policy front, it was actually very sound. I didn't have
Speaker 2: any any wars. He's actually you're right, he was quite
Speaker 2: sound and quite reasonable.
Speaker 1: Very reasonable.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's a very good businessman, and he kind
Speaker 2: of ran it that way, and America was pumping before
Speaker 2: COVID came along. So I agree with you. I think
Speaker 2: it's a great question. I think that we definitely overestimate
Speaker 2: the importance of whoever the incumbony is. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: America's basically been running without with someone. They've been running
Speaker 2: in the vacuum for the last two years. Biden has
Speaker 2: not been firing on all cylinder, and nor does she.
Speaker 2: You have to go back on, go back through the
Speaker 2: transcript about how she how muddled she is on so
Speaker 2: many issues. But you know, I must say she's been
Speaker 2: pretty good in the spotlight the last four weeks. Incredible.
Speaker 1: Actually, well, you guys in your organization, you sort of
Speaker 1: dig deep into the weeds and you must be getting
Speaker 1: sort of lots of information from the US. This looks
Speaker 1: like to me, it looks it looks like to me,
Speaker 1: no idea, but it looks like to me, it's all
Speaker 1: been coordinated below like it looks like there's a puppet
Speaker 1: master or puppet mark.
Speaker 2: It does look that way. I'm not a conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 2: but it does. Yeah, it looks scripted, right, It looked
Speaker 2: totally looks scripted. Well, certainly because I know and.
Speaker 1: I'm talking this conspiracy either. I'm just saying just this
Speaker 1: is power brokers managing a process and doing a brilliant
Speaker 1: job at it.
Speaker 2: Doing a brilliant job at it, and aid and embedded
Speaker 2: by the vast majority of mainstream media. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: I forget the Hunter Biden laptop was buried, was buried
Speaker 2: by Google, was buried by Zuckerberg, was buried by Twitter
Speaker 2: before must took it, and it was buried by all
Speaker 2: the mainstream networks. The only ones that were running it
Speaker 2: were the Post Wall Street Journal, and so most of
Speaker 2: America did not even know about it. And yet it
Speaker 2: was a scandal. It was it was a dreadful scandal.
Speaker 2: So that plays a big It's just to your point
Speaker 2: about it all being neatly scripted. They're all they're all
Speaker 2: dancing to that cart are.
Speaker 1: We talking like a No, I don't want to get
Speaker 1: really weird. But is it like a cabal of powerful people?
Speaker 1: I don't know if it is. Yeah, but like I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: I think they get together.
Speaker 1: In a room, right, So it's not coordinated, but there's
Speaker 1: almost like market signaling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, market signaling.
Speaker 1: They're signaling and like, I get it. You guys are
Speaker 1: saying that, so we'll how we're going to contribute on
Speaker 1: Facebook and I'm going to say I'm going to bury this,
Speaker 1: and and then there would.
Speaker 2: Have been phone calls. Yeah for sure, mates, mate, this
Speaker 2: this is rubbish. You're not gonna run Thatay, no, don't
Speaker 2: worry buried. Yeah, you know, So it would have been
Speaker 2: more kind of at that level. Like as I say,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't have been executive meeting saying you know, this
Speaker 2: is our policy. But you also have within these organizations
Speaker 2: everyone signed up, right, So you're sort of pushing through
Speaker 2: an open door. Everyone's all part of that mission.
Speaker 1: Because I mean during COVID, you know, Lack's already admitted
Speaker 1: that he buried certain stuff about COVID. It's dangerous, totally dangerous.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, people would say I'm a murder editor. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about? Don't you guys do that?
Speaker 1: Whether you do it or it doesn't matter, but maybe
Speaker 1: they both dangerous. But at least it's good to know
Speaker 1: that there's two sides of the imbalance in the system.
Speaker 1: And I guess that you know people's prejudices and there
Speaker 1: and also their biases. We're humans. It always comes out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: have the ability to write it because even like, if
Speaker 1: I look at the way someone writes a story, I
Speaker 1: mean generally speaking, I can see the language that they
Speaker 1: use is going to reflect their bias in the end,
Speaker 1: with their prejudice.
Speaker 2: It is, and rightly so. There've been concerns in the
Speaker 2: past of our concentration of media, but we've never seen
Speaker 2: anything like this in human history where a search engine
Speaker 2: is so utterly dominant on how we get our information.
Speaker 2: And so it's unprecedented and terrifying in a sense that
Speaker 2: you know, whatever you type in you can't it's been controlled.
Speaker 1: So you must have brother. This breathed a sigh of relief,
Speaker 1: and Musk took over x Or took over Twitter, because yeah,
Speaker 1: well he's sort of brought some he brought another side
Speaker 1: of the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, he's a grenade thrower. We need
Speaker 2: them in the world, right, Yeah, it needs to be
Speaker 2: a bit.
Speaker 1: Messy, rightly or wrongly, we do need it. Well.
Speaker 2: I think that's where you know, Trump is sort of
Speaker 2: in their mole too, right, So when people say they
Speaker 2: don't like Trump, it's mainly because, like when you actually
Speaker 2: push them on it, it's often quite slippery. They can't
Speaker 2: actually say what it is they hate about him.
Speaker 1: I think he's got he's obnoxious.
Speaker 2: I think it's because he's he kind of goes against
Speaker 2: the grain of what people expect a politician should look
Speaker 2: and feel like and sound like and sound like right,
Speaker 2: and so he's that ultimate disruptor in that way, and
Speaker 2: you know, there's there's a lot that's objectionable about that.
Speaker 2: But also I think none of us should be surprised
Speaker 2: that he came along, because we had were basically served
Speaker 2: up crap for so long that there was there was
Speaker 2: a vacuum there waiting to be filled.
Speaker 1: I assume as the ultimate disruptor because he disrupted politics
Speaker 1: without any right to do so. But he saw the
Speaker 1: opportunity absolutely, And I have met him a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and you know, on the occasions that I interviewed him once.
Speaker 1: The only interview he did in Australia I had, He
Speaker 1: gave me a half hour interviewer was during the TV
Speaker 1: series and he of course owns The Apprentice with one
Speaker 1: of the owners of The Apprentice, and so he offered to
Speaker 1: do it. He offered me that he I could do
Speaker 1: it and we get footage for a show. But the
Speaker 1: thing that I took away from was as pre president,
Speaker 1: he has to be for me the most the an
Speaker 1: ultimate or the ultimate marketing person when you go to
Speaker 1: market your own brand. Genius ever in history, well that's
Speaker 1: a lot coming from you. There's you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are up there. But but in
Speaker 1: modern history, at least obviously there's an agent. You know,
Speaker 1: JC was pretty good at it, but he still lasted
Speaker 1: till today. But Trump in modern history has to be
Speaker 1: one of the most ultimate, the ultimate. I think self
Speaker 1: market self promoters. And I don't mean that as a
Speaker 1: narcissist in a narcissistic way. I just mean putting himself
Speaker 1: in a position to disrupt politics as it was always seen.
Speaker 2: He has a genius.
Speaker 1: There is a genius. There is a genius even in
Speaker 1: the way he speaks. And because I can tell you
Speaker 1: the language we hear on television is not how he
Speaker 1: speaks one on one really, No, he doesn't talk that way.
Speaker 1: That's a deliberate. It's deliberate. Well, it's well crafted. Like
Speaker 1: where there's others of crafts for him. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's well crafted.
Speaker 2: The language jective though, isn't it?
Speaker 1: He does he does it. It's a performance, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It's like it's showmanship at best. He's incredibly entertaining. Even
Speaker 1: if you hate him, he's still entertaining. Want to watch
Speaker 1: him to hate him? Do you want to watch him
Speaker 1: to criticize him for somebody else?
Speaker 2: In no accident that The New York Times, the Washington
Speaker 2: Post has left leaning mastheads of the States had the
Speaker 2: greatest subscript subscription growth after Trump won. It was the
Speaker 2: best thing that ever happened to them because they had
Speaker 2: something to rail against and people rally to them to say, well,
Speaker 2: why should we hate Trump? When they articulated it for them.
Speaker 1: Do you think that I know we don't have president's
Speaker 1: elections in Australia, but like, do you think that our
Speaker 1: we are starting to move a little bit towards our territory?
Speaker 1: And it's nearly becoming when our poles do this, but
Speaker 1: prime ministerial elections, I know we both for our local member.
Speaker 1: But we are starting to move that territory.
Speaker 2: I think we are. And you see that this week
Speaker 2: with Jim Chalmers has attacked Uton. Yeah, attacked the man policy.
Speaker 2: It's harder to actually win the argument on policy these days.
Speaker 2: The SoundBite is getting compressed and so they go after
Speaker 2: the guy, which I think, by the way, is a
Speaker 2: sign of insecurity.
Speaker 1: It's not very Australian either. By the way, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if it works. We play we don't we play
Speaker 1: the ball, we don't play the man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like it.
Speaker 1: No, I that's what I think too. And I but
Speaker 1: my gut feeling is politics is borrowing from what they
Speaker 1: see in America, definitely, and it's nearly like there. I mean,
Speaker 1: particularly when it comes to Labor and the Democrats, Labor
Speaker 1: and Australia the democracy is I think that it feels
Speaker 1: like to me that they're nearly talking to each other
Speaker 1: saying listen, we're gonna lecture coming up to is there
Speaker 1: something you can help us as your you know, compatriots
Speaker 1: in the same cause win our next election or hold
Speaker 1: our position in Australia. This is important for you as
Speaker 1: a Democrat, if you as a Democrat leadership for Australia
Speaker 1: to be similar with the Labor Party. And I just
Speaker 1: get that's just the thing I feel.
Speaker 2: Certainly, certainly in terms of political strategy, there's a there's
Speaker 2: a heap of exchange of ideas. There's actually individuals who
Speaker 2: worked on both campaigns. It happened with Kirs Starmer. It
Speaker 2: happened also on the Conservative side where Crosby Texter, you know,
Speaker 2: they helped out with the Conservative campaigns in the UK.
Speaker 2: There's actually a Labor guy from Australia who's working on
Speaker 2: the Democrats campaign. So there's there's definitely.
Speaker 1: And we'll come back to probably to work on.
Speaker 2: There's cross pollination there happening, and so that is the
Speaker 2: That's the real deal, definitely, because I just be something.
Speaker 1: I just feel it. Because the way like they're polling
Speaker 1: every week, you know.
Speaker 2: And the small so at the moment, what you know,
Speaker 2: he's actually written about the weekend. I'm not making this
Speaker 2: up that they was saying that the small target strategy
Speaker 2: that Kamala has adopted may in some way have been borrowed.
Speaker 2: I mean maybe it's overstating it, but they're suggesting that that,
Speaker 2: you know, does emulate in a way the way ALBINIZI
Speaker 2: had a successful campaign in that he kind of was
Speaker 2: able to successfully present himself as a as a you know,
Speaker 2: no damage alternative that you know, I've got a safe
Speaker 2: pair of hands here. There was not much policy, you know,
Speaker 2: not not huge policy discussion during that campaign. It was
Speaker 2: mainly just I'm not Morrison.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's funny you should say that, because I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about the upcoming election. By the way, I
Speaker 1: have a prediction. So I'll boldly say to you, great
Speaker 1: I think, and I've said this. I still do lots
Speaker 1: of talks and lectures on the economy, and I said recently,
Speaker 1: I said, if Labor calls an election before the end
Speaker 1: of this year, you can pretty much bet that come
Speaker 1: for every next year we're going to have a recession.
Speaker 1: Because they know the numbers better than anybody else, because
Speaker 1: you know, they're talking to Treasury all the time, and
Speaker 1: Labor will call that election because they don't want to
Speaker 1: go into it. They don't want to go into election
Speaker 1: mode intercession, inter recession, because that that's just good night.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily follow if they don't call election before
Speaker 1: the end of the year, that we won't have a
Speaker 1: recession next year, because there could be other ministry.
Speaker 2: Definitely will be one if the dred percent.
Speaker 1: And we are seeing a little bit of noise at
Speaker 1: the moment and a little bit of ball passing and
Speaker 1: like pushing the blame across the RBA. I'm getting signs
Speaker 1: right now, and you know, because you know, and by
Speaker 1: the way, what I think is quite interesting is that
Speaker 1: the RBA was appointed by this party, in fact by
Speaker 1: the treasurer.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Yet now he's coming home on the ABA. The RBA
Speaker 1: more recently very sort of interestingly but sort of pointed
Speaker 1: to the fact that they're working against the government of
Speaker 1: the Montain or the governments working against them.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: They didn't say as much, but you know, you could could.
Speaker 1: That's sort of the coded walking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I find it quite interesting. And I just my
Speaker 1: gut feeling is something's something is brewing at the labor level.
Speaker 1: I think they're getting nervous.
Speaker 2: So on that the clients just turn it back here,
Speaker 2: do you think. I mean, we're talking about this narrow
Speaker 2: path that Bullock has to sort of try and navigate right, And.
Speaker 1: I don't think there is a narrow path as byner
Speaker 1: is one or the other. Right, it's not the recession
Speaker 1: a recession, and I think I think it's got to
Speaker 1: be recession.
Speaker 2: Okay, So therefore her bias should be towards cutting.
Speaker 1: Rates, right, Yeah, No, therefore she should say therefore, well,
Speaker 1: their database, so they're going to say, yes, yes, the
Speaker 1: bias will be, but they're never going to She's never
Speaker 1: going to say it. So she's going to hold race.
Speaker 2: She doesn't have inflation expectation and.
Speaker 1: She doesn't want to beat do what her predecessor did. Yes,
Speaker 1: so she's not going to say so she's just whole rates.
Speaker 1: I think she's been very good by the way I
Speaker 1: do too. She shouldn't be measured, yes, And by the way,
Speaker 1: she hasn't got upset with the government because like the
Speaker 1: government is actually spending money at state and federal levels,
Speaker 1: not just one, but at both those levels, which is
Speaker 1: actually making her job a lot harder. It is because
Speaker 1: the money's not been spent so much in infrastructure, but
Speaker 1: it's all the employees that the government's employing in all
Speaker 1: the various great outcomes and ndis they are all things
Speaker 1: that need to be done, don't get me wrong, but
Speaker 1: maybe a little hold on, like a freeze on employment
Speaker 1: for maybe six months, would be a good idea. Because
Speaker 1: every single person of the thirty six thousand people they
Speaker 1: are now going to be employed in the last budget
Speaker 1: at a federal level, they're all going to be put
Speaker 1: into one of these pockets, and they're all going to
Speaker 1: get paid a lot of money. And they are getting
Speaker 1: paid a lot of money. And the generally speaking of
Speaker 1: being pulled out of organizations like mine or the CBA
Speaker 1: and everyone else.
Speaker 2: There's capacity constraints in the private sex.
Speaker 1: Correct, and we have to pay more money than to
Speaker 1: get a person. So my my only alternative then is
Speaker 1: to increase my pricing, which we can't in the in
Speaker 1: our industry because you know, we have a standard price
Speaker 1: that pretty much everyone charges, but other industries can can charge.
Speaker 1: And that's by definitely is going to be inflationary. So
Speaker 1: there's there, seems to me from to answer your question
Speaker 1: from the Governor of the Reserve Bank's position, I think
Speaker 1: she knows, and you know, we only have to go
Speaker 1: back to the great Poor Keeping, who you know, people
Speaker 1: don't like him, is very divisive, but you have to
Speaker 1: say he's probably one of the smarter treasures we've ever had.
Speaker 1: And he did some great things, you know at the time,
Speaker 1: you know, keeping boarding compulsory superinnovation, which has turned out
Speaker 1: to be a great relief against Australian perse when people retire,
Speaker 1: given we've got an aging population. I would dare say
Speaker 1: that ORD needs to be recalculated, but doesn't matter. He
Speaker 1: did deregulate the banking system so allowed people like my
Speaker 1: businesses come out to put pressure on the banks to
Speaker 1: lend it the right price. He did a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: floated flow the currency. He did a lot of great things.
Speaker 1: But he also did something really important in ninety ninety one.
Speaker 1: I think was he was treasure at the time. He said,
Speaker 1: this is a recession we had to have. And if
Speaker 1: you look at the stats right now, and she'd be
Speaker 1: looking at the stats all the time. We have never
Speaker 1: had bad statistics in a data censeer to the dutyp
Speaker 1: et cetera, retail retail sales, et cetera, as we had
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety one. We have to go back
Speaker 1: thirty years to see the same numbers. And I could
Speaker 1: only say to you, because he was always honest Paul,
Speaker 1: which is why he lost his election in ninety six
Speaker 1: because you'd probably two on.
Speaker 2: Us for us.
Speaker 1: But he did say we had to have that recession
Speaker 1: to curb inflation. And my gut feeling is she is
Speaker 1: probably saying the same yeah, but won't say it. And
Speaker 1: I think the Treasurer probably knows it, and I think
Speaker 1: the Treasury numbers. We're going to get some numbers out
Speaker 1: in the next couple of days, but he probably is
Speaker 1: terrified of those things, and he's going to start pushing
Speaker 1: the blame down the other end of the bookshelf.
Speaker 2: Well, look Albernez, he quite rightly said before the last
Speaker 2: election that because he was asked, well, how are you
Speaker 2: going to drive real increase in wages without unleashing inflation,
Speaker 2: he said, because we're going to get productivity guns. So
Speaker 2: he hasn't delivered on that. And I think that's the.
Speaker 1: Most in the first part, productivity on the.
Speaker 2: First part, But the most critical thing in my mind
Speaker 2: is the second part. And it's hard to get productivity gains,
Speaker 2: but you certainly don't. You don't get productivity gains by
Speaker 2: making the industrial system more rigid. And I think that
Speaker 2: that's where it's going to come home to roost for
Speaker 2: them is that they've introduced some draconian restrictions on businesses,
Speaker 2: and the latest one being the right to disconnect, which
Speaker 2: are just ideological in nature and absolutely anathematic productivity.
Speaker 1: And small business growth, well.
Speaker 2: Small business is that's where it's really the rubber's hitting
Speaker 2: the road, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you'd be seeing that, would you know. I'm
Speaker 1: totally seeing it. Like you know, seventy percent of every
Speaker 1: person that's employed in this country, gamefully employed in this country,
Speaker 1: works for a small business. Most small businesses work on
Speaker 1: the premise that they don't have premises, So people actually
Speaker 1: work from home because rents so high commercially and so high,
Speaker 1: and it makes sense for people to work from home
Speaker 1: because a lot of these things are ministry roles. Well,
Speaker 1: productivity means if I'm you know, if you're working for
Speaker 1: me and you work from home, that if it probably
Speaker 1: means that you're going to stop at three o'clock because
Speaker 1: you might want to pick your kids up, which is fine,
Speaker 1: but you want to pick up tools again at eight o'clock.
Speaker 1: And I know the bank's operation this way. I mean
Speaker 1: most of the banks who talk to my brokers talk
Speaker 1: to them at seven pm at night. Yeah, the credit
Speaker 1: keep people, my guys up, my becus a MBM at night.
Speaker 1: And that's flexible, right, correct. So if all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I'm I can't read my guys, it's after five o'clock,
Speaker 1: then how am I going to get my loans approved?
Speaker 1: So and by all small business are affected like this.
Speaker 1: They all have flexibility. They have to have flexibility because
Speaker 1: if they don't provide the flexibility to their staff members,
Speaker 1: the staff members have so many choices and go and work.
Speaker 1: If the government will go never go to work.
Speaker 2: Well, we're at a front page story today about how
Speaker 2: hopeless our councils are at proving development applications. If you
Speaker 2: had them in the if the councils of the private sector,
Speaker 2: they wouldn't be knocking off at three o'clock and having
Speaker 2: an IDEO every nine days, and those applications will probably
Speaker 2: be getting done more frequently. That's there's an example of
Speaker 2: where the state is the dead hand on productivity.
Speaker 1: And and that's why the federal government will never solve.
Speaker 1: They will never build one point two million houses, which
Speaker 1: is their five you ticket, there is no chance. And
Speaker 1: and by the way, they need one point two million
Speaker 1: new House over the next five years based on what
Speaker 1: was previously considered to be the lot the medium term
Speaker 1: immigration numbers, which has already been blown out of the water.
Speaker 1: So you know, like so therefore, I do think if
Speaker 1: we go back to, you know, the next election, I
Speaker 1: do believe there is a big chance that the government
Speaker 1: will call an election before the end of thisition. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the timing world. I don't have Helen
Speaker 1: caretaker period's work, but like I would say, watch this
Speaker 1: space in the next month.
Speaker 2: That's what I think. I don't dispute that.
Speaker 1: And and it is becoming a personality game, as you said,
Speaker 1: the it's about keeping Albanesi clean. So you don't see
Speaker 1: Albanizi talk about any of these things. He's running the
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris style and he's using Jim to attack on
Speaker 1: this or you know, Penny Wong to attack on that
Speaker 1: or someone else. So they're all the bad but we'll
Speaker 1: just keep him pretty happy, you know. And I wonder
Speaker 1: in a minute, I'll put it back to you, do
Speaker 1: you think Australians would buy that? Do you think what
Speaker 1: do you think about Do you think Australians no, like
Speaker 1: American voters.
Speaker 2: No, I no, I don't. Well it's compulsory, so it's different.
Speaker 1: But do you think we're more wide into the games
Speaker 1: that people play?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I think so. I think that
Speaker 2: we are skeptical, very skeptical by hr yes, very untrusting
Speaker 2: in politicians. There's got to be something what's the hidden
Speaker 2: agenda here that would.
Speaker 1: Be the least trusted people I think in the next country.
Speaker 2: Maybe next to me, but yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: Journalists and meeting politicians, sales.
Speaker 2: And yeah, we're all in that. No, I think that's right.
Speaker 2: I think that Australians also would be very wary about
Speaker 2: kicking a government out after one term, right, because I don't, like,
Speaker 2: you know, we believe in a fair go. We want
Speaker 2: to give them, give them a chance to having a crack.
Speaker 2: But just to your point earlier, like people are hurting,
Speaker 2: and they're hurting when the power bill arrives. They're hurting
Speaker 2: when they see how much the mortgages or how much
Speaker 2: their rent's gone up, and right there, wrong, Well, actually
Speaker 2: you know they can shoot that home to this government.
Speaker 2: And the reason is is because they actually fought the
Speaker 2: last election on the cost of living how it's going
Speaker 2: up under Morrison.
Speaker 1: So will your paper prosecute that? I mean, is that
Speaker 1: is that what you do? Is that what your paper
Speaker 1: your news outlets? Well, do you, as the main editor, guy,
Speaker 1: did you say to your team, well, let's call us
Speaker 1: out let's because that's news.
Speaker 2: Let's call them both out.
Speaker 1: Okay, but the liberals insaney.
Speaker 2: No, But but then again, they're going to have they're
Speaker 2: going to present their pitch to the nation, and we
Speaker 2: have to interrogate that. Yeah. True, but yeah, definitely we
Speaker 2: I think it's a mistake too. It was a little
Speaker 2: bit like the Voice, So we didn't declare our hand
Speaker 2: on where we stood on the Voice. We just chased
Speaker 2: the story and watched the developments. Yeah, watsch the developments
Speaker 2: and very much to strains has made up their own minds.
Speaker 2: They didn't need any guidance from us or anyone else
Speaker 2: that they determined that. You know, I think it can
Speaker 2: be overstated the influence that papers have on how people
Speaker 2: vote on election day. It's important. It's one element, you know,
Speaker 2: But I'm in a game where I mean the game
Speaker 2: I mean is actually being trustworthy and actually presenting Our
Speaker 2: journalism has to be above approach, particularly with the onslaught
Speaker 2: from social media. That's our point of difference is that
Speaker 2: you know, we've got professional journalists who live in your community.
Speaker 2: They pay the same bills. They you know, they drive
Speaker 2: cars on the same roads. That's how point of difference
Speaker 2: if for.
Speaker 1: Is that because social media journalists, yes, is not edited,
Speaker 1: it is not controlled.
Speaker 2: What's derivative from us. So they rip our journalism off.
Speaker 1: But then they put their own spin on it.
Speaker 2: No, they just don't live here. What they'll do is
Speaker 2: they don't put a spin on it. They just shove
Speaker 2: it up there and just let the algorithm do its work. Right.
Speaker 2: But my point is that they're not here. They're in
Speaker 2: you know, they're in California somewhere.
Speaker 1: And do you think I mean, if you were asked
Speaker 1: to advise Anthony who by the way, I have met
Speaker 1: him once or twice, but from what people tell me,
Speaker 1: who haven't. He's a good blake, bubbly blake. Like I
Speaker 1: don't really know him.
Speaker 2: Well, we've been a footy a few times together. He's
Speaker 2: actually he's a great he's a great footy.
Speaker 1: He loves you, he loves his site, he loves footy generally,
Speaker 1: and he comes from a really humble beginnings. I mean,
Speaker 1: I like his whole story.
Speaker 2: I guess that's true.
Speaker 1: But if you're you know, you're an influential person, would
Speaker 1: you suggest to him that he should do he actually
Speaker 1: should expose himself to more more media because he doesn't
Speaker 1: really do that much media unless he's very controlled. He
Speaker 1: gives you the soundbites, but actually I don't really remember
Speaker 1: seeing him sit down with anybody for a long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, I don't think like he's
Speaker 2: not he's not as he's not on the level of
Speaker 2: some of the American politicians. He's certainly a lot more
Speaker 2: available on that. He does a lot of stand ups,
Speaker 2: a lot more doorstops. Yeah, yeah, And I wouldn't have
Speaker 2: that criticism of him. I think, for example, if we said, mate,
Speaker 2: we want to do a sit down with you in
Speaker 2: Freewek's time, he do it, we'd probably get it. Okay,
Speaker 2: you know, I wouldn't criticize him on that on that
Speaker 2: front at all.
Speaker 1: And what do you think about Dunton? Then he's done
Speaker 1: playing the reverse game, is done just saying I'm not
Speaker 1: going to say too much you talk about nuclear I
Speaker 1: get that, But other than that, I don't need to say.
Speaker 2: I think he's been very, very disciplined and to your point,
Speaker 2: he's kind of been very selective about when he's when
Speaker 2: he talks, and that's obviously a deliberate strategy because you
Speaker 2: can sound very shrill very quickly. We saw that with
Speaker 2: Jardie McKay and New South Wales. Mean, that was a
Speaker 2: disaster because she was just bagging everything. And then you
Speaker 2: see Chris Mins, who's actually actually incredible, incredibly, measured, incredibly
Speaker 2: but also magnanimous. So he's very happy to give credit
Speaker 2: where it's due.
Speaker 1: Oh I saw him at the then the Martin Players railway,
Speaker 1: like the what do we call this rolling thing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Metro and he congratulated Domin and he congratulate Gladys,
Speaker 1: which are You're right, it's magnanimous actually because like he's
Speaker 1: actually a really decent person. Oh he is not suggesting
Speaker 1: anybody else is not. But he's a very decent guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah he is, and smart, very smart. And when you
Speaker 2: look at Chris Mins, you don't actually see the labor
Speaker 2: brand on him, right, Yeah, it's that's clever. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: sort of like what you see is just him instinctively
Speaker 2: respond to things. And I think that he's a new
Speaker 2: brand of politician in that respect and it's incredibly effective.
Speaker 2: But the opposition cannot lay a glove on him.
Speaker 1: Nah, well, no one even knows who's I mean, we
Speaker 1: know who speaks, we know who his opposite number is.
Speaker 1: But well but a lot of it wouldn't know. And
Speaker 1: Chris is sort of put himself out there. He's so
Speaker 1: far ahead of everybody, he's like ten seconds ahead of
Speaker 1: everybody else in the two hundred meters. He's so far
Speaker 1: right ahead, like he's the only one in the race.
Speaker 2: But he's also I think I think he's also enough
Speaker 2: of a realist to know that that doesn't that doesn't,
Speaker 2: that can end very quickly. So I think he's you know,
Speaker 2: he's very determined and disciplined at the moment. He knows
Speaker 2: that this housing crisis will just swallow him up and
Speaker 2: spit him out unless he stays on top of it.
Speaker 1: So I guess it brings us to the story of
Speaker 1: a warrick Farmers Rose Hill. That's a a shit fight. Well,
Speaker 1: pout of landis is being dragged into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, In fact, it's the Australian Turf Club. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: it's not him, No, he's a regulator. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 2: a turf club that owns for Rose Hill. But of
Speaker 2: course that was an opportunity for Landi's detractors to use
Speaker 2: this as an excuse to have a crack at.
Speaker 1: Him, which is sort of worked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well to an extent.
Speaker 1: Men's backs him or backs backs the backs the idea.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's a good idea, I think, and
Speaker 2: he recognizes it. It's not a good idea, it's a
Speaker 2: great idea.
Speaker 1: Well, it's compulsory because we need more housing.
Speaker 2: We need more housing, and it's definitely the most attractive
Speaker 2: tract of land where people want to live in Sydney
Speaker 2: in the basin and you can get twenty five thousand
Speaker 2: homes in there, The Metro will go through there and
Speaker 2: you'll basically set up safeguard the racing industry for the
Speaker 2: next half century, if not more so.
Speaker 1: How does then how does how do the the controversy
Speaker 1: get legs?
Speaker 2: Well, I think that the ATC would probably have, had
Speaker 2: their time again, have approached it differently. They would have
Speaker 2: done a lot more stakeholder engagement.
Speaker 1: As in consultations one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: They should have spoken to the trainers and and actually
Speaker 2: presented the vision of where they want to take racing
Speaker 2: and I don't think they necessarily did that as well
Speaker 2: as they might have liked.
Speaker 1: So when that story comes into the you know, the
Speaker 1: editorial room, whatever you call it, you know, the the
Speaker 1: morning meeting.
Speaker 2: Sure, what do you do?
Speaker 1: What do you what's your first reaction to that?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, a bit of that, but I mean it's
Speaker 2: a stunning it's a stunning piece of stunning revelation.
Speaker 1: You've got premiers and everything, Pajaman the NRL names massive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and also like rose Hill is, there is
Speaker 2: incredible sentimental attachment to it. You know, the Golden Step
Speaker 2: has been there for more sixty years and so yeah,
Speaker 2: what do I do when that happens? It's like, right,
Speaker 2: let's get our heads around it. You know what do
Speaker 2: we think? We just basically do what you do with
Speaker 2: any yarn is, let's get the facts and then sort
Speaker 2: of then you know, the answers will sort of make
Speaker 2: themselves apparent.
Speaker 1: So do you have but do you get sort of
Speaker 1: is there a nervousness about the urgency because we've got
Speaker 1: to get this up? Do you see You've got two
Speaker 1: hours or so.
Speaker 2: I've got to express it. Probably shouldn't say what it is,
Speaker 2: but basically, let's call it fast and dirty, which is basically,
Speaker 2: get the yarn up.
Speaker 1: Get something up straight to get it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, and then let's let's build on it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: refined because it is a game of speed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the speed is quick.
Speaker 2: Quickness is important, Yeah, because your CEO search engine optimization
Speaker 2: authority is determined by one that important component of speed,
Speaker 2: right that you know, the engine determines that you've got
Speaker 2: more authority if you're first. Right, So speed is very
Speaker 2: very important.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the digital world's changed things a little bit
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you can't. You can't just sort of you know,
Speaker 2: take your time. You've got to get it up and
Speaker 2: then continue to add to it, add to the richness
Speaker 2: of the story. And you know, there's there's a whole
Speaker 2: lot of components that go into that.
Speaker 1: So I just want to find a question. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you see anybody or anything out there that can
Speaker 1: disrupt between the two main news outlets, which is nine
Speaker 1: and News Corp. Well Daily Telegraph? Is there a do
Speaker 1: you think there's some threat there? Because I remember many
Speaker 1: many years ago and Don Ugus was the CEO of NAB.
Speaker 1: Don Augus was asked this question. It was in the
Speaker 1: AFI I was in two thousand and two or three,
Speaker 1: and they said what keeps you wake at night? In
Speaker 1: terms of the banks controlling the market. And his answer
Speaker 1: to that was, funnily enough, someone a General Electric coming
Speaker 1: to the marketplace and becoming a bank. Of course they
Speaker 1: bought my business. As as soon as I read it,
Speaker 1: I went straight to thank you, thank you, don But
Speaker 1: but if I'm asking you the same question today, what
Speaker 1: was your most what keeps you awake?
Speaker 2: Where I went to straight away was retail media. Well
Speaker 2: you mentioned Amazon, right, Amazon's got enormous retail media like
Speaker 2: on there through all their assets, They've got content and
Speaker 2: they could easily just you know, they will hoover up
Speaker 2: a lot of attention, a lot of revenue that way.
Speaker 2: So Wilworth has their own media. They have their own
Speaker 2: digital magazine, physical magazines. All of the big companies have that,
Speaker 2: and they're they're hoovering up revenue as well as the
Speaker 2: social media as an advertising revenee. Advertising but you know,
Speaker 2: a subscription, no no advertising revenue. Absolutely to reach play
Speaker 2: engagement and so that they're they're hiring journalists. Banks are
Speaker 2: hiring journalists. They're all hiring journalists. So what keeps me
Speaker 2: up at night. I suppose is that in the other
Speaker 2: corollay for that is talent. It's so hard to hold
Speaker 2: on to and attract talented journalists because they all go
Speaker 2: to UNI, might do a communications course and all the
Speaker 2: all the lecturers are saying, I don't go to the media,
Speaker 2: there's no future in it. Of course there's a future
Speaker 2: in it, but they just don't see that in the universities.
Speaker 2: So talent, the pipeline of talent's one of the one
Speaker 2: of the toughest things.
Speaker 1: And does that mean therefore then that perhaps you need
Speaker 1: to word infiltrate sort of comes to mind. But engage,
Speaker 1: engage with the university there we are go and see
Speaker 1: someone like David Gons Can you say, how can we assist?
Speaker 2: So we do that. We've got campus partnerships with well
Speaker 2: in Sydney. We've got three campus partnerships Western Sydney, Sydney
Speaker 2: and un Newcastle.
Speaker 1: You would have been inestud No, I haven't got them yet.
Speaker 2: If you can help me out, I can.
Speaker 1: I can David who's I'm alumni there and David would
Speaker 1: definitely be interested in.
Speaker 2: Talk trific Okay, great, we'll take that off on totally brilliant.
Speaker 2: And that involves us giving guest lectures, getting the students
Speaker 2: to come and they do internships and we we certainly
Speaker 2: we give a free subscription to the students and we
Speaker 2: try to serve up content that's relevant to them and
Speaker 2: hopefully that's an investment in future, you know, full blown subscribers,
Speaker 2: you get that sort of pipeline of engagement. So yeah,
Speaker 2: well that's absolutely critical to our mission to remain viable,
Speaker 2: because you're.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, unless a software can write for you,
Speaker 1: which perhaps may be the case one day, but right now,
Speaker 1: in order to be a news business, you have to
Speaker 1: have talent to write the news.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do, and and it's all the more precious,
Speaker 2: you know that. As I said at the outset, I'm
Speaker 2: fortunate to have a good team, but you can't take
Speaker 2: that for granted. I probably spend you know, he asked me.
Speaker 2: Actually the first question asked is what do I do.
Speaker 2: I probably spend you know, four hours out of every
Speaker 2: ten on talent development and my team. It's absolutely critical.
Speaker 1: Have you got an aging talent pool. It's a good mix.
Speaker 1: It's a good mix.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we've got we've got a good cadet ship program, unfortunate.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's actually the money from Google to license
Speaker 2: our content pays for our cadetship program. And it's so
Speaker 2: so critical because it's sort of injecting that fresh blood.
Speaker 2: But then we've also got the grizzly old journals that
Speaker 2: are there too, who are fantastic.
Speaker 1: Well, that's only sort of says that your attention has
Speaker 1: been very good. I mean, because I mean everything's about
Speaker 1: recruitment and retention. So maybe the recruitments more difficult because
Speaker 1: there's lesser pool to recruit them. There's more people trying
Speaker 1: to hit that pool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, retention is, but your attentions.
Speaker 1: I mean, like if I look at you mentioned my
Speaker 1: car Arnison, which is one of the younger Rugby League journalists.
Speaker 1: Michael's maybe he's forty, I don't know sure, But then
Speaker 1: you've got Buzz, who's like my age, Buzz one hundred
Speaker 1: Buzz to hear that, and but you still got in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because to keep Michael you need to have absolutely you
Speaker 1: need he wants to look. He looks up to Buzz
Speaker 1: and that's sort of like, you know, if he wasn't there,
Speaker 1: it's going to be hard to get a whole lot
Speaker 1: of footy the inspiration.
Speaker 2: And it's the same with Mark Maury as our crime Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then Josh Hanrahan is just freakishly good and they're like,
Speaker 2: you know, the old couple, but they work together. Well.
Speaker 1: Markemurray's got a head for crime. He doesn't. He's just
Speaker 1: like I look at him, he's on TV. I come
Speaker 1: in where I see him now he's probably but asking that.
Speaker 1: I think he's got a head for a crime writer.
Speaker 1: Brilliant and just just on that, just sorry, quickly, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm going I've been going too long. I'm getting
Speaker 1: wound up. But just on that. I remember in the
Speaker 1: days when Hardo was there, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: long time ago. They are always connected with the cops,
Speaker 1: and you know, they did a lot with the police
Speaker 1: because you know, they needed to get that's information. That's
Speaker 1: it still works that way very much. Yeah, because.
Speaker 2: It works both ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, correct, because sometimes the police wants something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it doesn't mean we hold them, don't
Speaker 2: hold them account Yeah, but you definitely have to have
Speaker 2: a strong relationship and have that back channel ability to
Speaker 2: have those back channel conversations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what doesn't really compromise you anyway, because you know,
Speaker 1: just because you're talking to, you know, the crime commander
Speaker 1: for New South Wales, it doesn't necessarily mean you've got
Speaker 1: to support the commissioner if she's in the you know,
Speaker 1: in the in the headlines for some reason. Right, And
Speaker 1: because the crime the head of crime, he'll still talk
Speaker 1: to you because he knows there's a need for that.
Speaker 1: So I sort of get that. But the old days
Speaker 1: are pretty close. I mean I haven't really been around.
Speaker 1: I'm still involved with the police, but in terms of
Speaker 1: I do stuff for them. But do you still play
Speaker 1: that game sort of very much? Mark Murray would sort
Speaker 1: of be talking to them.
Speaker 2: All the time. Yeah, and me too. You know, it's
Speaker 2: really important to have those relationships because it's also like
Speaker 2: I have to have a very strong contact book and
Speaker 2: being constantly contact with a lot of external parties. Otherwise,
Speaker 2: he asked me before, how do I have a sense
Speaker 2: of what's important? I have to be out and about
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and does that mean your life is sort of
Speaker 1: you know, you're always.
Speaker 2: On pretty much? Yeah, yeah, I like that. Yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 1: So nine times you've got to go to functions to
Speaker 1: write down the sort of dallims and it gets definitely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an important one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you okay, that's cool, but that means you're
Speaker 1: incredibly busy then, like if you're kicking off early in
Speaker 1: the morning, because you've got to be around when people
Speaker 1: talking to you. But then you've got to sort of
Speaker 1: do the schmoozing sort of stuff. I mean it's sort
Speaker 1: of pr type of thing. But I've got to be present.
Speaker 2: You've got to be present, You've got to c and
Speaker 2: be scene and I think it's really important. So that's
Speaker 2: how you established trust.
Speaker 1: As well enjoying it.
Speaker 2: I'm loving it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the best job. I've got the best job
Speaker 1: in Sydney.
Speaker 2: I love it. It's so great.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And and what's the Yeah, do you worry about burnout.
Speaker 2: Every day?
Speaker 1: Yeah? You feel exhausted?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I kind of cacun a bit on
Speaker 2: the weekends. Yeah, whor I can you just sort of
Speaker 2: you know, you're not really But.
Speaker 1: What is someone like you do to just to flip
Speaker 1: it a little bit too, just to relax, to decompress.
Speaker 1: I serve like actually in the on a border yea wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And do you live in Cyitny?
Speaker 2: Yeah, surf at Maroubra okay, and you know that's just great.
Speaker 2: You're in the wilderness and no one.
Speaker 1: Can call you. Always surfed. Yeah, since I was that
Speaker 1: seven or eight, Apple Juice was sitting across of there.
Speaker 1: He used to be a journalist Tracks.
Speaker 2: I was talking to him. Amazing. I mean, that's what
Speaker 2: I have that I dreamt off, that's the dream shop.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he was jals of tracks. But he left
Speaker 1: me because and if he saw the like, he decided
Speaker 1: to come to stay talk much better. So you could
Speaker 1: have done that if you had, if you were twenty five,
Speaker 1: thirty five, forty years younger, you could have done the
Speaker 1: same thing. All go wrong, mate. Good to see
Speaker 2: You too, mate, Thanks so much.