Speaker 1: Doctor Nick Coachworth, welcome straight talk mate.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you mate.
Speaker 1: You've been pretty vocal lately, or not not lately, forever,
Speaker 1: but lately. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Look, mb I've got the opportunity from COVID to have
Speaker 2: a bit of a platform, a bit of a voice.
Speaker 2: And you know, it was once when I actually learned
Speaker 2: how to do my debating and public speaking at school
Speaker 2: that I actually became, you know, reasonably good at it.
Speaker 2: And I would never claim to be the best doctor
Speaker 2: in the world, but you know, my latent talent is
Speaker 2: sort of talking. So with everything that's happening so far
Speaker 2: in the world, and I think what's happening to the
Speaker 2: country as well, what's happening to Australia, I think it's
Speaker 2: important that people with something to say get up and
Speaker 2: say it.
Speaker 1: Well. I think it's also important to Nick that people
Speaker 1: with it's called status. And I don't mean that in
Speaker 1: sort of any condescending way or the opposite to that
Speaker 1: as a matter of a matter of fact, but people
Speaker 1: with status, I think have an obligation to say something
Speaker 1: if they've got an opinion. If they're an opinion, fair enough,
Speaker 1: but if they've got an opinion on something, I think
Speaker 1: there's an obligation to say something. Do you do you
Speaker 1: think you fit into that category? And do you would
Speaker 1: you agree with that proposition?
Speaker 2: Oh, I definitely agree with the proposition. I think there's
Speaker 2: limitations on what people can and can't do, and I
Speaker 2: think from my point of view, I'm relatively unconstrained, you know.
Speaker 2: I'm yes, I work with the Nine Network. I've you know,
Speaker 2: very fortunate to have that sort of position. I still
Speaker 2: work as a doctor. But I think as long as
Speaker 2: you keep your opinions within a reasonable discourse or reasonable
Speaker 2: left or right of arc, you can have strong opinions
Speaker 2: and you should express them.
Speaker 1: So, you know, one of the things you're from my
Speaker 1: point of view at least, that you're best known for
Speaker 1: and is the COVID period. How did you get go
Speaker 1: from being a medical practitioner to being someone that effectively
Speaker 1: became the federal government spokespersonally for COVID or during COVID.
Speaker 1: How did that sort of all occur? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, some of it's always going to be
Speaker 2: the right place for the right time, But there were
Speaker 2: a few key steps in the Korea that got me there.
Speaker 2: I think the first one was probably working with doctors
Speaker 2: with our borders, getting a real passion for crisis medicine
Speaker 2: and humanitarian aid.
Speaker 1: And maybe you explained that a little bit. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've heard of it, but explain a little bit about that.
Speaker 1: What does it mean is that like charity not charity work?
Speaker 1: Is that like freebie stuff, like you're doing it you
Speaker 1: don't get paid?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, we won't paid for it. And it was
Speaker 2: it's a French organization with a very long and deep
Speaker 2: history of going into some of the most difficult conflicts
Speaker 2: in the world. Where were you pleased, Well, I went
Speaker 2: to I went to the Congo. Now there's two congos.
Speaker 2: Two congos. There's a Democratic Republic of Congo, which is
Speaker 2: the least democratic, and then there's the Republic of Congo,
Speaker 2: which is sort of the old French Congo, the DRC,
Speaker 2: which is the one who's playing the moment, the DRC
Speaker 2: is playing footy and has gotten a bowler outbreak, right,
Speaker 2: So that's not the one I was in, but we
Speaker 2: were just across the river from that. They're both next
Speaker 2: to each other, the old Belgian and the French Congos
Speaker 2: from colonial days, so it was post conflict mark, but
Speaker 2: it was a long way away. Like if you from
Speaker 2: the capital. Like if you think about Sydney and and
Speaker 2: I don't know Burke or wester Dubbo or something like that,
Speaker 2: that's where this was relatively in that country. So there's
Speaker 2: nothing there. We're in the middle of the jungle. We're
Speaker 2: in a village of thirty thousand people. We're providing the
Speaker 2: only healthcare there the hospital. MSF had built a hospital
Speaker 2: there when the need arose ten years ago, and now
Speaker 2: we're sitting there going, well, what do we do with
Speaker 2: this hospital? And we ended up being the last group
Speaker 2: of MSF doctors. I was the doctor. There was a
Speaker 2: nurse or a couple of other people, and we were
Speaker 2: the last ones there because the home base in Paris
Speaker 2: said no need here anymore and we need to shut down.
Speaker 2: So I'd gone out thinking I was going to be,
Speaker 2: you know, save the world. There was a program back
Speaker 2: then called er where there was a young doctor called Carter,
Speaker 2: and I used to love that program, and he was
Speaker 2: out doing the similar sort of thing, and you know,
Speaker 2: I got to be honest. There was a little bit
Speaker 2: of you know, glamour raman, a bit of romance about it,
Speaker 2: but the truth was exactly the opposite. We were the
Speaker 2: down sizes. We were like the management consultants of MSF,
Speaker 2: we needed to close this thing, and so we ended
Speaker 2: up leaving after I'd been there for six months. And
Speaker 2: it was a hugely emotional experience, sort of leaving a
Speaker 2: town of thirty thousand people with no healthcare. And I
Speaker 2: can remember distinctly going because you know, no plan's going
Speaker 2: in and out. We had to go down via canoe
Speaker 2: and we're leaving on a canoe waving and everybody's in
Speaker 2: tears and they know that there's going to be no
Speaker 2: free health care for them.
Speaker 1: The day that we leave, is that because they are
Speaker 1: no longer going to get free healthcare or end or
Speaker 1: is because you start to build relationships to them, they
Speaker 1: build relationships to you. Like a small community.
Speaker 2: Really, yes, small community and only two things driving the economy.
Speaker 2: So MSF being there and paying people to work for us.
Speaker 2: We had a staff of about thirty and they spend
Speaker 2: and they spent yep. And then there's an Italian logging company.
Speaker 2: Now this is an important story because the Italian logging
Speaker 2: company weren't paying its workers. So we were the only
Speaker 2: source of money into this town. And when we leave,
Speaker 2: it's not just healthcare that goes. It's not just friendships
Speaker 2: that go. The economy of last place collapses. And I thought, geez,
Speaker 2: you know, for all the romance of this and for
Speaker 2: all the good that we were clearly doing for a
Speaker 2: period of time, eventually you've distorted the economy. We've created
Speaker 2: a problem. Now. The night that we left, so we
Speaker 2: were on the canoe, we were out. There wasn't any
Speaker 2: mobile no mobile phones, well, satellite phones. So we go
Speaker 2: down the river and get to the next stop, and
Speaker 2: we get a call and the nurse that had worked
Speaker 2: for us for longest, and he got the biggest payout
Speaker 2: because we're doing French labor laws, right, you've worked with
Speaker 2: us for ten years, we'd give your stack of cash
Speaker 2: just like you would hear, like a redundancy payment, like
Speaker 2: a redundancy payment. So the coppers find out, the police,
Speaker 2: the Congolese police, they find out.
Speaker 1: That he got a pay out.
Speaker 2: They knew that everybody got to pay out, they knew
Speaker 2: that he got the most. They stop him in the street.
Speaker 2: So at the point of a gunpoint, give.
Speaker 1: Us your cash, like, here's a robbery.
Speaker 2: Here's a robbery. He said no. They shot him, no,
Speaker 2: they shot him dead, dead, Well, he got to the hospital,
Speaker 2: but you know, the thirty staff are not there anymore
Speaker 2: and it's just three three government Congolese staff, no equipment.
Speaker 2: We've taken all the equipment and Jacques died that night
Speaker 2: and we found it out about it the next day.
Speaker 1: Why didn't he go with you?
Speaker 2: Well, he was what we call local or national staff.
Speaker 2: So you come in with your team with five usually expats.
Speaker 2: It's a bit different now with MSF, who used to
Speaker 2: be people from overseas. You come in with your five
Speaker 2: basic teams, a field coordinated doctor, nurse, logistician, and an admin person.
Speaker 2: And that was us. There was core for five person team.
Speaker 2: And then you build your local team around you. So
Speaker 2: you employ you employ nurses and doctors from local people,
Speaker 2: from the local health system, and you're providing with jobs,
Speaker 2: training and do it. You're building capacity. So there's good
Speaker 2: stuff here.
Speaker 1: But you're building a business.
Speaker 2: Basically, you're building healthcare. I mean, obviously you're providing it
Speaker 2: for free because you're doing.
Speaker 1: It's still revenues, but you are building a business system.
Speaker 2: And then that money is going in to the local economy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so we managed to successfully collapse the local economy overnight.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So corruption is a big issue, oh, I mean in
Speaker 2: those sort of regions, and it's not it's not so
Speaker 2: different corruption anywhere in the world, back where where there's
Speaker 2: lots of money and perverse incentives. And you know, we
Speaker 2: can talk about a bit of the soft corruption or
Speaker 2: hard corruption that goes on in Australia later on, but
Speaker 2: this is like hard, brazen corruption on behalf of anyone
Speaker 2: with power given to them by the government. And in
Speaker 2: this case it was the place.
Speaker 1: How old were you at that point, I was twenty seven.
Speaker 1: I think what you learn from that, well, I learned.
Speaker 2: That the road to hell proverbially is paved with good
Speaker 2: intentions no matter you know, you are doing genuine good,
Speaker 2: but in the course of doing that good, you can
Speaker 2: create a whole heap of you know, in economic terms,
Speaker 2: negative externality is pretty pretty serious negative externality for Jacques
Speaker 2: who lost his life because of it, and that just
Speaker 2: shocked us. I mean, you can imagine what that did
Speaker 2: to our Core five team when we find out about that.
Speaker 2: We all knew why, and we all knew it was
Speaker 2: related to us and what we've done. But now you know,
Speaker 2: now in Africa, this has sort of added just switching
Speaker 2: back to the sort of the romance of it, I suppose,
Speaker 2: and it's not like this anymore around the world. But
Speaker 2: we couldn't communicate with anyone were it not for a satellite.
Speaker 2: I was sending emails to my current wife who i'd
Speaker 2: split up with as a girlfriend boyfriend at the time,
Speaker 2: and I had to send her. I was sending her
Speaker 2: emails and it would cost me most of my per DM,
Speaker 2: which was like ten euros a day just to send
Speaker 2: one email of like forty words, So it was hard
Speaker 2: to communicate.
Speaker 1: Did she realize how much you loved when you're told
Speaker 1: of it?
Speaker 2: Ah, she did when I took her to France afterwards
Speaker 2: at day's pay.
Speaker 1: As a day's pay, I just spent a day's pay
Speaker 1: on on a whatty word email to you.
Speaker 2: I still remind her about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well she'd be watching this, no doubt. So you
Speaker 1: went from there then? What happened? So you come back
Speaker 1: to Australia. What did you do? No?
Speaker 2: So at the end of MSF missions, there's always another mission,
Speaker 2: so they said, you know, there's a measles vaccination up
Speaker 2: in Chad, Chad. I didn't even know where it was.
Speaker 2: For the listeners viewers next to Sudan, Maley, that's sort
Speaker 2: of very Subsharan Africa.
Speaker 1: Pretty hectic though, very very hectic, and.
Speaker 2: At the time probably one of the bottom three poorest
Speaker 2: places in the world. So we went there and we
Speaker 2: had to try and vaccinate. It wasn't just me. There
Speaker 2: was a big team there because it was an emergency
Speaker 2: that probably forty internationals came in to try and vaccinate
Speaker 2: ten thousand kids in three weeks.
Speaker 1: Is the objective sort of part of being a doctor
Speaker 1: and becoming a doctor back in your own country? I mean,
Speaker 1: or just did you feel like you need to give back?
Speaker 2: No, this was something I'd wanted to do for years.
Speaker 2: This is something I wanted to do before I was
Speaker 2: even a doctor. Yeah, I saw this idea of.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a career idea though, it.
Speaker 2: Wasn't a career idea, But I mean I stayed with
Speaker 2: MSF for a long time afterwards, just not going into
Speaker 2: the field. I went to the field once more and
Speaker 2: I went to the Dat region of Sudan. But I
Speaker 2: then was on the board of MSF Australia for six
Speaker 2: years and did a lot of the governance work with them,
Speaker 2: and I think we achieved a lot. We took it
Speaker 2: from sort of forty million dollars a year to seventy
Speaker 2: million dollars a year in revenue, which was pretty good,
Speaker 2: and had a lot of interactions with the global governance
Speaker 2: of it. So for me, no, it wasn't a career,
Speaker 2: but it was a pretty important part of my life
Speaker 2: and I kind of knew that I'd wanted to do that.
Speaker 2: It was a service humanitarian thing. I I'd seen a
Speaker 2: thing like a profile of MSF in my French textbook
Speaker 2: when I was in year ten, and that's what planted
Speaker 2: the seed. Like I was looking at that, going, oh,
Speaker 2: that sounds like something I'd like to do. You combine
Speaker 2: that with, you know, just the sort of global view
Speaker 2: that my parents had instilled in me, and it was
Speaker 2: always going to happen.
Speaker 1: But when I see something like that, and if I'm
Speaker 1: thinking then about I'm the Prime Minister and who can
Speaker 1: I trust to give advice and to talk to Australian
Speaker 1: people about what COVID may or may not be going
Speaker 1: to do, And you know, it was a big drama here,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking to myself in terms of profile. Must be
Speaker 1: a practitioner, doctor, must be able to stand on our
Speaker 1: own two feet they actually have a conversation. But having
Speaker 1: that background would definitely go to the top of the
Speaker 1: list for me, you know, like you know, someone's used
Speaker 1: to used to dealing with potentially epidemics, being in the field, measles, epidemics,
Speaker 1: that sort of immediately qualifies you. Not I mean we
Speaker 1: put you up with there in the list.
Speaker 2: It put me on the pathway. And of course, you
Speaker 2: know Prime Minister Morrison and Greg Hunting and Minister hunt
Speaker 2: didn't know any of that about my background when they
Speaker 2: appointed me. I had actually been part of the National
Speaker 2: Critical Care and Trauma Response Center, which is a disaster
Speaker 2: response out of Darwin. So that was this is before COVID. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this before COVID. So between MSF and COVID, I'm up
Speaker 2: in Darwen. My wife and I had two of our
Speaker 2: three kids up there, and there was a policy called
Speaker 2: developing the North at the time, and we developed the North.
Speaker 2: We had two kids, we built a house, we did
Speaker 2: all sorts of defty contributed. Yeah, four years up there,
Speaker 2: and I remember clearly, you know, it was a great time.
Speaker 2: Beck was heavily pregnant with our third and flying in
Speaker 2: and doing remote consultations she's a doctor as well out
Speaker 2: in the back community. It was a good time in
Speaker 2: our lives, but for me it was disaster response, and
Speaker 2: the architecture of disaster response in Australia is very much
Speaker 2: linked in with Foreign Affairs, Health Department, those names that
Speaker 2: we never knew before but known now chose Chief Health Officers, HPPC,
Speaker 2: the Protection Committee. This was something that I'd lived and
Speaker 2: breathed for four years. So when we went from Darwin
Speaker 2: to Canberra, I was there working as an infectious disease
Speaker 2: doctor for five years. Then COVID hits and I get
Speaker 2: this call about, you know, late February twenty twenty from
Speaker 2: Professor Paul Kelly, who was one of Brendan Murphy, the
Speaker 2: Chief Medical Officers deputies, and he said, listen, this is real.
Speaker 1: Did you know him ready?
Speaker 2: I did throw all this Darwin stuff. So he goes,
Speaker 2: this is real. We'd like you to come. We've already
Speaker 2: spoken to your boss. She's released you for three months.
Speaker 2: Come across from Camberra Hospital and come and work with
Speaker 2: us as one of Brendan's deputies.
Speaker 1: I mean obviously remember well, but I remember talking to
Speaker 1: David Heslot, Oh yeah, and he was telling me about
Speaker 1: the powers of the Surgeon General and in Australia, and
Speaker 1: also we talk about Morrison and this whole process of
Speaker 1: basically locking to join down and David who's at the
Speaker 1: University New South Wales in Department of Medicine, one of
Speaker 1: those faculties. And so around that period it seemed to
Speaker 1: me that Morrison was creating a cohort of people around
Speaker 1: him like that that he could rely upon in terms
Speaker 1: of making the calls on all of this. You know, so,
Speaker 1: would you consider yourself as at that point in February
Speaker 1: when you first got the call, as someone who was
Speaker 1: enrolled or enlisted that's called by the Prime Minister.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean really it was
Speaker 2: Brendan who was advising the Prime Minister on that, and look,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have couched in those terms at the time.
Speaker 2: I simply said yes, But it was the first time
Speaker 2: that i'd stopped. And I mean usually when an opportunity
Speaker 2: like that comes in front of my lap, i'd say
Speaker 2: yes straight away. But as a sense of duty, as
Speaker 2: a sense of duty as because in these sort of
Speaker 2: careers where you sort of you know, start to leap
Speaker 2: frog and and go higher and higher, and higher. It's
Speaker 2: often because you say yes to the opportunity, it's not
Speaker 2: necessarily and you say yes quickly. But on this occasion,
Speaker 2: you know, I put down the phone. I said, Paul,
Speaker 2: I'm on a ward round. I'm going to call you back.
Speaker 2: And I called my wife straight away and said, listen,
Speaker 2: this is this is going to be big. Am I
Speaker 2: in the right frame of mind to do it? And
Speaker 2: you asked her that, yeah? I asked her that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was asking myself that question, but she'd obviously not.
Speaker 2: I'd gone through a bit of a troubling time in
Speaker 2: my mental health in the in the previous six months,
Speaker 2: and and I had to ask myself, am I the
Speaker 2: right person to do this at this time? Fortunately?
Speaker 1: I was on well fit for purpose?
Speaker 2: Am I fit for purpose? Am I fit to serve?
Speaker 2: And I think it was a really, really important reflection.
Speaker 2: I'm glad I gave myself the time to reflect.
Speaker 1: How much time do you give yourself?
Speaker 2: Oh an hour?
Speaker 1: Do you walk in the bathroom at the hospital you're
Speaker 1: working the rounds it and just looked at yourself in
Speaker 1: the mirror, saying, okay, we've got sixty minutes.
Speaker 2: Let's talk this. Yeah, let's work shop this. No, I
Speaker 2: mean it was a that sounds a bit glib. It
Speaker 2: was only an hour and I got back to Paul,
Speaker 2: but it was some serious for us, compelling just to
Speaker 2: pause and say stop, let's have a think. Are you
Speaker 2: Are you enough on the road to recovery because you've
Speaker 2: seen I mean, we've got a lot of good examples
Speaker 2: of what happens to people in public positions, and people
Speaker 2: have been really open and frank about their mental health,
Speaker 2: and particularly when it's led to the end of their careers.
Speaker 2: Now this was on the opposite. This was really what
Speaker 2: launched where I am, and I had to reflect about
Speaker 2: whether I was in the place to do it.
Speaker 1: When you think back at it, do you think you
Speaker 1: had any sense of what you're saying yes to?
Speaker 2: No, No, I don't think. I don't think we knew
Speaker 2: just how enormous this was going to be, the gravity
Speaker 2: of our decisions, what it would do to the country,
Speaker 2: And I think it's done an immense amount. You know,
Speaker 2: both positive, but I have got some concerns about. You know, Mark,
Speaker 2: we talk about critical junctures in the life of our nation,
Speaker 2: and that's where you're on one railroad and something happens
Speaker 2: and you hop on another railroad. And I've listened to
Speaker 2: a lot of your guests on this podcast, and I
Speaker 2: do worry that we shifted quite markedly to a heavy
Speaker 2: dependence on government as a result of some of the
Speaker 2: things that we did. And that is something that I
Speaker 2: couldn't really have predicted in the thick of it there
Speaker 2: or even reflected on.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that. Would you say, sitting back
Speaker 1: here today on reflection that governors may have advantage of
Speaker 1: that opportunity that they knew we would become more reliant
Speaker 1: upon them. When I was saying Scott Morris, Scott, wasn't
Speaker 1: it long enough? But are the governments? Dan Andrews.
Speaker 2: Perhaps I think that at the start there was a
Speaker 2: genuine desire from most leaders to try and do the
Speaker 2: right thing. Yes, But when I'm talking about the start,
Speaker 2: I'm really only talking about the first three months February
Speaker 2: March April February March April, because after that we had
Speaker 2: a fairly clear idea of who this was going to
Speaker 2: affect and who wasn't at risk. But we got into
Speaker 2: this and the thing that troubled me most mark was
Speaker 2: that it showed us that instead of being a hopeful
Speaker 2: Alarican nation, which is what I want. I want to
Speaker 2: be part of that nation. Yeah, we were part of
Speaker 2: a locked up and very scared nation.
Speaker 1: So how do we become those people?
Speaker 2: Though I don't know, I think it was a combination. Well,
Speaker 2: I can say I don't know. I actually just did
Speaker 2: a PhD on why we closed the international borders, and
Speaker 2: it was, you know, in those sort of academic terms,
Speaker 2: it was because the fear that was generated, legitimate fear
Speaker 2: the images out in New York and Italy, which you
Speaker 2: know were as all media images are partly true. Clearly
Speaker 2: those images happened, but I think the magnitude of what
Speaker 2: was going on there was probably inflated, at least in
Speaker 2: people's minds about how that would happen here. Nonetheless, it's
Speaker 2: important New York Italy combined with the advice from public health,
Speaker 2: and then you get no counterweight from anyone in the
Speaker 2: economic or business fear, Like the only guy who's kicking
Speaker 2: up a fuss is is old mate from flight Center. Yes, screw, yes,
Speaker 2: screw Graham, screw Turner, Yeah, absolutely sorry, screw. I know
Speaker 2: him very well, so I should remember his name there.
Speaker 1: And legitimately from an economic point of view, because his
Speaker 1: business would have been just completely decimated at that point.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, But everybody else was locking in, including Treasury.
Speaker 1: But why were we so compliant? You've done pere well.
Speaker 2: That was the lock in effect of all the institutions.
Speaker 2: So the Business Council of Australia, the big four banks,
Speaker 2: all the banking executives, everybody was behind this.
Speaker 1: But what happened to that? Larry put you said, what
Speaker 1: happened to that anti authority lark and piece that we
Speaker 1: ordinarily would have? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think was I think was overwhelmed by it. You
Speaker 2: know what was initially a very strong and legitimate position,
Speaker 2: which was Team Australia, we're in this together. But once
Speaker 2: we headed down that path, it was very very difficult
Speaker 2: for people to turn around and go, okay, we need
Speaker 2: to course correct here. Now we've overcooked it. Now we're
Speaker 2: into twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two. I mean
Speaker 2: Mark McGowan still wanted to keep the WA borders closed
Speaker 2: in January of twenty twenty two, and we got to
Speaker 2: this idea that the only thing you couldn't die of
Speaker 2: in this country was COVID nineteen. Now let's look at
Speaker 2: some of the other things that we get worried about.
Speaker 2: We closed again last year because there was supposed to
Speaker 2: be some asbestos in playsand you remember that I don't
Speaker 2: think there was that much asbestos in the sand, and
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure as a respiratory physician the lifetime risk
Speaker 2: of a kid developing asbestosis or mesothelioma was pretty close
Speaker 2: to zero from that, but we still closed the schools.
Speaker 2: So that sort of covid mentality you can see playing
Speaker 2: out in that sort of fear of asbestos, and then
Speaker 2: you move very quickly into how the whole country is
Speaker 2: completely overregulated and we're dominated by a culture of safetyism.
Speaker 2: So it ends up being that the Larican Australian is
Speaker 2: a legend and a myth, and maybe we need to
Speaker 2: look hard in the mirror and go, do we want
Speaker 2: to get back to that hopeful Alarican that's built a
Speaker 2: nation from settlement to over two hundred years ago, and
Speaker 2: we're one of the most successful nations in the world.
Speaker 1: We were to.
Speaker 2: Now one of the most you know, insular naval gazing
Speaker 2: over regulated. You know, I'm not talking, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: not having to go a individual Australians here. I'm talking
Speaker 2: about let's have a look at what sort of nation
Speaker 2: we want to be, and let's get try and get
Speaker 2: back to that nation, which is, you know, let's have
Speaker 2: a national project, let's have some big ideas. Let's be
Speaker 2: the successful nation of the nineteen nineties, of the two
Speaker 2: thousands that was built off the back of good governments.
Speaker 1: You know, in an economic sense, Australia was from nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six through to twenty twenty was the most successful
Speaker 1: in economic terms nation in the world. No other country
Speaker 1: had it at as many quarters of GDP growth. Then
Speaker 1: Australia we've gone from being the envy of the world
Speaker 1: to being the question of the world. Why is a
Speaker 1: country with so much resources, so much safety, so much
Speaker 1: beauty struggling. It's a conundrum, it is.
Speaker 2: Well, it is a conundrum until you put it in
Speaker 2: terms that we've just discussed.
Speaker 1: When if I look at you, Nick, I go back
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty did you feel when you when it
Speaker 1: was all over in twenty twenty two, whenever this whole
Speaker 1: thing finished, did you think, wow, shit, what was I
Speaker 1: part of?
Speaker 2: Yes, And I've said it on a number of occasions.
Speaker 1: What regrets do you have and what would you have
Speaker 1: done differently. Perhaps what could you have done?
Speaker 2: I think the one thing that you could do differently
Speaker 2: if we ever have a pandemic again and the government
Speaker 2: brings in a rule or a regulation, it has three
Speaker 2: months to conclusively prove that that's benefiting the country or
Speaker 2: it's got to go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you put a time limit on it.
Speaker 2: You've got a time limit these things, and that includes
Speaker 2: you know, I think I've spoken as the face of
Speaker 2: the national vaccination campaign which was underpinned by mandates and
Speaker 2: mandates that you know I discussed on TV, on press
Speaker 2: conferences and to know you yeah, backed in essentially government policy.
Speaker 2: I thought that that was a critical error in judgment
Speaker 2: and I think that we could have got very high.
Speaker 1: What what do you mean having a national vaccination program?
Speaker 2: No national vaccination program was fine. Mandating people to get
Speaker 2: vaccinated was a huge process.
Speaker 1: It should have been left to our choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and we could have look if you, if
Speaker 2: you were looking at what Australians were doing and how
Speaker 2: they were behaving and the Team Australia approach, we we
Speaker 2: could have successfully vaccinated the country with education alone.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, without without the job, without you.
Speaker 2: You would have got sufficient vaccination rates amongst the at
Speaker 2: risk population, just by recommending it, educating people that was
Speaker 2: the right thing to do, using people like me, and
Speaker 2: forgetting the idea of mandates right, I will, I will
Speaker 2: die on that hill, I reckon we could have done.
Speaker 1: It and at risk meaning what if you just give
Speaker 1: it out to me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well the risk clearly started to go up
Speaker 2: from COVID. It was, it was extraordinarily low, and then
Speaker 2: for the age of fifty and above it made a
Speaker 2: material uptick as a result of what was well, it
Speaker 2: was just you know, COVID was a virus that the
Speaker 2: older you got, the worse the inflammation was in the lungs,
Speaker 2: the more likely you were to have to go to ICU.
Speaker 2: And certainly for people who were in their seventies living
Speaker 2: at home, you know, retired Australians enjoying their lives as grandparents.
Speaker 2: I do think there was a material risk of letting
Speaker 2: that virus into this country. You know, so the borders
Speaker 2: closures before we were vaccinated, So the border closures were important.
Speaker 2: The vaccination program was important, but we overcooked the mandates.
Speaker 2: It was a risk to healthy elderly Australians, but they
Speaker 2: were all going to get themselves vaccinated and they did
Speaker 2: huge like close to ninety five hundred percent of healthy
Speaker 2: Australians over the age of seventy were vaccinated and they
Speaker 2: weren't going to lose their job because they were mandated.
Speaker 2: They were already retired. So we were always going to
Speaker 2: vaccinate our healthy, at risk population. And then we could
Speaker 2: have we could have left the rest to choice, and
Speaker 2: I still think most people would have got it anyway.
Speaker 1: Do you think those people are over seventy would have
Speaker 1: got vaccinated whether it was mandated or not. In other words,
Speaker 1: that's just a behavioral process, you know how they behave?
Speaker 1: Or is it people over seventy in Australia is compliant?
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 2: No? No, I think we knew enough at that point
Speaker 2: to know that they were at risk and that if
Speaker 2: they didn't get the vaccine. I can't tell you how many,
Speaker 2: but an unacceptable number of healthy elderly Australians would have
Speaker 2: lost their lives. So that would have driven that behavior,
Speaker 2: would have would have driven high vaccination.
Speaker 1: Rates because I saw some modeling right at the beginning,
Speaker 1: and maybe not like the way you guys do modeling,
Speaker 1: but in my world, when we do modeling, the model
Speaker 1: is pretty easy to build. It's the assumptions that are
Speaker 1: I can manipulate the model by the assumptions, and if
Speaker 1: I want a certain outcome, I'll say that this is
Speaker 1: going to be the outcome, and then I work backwards
Speaker 1: and I'll say the model says this is going to
Speaker 1: be the outcome, and I'm selling you the outcome to
Speaker 1: get something else I want to get done.
Speaker 2: So the question is did that happen?
Speaker 1: Well, I asked my question to you if you don't mind,
Speaker 1: because you know, like I saw models getting trotted out
Speaker 1: by I don't know who, by maybe me, and you
Speaker 1: might have been other people. Governments are I'm talking about
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand people Austrains going to die.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the quote was one hundred and fifty thousand,
Speaker 2: and it came out in the papers in about March
Speaker 2: and Paul Kelly said it. Now, that was the Doughty
Speaker 2: Modeling Doughty Institute, And I can with one hundred percent
Speaker 2: confidence say that those inputs were not given to to
Speaker 2: produce a certain outcome. I cannot tell you what happened
Speaker 2: with state governments after that. Right, So, the modeling that
Speaker 2: was commissioned by Victoria to justify their prolonged lockdowns. I
Speaker 2: cannot tell you whether that was reverse engineered or.
Speaker 1: Not, because they didn't use a Doughity modeling. No, they
Speaker 1: used to build their own modeling. They used which one.
Speaker 2: They used a different institute.
Speaker 1: A different institute, and did New South Wales use something different?
Speaker 2: Again New South Wales, I can't recall whether they were
Speaker 2: still using Dohity or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they were nowhere near as bigger numbers as
Speaker 1: they were getting towered down there in Victoria.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Victorians successfully convinced their population that this was
Speaker 2: going to be a doomsday scenario for them, and then
Speaker 2: successfully convinced their population that New South Wales was the enemy.
Speaker 2: It was like a state of origin for COVID.
Speaker 1: It was dreadful and I in those days were probably
Speaker 1: the same as say, we had like fifty officer branches
Speaker 1: in Victoria, and they weren't allowed to travel more. They
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to trouble for more than five k's from
Speaker 1: their home to go to work, to go to the office.
Speaker 1: And most of the people's offices are outside away from
Speaker 1: where they lived. And unless you're at essential work or
Speaker 1: something along those lines. So, and it was all based
Speaker 1: on the modeling, and I saw I seen themsels model
Speaker 1: little bullshit like I can make modeling. As you said,
Speaker 1: it's a beut the inputs or the assumptions that you
Speaker 1: input into the model. And so they must have been
Speaker 1: somehow the managed to scare the life out of everybody
Speaker 1: though they did did they do you think in hindsight,
Speaker 1: just pick Victoria for a second. People were scared of
Speaker 1: getting caught and getting into trouble, or they were actually
Speaker 1: scared of what COVID might do if they got if
Speaker 1: they caught COVID.
Speaker 2: No, they were scared of what COVID might do in
Speaker 2: the main like there, yeah, I don't I don't think.
Speaker 2: I don't think I.
Speaker 1: Was worried, worry really about what would.
Speaker 2: Happen if they got caught. There was, you know, but obviously,
Speaker 2: if if you're going to if you're going to let's
Speaker 2: use the right word, subjugate a popular for that long,
Speaker 2: they will eventually start to rebel against it. And by
Speaker 2: the fifth lockdown they did, and you have those enormous
Speaker 2: protests which we've never seen rubber bullets used before, but
Speaker 2: they were used at the end of that fifth lockdown. Wow,
Speaker 2: when when the population started to go, well, enough of
Speaker 2: the population started to go, no, this is this is
Speaker 2: this is enough. We've had enough. Now, you know the
Speaker 2: thing that is interesting and it gets a little bit controversial,
Speaker 2: but we remember the Black Lives Matter protests. Yep, well
Speaker 2: a lot of those were either they were either condoned
Speaker 2: and they were allowed to happen, or people turned to
Speaker 2: blind eye when they did happen in or yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: well around it around Australia there were there were several
Speaker 2: of them during COVID, even more of them in the US.
Speaker 2: So it's okay to protest if you're if you're protesting
Speaker 2: against the you know, the preferred issue or the presumptive good.
Speaker 2: But if you're protesting for your individual freedom, no, no,
Speaker 2: we're going to shut that out. That and that to me,
Speaker 2: you know, Mark, this was a this was a it
Speaker 2: was a change in my politics. I was I was
Speaker 2: looking at this going, you know, we have got the
Speaker 2: philosophical balance wrong in this country. And when I say philosophical,
Speaker 2: I am talking about John Stuart Mill. The only reason
Speaker 2: that you can restrict the liberty of one person is
Speaker 2: to prevent harm to another. Now we decided or we
Speaker 2: were fearful or someone you know, was fearful enough that
Speaker 2: so much harm was going to happen that we wanted
Speaker 2: to restrict the individual liberties of people For two hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty five days. I was way too long down
Speaker 2: in Victoria. And so we exceeded that fundamental principle of
Speaker 2: individual liberty. And I guess you know some of the population,
Speaker 2: a significant amount of the population went along with that.
Speaker 2: So we go all the way back to what you
Speaker 2: asked me. Did we know that this was going to
Speaker 2: shift the way Australians think? Well, I think Australians are
Speaker 2: a lot more accepting now of government policy that restrict impedes,
Speaker 2: you know, the individual and what they can achieve in life.
Speaker 2: And that's why, like this is how you link COVID
Speaker 2: to capital gains, tax changes to negative gearing changes and people,
Speaker 2: and there's people who believe in the success of the
Speaker 2: individual being absolutely conducive to the success of the country.
Speaker 2: And that's people like you and me, I presume and
Speaker 2: we think, hang on, you know, we've got to help
Speaker 2: the individual succeed here. But there are still a lot
Speaker 2: of people in Australia as a result of COVID who
Speaker 2: think the opposite and the principles are exactly the same.
Speaker 2: They sit there and go, we want the collective to succeed,
Speaker 2: and if we have to chip away at the success
Speaker 2: of the individual to get that, then we're happy to
Speaker 2: vote for it. So there is actually, for the first
Speaker 2: time I'm ever probably in the past thirty years, a
Speaker 2: fundamentally different choice in politics in Australia at the moment,
Speaker 2: like left and right is very very different in terms
Speaker 2: of the choice that Australians have to make at the
Speaker 2: balance ballot box.
Speaker 1: And something that actually bothers me by the way the
Speaker 1: division it is like so nakedly obvious between left and right,
Speaker 1: and I can put it down to the the commencement
Speaker 1: of this so I can put it down to the
Speaker 1: COVID period. You're right, I have never seen so many
Speaker 1: regulations in this country, state or federal what doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter that have occurred since COVID. And I often wondered
Speaker 1: to myself, and I don't want to be conspiracists, but
Speaker 1: I wondered to myself, if governments have thought, look, we
Speaker 1: know Australians are basically able to be complied. Prior to
Speaker 1: they I would have thought Australians there's stuff you're not
Speaker 1: doing that. You know they too, the Aussie guy woman
Speaker 1: whatever's in no way, stick it up your whatever. We're
Speaker 1: going to live our life down to we've got too.
Speaker 1: Maybe has government found out that we're so compliant, they thought,
Speaker 1: you know what, we want to build a big government
Speaker 1: and by one of them, and we've just been rewarded
Speaker 1: by we will bill big government by giving people more jobs,
Speaker 1: to be more regulatory against people like in private and
Speaker 1: prise like you and me, and no one's going to
Speaker 1: really object. And as a result of that, we can
Speaker 1: take more control of the individual and we the government
Speaker 1: are the best place to determine whether the whole community
Speaker 1: is successful as opposed to individuals like Nickosworth or my
Speaker 1: Buris or whoever it is. Those individuals, by being individually successful,
Speaker 1: will make the whole community successful. Is that where you're at,
Speaker 1: That's where I'm.
Speaker 2: At, That's where I'm at. I mean in my mind, Mark,
Speaker 2: A strong individual makes for a strong family, makes for
Speaker 2: a strong country, and then government can step in to
Speaker 2: help the peace people that need to be helped. We've
Speaker 2: got a very different government at the moment. Who is
Speaker 2: picking and choosing, often based on identity politics, Who the
Speaker 2: winners and the losers should be weakening the individual, which
Speaker 2: in my view is going to weaken the country and
Speaker 2: make us less able to help the people the data. Now,
Speaker 2: the biggest trick that progressivism ever pulled was convincing people
Speaker 2: that it united a country. It doesn't. It doesn't because
Speaker 2: progressivism now is tied to identitarianism. So you get this
Speaker 2: fragmentation or atomization of your community into different identity first, individual, second, country,
Speaker 2: distant third, and suddenly your country is divided. Now, this
Speaker 2: is very different to what the and I'll call it
Speaker 2: what the Labor Party go around and tell everybody. Labor
Speaker 2: parties say that the right side of politics is responsible
Speaker 2: for the dew vision. I take it completely different. Me
Speaker 2: to sit there and look in those sort of terms,
Speaker 2: look at it in those sort of terms. If you
Speaker 2: put if you, if you, success requires adhering to a
Speaker 2: list of identities, or benefiting from government requires adhering to
Speaker 2: a list of identities that the government thinks they're acceptable.
Speaker 2: Then you are going to split people into those identity groups.
Speaker 2: And that's a problem.
Speaker 1: Force them to take sides, force.
Speaker 2: Them to take sides, and the one thing that they're
Speaker 2: not taking the side of it's the country's and that's
Speaker 2: a problem. And this is why you get one nation
Speaker 2: rising up because people there are enough people in the
Speaker 2: country that look at that and go, that's not the
Speaker 2: way I want to be.
Speaker 1: They don't really know how to articulated, though I don't
Speaker 1: say only they just feel something's wrong.
Speaker 2: I know, and that and that to me, and that,
Speaker 2: to me is the great opportunity for conservative politics in Australia.
Speaker 2: You you know, everybody is saying the Liberal Party is
Speaker 2: dead whatever, there will be a phoenix moment where someone
Speaker 2: comes along or a group of people ideally who can
Speaker 2: articulate this, and then people will go, yes, that's the
Speaker 2: way we want to live. Yes, we're Australians. We want
Speaker 2: to help our fellow AUSSI, but we know that to
Speaker 2: do that we have to be successful as an individual first,
Speaker 2: and we have to have successful individuals, families, country, and
Speaker 2: then government can come in.
Speaker 1: Do you put it down to just a temporal cause,
Speaker 1: like something that happened in time twenty twenty that was
Speaker 1: the start of it and it was just a cascade
Speaker 1: of events, or do you put it down to where
Speaker 1: we are sitting right now? Do you put down where
Speaker 1: we are right now and down to ideology taking advantage
Speaker 1: of the situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the time course is much longer. I
Speaker 2: think COVID's what accelerated it and was that critical juncture
Speaker 2: that acts as a sort of pat accelerator for this
Speaker 2: malaise that we've got in the country with big government
Speaker 2: and dependence on government. But this was going on in
Speaker 2: the nineties, just at the time when we were sucessful.
Speaker 2: As you said earlier in the pod, we were undergoing
Speaker 2: a very significant left Wood shift in our institution. And
Speaker 2: I think you know, there's actually nowhere where you see
Speaker 2: it more than in medicine. Oh really absolutely, Like you
Speaker 2: look at some of the big cultural issues at the moment,
Speaker 2: the medical communities adopted a significantly progressive or left wood
Speaker 2: leaning position on them. And we don't need to get
Speaker 2: into the controversy of this because it is a very
Speaker 2: controversial topic. But let us just compare COVID with gender
Speaker 2: medicine in Australia.
Speaker 1: What's that mean, Joe, So.
Speaker 2: Gender medicine is transgender medicine and sex changes and puberty
Speaker 2: blockers and all that kind of thing, which we don't
Speaker 2: need to get into the clinical side of the moment.
Speaker 2: But all I can say to you is that the
Speaker 2: rest of the world has shifted back to a more
Speaker 2: nuanced and precautionary position around these sort of treatments, whereas
Speaker 2: Australia has so have stayed in the let's go, let's
Speaker 2: charge your head with puberty blockers and allowing young people
Speaker 2: to change their sex and that sort of thing. Now,
Speaker 2: is it really? Absolutely? Now, this is very similar to COVID,
Speaker 2: So the rest of the world had moved on significantly
Speaker 2: before Australia did. It took Australia a good What is that?
Speaker 2: I think I do think that it's partly because the
Speaker 2: medical profession is dominated by a sort of that sort
Speaker 2: of progressive ideology. You said it was ideology, and that
Speaker 2: that started when I was a medical student. You know,
Speaker 2: this has been going on. Absolutely, this is not being
Speaker 2: something and I was, you know, I was part of it.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I was a card carrying member of you know, the
Speaker 2: other side of politics at once. I probably just ruined
Speaker 2: my chance at a political career.
Speaker 1: But you know, now, I think you might have enhanced it.
Speaker 1: And then those podcasts you definitely enhanced it. But because
Speaker 1: it's funny, no, I was thinking back to when I
Speaker 1: wand to university nine as in his three and started
Speaker 1: university and I was doing a commerce law degree, and
Speaker 1: I remember they told me I had to do a
Speaker 1: subject and it was called women in Society. And I
Speaker 1: might had an Irish man, like a very strong minded male.
Speaker 1: I didn't need anyone to remind me of the position
Speaker 1: of a woman in society. And on the Greek side
Speaker 1: of the family, of the Greek women definitely were in
Speaker 1: control of everything, and so I didn't need any reminding it.
Speaker 1: But the book that we had to read I was
Speaker 1: written by a doctor, Anne Somemmers, and it was called
Speaker 1: she was an academic doctor, but her book was called
Speaker 1: Damned Whores in God's Police. And I was like seventeen,
Speaker 1: because I started Union seventeen, and like totally mature, being
Speaker 1: in a boys school my whole life, like played footy.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything you know about women and whatever.
Speaker 1: And I remember reading this book and and then many
Speaker 1: years later I thought about it and I thought they
Speaker 1: were trying to when I remember the context of book
Speaker 1: trying to push me a certain direction about feminism. What
Speaker 1: it had to do with what I was doing, had
Speaker 1: zero to do with what I was doing. But I
Speaker 1: was the University of Southwales, which is one of the
Speaker 1: newer universities, which was trying to be very modern, but
Speaker 1: the place was infiltrated by this system. By the way,
Speaker 1: I since met doctor An Summers, and she's a lovely person,
Speaker 1: by the way, really really nice person, and generally people are.
Speaker 1: And she wasn't trying to she wasn't trying to influence
Speaker 1: me or students. But that was a book she wrote
Speaker 1: about something she believed in, but the institution grabbed hold
Speaker 1: of it and then sort of pretty much jammed in
Speaker 1: our throats because we got tested on this stuff. I
Speaker 1: had to do exams on this stuff. And you're right,
Speaker 1: so I mainly reflect you on your comment. This goes
Speaker 1: right back to on in seventies.
Speaker 2: And I think the movement was generally the progressive movement
Speaker 2: in the seventies, sixties, seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: It was probably a good idea, was full of good
Speaker 1: ideas because I had no year about women in society
Speaker 1: other than what I experienced my pant family.
Speaker 2: A quality of pay, women on boardrooms, to an extent,
Speaker 2: the broader diversity movement, all of those, you know, basically
Speaker 2: started as good things, but when you need the pendulum
Speaker 2: to shift back into sort of conservative politics is when
Speaker 2: those things have gone too far right. And let me
Speaker 2: give you a little example. I've been sticking a little
Speaker 2: bit of hughesy David Hughes on my Instagram feed, a
Speaker 2: lot of it from when you did the interview. He
Speaker 2: was great. And I get a call from my nearest
Speaker 2: and dearest friend and she says, I think it's bad
Speaker 2: for your brand to stick that on your Instagram feed?
Speaker 2: Is it okay? Well, I don't think he's saying anything unusual.
Speaker 2: I mean he's just basically saying that someone should have
Speaker 2: taken a policy to an election instead of bringing it
Speaker 2: on people two years later or a year later.
Speaker 1: One year.
Speaker 2: Lady exactly exactly one year later didn't want to engage
Speaker 2: with that. Do you know what words I heard? Oh,
Speaker 2: he's privileged, Okay, hugh'sy hu'sy right. Privileged. Actually that's not
Speaker 2: what is meant. It's meant that he's a bloke, he's white,
Speaker 2: and he's got some coin behind him. So there was
Speaker 2: no desire to engage with the actual debate, which is
Speaker 2: which is what I was trying to do. So I said, well,
Speaker 2: the principle. Well, a prince, what about what about democracy?
Speaker 2: You know, what about taking something to an election? If
Speaker 2: you turn around, as Jim Chalmers has said, and say,
Speaker 2: I'm introducing this policy because you know, social media is
Speaker 2: so difficult at the moment that I couldn't possibly take
Speaker 2: this to an election, which I understand is what he says.
Speaker 1: Because we might lose.
Speaker 2: Because we might lose, well, let's just let's just forget
Speaker 2: about the ballot box. Well, we'll have a dictatorship of
Speaker 2: the proletariat for the next twenty years like Victoria and
Speaker 2: will be absolutely fine. You know. So I raised that
Speaker 2: because that's how people position arguments these days, and they
Speaker 2: they will sit there and go, okay, that you are privileged.
Speaker 2: Therefore I'm not going to listen. I don't. I don't
Speaker 2: consider Husy privilege. I don't consider his views particularly outrageous.
Speaker 2: And what I want to do is debate the substance
Speaker 2: of it. And when I put something up on Instagram
Speaker 2: about CGT and negative gearing, I said, actually, I can
Speaker 2: understand why they're doing it, but the problem is they're
Speaker 2: doing it and then they're not giving anything back to
Speaker 2: people in personal income tax cuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have said that, which I responded to. That's
Speaker 1: how why I reached out to you, because it's funny
Speaker 1: you said, because many many years ago, I was asked,
Speaker 1: as an economic concept, what do I think about negative
Speaker 1: gearing and caupl gainst tax discounts. This is back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and I said, in an economic sense, it's
Speaker 1: not good policy because it can disdorder market. This is
Speaker 1: back in the early two thousands. Because bear in mind
Speaker 1: that it was it was it was in ninety ninety eight,
Speaker 1: I think ninety eight the Costello actually brought in the
Speaker 1: couple gainst tacks discount. Before that it was porkeeating system,
Speaker 1: which was indexation, which is what we now got. And
Speaker 1: I was just asked, and this was quote in the
Speaker 1: fin Review many years later. I remember the journalist George
Speaker 1: Leicacas at the fin Review came back and said, look,
Speaker 1: the govern was thinking about ten years later. They said,
Speaker 1: the thinking about getting rid of capital gainst tax will
Speaker 1: change the discount and getting rid of the negative gearing.
Speaker 1: What do you think. I said, well, it's not a
Speaker 1: good idea. Well he wrote that up and he grabbed
Speaker 1: my quote from fifteen years earlier and said, well, boris
Speaker 1: you know contradicting himself. But my point being, my point
Speaker 1: being is my point was, is that you can't have
Speaker 1: something that gets embedded in a system where millions of
Speaker 1: Australians are using it to build wealth and then not
Speaker 1: only not going to election with it, but making that change.
Speaker 1: It's in the middle of a high interest rate period
Speaker 1: and all the other stuff that's going on around the world.
Speaker 1: It's so structurally disruptive that is too dangerous to big
Speaker 1: a risk, and we're now seeing the results of that
Speaker 1: right now. I mean, the place is all over the shop.
Speaker 2: It is, and there's so much there's uncertainty around it.
Speaker 2: The thing that got me more because I you know,
Speaker 2: I do I very much empathize as the as the
Speaker 2: dad of three kids and think about how they're going
Speaker 2: to own a house or whether they're ever going to
Speaker 2: own a house. The thing that got me was you
Speaker 2: take away these so called exemptions. And by the way,
Speaker 2: the word exemption is a problem because it assumes that
Speaker 2: the government has a default right to your money, which
Speaker 2: you know, it's not good language. We should change it completely.
Speaker 1: Can I just well, I do want you to finish your sentence,
Speaker 1: but I do want to add to the well, I
Speaker 1: think about it. By the way, the reason you get
Speaker 1: a tax deduction, why it's called negative gearing. That's that's
Speaker 1: a bad terminology. You get a tax deduction because you're
Speaker 1: actually losing money, because.
Speaker 2: You're actually making a loss.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And to say to say that that's different to
Speaker 1: running a business. If you own a property and you're
Speaker 1: going tenants and you're paying strata title and you're paying interesting,
Speaker 1: you're running out trying to get the best interest rate,
Speaker 1: and you're trying to do the repairs and maintenance and
Speaker 1: collect the money every organized you are running a business.
Speaker 1: As like I said, so you should get a tax
Speaker 1: reduction because you're losing money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, correct.
Speaker 1: And the story, Yeah, it's not negative gearing, it's not exemption.
Speaker 1: All these trick words that are thrown around the place
Speaker 1: suits the moment to reframe it, reframe the narrative.
Speaker 2: And the media does that a lot because they just
Speaker 2: buy into those ports terms. It's an easy thing to write.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: So you know, we've suddenly got rid of these exemptions,
Speaker 2: and the biggest problem is that you're not passing that
Speaker 2: back to anyone in any sort of meaningful income tax.
Speaker 2: You're taking it in to increase government spending and I
Speaker 2: think eventually what's going to happen, and I hope it
Speaker 2: happens sooner rather than later. But the broader Australian community
Speaker 2: will start to look at these areas of government spending
Speaker 2: and they will recognize it is inefficient, it's not getting
Speaker 2: to the people who need it, and it's aldly causing
Speaker 2: problems for them as individuals and families. I recognize this
Speaker 2: this year with my mother who needed a home care package.
Speaker 1: Oh, my dad, so hard to get, so.
Speaker 2: Hard to get waited what waited for six months? And
Speaker 2: then she was allowed sixty percent of the home care package.
Speaker 2: It's like saying, what do you do? Go into surgery
Speaker 2: and so I'll give you sixty percent of surgery like.
Speaker 1: What my mother and I passing away before she did
Speaker 1: to take advantage of it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely wait so long. I'm sorry to hear that. That's
Speaker 2: but that's the sort of.
Speaker 1: Thing a MND and I can't believe it. And you
Speaker 1: know how to do what I'm saying that is, and
Speaker 1: she couldn't the application process. It was also hard and
Speaker 1: traumatic for my dad to do it. And a joke
Speaker 1: and so.
Speaker 2: We have we have a triangle in our care economy,
Speaker 2: the much vaunted care economy of Jim Charmers that is
Speaker 2: supposed to, you know, somehow cause the growth of this country.
Speaker 2: I haven't quite worked out how it's going to do that,
Speaker 2: but it does need to work for families. That's true.
Speaker 2: Now it's composed of hospitals, it's composed of age care,
Speaker 2: and it's composed of the NDIS yep. And if any
Speaker 2: one of those is out of balance, the other two
Speaker 2: are going to fall over. And what we see at
Speaker 2: the moment is the NDIS at fifty six billion that
Speaker 2: no one could possibly have imagined. That is just extraordinary.
Speaker 2: And you're seeing hospitals starting to fall over, and you're
Speaker 2: definitely already seeing age care fallover because of the distortion
Speaker 2: that the NDS has created in the care economy. And
Speaker 2: that's all we need to say. But you're not hearing
Speaker 2: anyone actually say that, because apparently.
Speaker 1: Why don't they want to say Why is it that
Speaker 1: they're reticent about correcting end or saying.
Speaker 2: Because I think I think you'll get you'll get smashed
Speaker 2: by the disability sector for doing it.
Speaker 1: Is there like a lobby group that represents that sector.
Speaker 2: You have a look at my LinkedIn So I made
Speaker 2: these comments at the AFI Health Summit this year because
Speaker 2: I was frustrated and the new South Walest Health Minister
Speaker 2: is there. Mark Butler had done the space each and
Speaker 2: nicked off on a plane, so I couldn't I couldn't
Speaker 2: have a go at him. So Ryan Park I had
Speaker 2: to go at Ryan. Ryan's actually great in your Southwest
Speaker 2: Minister health Anyway, I said, you know, why aren't we
Speaker 2: taking some of them in NDIS funding and putting into
Speaker 2: our hospitals and putting into our urge case system, so
Speaker 2: you don't have two thousand people in your hospitals waiting
Speaker 2: for an age care.
Speaker 1: Bed, which is by the way, the case in your Southwest.
Speaker 2: It is the case in your South Wales. And that
Speaker 2: got applause in the audience of the AFO Health Summit
Speaker 2: and so.
Speaker 1: Huge he would have agree with you by it.
Speaker 2: He did agree with me, and huge play on social
Speaker 2: social media, particularly Instagram, but on LinkedIn. Got I got
Speaker 2: murdered and by the Disability Advocacy group now came after you,
Speaker 2: came after me, just as I came after me and
Speaker 2: COVID when I was suggesting that we should open the
Speaker 2: borders around about mid mid twenty twenty one. So I
Speaker 2: was one of the first official voices or anyone who
Speaker 2: had had any sort of role in COVID to say
Speaker 2: let's open the border in twenty twenty one. The people
Speaker 2: who came after me the worst were disability advocates. Now
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about the whole disability community or everyone
Speaker 2: in Australia with a disability. I'm talking about certain advocates
Speaker 2: and they're the same people that went after me when
Speaker 2: I started talking about the NDIS. And all we are
Speaker 2: asking for here is balance. It gets right back to
Speaker 2: the way that our country is structured. It can't be
Speaker 2: it's got to be individual community country and then identity,
Speaker 2: because if not, then we are just run by this
Speaker 2: conger line of different advocacy groups and interest groups, and
Speaker 2: you see them. The conga line turns up every time
Speaker 2: Parliament happens, and so there's no sort of there's no
Speaker 2: national direction, and every time you try and do something
Speaker 2: to rebalance, no one wants to stop funding the NDIS.
Speaker 2: We know it's going to cost tens of billions of dollars,
Speaker 2: and it should cost tens of billions of dollars, but
Speaker 2: it can't be fifty six billion, and it can't imbalance
Speaker 2: the two other sects.
Speaker 1: Extorts the other two care economy.
Speaker 2: To the extent that it distorts the two other careconomies.
Speaker 2: That is the problem, and that's a good point. I
Speaker 2: want to put something to you, and I thought about
Speaker 2: this the other day. I was trying to simplify things
Speaker 2: in my head about what is the role of government. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the govern that includes regulatory stuff and all the sorts
Speaker 2: of things. Just keep safe and make sure there's water,
Speaker 2: and is electricity in power and all those things. But
Speaker 2: just just put those part those for a moment. I
Speaker 2: want to put this to you. Is the role of
Speaker 2: a government. I'm taught about the politicians and everybody sits
Speaker 2: below them in the bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: Is it okay to simplify a like this. You are
Speaker 1: there to build the progress of the country of every
Speaker 1: individual in the country, in other words, our standard living,
Speaker 1: every individual standard living. You're there to maintain or improve
Speaker 1: it more economically, which is the most of the country.
Speaker 1: But then there will be some people in the country
Speaker 1: you don't do as well as others, and there's a
Speaker 1: level at which you have to determine. But those people
Speaker 1: need welfare. So that's the welfare part of your role.
Speaker 1: So your role is progress. It's not necessarily GDP, but
Speaker 1: it involves GDP involves all those things. But it's about
Speaker 1: the standard of living of Australians. You know, can we
Speaker 1: all afford to send our kids to daycare? Can we
Speaker 1: afford to send our kids to get a music lesson?
Speaker 1: You know, if I live in the West, can I
Speaker 1: afford to send my kids to swimming lessons? That type
Speaker 1: of stand living. I'm not talking about living in palaces.
Speaker 1: I'm just about stand living. Can I afford to buy
Speaker 1: a house and just have a roof over my head?
Speaker 1: Or if I'm renting because I don't want to buy
Speaker 1: a house, can I afford to pay me rent? I've
Speaker 1: been too stressed out. So building the standard living and
Speaker 1: for Australians, all Australians and for those who people who
Speaker 1: don't fit in there. They could be disabled, they've never
Speaker 1: had a chance, a bit properly educated, they could come
Speaker 1: from that. They could be First Nations people never had
Speaker 1: an opportunity. They need welfare. I hate the word, but
Speaker 1: let's come up with some other word. But we have
Speaker 1: to be look or support support. There are the support
Speaker 1: economy that you definitely need. You need a generous public
Speaker 1: baseline of support, and we do have that in this country.
Speaker 1: But we can't be overdone there.
Speaker 2: But we've moved towards defining what level of success is
Speaker 2: acceptable and government tells you no, no, no, you're a
Speaker 2: bit too successful.
Speaker 1: We've got a too successful is what we need.
Speaker 2: I know. But government is now telling us two successfuls
Speaker 2: that we need we need more of that. Yeah, now
Speaker 2: we've got government saying, oh, we'll be the ones that
Speaker 2: decide when you can be successful or not.
Speaker 1: So you see, therefore, Nick, you would sort of sort
Speaker 1: of agree to some extent with I know I'm over simplified,
Speaker 1: but I just wonder whether the voters in Australia we
Speaker 1: need to have a simple formula. Like at the moment,
Speaker 1: it's convoluted. It's all over the joint because care economy
Speaker 1: is the ndis is the you know, the older people,
Speaker 1: younger people, people haven't got a job, apprentices. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many sections. You don't know where the money
Speaker 1: is being spent. You can't follow the dollars anywhere. The
Speaker 1: taxes are really high. There's some people getting tax for
Speaker 1: a couple of against tax. Some people are not getting
Speaker 1: getting a pay white rise, other people are not getting
Speaker 1: a paid rights. There's just out of control. If they
Speaker 1: just said something simple, we're going to increase the standard
Speaker 1: living of every Australian. But at the same time, we're
Speaker 1: going to make sure that there is a work well,
Speaker 1: we're going to make sure we look after the welfare
Speaker 1: of everybody as well. So nobody's going to really get
Speaker 1: be in too much trouble. Everyone is going to get
Speaker 1: a chance to get up. And you know, and because
Speaker 1: and in terms of money is taxed. You know, the
Speaker 1: taxes we raise, we're going to try and spend less
Speaker 1: on government.
Speaker 2: Well, there was always I just want to touch on
Speaker 2: the first two things you said. Yeah, government is there
Speaker 2: to always raise the standard of living of Australians.
Speaker 1: Correct or not? Definitely not lose it. No, we're gone backwards.
Speaker 1: We've got we're going backwards. They have been if you
Speaker 1: do it in proper measurement terms, we've gone back forwards
Speaker 1: over the last ten years.
Speaker 2: That's correct. So that should that should be a measure
Speaker 2: Australians want Australians who are in need supported. That's another
Speaker 2: measure we all want that. We all want that that
Speaker 2: we want to do that together. The third one used
Speaker 2: to be a very clear measure, which was governments had
Speaker 2: a certain you know, we didn't have a have a
Speaker 2: debt ceiling like the US, but we had a charter
Speaker 2: of budget honesty and a notional percentage of GDP that
Speaker 2: we would take into government coffers, which is, as you know,
Speaker 2: being blown out. So I would I would suggest you
Speaker 2: that on those three measures we're actually failing because standard
Speaker 2: living is measurably going backwards relative to both our own
Speaker 2: standard of living and the OECD. We don't seem to
Speaker 2: be able to have government programs that adequately balance each other.
Speaker 2: And the nd S age care health care example is
Speaker 2: a good one.
Speaker 1: So one of those three should not be paying for
Speaker 1: one of the others, or two should never be paid
Speaker 1: for one.
Speaker 2: Two shouldn't be paying for one, that's right. And the
Speaker 2: third one is that the relative proportion of government spenditure
Speaker 2: as a proportion of GDP is too high.
Speaker 1: It's a an all time record, it's never been as high.
Speaker 2: And then you know, meaning.
Speaker 1: Just for people watching this nig meaning that more money
Speaker 1: is being spent by government on government employees or projects
Speaker 1: that are put out by government. More money has been
Speaker 1: spent on that relative to the amount of total gross
Speaker 1: domestic products of the whole country than there's ever been
Speaker 1: spent out as a percentage in our history.
Speaker 2: Now, what happens when we go out of balance? Because
Speaker 2: I think we are out of balance. When you've got
Speaker 2: lots of money in big pots, whether it's private, especially
Speaker 2: when it's government, you start getting leakage, you start getting fraud.
Speaker 2: We see that with the NDIS. But the other really
Speaker 2: big one that we see at the moment is what's
Speaker 2: going on with Building Bad down in the Victoria and
Speaker 2: the big build what we call is bordering on corruption
Speaker 2: fifteen billion dollars. And I know I'm doing a shameless
Speaker 2: plug for the conspiracy cabal, but we do have an
Speaker 2: episode on this where we interview Nick mackenzie from the Age,
Speaker 2: who's plowing the lid on this, and it is a
Speaker 2: fascinating insight into what happens when the world's of politics,
Speaker 2: organized crime, business intersect together in a Venn diagram that
Speaker 2: is far too overlapping. Now, in a democracy, you don't
Speaker 2: want that organized crime circle. You never want it overlapping.
Speaker 2: And we were right at the start we talked about
Speaker 2: corruption in sub Saharan Africa. Well, we have the worst
Speaker 2: example of corruption in your and my living memory occurring
Speaker 2: down in Victoria at the moment, and we've got to
Speaker 2: find a way to let Australians know about it, and
Speaker 2: firstly to let them know about it, and secondly to
Speaker 2: make them care enough to turf that mob out in
Speaker 2: the election of the nom in November, because you know,
Speaker 2: anything you read about it where they listen to the
Speaker 2: podcast Conspiracy Cabal or other things that Nick mackenzie has done.
Speaker 2: This is stomach curdling sort of stuff. When you're just
Speaker 2: the bloke or the girl holding that stop sign, you
Speaker 2: can earn more in this country than a nurse can.
Speaker 1: What is that.
Speaker 2: It's a problem, That's what it is.
Speaker 1: But how does that ever happen?
Speaker 2: We have to ask ourselves. You know, we have been
Speaker 2: sitting in this steadily boiling water, as the proverbial frog,
Speaker 2: getting hotter and hotter and hotter into this political boiling
Speaker 2: water of corruption that we've got at the moment, and
Speaker 2: we just haven't noticed it. And we do have to
Speaker 2: get we do have to notice it. We need to
Speaker 2: get some balance back into our politics and the only
Speaker 2: way you can do that is with your vote.
Speaker 1: I think do you think you said something interesting before?
Speaker 1: One be aware of it Australians to be aware of
Speaker 1: a particularly Victoria Victorians to be aware of it. But
Speaker 1: two care enough about it?
Speaker 2: Did you?
Speaker 1: I know so many pim Victoria and so many times
Speaker 1: I'm in a car drive whatever taxi driver Uber all
Speaker 1: complaining over the last couple of years. Yeah, yep, it
Speaker 1: doesn't get nothing happens, nothing changes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the polls, what is that? Well, I think I
Speaker 2: think partly it's apathy, but it's partly also the framing
Speaker 2: because you and I talking about this, people are going
Speaker 2: to just like my mate did with Dave Hughes. You know,
Speaker 2: two fellows have done pretty well waxing lyricle about this
Speaker 2: stuff having a winge. Okay, when we interviewed Nick mackenzie
Speaker 2: on this, one of the problems with building bad is
Speaker 2: that the CFMU could be paid out to turn a
Speaker 2: blind eye to worker exploitation by companies. So the purpose
Speaker 2: of the union movement, which is to protect workers, is
Speaker 2: the opposite. And yet that whole little corrupt sphere there
Speaker 2: has bastardized what the union movement is all about. Now again,
Speaker 2: something will probably blow up a conservative political career. I'm
Speaker 2: a member of a union. I've been a member of
Speaker 2: the Australian Salaried Medical Offices Federation and now a member
Speaker 2: of the Health Services Union, So you know my soupers
Speaker 2: with an industry fund. I know what the value of
Speaker 2: organized labor is in a country. But this is where
Speaker 2: the balance has been completely lost and we need to
Speaker 2: We need to overcome people's apathy, but we also need
Speaker 2: to make them realize that even if they are a
Speaker 2: labor voter, this is bad for the union movement, really bad.
Speaker 2: What's going on down there?
Speaker 1: If it gets understood, probably if it gets something. Is
Speaker 1: it because it's complicated, No, it's because we haven't had
Speaker 1: a royal commission. And who calls it? Is that Victorian
Speaker 1: government or.
Speaker 2: It's got to be a Victorian one I think. I
Speaker 2: think from COVID days, my understanding is that a federal
Speaker 2: government could call one, but then it wouldn't necessarily have
Speaker 2: the powers that a state government one would. So if
Speaker 2: the problem is in the state, it's preferable that the
Speaker 2: Victorian state government call it.
Speaker 1: Would you have liked to see in a cover raw commission? Ultimately, yes,
Speaker 1: I think we were just to examine it properly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I think so. I think they
Speaker 2: were you know, maybe maybe have the Royal Commission down
Speaker 2: the track, maybe you know, big build first. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: then and then let's have a look at COVID now
Speaker 2: that things have settled down and we can be a
Speaker 2: bit more dispassionate and less political about it. I do
Speaker 2: understand by virtue of time, by virtue of time, but
Speaker 2: we need there are still lessons from COVID that perhaps
Speaker 2: only a Royal Commission can can uncover.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I often wonder. I mean I resisted the vaccination
Speaker 1: until the very end, and because I had to travel
Speaker 1: to my farm, the only way I could actually travel
Speaker 1: was to produce a vaccination certificate. And I got the
Speaker 1: very first one. Because I was over the age group.
Speaker 1: Whatever it was, I couldn't. I couldn't get the m
Speaker 1: R and A. Yeah, you've got the astros with me,
Speaker 1: and literally they told me that we didn't do it.
Speaker 1: I got my asters and I caught it two days later. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: I got COVID two days because it was rand news.
Speaker 1: Even my sons had all been out together on New
Speaker 1: even they all must have mixed with all their mates,
Speaker 1: and they got it. And they come at my place.
Speaker 1: Next thing, you know, I got exposed to it and
Speaker 1: I caught it, but astrosenic didn't do anything for me.
Speaker 1: And since an Astroseneka pulled out, like have said it
Speaker 1: didn't work or something like what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had to pull out because they had a
Speaker 2: very rare complication, but a fatal ultimately a fatal one
Speaker 2: about one in two hundred and fifty thousand people got it. Now,
Speaker 2: ordinarily one in two hundred and fifty thousand is not
Speaker 2: a big risk in medicine. That's probably the risk you
Speaker 2: have of dying under a general anesthetic, and plenty of
Speaker 2: people go and have surgery. But because we were giving
Speaker 2: everyone the vaccine at once, you were going to get
Speaker 2: deaths as a result of it, and there was one
Speaker 2: particularly tragic one. Katie Lees can read my comments about
Speaker 2: that in the media, but that really shifted my view
Speaker 2: as well. This was a young woman who got the
Speaker 2: astrosenica vaccine, was doing it because you know Team Australia.
Speaker 2: That was genuinely her view. I've spoken to her folks
Speaker 2: about it and died and lost of life and didn't
Speaker 2: get adequately compensated for it. The family got a poultry
Speaker 2: amount of money. So once again, you know, people would
Speaker 2: have tolerated all this if we've got the balance of
Speaker 2: the settings right. And you know, even the ABC, I think,
Speaker 2: has now done a radio national background briefing on the
Speaker 2: forgotten people who were vaccine injured. Now, I'm not of
Speaker 2: the view that that number is in the tens or
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands. That's what you'll see online on Facebook,
Speaker 2: and that's what you know one nation senators will say
Speaker 2: and others. I'm not of that view at all in
Speaker 2: terms of numbers. In terms of numbers, but I am
Speaker 2: of the view that we undercounted it, and I've said
Speaker 2: that publicly.
Speaker 1: And so again I think they should be compensated.
Speaker 2: I think the compensation. I was the guy up there, honestly, Mark,
Speaker 2: I was the guy up there telling people it's going
Speaker 2: to be okay, we've got a functioning compensation scheme. But
Speaker 2: we didn't have a functional realization scheme. We didn't. I
Speaker 2: think it's accepted that our compensation scheme was suboptimal. So
Speaker 2: this is the sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Give me some women.
Speaker 2: The quantity of money that was given out for people,
Speaker 2: it was only seventy thousand dollars for Katie Leesa's family
Speaker 2: who lost her life seventy thousand. It's an insult. They
Speaker 2: might as well not have paid anything.
Speaker 1: But how did they calculate that?
Speaker 2: Oh, raw commission, raw commission. Yeah, that's why you need it,
Speaker 2: so you can you can sit there and ask those
Speaker 2: sort of questions.
Speaker 1: But was there not enough money in the fund, the
Speaker 1: conversation fund to pay out the number of people that
Speaker 1: you because nobody expected this many people to be affected?
Speaker 1: Or was it the rules and regulations to sit around
Speaker 1: how much people get paid out per event?
Speaker 2: I suspect it was, you know, the rules around her
Speaker 2: qualified number one so it was too narrow cast, and
Speaker 2: number two the quantum that was available. And so they're
Speaker 2: you know, but these are things that I think people
Speaker 2: will accept. You know. Let me give you just quickly
Speaker 2: the example of open disclosure in hospital settings, when you
Speaker 2: get something wrong, the worst thing you can do to
Speaker 2: a patient is not a admit it straight away. You'll
Speaker 2: get in more legal trouble every single time if you
Speaker 2: don't admit it straight away. And yet there have been
Speaker 2: very very few public figures who have sat down and
Speaker 2: reflected on COVID and said, okay, we could have done
Speaker 2: this better, or in some cases we did things that
Speaker 2: were that were wrong.
Speaker 1: What would you say you were, Nick Cosworth, I mean,
Speaker 1: what sort of things would you like to say that
Speaker 1: perhaps you could have got you could have done better,
Speaker 1: or you may have you may have got glaringly wrong.
Speaker 2: I think I think the mandates were wrong. I've already
Speaker 2: said that the mind get the mandates to get back sides.
Speaker 2: So I think forcing people to get a medical treatment
Speaker 2: it'll be astonishingly difficult if we would have to have
Speaker 2: the most devastating pandemic ever. I mean it's possible, but
Speaker 2: it would have to be devastating to bring that policy
Speaker 2: back in. That's that's one view. Number two, stopping people
Speaker 2: crossing state borders in their own country, that was a.
Speaker 1: Major I've heard of people in New South Wales who
Speaker 1: want to go visit their dying parent inquins and who
Speaker 1: couldn't get there Palichet wouldn't let them in.
Speaker 2: So that that that's that's really got to go. It's
Speaker 2: got to be a team Australia approach. And I think
Speaker 2: if we got you know, if we got those two
Speaker 2: things right and then brought in the third one, which
Speaker 2: was you know, if you're going to bring in any
Speaker 2: sort of policy review, its evidence, have a time bound,
Speaker 2: and genuinely think about whether you need to continue it.
Speaker 2: Then if we did those three things, then I think
Speaker 2: we'd be in a better position. We'd certainly have more trust.
Speaker 2: We lost, We lost trust amongst a good portion of
Speaker 2: the population.
Speaker 1: Do you think that trusting government has disappeared? Oh?
Speaker 2: I think you know you spoke earlier Mark about polarization
Speaker 2: and how we're further apart than we were before. That's
Speaker 2: the problem. It's not we have lost the middle. We've
Speaker 2: lost the balance and some of those people were driven
Speaker 2: further towards what we were termed the political right as
Speaker 2: a result of COVID, no doubt, and you know, the
Speaker 2: people who sort of believed in what we were doing
Speaker 2: for COVID are moving more to the left. So we're
Speaker 2: in desperate need of, you know, something in the middle
Speaker 2: that can come back and and reinvigorate the center and
Speaker 2: give us give us a national project to work towards.
Speaker 1: But what happened to that? Aussie uses who used to say,
Speaker 1: at least when I was younger, when you were younger,
Speaker 1: don't tell me what to fucking do. Like I'm a
Speaker 1: good person, I work hard, payment taxes, don't tell me
Speaker 1: how to leave my life. Whatever happened to that? Aussie?
Speaker 1: That's a very Aussi trait.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's to me. That's the national project. Let's get
Speaker 2: that back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but what do you think happened to with that?
Speaker 2: Maybe life got a bit easy for us, bit complacent,
Speaker 2: we did too well? Yeah, who knows? I mean, you
Speaker 2: know again we spoke right at the start of the
Speaker 2: challenges my old man had losing his job in the eighties.
Speaker 2: Losing your job in the eighties as a thirties early
Speaker 2: forties bloke was that was a big deal.
Speaker 1: My dad lost his job in the same period.
Speaker 2: In fifteen to seventy eight percent interest rates. Yeap, you know, struggling.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much debt that. My mum and
Speaker 2: dad were into our school by the time my brother
Speaker 2: and I finished, but they were paying it off for
Speaker 2: a long time afterwards. And they believed it. They believed
Speaker 2: in sending us to a private school. They worked hard
Speaker 2: to do it. Dad worked himself into the grave to
Speaker 2: do it, no doubt, got early dementia because of it,
Speaker 2: and they had to work really hard.
Speaker 1: Did your father die with dementia or from dementia.
Speaker 2: He died from dementia and he got it. He probably
Speaker 2: started getting it in his sort of mid to late fifties. Wow, awful,
Speaker 2: awful type of dementia, fronto temporal dementia. And you know,
Speaker 2: we just thought he had really really bad dad jokes
Speaker 2: because they didn't make any sense. But there was the
Speaker 2: dementia starting. Yeah, and it was nasty. It wasn't that
Speaker 2: any one who knows anyone with FTD, which has a
Speaker 2: little bit of an overlap with made in your own disease,
Speaker 2: I might add, is you know, aggression violence, you lose
Speaker 2: your inhibitions, and ultimately he lost the ability to speak.
Speaker 2: So that was a that was a sort of devastating thing.
Speaker 2: But you know, he was a man who never stopped
Speaker 2: working for his family.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's we're sort of sitting here painting not a
Speaker 1: great picture about Australia. But it doesn't take much to
Speaker 1: pick up from where we left off a long time
Speaker 1: ago before all this stuff happened. It doesn't take that much,
Speaker 1: but it does take a bit of courage, political courage.
Speaker 1: Just finally, I'm seeking you to take sides here because
Speaker 1: we've just talked about that. But do you think that
Speaker 1: one nation might be showing us the courage that a
Speaker 1: lot of Australians who used to sit in the middle
Speaker 1: of all this, who want to see Australia pull back
Speaker 1: towards the middle. Do you think that one nation is
Speaker 1: appealing to them, not through policy, just by just by
Speaker 1: examples of courage or interpretation that what they're doing, what
Speaker 1: one nation doing is courageous. Do you think that.
Speaker 2: I think there's a difference between anger and courage, and
Speaker 2: that sometimes that they can be confused and in the
Speaker 2: absence of courage, people are going to go towards anger. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so we lack anyone who's really bold and courageous
Speaker 2: in Australian politics in terms of a party at the moment.
Speaker 2: And I think it's generally accepted that the Liberal Party
Speaker 2: had nine years of steadily declining courage when they were
Speaker 2: in power. I don't think the Labor Party's courageous at all.
Speaker 2: I don't see any positive nation.
Speaker 1: There's no book getting there.
Speaker 2: I don't see any positive national vision from them, and
Speaker 2: I think I don't see a positive national vision from
Speaker 2: one nation. But I do see justifiable anger, and I
Speaker 2: think that if you can take that anger and move
Speaker 2: it into the courageous space. Then you've got you've got
Speaker 2: something that Australians can work towards.
Speaker 1: Do you think Nick Coachworth ll ever stand for Parliament.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty hard environment to sit on the sidelines, mate.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: Well I take that as a positive outcome. If I
Speaker 1: got anything out of this interview, that's my number one takeaway.
Speaker 2: Well maybe if I ever decide to stand a company.
Speaker 2: Call now it's on straight Talk.
Speaker 1: Give me a call. Good to see me.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Mane