Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from news talks it B.
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Speaker 1: It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
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Speaker 1: Smith Podcast powered by news talks it B.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Podcasts two hundred and forty four. For June nineteen,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, sociologist J R. Brunning guests on podcast
Speaker 2: two four fourth and for very good reason. She has
Speaker 2: forced her way into public attention through research and producing
Speaker 2: papers of relevance. Her latest production, and it is a production,
Speaker 2: a ninety page effort, is on a most important issue,
Speaker 2: digital IDs and cbdc's, the combination of which threaten results
Speaker 2: we should be aware of, but patently we're not. Let
Speaker 2: me quote. CBDCs have not been pushed into policy space
Speaker 2: by the citizens of nations, but by the big global
Speaker 2: central banks and the fintech industry. There is compelling evidence
Speaker 2: that power and interoperability of the digital infrastructure will not
Speaker 2: only enhance government control and surveillance, but that it presents
Speaker 2: a real risk to civil, constitutional, and human rights. This
Speaker 2: tech is scalable, and it's out of sight because of
Speaker 2: the mixture of interests involved, from the Reserve Bank of
Speaker 2: New Zealand to allied government agencies, to the fintech sector
Speaker 2: and RB and z's Central Bank colleagues, the decision making
Speaker 2: processes and authorities will be difficult to track and assess
Speaker 2: should something go wrong. Now, may I suggest that you
Speaker 2: listen to this interview from beginning to end and then
Speaker 2: look up a couple of the papers that she has produced.
Speaker 2: But more details on all of that very shortly, but
Speaker 2: just a note on this week's podcast. It is shorter
Speaker 2: than normal. We are covering the interview and then we
Speaker 2: do a shortish mail room. The reason for it is
Speaker 2: that there has been a bit of sickness in the
Speaker 2: house over the last week and hopefully you won't be
Speaker 2: exposed to much of it. Due to the ability to
Speaker 2: edit things, it's been a full time job, let me
Speaker 2: tell you. Doing the interview, I had my microphone closed
Speaker 2: most of the time. However, I think that it all
Speaker 2: come out right in the end. Jr. Running is very
Speaker 2: very good. Now. I wanted to mention that because it's
Speaker 2: been a case of spending more time in bed, particularly
Speaker 2: in the morning, and the other morning I heard the
Speaker 2: news I think it was at about six point thirty
Speaker 2: or something. Usually i'd be up by then. There was
Speaker 2: the story of Jasindra Dern and her latest well whatever
Speaker 2: you want to call it, and I immediately started rolling
Speaker 2: words around of my head about what I would say
Speaker 2: about it, and then I thought, no, let it go.
Speaker 2: It's gone now who cares? And then reality set in.
Speaker 2: Of course, reality set in because it's fine to forgive,
Speaker 2: but when people are not repentant, when people carry on
Speaker 2: in the same manner of what as to what they
Speaker 2: have in the past, then there's no forgiveness to be had.
Speaker 2: And I think the best way to cover this is
Speaker 2: to read a letter to you that came in that
Speaker 2: same morning at five point thirty three from Liz just
Speaker 2: when we thought it was safe to go back into
Speaker 2: the water exclamation mark. The extrag below is from just
Speaker 2: sindro Render's Facebook page. It details how she has started
Speaker 2: an excite quote an exciting new initiative called Field. It's
Speaker 2: all about humanizing leadership with empathy and kindness. She also
Speaker 2: says she's focused on unity without using fear to divide people.
Speaker 2: For those of us who lived through her tyranny, who
Speaker 2: lost their jobs, had loved ones locked out of New
Speaker 2: Zealand or die alone. Her lack of self awareness and
Speaker 2: blatant stupidity astounds me. Liz goes on, this is another
Speaker 2: of her attempts to remain relevant and to suck the
Speaker 2: ill informed and bewildered into supporting her socialist idealist agenda.
Speaker 2: She is not and never will be remembered as a
Speaker 2: kind and empathetic leader. She was driven by her ego
Speaker 2: and vanity projects, and she almost single handedly destroyed New Zealand.
Speaker 2: I sincerely hope that field is not her way of
Speaker 2: working her way back onto the global political stage. Her
Speaker 2: influence is dangerous, and the potential outcome of that influence
Speaker 2: on the ill informed and those who are not aware
Speaker 2: of what she did to our society would be devastating.
Speaker 2: Extract below largely waffle with no substance, no change there
Speaker 2: best wishes Liz. Now. Anybody who doesn't understand that's most
Speaker 2: who doesn't understand what the word progressive actually means in
Speaker 2: political terms, is at a loss to describe what her
Speaker 2: politics are. Is very simple. Progressive progressivism is the road
Speaker 2: to Marxism, to communism. If you like, I'm not making
Speaker 2: it up. There's plenty of reference to it, but that's
Speaker 2: the way that it is. And I think that what's
Speaker 2: going on, what has been going on since her flight
Speaker 2: from office, indicates that that is much the case, and
Speaker 2: in just a moment, Jody Brunning. There are essential fat
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Speaker 2: to be flexible, so important to support healthy blood flow
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Speaker 2: mental clarity and focus in children, all the way to
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Speaker 2: as we get older. Equisine is a premium high grade
Speaker 2: fish and evening primrose oil to be taken in addition
Speaker 2: to a healthy diet and is only available from pharmacies
Speaker 2: and health stores. Always read the label and users directed
Speaker 2: and if symptoms persist. Seainguid healthcare professional farmer Broker Auckland
Speaker 2: Leighton Smith j R. Brunning is a consultant sociologist. Her
Speaker 2: work explores governance, cultures, policy and the production of scientific
Speaker 2: and technical knowledge. Brunning is a trustee of the Physicians
Speaker 2: and Scientists for Global Responsibility New Zealand or. The address
Speaker 2: is PSGR dot org dot enz.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: If that sounds dull and boring, let me alert you
Speaker 2: is not. Her most recent work involves digital ideas and
Speaker 2: central bank digital currencies, about which there is growing public concern,
Speaker 2: both individually but especially when coupled together. Now, if you're
Speaker 2: trying to imagine why, think of the World Economic Forum
Speaker 2: at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand as bedmates. Running's
Speaker 2: major contribution is a ninety page paper stepping back from
Speaker 2: the brink the programmable ledger, which I was term as challenging,
Speaker 2: but there is a safety net. A nine page that
Speaker 2: is one tenth size of the Monster report. A nine
Speaker 2: page reduced version which is much easier for most of
Speaker 2: us to grasp, is available. Details to follow shortly. Jr.
Speaker 2: Jody Brunning, it's great to have you on the Latensmith podcast,
Speaker 2: and I thank you.
Speaker 3: Look, it's great to be here with you. Lton, thank
Speaker 3: you for inviting me on.
Speaker 2: You start by saying, this is on the ninth pager.
Speaker 2: Don't be misled. Judging the risk from central bank digital
Speaker 2: currencies in isolation is a rookie mistake. Did you know
Speaker 2: it was going to be so long when you started?
Speaker 3: Absolutely not that. And you're talking about a recent article
Speaker 3: in the Daily Telegraph, so people just have to can
Speaker 3: quickly search for that. Yeah. No, I didn't know it
Speaker 3: would be that long. And this is because, as you
Speaker 3: learn something about a very complex subject, was a very
Speaker 3: open ended bit that needs to be addressed Otherwise people
Speaker 3: are left questioning. I guess, so we had to sort
Speaker 3: of keep talking about this issue and fleshing out those
Speaker 3: those gaps.
Speaker 2: I guess It's interesting you say that, because I probably
Speaker 2: three years ago, no more than that'd be four years
Speaker 2: ago now. I interviewed a professor from the Melbourne Institute
Speaker 2: Melbourne Tech. He and two others had had written a
Speaker 2: book that was on digitization and it was going to
Speaker 2: be the release of freedom amongst the community in the world,
Speaker 2: and got I got quite a bit of hefty feedback
Speaker 2: on it, saying that this is a con they're not
Speaker 2: they're not working on something to This was the suggestion,
Speaker 2: they're not working on something to give us freedom, They're
Speaker 2: working on something who's going to do exactly the opposite.
Speaker 2: And I could see the point of the people who
Speaker 2: were saying that, do you run into any of that, Well,
Speaker 2: I guess we shouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 3: I guess it's a very very ancient sort of things,
Speaker 3: looking at power and aggregating power, and powerful people usually,
Speaker 3: you know, they're not usually happy with one super yosh
Speaker 3: or whatever. They normally like three or four, and so
Speaker 3: I think it's pretty natural for powerful interests to want
Speaker 3: to consolidate their interest and sort of the game of monopoly,
Speaker 3: you know, is an ancient sort of concept, and we're
Speaker 3: used to sort of the oligopolies or the oligarchs in
Speaker 3: you know, old societies ruling and so it's not a
Speaker 3: it's a very human thing to concentrate power.
Speaker 2: And but we've never seen anything like it before like
Speaker 2: what we're experiencing now where we're headed.
Speaker 3: Yes, and so this is just just to let people
Speaker 3: to help people understand. My undergraduates of BBS and I
Speaker 3: have masters in sociology, and what I've been looking at
Speaker 3: for the last decade or so is technology and science
Speaker 3: and how we regulate technology and science, be it a
Speaker 3: commercial formulation, a pesticide and nanotech. And now we're looking
Speaker 3: at the silicon, we're looking at digital technologies. And so
Speaker 3: the difference that we have now and this is why
Speaker 3: I think PSDR we're happy to take this paper on
Speaker 3: is its scalability potential, so we can use tech for
Speaker 3: good to help us in our everyday lives. But the
Speaker 3: trick is powerful interests. Also we'll see that that technology
Speaker 3: is is very able to be scaled up and we
Speaker 3: can get into how it can be scaled up for
Speaker 3: their own interests. So it's the scalability potential. And we
Speaker 3: put this together with the programmability of the digital currencies
Speaker 3: that we're going to be talking about, and that changes
Speaker 3: the game.
Speaker 2: What's an alternative word for scale up or scale.
Speaker 3: Well, sort of increase exponentially.
Speaker 2: I guess I was thinking of those who can't quite
Speaker 2: place the meaning.
Speaker 3: Well, it's the the idea of going from the horse
Speaker 3: and cart to the car. How could we, you know,
Speaker 3: consider what would be the outcome of that? What? How
Speaker 3: did we have to change all the rules on the
Speaker 3: on the road to ensure that people weren't, you know,
Speaker 3: rolling the car at every fast corner. So it's, you know,
Speaker 3: scaling things up creates all these you know, it's the
Speaker 3: no known, it's the unknowns, unown unknowns, it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's we just cannot And this is why it's
Speaker 3: a very much a governance issue, and y p SR
Speaker 3: are hoping that, you know, people from the school of governors,
Speaker 3: legal experts in public law, constitutional and administrative law, will
Speaker 3: become interested in this. It's it's a very big issue
Speaker 3: because of the scalable potential.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you a blunt question at this point,
Speaker 2: which I might have left till later. Considering those organizations
Speaker 2: in the world who are backing this and promoting it,
Speaker 2: and some of them dishonestly, Is there any real way
Speaker 2: that little Old New Zealand can control its own future
Speaker 2: by escaping what might be coming down the track?
Speaker 3: Well, if we're simply talking about central bank digital currencies CBDCs,
Speaker 3: we can very easily step away from that. And of
Speaker 3: course the issue here is around the public waking up
Speaker 3: and being courageous enough to share information that looks critically
Speaker 3: at how these technologies can be scaled up. And I
Speaker 3: think we're seeing some examples of countries pausing or moving away.
Speaker 3: And it's very clear that all internationally. When you see,
Speaker 3: for example, the CBDC, you know, the Reserve Bank of
Speaker 3: New Zealand, take go and have a look on CBDC
Speaker 3: website and it will show you how many countries are involved.
Speaker 3: And of course the cbd website is controlled and overseen
Speaker 3: by the Boston Consulting Group, so we see that all
Speaker 3: the main Wow Aunt, CBDC is awesome. All those and
Speaker 3: this is where PSR are talking. All those sort of
Speaker 3: policy papers, those white papers have all been produced by
Speaker 3: the organizations with the financial and dare I say political
Speaker 3: conflicts of interest. So because most of the and we
Speaker 3: can call that propaganda as well that has been produced
Speaker 3: that they hope that will be adopted about by our
Speaker 3: governments and then pushed through really quickly, is by these
Speaker 3: organizations with the conflicts of interest. The people of New Zealand,
Speaker 3: you know, they can say we don't actually want to
Speaker 3: do this anymore. It is possible.
Speaker 2: Can I offer my opinion that it's possible. But it's
Speaker 2: only possible if there is a is a if there
Speaker 2: is a very large ground swell. And at this point
Speaker 2: of time I struggle to see that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's because I mean what we have now Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: you know, in April there was an RB and Z
Speaker 3: you know Digital Cash in New Zealand puff piece and
Speaker 3: what we see is a very obsequious legacy media that
Speaker 3: will not critically analyze this. And one of the big,
Speaker 3: the big takeaways that we want people to understand from
Speaker 3: our paper is that there is not a single academic
Speaker 3: expert or an expert that is lacking you know, the
Speaker 3: financial conflicts of interest, the complex of interests having worked
Speaker 3: with a management consultancy firm or you know, a big
Speaker 3: global bank. There is not a single expert in New
Speaker 3: Zealand talking about cpdc's critically and the potential for these
Speaker 3: technologies and the risk of what might happen should there
Speaker 3: be what's called unified ledger in time. So there's a
Speaker 3: there's a policy creep that can happen that can further,
Speaker 3: you know, push policy into the arms of the big
Speaker 3: big banks. So this is the this is the and
Speaker 3: this is what I've observed in my work looking at
Speaker 3: policy and regulation and new technologies is the information supporting
Speaker 3: the safety and efficacy of these technologies is produced by
Speaker 3: the very institutions with the conflicts of interest and and
Speaker 3: part of that real problem later and this is what
Speaker 3: my masters looked at, is the difficulty scientists and researchers
Speaker 3: have in accessing funding to research issues that is contrary
Speaker 3: or that might contradict the position of the government of
Speaker 3: the day. And so it's very difficult for any scientist
Speaker 3: or researcher to get long term funding that is not
Speaker 3: aligned with the interests of the ministry that is responsible
Speaker 3: for funding science. That's the Ministry for Business and Innovation
Speaker 3: and Employment. So mb is responsible for funding science. And
Speaker 3: that is a really big problem. So that scientists are
Speaker 3: cought and researchers are caught by the short and curlyes
Speaker 3: because they're financial because their funding is so precarious today, does.
Speaker 2: It make it worse that we are driving through an
Speaker 2: economic period that has put us in a very very
Speaker 2: difficult position.
Speaker 3: Well, well, I mean you have this sort of combined forces.
Speaker 3: You've got the lack of the freedom, of lack of
Speaker 3: academic freedom in New Zealand. You've got the obsequious sort
Speaker 3: of legacy media that doesn't have the resources or the
Speaker 3: somehow the inclination for long form critical journalism. So we've got,
Speaker 3: you know, and they're meant to be the fullest stay.
Speaker 3: Then if you think that, if you think about the
Speaker 3: scientists researchers that can't independently research, who do judges go
Speaker 3: to when there's a decision to be made or when
Speaker 3: people are calling for advice. So we see that the
Speaker 3: judiciary are always going to be a little bit captured
Speaker 3: by the executive, by the ministries and the agencies because
Speaker 3: they're producing the information inverted commas, evidence, the policy papers,
Speaker 3: the risk assessments. Then you add to the fact that
Speaker 3: there's an economic downturn, and the economic downturn provides if
Speaker 3: we lack sort of that information about how we make
Speaker 3: cash or the potential about of fiscal policy and the
Speaker 3: appropriations process. If we just only default and think that
Speaker 3: we need a UBI and that can only be made
Speaker 3: through the retail the seed, you know, sorry, the central bank,
Speaker 3: the Reserve Bank of New Zealand having the power to
Speaker 3: retail currencies. People think that's the only way we can
Speaker 3: actually solve financial problems. And we're in deep doo dooos,
Speaker 3: you know, So that the economic downturn is an antecedent
Speaker 3: I think, excuse my pronunciation, it's sort of alongside these
Speaker 3: other problems, but it's not the biggest problem, you know.
Speaker 3: And one of the interesting things I think is that
Speaker 3: we need to understand that the Reserve Bank of New
Speaker 3: Zealand has gone through, as Christian Hawksby stayed in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two, the most significant changes since the Reserve Bank
Speaker 3: of New Zealand reforms of the nineteen eighties. In twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four at the he said to the Financial and
Speaker 3: Expenditure Committee, you know, they're going through this massive process
Speaker 3: of transformation and modernization. So the Reserve Bank has, interestingly,
Speaker 3: during the depths of COVID, when we have been really
Speaker 3: distracted with COVID, we've been very distracted. The people that
Speaker 3: are interested in politics or interested in justice and sort
Speaker 3: of civil constitutional human rights have been busy looking at
Speaker 3: what has been happening in terms of COVID legislation. Several acts,
Speaker 3: several bills have been passed that have been part of
Speaker 3: the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's transformation process. You know,
Speaker 3: one of the bills had the Monetary Policy Amendment Act
Speaker 3: had only fourteen submissions. The Financial Market Infrastructures Act in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one had nine submissions to it, The Reserve
Speaker 3: Bank of New Zealand Act thirty one submissions, the Deposit
Speaker 3: Takers Act twenty forty three submissions. So the Reserve Bank
Speaker 3: of New Zealand has gone through the most significant transformation
Speaker 3: process through all this new legislation, and you look at
Speaker 3: how few people have sort of known about it, ormitted
Speaker 3: to it. And so we look, we again turned to
Speaker 3: the conventional legacy media that there's only been sort of
Speaker 3: reporting of this is what the Reserve Bank's you know,
Speaker 3: doing in a happy, little puffy, puffy pand you know,
Speaker 3: there's there's nothing critical critically looking at all this legislation
Speaker 3: and picking it apart. So, you know, Michael Riddell has
Speaker 3: been on poaking. Cassandra been doing quite a bit of
Speaker 3: work criticizing the RB and Z, but it's we've had
Speaker 3: such an amazing time and it's really surprising that that
Speaker 3: in particular has occurred over COVID.
Speaker 2: The Reserve Bank management reminds me very much of the
Speaker 2: military governance in the United States at the moment. And
Speaker 2: if you don't know what I mean, they have They
Speaker 2: have launched themselves into different directions, both of them different directions,
Speaker 2: but both of them woke and woke to an ultimate degree,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: Yes. So the reason people are traditionally now and let's
Speaker 3: just preface this latent because because I'm a sociologist and
Speaker 3: I've been looking at this in depth over the say,
Speaker 3: the last three or four months, But I am very
Speaker 3: happy for people to criticize me if I am incorrect,
Speaker 3: But as long as we have a discussion about it,
Speaker 3: that is a wider, broader discussion looking at the big,
Speaker 3: big issues. So when you talk about them being woke,
Speaker 3: being woke means they're taking on this is what I
Speaker 3: aren't My understanding is they're taking on political issues or
Speaker 3: values that might not represent the average key way. And
Speaker 3: of course, the reason people have historically trusted central banks
Speaker 3: or the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is because they don't.
Speaker 3: They don't they're very constrained in what they can politically
Speaker 3: do because they can print money. They've been very construing.
Speaker 3: So if all of a sudden their powers in encompass
Speaker 3: climate change, which this has happened, that is a political
Speaker 3: shift and I think people need to understand that. So
Speaker 3: the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has actually more powers
Speaker 3: than the average and we discussed this in our paper.
Speaker 3: The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has more powers than
Speaker 3: the average central bank. So it's not only responsible for
Speaker 3: monetary policy, so you know, the ocr the central Bank
Speaker 3: is a financial markets regulator responsible for oversight of the
Speaker 3: financial system and prudential regulation of banks, deposit takers and
Speaker 3: insurance companies. As well as that the Reserve Bank engaged
Speaker 3: in large scale asset purchases and over COVID. And that's
Speaker 3: interesting because we think there's been about eleven billion dollars
Speaker 3: in losses there. And then interesting with this Financial Market
Speaker 3: Infrastructures Act in twenty twenty one, they introduced into this
Speaker 3: legislation the concept of the systemically important financial institution so
Speaker 3: they si they and that's the too big to Fail
Speaker 3: clauses that you're seeing coming through America that were introduced
Speaker 3: after the global financial crisis. So they're really broad powers
Speaker 3: are not just all those responsibilities. But we're seeing sort
Speaker 3: of we're seeing the political things come in the DEI,
Speaker 3: the climate change, and their budgets doubled as well. So
Speaker 3: this is extremely worrying because when you listen to the
Speaker 3: Select Committee February twenty twenty four, people are sort of
Speaker 3: asking the Bank's questions as if they're an organization that
Speaker 3: should make political decisions. I think people do not understand
Speaker 3: how important it is that that is the role of parliament,
Speaker 3: not unelected bureaucrats sitting in their own office, you know,
Speaker 3: sitting in offices that can't actually get voted out of office.
Speaker 2: So we're talking to the administrative state, and the administrative
Speaker 2: state has has has made huge in roads into many
Speaker 2: aspects of life. And I refer again to the United
Speaker 2: States where where basically it saw its birth. But here
Speaker 2: the best example that I can utilize is Auckland Transport,
Speaker 2: who have taken on roles that they were never they
Speaker 2: were never associated with, not supposed to be associated with
Speaker 2: extended their powers and during the period specifically that you
Speaker 2: refer to the COVID period, they were they had free
Speaker 2: hand to just do what they want. And we know,
Speaker 2: we know that they're under inspection because various people, starting
Speaker 2: with I suppose the latest mayor of Auckland, have been
Speaker 2: in assaulting them. Not to forget one or two podcasters,
Speaker 2: but the point being that that is one example, but
Speaker 2: there are lots of others, including I think the medical field.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and so I think the the other problem is
Speaker 3: that these agencies and these ministries become so big that
Speaker 3: they become this rolling ball getting even bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3: And I am a very big fan of a working
Speaker 3: democratic government. But when the information that is supporting their
Speaker 3: policy agendas is solely being produced by the agencies who
Speaker 3: will only grow bigger, then that doesn't work. So, you know,
Speaker 3: we have this is why we have the problem that
Speaker 3: science is now controlled by the Ministry for Business and Innovation.
Speaker 3: This is why we have the problem that agriculture is
Speaker 3: you know, funding for agricultural research is controlled by the
Speaker 3: agency who likes innovation and patents. So we're not going
Speaker 3: to solve drought problems when the only money that they
Speaker 3: want to spend on research has got to be tied
Speaker 3: to a patent. And you look at for example, education,
Speaker 3: you know, education has been you know, the curriculum development
Speaker 3: is core core, and that's I think, I believe in NGO.
Speaker 3: So if you had, if you had teachers being responsible
Speaker 3: for example, for their own you know, for improving and
Speaker 3: upskilling the curriculum, you would actually have more fighting more.
Speaker 3: It would be slower, it would be difficult, but it
Speaker 3: would be the people who are who have the most
Speaker 3: expertise doing it. This is the same so science, but
Speaker 3: right now you're getting these agencies creating their own agendas
Speaker 3: and so Jeffrey Palmer has talked about this recently and
Speaker 3: he said, what happens is the parliamentarians they've got no funding,
Speaker 3: they've got no research resources, so they must, you know,
Speaker 3: divert genuflect to the big agencies because that's where all
Speaker 3: the information and the knowledge is coming from. This is
Speaker 3: a very big problem in a democracy.
Speaker 2: Is democracy under a threat in this country? Do you think?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? But it's not dead. But we very much people
Speaker 3: need and my interest is information. So I see how
Speaker 3: the flows of information then can perpetuate power or the
Speaker 3: flows of information can help us understand situations and chat
Speaker 3: and wage war and debate and get cross with each other.
Speaker 3: But the most important thing is that we should be
Speaker 3: actually talking about all these different issues. And this is
Speaker 3: why you know, pstr and Zena have released this paper,
Speaker 3: because if we don't talk about the issues, this is China,
Speaker 3: this is you know, Russia in its darkest days. It's
Speaker 3: an authoritarian state does not let the people you know
Speaker 3: chat and debate, and neither does it let they're elected
Speaker 3: members debate and challenge each other. And we're moving, I believe,
Speaker 3: into a very polarized environment. And when we're polarized, we
Speaker 3: go into our corners, and we've got to come out
Speaker 3: of those corners and know that even if it's really difficult,
Speaker 3: we've we've got to keep talking to each other. And
Speaker 3: the problems of governance are never black and white. They're complex,
Speaker 3: they're nebulous. You know, they involve going upstream into you know,
Speaker 3: into I guess environments that often have lots of political
Speaker 3: and financial conflicts where you'll see large, powerful interests. And
Speaker 3: that's a little bit why you know, often you get
Speaker 3: when you start asking questions about sort of technologies you
Speaker 3: know from nanotech to GM to to pesticides to the
Speaker 3: tech we're talking about today. It's very easy for people
Speaker 3: to call you are you're a team foil where you're
Speaker 3: a conspiracy theorists like, well, actually, I think it's incumbent
Speaker 3: upon us ever since, ever since they put spikes on
Speaker 3: you know, heels to make horses go faster, to say,
Speaker 3: what what what is this tech achieving? Is it going
Speaker 3: to make the horse go faster or they're going to
Speaker 3: get some you know, saws in the sides of their flanks?
Speaker 3: You know, So we actually always have to ask how
Speaker 3: how is the tech going to support us and make
Speaker 3: human you know, society, tribe, and perhaps we're actually the
Speaker 3: tech we're seeing today, we're not thriving more so maybe
Speaker 3: we can ask what is going wrong here?
Speaker 2: Have you in your in your work spend any time
Speaker 2: on digital currencies per se bitcoin specifically.
Speaker 3: No, I listen, look, I try to be really informed.
Speaker 3: I listened to a lot of podcasts my you know,
Speaker 3: my husband's a software engineers, so you know, talking about
Speaker 3: this sort of tech is not outside our spectrum of conversation,
Speaker 3: but we haven't and so I try to be really informed,
Speaker 3: but not not really because I guess I only have
Speaker 3: so many hours in the day, so you know, I've
Speaker 3: been listening. You know, your excellent interviews with John Orcock
Speaker 3: are really great for helping people understand about bitcoin. I
Speaker 3: guess my question, Laighton, I am. You know, like I
Speaker 3: didn't grow up you know, in that happy family with
Speaker 3: the mummy and you know, and everything been great. So
Speaker 3: I was lucky enough to be an at home mum
Speaker 3: and you know, then started working when they were younger.
Speaker 3: And on this my situation always is, you know, how
Speaker 3: can a woman that is working, probably a little few
Speaker 3: more hours because she's got to do the cleaning, do this,
Speaker 3: do that? How can she be as informed as a man?
Speaker 3: How can she access you know, if bitcoin? Bitcoin has
Speaker 3: to work whatever social strata you're on, whatever education level
Speaker 3: you're on, it has to actually work similarly for females
Speaker 3: and males. And right now I don't see like how
Speaker 3: bitcoin is equally as accessible, you know. And and this
Speaker 3: is I guess this is my point why I see
Speaker 3: governments as being really important. It's the single woman, you know,
Speaker 3: in the supermarket. Can she afford good quality meat, good
Speaker 3: quality of veggies? How do we create a social structure
Speaker 3: that means we're going to thrive and that our young
Speaker 3: people are going to grow up healthy and strong. And
Speaker 3: so I guess I keep coming back to the Bitcoin
Speaker 3: seems to be the really great if you're a guy
Speaker 3: and you can do a ton of research and you
Speaker 3: know a lot about it. But that's sort of that's
Speaker 3: a that's my kind of thought for bitcoin really at
Speaker 3: the moment.
Speaker 2: But it's well, I think I'm not in a position
Speaker 2: to you with you. Well I suppose I could be,
Speaker 2: but I'm not. I just want to quote you quickly.
Speaker 2: This is a little outside what we're here to discuss,
Speaker 2: but there is a connection obviously. Fred Krueger quote bitcoin
Speaker 2: is going to replace Fiat. In a recent interview in Entrepreneur,
Speaker 2: investor and mathematician Fred Krueger said bitcoin is going to
Speaker 2: replace theat According to Kruger, FIAT is unable to compete
Speaker 2: with bitcoin. He sees the world moving to a global
Speaker 2: monetary standard based on bitcoin. And then the author of
Speaker 2: this short article says, realize what Kruger is saying here,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to take a gamble here and reach
Speaker 2: the next five lines. The global M two money supplies
Speaker 2: currently around one hundred and three trillion. The market capitalization
Speaker 2: of bitcoin is one point three trillion. This means for
Speaker 2: bitcoin to become the global monetary standard, it needs to
Speaker 2: go up by one hundred times one hundred. Is this
Speaker 2: possible Since the famous pizza incident, I don't know what
Speaker 2: that is. In twenty ten, bitcoin has risen one million times.
Speaker 2: Krueger knows of no other asset that has done this.
Speaker 2: His message is simple. This is a make or break
Speaker 2: moment for a lot of people. If you want to
Speaker 2: accumulate wealth by bitcoin now you could argue that that's
Speaker 2: a promotion if you like, or even propaganda. But I'm
Speaker 2: seeing more and more confidence in bitcoin now. The connection
Speaker 2: between the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's CBDC and bitcoin
Speaker 2: or the differences, take that approach whichever way you prefer,
Speaker 2: what is it?
Speaker 3: Well, so at the moment, central bank digital currencies globally
Speaker 3: aren't really looking at being on the blockchain, and Bitcoin's
Speaker 3: on that blockchain, and of course, of course all the
Speaker 3: greenies buying bitcoin. When you look at the energy required
Speaker 3: to do all those mathematical formulations to keep working, is
Speaker 3: a sort of an interesting thing to you know, a
Speaker 3: little thing for the greens to go down and CBDCs.
Speaker 3: So at the moment they're not on the blockchain, they're
Speaker 3: just basically going to be sort of controlled and overseen
Speaker 3: by reserve banks, central banks. But of course the etiology,
Speaker 3: if you look at the design, how how CBDs c's
Speaker 3: have come about. They've come about by a lot of
Speaker 3: policy work by the financial, tech, finance and technology industries
Speaker 3: who have also you know, being involved with the establishment
Speaker 3: of bitcoin. But so whereas you know bitcoin has you know,
Speaker 3: the doubling and the production or the reduction of coin
Speaker 3: is is a mathematical formulation, CBDCs can be produced at
Speaker 3: will and at whim by central banks. This is where
Speaker 3: they're very dangerous because they can be and they will
Speaker 3: likely be a political tool. And when I say a
Speaker 3: political tool, this is because the Bank of International Settlements
Speaker 3: and the large global banks are very much seeing them
Speaker 3: as a as a way of achieving policy, you know,
Speaker 3: the desire of what sort of policy might be achieved,
Speaker 3: and so we can we can provide those financial incentives.
Speaker 3: And it's carrot, it's carrot and stick stuff. We know that.
Speaker 3: For example, so if a reserve bank was going and
Speaker 3: I think it's a terrible idea, they can if they
Speaker 3: were designing a CBDC, they can choose to have a
Speaker 3: negative interest rate, they can choose to have a you know,
Speaker 3: positive interest rate. They can choose, you know, all the
Speaker 3: program the payments will be programmable. So the Reserve Bank
Speaker 3: of New Zealand and its current consultation says, oh, we
Speaker 3: won't make the money program But the problem is the
Speaker 3: payments will be programmable, they will be revocable because they
Speaker 3: have to be revocable in case the mistake is made.
Speaker 3: So we know that all this program these programmability functions,
Speaker 3: which is not there with bitcoin. So a third party
Speaker 3: locks can be put in place where so, for example,
Speaker 3: the Health Ministry might decide that, you know, this group
Speaker 3: of welfare benefit beneficiaries can get this much money if
Speaker 3: they get their kids injected with the latest vaccine and
Speaker 3: get their teeth scene too, and then they tend them
Speaker 3: to school, they'll get this extra money, you know. So
Speaker 3: the Ministry for Health can instruct that through to the
Speaker 3: Central Bank of New Zealand, who could then send that
Speaker 3: advice out to whatever fintech industry is contracted to then
Speaker 3: design the smart contract. Sorry that is a smart contract
Speaker 3: that would be third party processes. It would be involved
Speaker 3: with the financial and tech industries will be contracting and
Speaker 3: designing the software perhaps, so this is how disaggregated it
Speaker 3: will be. And this is this is part of the problem.
Speaker 3: So like the blockchain is, you know, you can see
Speaker 3: your ID code wherever you want. It's quite transparent, whereas
Speaker 3: this stuff is all black boxed like in an aircraft.
Speaker 3: You can't see what's happening when you can't know. And
Speaker 3: there's a term they use called composability. So smart contracts
Speaker 3: which are let's let's they are self little self executing programmed,
Speaker 3: self executing applications of programmable platforms that can trigger an
Speaker 3: action if some pre specified condition is met. And that's
Speaker 3: that's a Bank of International Settlements. That's the way they
Speaker 3: see smart contracts. So they can be composable. Smart contracts
Speaker 3: can be bundleable. So that's so you're you know, you
Speaker 3: were talking about not being able to you know, your
Speaker 3: your bank account could be frozen if you go outside
Speaker 3: the region of the Bay of Plenty, so it could
Speaker 3: you know, the smart contract could be applicable to all
Speaker 3: people in the Bay of Plenty, so they don't have
Speaker 3: any you know, they can't fill up with petrol outside
Speaker 3: that region, and of course.
Speaker 2: Contract which, of course which which of course would make
Speaker 2: lockdowns far more readily available to the powers that be.
Speaker 3: And this is a scalability potential. Yes.
Speaker 2: The biggest problem I believe is how to advise people
Speaker 2: who don't usually care, who haven't got time for it,
Speaker 2: who don't care, who think you're, like you said, a
Speaker 2: tenfoil hatter or whatever, and they're just not interested in
Speaker 2: knowing what's going on. How do you how do you
Speaker 2: best apro Well?
Speaker 3: I think for me, I am informed, and I want
Speaker 3: I work in this area, which is politically often politically
Speaker 3: uncomfortable because I have children, and my children are young
Speaker 3: adults and they are growing up and I I'm not,
Speaker 3: you know, And part of it we're not We don't
Speaker 3: look at we don't look at history, so we don't understand.
Speaker 3: So we might learn about World War Two, we might
Speaker 3: learn about and Frank, we might learn about the concentration camps,
Speaker 3: but when we're at high school, we don't actually learn
Speaker 3: about the extent which there was a massive propaganda campaign
Speaker 3: be fleeting up to that with Russia, with the Chinese Revolution,
Speaker 3: how now gained young students? You know, the history of
Speaker 3: propaganda and gaining the youth to to to jump on
Speaker 3: board without the nuances the experiences of older generations, and
Speaker 3: so younger people can achieve really powerful, important things. But
Speaker 3: we need to I think as older people you know
Speaker 3: listening to this podcast, and I know you know, young
Speaker 3: tradees will be listening to this as well, with you know,
Speaker 3: common sense people will be listening to them. It's exactly
Speaker 3: it's learning to speak up when it's a little bit uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: because if you don't speak up now, there's a very
Speaker 3: big chance in hell that that is not going to
Speaker 3: get any easier. And so I have two there's two
Speaker 3: reasons why I believe democracy is the most at risk.
Speaker 3: And one is because we keep sort of delegating authority,
Speaker 3: whether it's through trade agreements or through other agreements such
Speaker 3: as you know agreement you know, tacit agreements with UN
Speaker 3: agencies such as WHO. So when we delegate authorities to them,
Speaker 3: we lose a little bit of our you know, sovereignty,
Speaker 3: our democratic strength. And the other way we're losing is
Speaker 3: through the fact that the as I said, the information
Speaker 3: is controlled by those big agencies, and when those big
Speaker 3: agencies need an extra portion and they need an extra
Speaker 3: they want to follow a little bit more of this
Speaker 3: you know, digitizing government stuff they get in the big
Speaker 3: management consultancies. And so people need to understand how bad
Speaker 3: this situation is. So the Reserve Bank of New Zealand
Speaker 3: are the only people right now producing the evidence for
Speaker 3: how marvelous and wonderful CBDCs are. So there's no you know,
Speaker 3: like I said, there's no expert lawyers out there, no
Speaker 3: expert governance people out there, no one there's kids, you
Speaker 3: not PSDR and SRE. This is why we've come into
Speaker 3: this space because no one else is here. It's not
Speaker 3: our dream. And so we need to understand that if
Speaker 3: the governments are only looking at the agencies doing this,
Speaker 3: and I'm probably going on about this too much, we
Speaker 3: are fully ignorant and we are victims to that policy.
Speaker 3: So the question at the dinner table is should the
Speaker 3: RBNZ be the only agency providing all the evidence for
Speaker 3: the safety and efficacy of central bank digital currencies? And
Speaker 3: this is when we stop being tinfoil hat wearers, because
Speaker 3: we're actually saying this is a reasonable question.
Speaker 2: Let me quote the beginning of your monster paper in
Speaker 2: the executive summary by releasing this discussion paper Physicians and
Speaker 2: Scientists for Global Responsibility New Zealand, that is psg r
Speaker 2: n Z aim to encourage debate around governance, democracy and
Speaker 2: the interoperability of digital identity systems and central bank digital currencies.
Speaker 2: What are the risks from adopting CBDCs which are tied
Speaker 2: to your digital ID, your digital twin? What is the
Speaker 2: answers to that? So, Jody, what are the risks from
Speaker 2: adopting cbdc's which are tied to your digital ID, your
Speaker 2: digital twin as.
Speaker 3: You put it, so thank you for that. Yeah, that
Speaker 3: we haven't talked about digital IDs yet, so so digital
Speaker 3: ideas are increasingly so the whole of New Zealand government
Speaker 3: hasn't has put in put out the requirement that all
Speaker 3: agencies offer they accept real me, they accept a digital
Speaker 3: identity for as equally to a passport. But what we're
Speaker 3: seeing now is we're seeing it increasingly increasingly they might
Speaker 3: only only accept your real me identity and so when
Speaker 3: you get your digital ID, you they take them er scams,
Speaker 3: so they have your biometric data. And the issue here
Speaker 3: is so the Department of Internal Affairs controls all this
Speaker 3: information and so the Department of Internal Affairs is sort
Speaker 3: of has information sharing agreements across the whole of government,
Speaker 3: so they can share your data and we don't know
Speaker 3: how much this is shared or shareable because of course
Speaker 3: it's black boxed. So the DEA administers the Digital Identity
Speaker 3: Services Trust Framework Act and the Electronic Identity Verification Actors.
Speaker 3: So that's the back end management of our personal data.
Speaker 3: So then you add that, you toddle that to for example,
Speaker 3: if CBDCs where your main money account of retail CBDCs,
Speaker 3: then we have the capacity for a surprising amount of
Speaker 3: control acrosshole of government. And so you know, psgr And said,
Speaker 3: we've always looked at the fact that often you know,
Speaker 3: it's a round up the Glacious eight trials. It was
Speaker 3: what came out in that was that the formulation was
Speaker 3: so much more toxic than the active ingredient. So when
Speaker 3: the Reserve Bank only talks about CBDCs, the formulation is
Speaker 3: more toxic than the active ingredient. When they're combined with
Speaker 3: digital ideas, that's when i've got the capacity to survalue
Speaker 3: when you're walking down the street and know where you are,
Speaker 3: then they've got the capacity to understand your transactions because
Speaker 3: you're using your CBDC and you're transacting, transacting on your
Speaker 3: real may identity, so that, like we keep talking, the
Speaker 3: scalability of this is significant. And so it's when all
Speaker 3: this is linked together that harm happens. That's the problem.
Speaker 3: And so this is normally if you have your and
Speaker 3: this is the other problem. And we have the same
Speaker 3: problem when we have retail banks operating in an oligopoly.
Speaker 3: So this is why sort of Richard Werner, who's an
Speaker 3: international economist, he says, we need to do a heck
Speaker 3: of a lot of work, and this is government policy.
Speaker 3: Governments can turn around do this tomorrow to let small
Speaker 3: local banks establish themselves and serve small local communities. The
Speaker 3: minute you get oligopolies, you get the government and the
Speaker 3: oligopolies naturally working together to shape regulation to make sure
Speaker 3: it's virtually agreeable. And often this is a way of
Speaker 3: not just it's a strategic way of the large corporations
Speaker 3: reinforcing their position because it makes it harder for the
Speaker 3: little guys to get going. So you know, this is
Speaker 3: a this is a very good industry tactic. It's done
Speaker 3: across big food, it's done across pesticize regulation, it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's a common thing to do. So you know,
Speaker 3: when these things are linked, you know when digital ideas
Speaker 3: linked to cbdc's harm happens.
Speaker 2: So where are we out at the moment then with
Speaker 2: the existence of both and their connectivity in the in
Speaker 2: the future.
Speaker 3: So right now, government, if you want a government job,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you're able to get a government
Speaker 3: job unless you have a real May identity. Right now,
Speaker 3: if I wanted to get funding through the poking through
Speaker 3: the Losttery grant scheme, I would have to get a
Speaker 3: digital identity. If I was PSDR and Z was looking
Speaker 3: for funding through that, I personally would have to get
Speaker 3: a digital identity. So they're bringing it in through funding mechanisms.
Speaker 3: I'm aware that if teachers need if they have something
Speaker 3: that's been contested and they need to get it resolved
Speaker 3: or envy, they need to have I believe, a digital identity.
Speaker 3: So the digital identity creep is happening. So all the
Speaker 3: students now they're devaulting to digital identities to the real
Speaker 3: May identities to apply for tertiary education because it's just
Speaker 3: easier and quicker. So they've got a definite creep of
Speaker 3: people onto digital identities. So if we look at China, China,
Speaker 3: in China, they're paying wages of people through CBDCs, and
Speaker 3: we know that the Chinese are quickly getting rid of
Speaker 3: their CBDC money. They don't trust it, they quickly truncefer that.
Speaker 3: But we know that this is you know, say, the
Speaker 3: public sector will use the power of the public sector
Speaker 3: to force people onto this. So when and I guess
Speaker 3: I became a lursi and started getting really into this
Speaker 3: when I saw that ad for the trial project the
Speaker 3: cbdc's and when I saw that ad, I directly put
Speaker 3: in an official Information at request. I wanted to understand
Speaker 3: where the cabinet, the Prime Minister, where the ministers had
Speaker 3: to what extent have they been briefed on CBDCs, to
Speaker 3: what extent did they understand the risks? Now that was
Speaker 3: a December in December official Information at Requests. I heard
Speaker 3: back from that two weeks ago. That's how long it
Speaker 3: took me to get that.
Speaker 2: And in terms of weeks, how long is it.
Speaker 3: So December to May? So it took five and a
Speaker 3: half months to get a response for this official Information
Speaker 3: at Requests because they transferred it back to the arm
Speaker 3: in z because the cabinet cabinet ministers didn't want to
Speaker 3: answer it, and because they haven't been briefed. They really
Speaker 3: have not been briefed in general, so our MPs are
Speaker 3: lastly ignorant about the potential. So it comes back to
Speaker 3: the academics. The experts aren't speaking up, media is not
Speaker 3: speaking up. You know, Members of payment have no idea
Speaker 3: and this is the biggest transformation in in you know,
Speaker 3: money potentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well tell me this, Grant Robertson, because you've
Speaker 2: you've you've attached yourself to this, or you've asked this
Speaker 2: question in one of them, in one of the pieces
Speaker 2: Grant Robertson, how much did he know about the advancement
Speaker 2: of this?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't think. I don't think they've been briefed.
Speaker 3: You know that I haven't. I tried to get I
Speaker 3: asked directly, how much is the Minister for Finance, the
Speaker 3: minister responsible for you know, basically the treasury in the
Speaker 3: RB and there and I don't you know, there's been
Speaker 3: nothing zip. It's just impossible to understand this. And of
Speaker 3: course the minute, this is a big loophole. The minute
Speaker 3: a minister gets moves out into a different portfolio. They
Speaker 3: don't have to answer question official information, actual quests from
Speaker 3: their previous portfolio. But I don't you know there has
Speaker 3: has Nikola been briefed to what extent does she know?
Speaker 3: But and the truth is she will only know as
Speaker 3: much as she knows from the RB and ZAT and accenture.
Speaker 3: So you know, this is we can talk about eccentia
Speaker 3: in a bit. This is this is a major problem.
Speaker 2: We all right, so quickly some quick Q and as
Speaker 2: if we can, if I can think of the questions
Speaker 2: fast enough. There is an old argument. It's the greatest
Speaker 2: loser argument I've ever known. I think, if you've got
Speaker 2: nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear it, what
Speaker 2: do you say?
Speaker 3: So that leaves us really really, really really really big
Speaker 3: space for the demagogues and the tyrants to step in
Speaker 3: and to create unfair laws. And then you wake up
Speaker 3: one day and you say, but that law's unfair. But
Speaker 3: you can't fight back. You can't fight back because the
Speaker 3: laws have been put in place that stop you. So
Speaker 3: you presume everything's going to be fair and lovely. But
Speaker 3: what happens if it's not? And when it's not so
Speaker 3: and the problem is, I think again, this is this
Speaker 3: is when you're at the barbecue. How many laws have
Speaker 3: been pushed through using emergency rational emergency excuses, And then
Speaker 3: COVID that all the all the the mandates came through
Speaker 3: using what's called delegated or secondary legislation. It came through
Speaker 3: with perhaps only two ministers, maybe three ministers making those
Speaker 3: decisions for the mandates to go through without any reviews
Speaker 3: of the scientific literature. That's remember, that's a game being played,
Speaker 3: is they don't actually look at the published scientific literature
Speaker 3: and they say that this is the evidence. But the
Speaker 3: evidence only involves the evidence that the industry involves. You know,
Speaker 3: during COVID that was that was Spiza gives them. So
Speaker 3: we need to understand that when agencies are making decisions
Speaker 3: that do not involve using independent, impartial researchers and actors,
Speaker 3: then we cannot trust the decisions being made of those agencies.
Speaker 3: So that I have nothing to hide means that you're
Speaker 3: sitting dark when things are that when things go wrong
Speaker 3: or they become unfair.
Speaker 2: Well, I've had an argument for as long as I
Speaker 2: can remember now, and I don't know where it came from.
Speaker 2: I'd like to think. I thought of it myself. But
Speaker 2: you you've got nothing to hide. You think you think
Speaker 2: you've got nothing to hide. You're not the one that
Speaker 2: makes the decisions on what should be hidden or not hidden,
Speaker 2: and what what's right or wrong at any given stage.
Speaker 2: You're not the authority in charge of the rules. That's
Speaker 2: the point exactly. I just don't get. I don't understand
Speaker 2: how otherwise intelligent people, and I can think of two
Speaker 2: prominent people still still argue that now you included, you included.
Speaker 2: Did you want to say more?
Speaker 3: Well, I would those two intelligent and prominent people, I
Speaker 3: would quickly like to draw their attention to So the
Speaker 3: attorney general. Can we take a quick talk about the
Speaker 3: attorney general? Right? So attorney general has constitutional responsibilities. Judith
Speaker 3: Collins is required to ensure that the operations of executive
Speaker 3: government are conducted lawfully and constitutionally, and that the government
Speaker 3: is not prevented, through the through use of legal process,
Speaker 3: from lawfully implementing its chosen policy. Now, remember, lawful lawfully
Speaker 3: implementing means it can just go bang bang bang through
Speaker 3: emergency powers or secondary legislation. But we have a big
Speaker 3: problem because Judith Collins is the Attorney General. I have
Speaker 3: never seen an Attorney General with the extent of ministerial
Speaker 3: portfolios that Collins had. She's the Minister for start you know,
Speaker 3: just breathing deeply everyone, because this is a long list,
Speaker 3: Minister for digitizing content. She's the Minister for Defense. She's
Speaker 3: the Minister for the GC s B. She's the Minister
Speaker 3: for the nz SIS. She's the minister who is leading
Speaker 3: the coordination of the government's response to the Royal Commission's
Speaker 3: report into the terrorist attack on the christ Church Mosques.
Speaker 3: She's the Minister for Space, and she's the Minister for Science,
Speaker 3: Innovation and Technology. And if you remember, Science and Innovation
Speaker 3: and Technology is caught under MB and will not do
Speaker 3: any research that is contrary to that of the Government
Speaker 3: of the day. Should the Attorney General, who is that
Speaker 3: the Minister for responsible for good law also have those
Speaker 3: ministerial portfolios?
Speaker 2: The answer is it's crazy.
Speaker 3: It's just I think the word is diabolical later and
Speaker 3: I like crazy.
Speaker 2: Or diabolically crazy. But anyway, there's two more things. At
Speaker 2: least I want to slip in digitally. These heavy criticism
Speaker 2: by New York University Law School paper. This is something
Speaker 2: I only read the very short time ago, and I've
Speaker 2: got to go back and deal with it further, because
Speaker 2: coming from a university in New York, little in America
Speaker 2: at the moment, something like this seems out of context.
Speaker 2: At twenty twenty two, paper paving a Digital Road to
Speaker 2: Hell question Mark by the Center for Human Rights in
Speaker 2: Global Justice New York University School of Law heavily criticized
Speaker 2: the models of digital ideas that have been propagated by
Speaker 2: these large organizations. The policy development that followed the World
Speaker 2: bank initial efforts have reflected the concern in this New
Speaker 2: York University School of Law paper. Key issues include privileges
Speaker 2: economic identity is disconnected from legal status and steers attention
Speaker 2: away from civil registration, threatens a range of fundamental rights,
Speaker 2: from the right to social security to the rights to privacy.
Speaker 2: And that's the big one for me. The surported benefits
Speaker 2: remain mostly unsubstantiated in the absence of serious baseline studies,
Speaker 2: cost benefit and value for money analysis and impact assessments.
Speaker 2: I'll stop there because I don't want to take up
Speaker 2: too much time. But the authors the authors just went
Speaker 2: on to note all too often digital ID systems are
Speaker 2: mired in a lack of transparency. Even the legislation underlying
Speaker 2: digital ID where it exists often does not provide adequate
Speaker 2: information about what the system will entail you go.
Speaker 3: So this is really interesting. They looked at the World Bank,
Speaker 3: the role of the World Bank's bank, that World Bank
Speaker 3: singular in setting the white papers, the policy, the framing,
Speaker 3: the language for digital identities. In our PSCR and Z paper,
Speaker 3: we've gone and said, look at look at the Bank
Speaker 3: of International International Settlements the BIS. Look at how they've
Speaker 3: set the policy, the language, the framing, the principles, the risks,
Speaker 3: and so what we have is these big, global, powerful
Speaker 3: banks that have legal indemnity that are outside the purview
Speaker 3: of any democratic nation, setting the language, the risk framing,
Speaker 3: all that sort of stuff. And so that's why those
Speaker 3: those academics looked at that background, and then they came
Speaker 3: down and they looked at how the risks and so
Speaker 3: there's a there's an image that we've reproduced in the
Speaker 3: latter later sort of twentieth fifth of our paper, and
Speaker 3: it's there. They're they're showing how digital identity stretches into
Speaker 3: every single part of society. So when you overlay digital
Speaker 3: identity stretching into every single part of society, how we
Speaker 3: pay your access, Every single stratu of society is overlaid
Speaker 3: with that. So that's a really important paper to consider.
Speaker 3: And we've cited that and yeah, yeah, we've that's that's
Speaker 3: highlighted in a chapter in our paper. It's really important
Speaker 3: to understand.
Speaker 2: Off the top of your head the four democratic myths.
Speaker 2: Can you recall them?
Speaker 3: I said, four democratic risks? Risks?
Speaker 2: Sorry, did you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So the first thing is that they and this
Speaker 3: is what you will talk about a lot, is that
Speaker 3: they The first one is that digital IDs linked to
Speaker 3: cbdc's enhance all of government oversight over private activity, so
Speaker 3: that is surveillance on steroids. The second one is that
Speaker 3: they will be transferred electronicity electronically using these pre programmable
Speaker 3: smart contracts that are all so composable they can be
Speaker 3: bundled together. Then we have the third one is the
Speaker 3: potential for erosion of parliamentary oversight. So what will happen
Speaker 3: is that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand will basically
Speaker 3: take on more powers relating to money for production, and
Speaker 3: that will be outside of the appropriations process that normally
Speaker 3: is our democratic way of you know, creating ways which
Speaker 3: say poorer communities might have a little bit of a
Speaker 3: more access to resources or better access to health and education.
Speaker 3: That helps, you know, results in less inequalities. So for example,
Speaker 3: then the fourth one is the continued increase in oversight
Speaker 3: and delegation of the production of policy, strategy and rules
Speaker 3: to the BIS, that Bank of International Settlements and the
Speaker 3: International Monetary Fund. So what happens is these guys, with
Speaker 3: all their big white papers and all their big expertise,
Speaker 3: they become the go to institution for the Reserve Bank.
Speaker 3: Now we've already seen that following this massive, big consultation
Speaker 3: with the IMF and twenty sixteen that resulted in all
Speaker 3: this changing, including building in those too big to fail
Speaker 3: clauses in the financial markets infrastructures at So we've got
Speaker 3: those four risks and as well as that which we
Speaker 3: didn't obviously I should have put in, is the financial
Speaker 3: like this, the Reserve Bank has oversighted financial market. If
Speaker 3: they enter as a player, they're saying, oh, no, it'll
Speaker 3: be good because there'll just be another player. And I'm like,
Speaker 3: so another player that can't go bust and is too
Speaker 3: big to fail. That's not an equal playing field. So
Speaker 3: you know, they're the main sort of risks because you know,
Speaker 3: and then and then you've got that other risk that
Speaker 3: they could there could be a digital run to foreigns.
Speaker 3: So that our bank our central banks think that there
Speaker 3: could be a digital run to foreign CBDCs if other
Speaker 3: CBDCs are doing this, and it's unlikely. I think the biggest,
Speaker 3: the biggest people aren't wanting to get on CBDCs because
Speaker 3: they fundamentally don't trust the expanded oversight and powers of
Speaker 3: the government. The only way governments right now getting people
Speaker 3: into c bydcs is through regulatory or mission creep, where
Speaker 3: they force people onto them.
Speaker 2: I just questioned whether expanded oversight and whatever has reached
Speaker 2: even fifty percent of the population, whether we are with
Speaker 2: regard to all of this, And that takes me back
Speaker 2: to your comments right at the beginning about the legacy
Speaker 2: media and their failure, and I to be honest, they
Speaker 2: don't deserve the job in the first place. That I often.
Speaker 3: Well, I mates with the next mainstream journo, and they
Speaker 3: got so sick and tired of basically pulling off the
Speaker 3: Reuters press releases and rehashing that or the government agency
Speaker 3: press releases and rehashing that they're disgusted by it. They
Speaker 3: know that's the formulation of legacy media.
Speaker 2: I wonder, because this has been so good and there's
Speaker 2: been so much left unsaid and discussed, whether you would
Speaker 2: consider a return in the not too di some future.
Speaker 3: Well, I'd be grateful if I could just quickly talk
Speaker 3: about psdr's recommendations in our paper.
Speaker 2: I think you should go for it.
Speaker 3: So what I think we can ask for so right now,
Speaker 3: right now, they're looking at these digital cash trials. I
Speaker 3: don't believe so I see trials as there is as
Speaker 3: a soft launch, and so instead we should say that
Speaker 3: there is a minimum sixty moderatorium two election cycles at
Speaker 3: least until twenty thirty of any trial or CBDC release,
Speaker 3: and so we can we can observe what is happening
Speaker 3: in foreign jurisdictions. And then after twenty thirty that decision
Speaker 3: for the RBNZ to enter the CBDC world should only
Speaker 3: be taken by Parliament at all of people's vote. And
Speaker 3: this is after we see a heck of a lot
Speaker 3: of information and data produced by independent people. I also
Speaker 3: we've also recommended that that digital ideas, digital IDs, a
Speaker 3: real mey identity should never ever be the only form
Speaker 3: of identity that is accepted by any government agency in
Speaker 3: any form, and that passports and driver's licenses are equally acceptable,
Speaker 3: and we know that passports and driver's license in Australia
Speaker 3: have a historically low rate of fraud. And then the
Speaker 3: fourth one is that the DA, with their expansion of
Speaker 3: powers and their capacity to control real meat, we should
Speaker 3: be really examining the context of information sharing cross government
Speaker 3: behind the scenes. So they were just before recommendations and
Speaker 3: I'd love to come back on it, mat.
Speaker 2: That would be great because I'm just looking at some
Speaker 2: stuff here. I have a full print out by the
Speaker 2: way of the of the monster stepping back, stepping back
Speaker 2: from the brink where where you said you said that
Speaker 2: the original one which arrived in my inbox was from
Speaker 2: the Telegraph.
Speaker 3: So you've got you've got the If there is a
Speaker 3: Daily Telegraph New Zealand article that's come out, hope I'm
Speaker 3: hoping will be a Brownstone paper coming out next week.
Speaker 3: But if you search for on Instagram, on Twitter, on substatic,
Speaker 3: and you will for at p s g r n
Speaker 3: Z so psgr is in New Zealand, twenty five year
Speaker 3: old New Zealand charity. We've been around for ages, but
Speaker 3: we've got no money, so no one knows about it.
Speaker 3: And ENDZ is on the end because that is the
Speaker 3: only like, the only handle I could get that is consistent.
Speaker 3: So if you search for PSCR and Z on subset,
Speaker 3: Twitter or Instagram, you'll find a link to us, and
Speaker 3: you'll find a link to the paper or ps TR
Speaker 3: dot org dot.
Speaker 2: NZ, PSCR dot org dot NZ that eighty page ninety
Speaker 2: page whatever piece is. They're both worth reading. Start with
Speaker 2: the shorter one and you'll know you'll get a line
Speaker 2: on yourself if you find that you're interested in more.
Speaker 2: And I'd approve that. So Jodie, it's been great and
Speaker 2: we shall talk soon.
Speaker 3: An absolute pleasure, late, and thank you for this chance.
Speaker 2: Now I have to report some bad news. We did
Speaker 2: have a mailroom and it was a very good mail
Speaker 2: room I my dad. Unfortunately the male failed to get delivered.
Speaker 2: That covers a lot of areas I know, and it's
Speaker 2: got all of us confused, but it's going to have
Speaker 2: to wait until next time. So the only thing left
Speaker 2: to say is with apologies of course, is that we
Speaker 2: shall return with two forty five in the not too
Speaker 2: distant future. Until then, thank you for listening and we
Speaker 2: shall talk soon.
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