Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks ed B.
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Speaker 1: It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
Speaker 1: the information, all the debates of the now, the Leyton
Speaker 1: Smith podcast, cowered by News Talks ed B.
Speaker 2: Welcome to podcast two hundred and eighty two for April thirty,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. Ramesh the Kerr honors us with his
Speaker 2: appearance this week. Now most of you are familiar with
Speaker 2: Ramesh the Kur, I think he excels himself on this occasion.
Speaker 2: Discussion runs about an hour and a quarter and it
Speaker 2: refers to many headline topics. For those who are unfamiliar
Speaker 2: with Ramesh, here are his qualifications. Have borrowed them from
Speaker 2: the Lowe Institute in Sydney. Ramesh the Kerr is Emeritus
Speaker 2: Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy the Australian
Speaker 2: National University, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International
Speaker 2: Affairs and Brownstone Institute. Senior Scott up I was Senior
Speaker 2: Vice Rector of the United Nations University and Assistant Secretary
Speaker 2: General of the United Nations. Educated in India and Canada.
Speaker 2: He was a Professor of International Relations at the University
Speaker 2: of Otago in New Zealand, Professor and head of the
Speaker 2: Peace Research Center at the ANU, and Foundation Director of
Speaker 2: the Balcilly School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario. He
Speaker 2: has also served as a consultant and advisor to the Australian,
Speaker 2: New Zealand and Norwegian governments on arms control, also on
Speaker 2: disarmament and international security issues. He was a commissioner and
Speaker 2: one of the principal authors of the Responsibility to Protect
Speaker 2: and senior advisor on reforms and principal writer of the
Speaker 2: United Nations Secretary General KOFE and NaN's Second Reform Report
Speaker 2: of two thousand and two and We're Not Done. The
Speaker 2: author or editor of new, umerous books, chapters in books
Speaker 2: and journal articles, Professor the Kerr has also been a
Speaker 2: regular contributor to media outlets, served on the international advisory
Speaker 2: boards of institutes in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America,
Speaker 2: and was the editor in chief of Global Governance twenty
Speaker 2: thirteen to twenty eighteen. His books include The United Nations
Speaker 2: Peace and Security From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect,
Speaker 2: published by Cambridge University Press twenty seventeen, Global Governance and
Speaker 2: the un An Unfinished Journey from Indiana University Press in
Speaker 2: twenty ten. The Responsibility to Protect Norm's Laws and the
Speaker 2: Use of Force in International Politics came out in twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, Oxford University Press, That's
Speaker 2: No Surprise twenty thirteen, Theorizing The Responsibility to Protect Cambridge
Speaker 2: University Press, twenty fifteen. And The Nuclear Band Treaty, A
Speaker 2: Transformational reframing of the Global Nuclear Order, published in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. Now, I know that was a long, well
Speaker 2: sort of introduction, but keep in mind that the knowledge
Speaker 2: and experience that he has guarded over a lengthy lifetime
Speaker 2: of work in various areas, as you've heard, qualifies him
Speaker 2: for respect for the opinions that he expresses, and there
Speaker 2: are many of them in the interview to follow, And
Speaker 2: here is a shortlist of some of the things that
Speaker 2: we touch on. Judicial activity, which is creeping, whiles not
Speaker 2: creeping in its racing up the scale of concern in
Speaker 2: much of the world India and Pakistan as a result
Speaker 2: of the recent heated clash China. The World Economic Forum.
Speaker 2: You'll be interested in his comments the United Nations, the WHO. Oh,
Speaker 2: you'll be interested in his opinion on the WHO hospital systems,
Speaker 2: mass migration, and the Canadian election. We touch on well,
Speaker 2: I do briefly in mentioning because that was that was
Speaker 2: yesterday and we were recording at the time when I
Speaker 2: think they were about two hours to go before the
Speaker 2: before the polling closed. So with that in mind, before
Speaker 2: we get to Ramesh, let me lead with Mark Karney's
Speaker 2: House of Cards, which is published by American Affairs and
Speaker 2: its senior editor Michael Suwenka. Two narratives were at play
Speaker 2: in Canada's election. Either the Great White Norse was going
Speaker 2: to continue on its liberal sonder weeg. Sonderweg. It's a
Speaker 2: word I'd not come across before, so I checked it out.
Speaker 2: It relates to the Weimar Democracy is the simplest way
Speaker 2: to put it, anyway, to continue on its liberal sounderweg,
Speaker 2: rejecting the right populist surge that has erupted elsewhere in
Speaker 2: the West. Or it was going to take the same
Speaker 2: plunge into the unknown that their American and British cousins
Speaker 2: had taken with Trump and Brexit. And from there I
Speaker 2: jumped straight to the closing paragraph. At the start of
Speaker 2: his ministry, Mark Carney made a bizarre gesture. He winked
Speaker 2: at the camera as if to cross the fourth wall
Speaker 2: and communicate with someone to those something to those watching
Speaker 2: on social media. Karne was then compared with the protagonist
Speaker 2: of the House of Cards, a shrewd Macavelian figure who
Speaker 2: comes in from the shadows to seize and hold power
Speaker 2: against great odds. Instead, what we Canadians got was a
Speaker 2: house of cards in the more literal sense, a fundamentally
Speaker 2: unstable structure that can be blown away at any time
Speaker 2: by a strong gust of wind and a storm is
Speaker 2: brewing across the border. Then there was my favorite comment
Speaker 2: from kerch Schlichter, who wrote this on x before the
Speaker 2: polls closed. He said, I sure hope Trump does not
Speaker 2: cause Canadians to elect the guy who is quite liberal,
Speaker 2: believes in climate change, won't rule out sending Canadian troops
Speaker 2: to fight in Ukraine, wants massive immigration, and wants to
Speaker 2: maintain imbalanced trade with the United States, over the other
Speaker 2: guy who does but who had a couple of videos
Speaker 2: where he frustrates reporters that amused American conservatives. Although that
Speaker 2: was very clever. Now after a short break, Rameshakur. Now,
Speaker 2: for those of you who've been listening for a few years,
Speaker 2: and I speak specifically about the radio program, you'd be
Speaker 2: aware of the name of Lance Green. Lance Green and
Speaker 2: I have been made for a long time. We established
Speaker 2: that relationship through doing some joint ventures in tourism, like
Speaker 2: we would take tours away. We started with the New Orleans.
Speaker 2: We ended up in Europe and particularly Italy. Lance has
Speaker 2: been quiet for the last few years COVID, etc. And
Speaker 2: he's now emerged with something different and I think enticing
Speaker 2: one word in his mind he writes best described Sicily
Speaker 2: extreme in the most beautiful way. Why would he say this?
Speaker 2: Sicily is a tapestry woven from threads of various cultures
Speaker 2: that have shaped the island over centuries, resulting in a
Speaker 2: unique blend of flavors and traditions. I've only been to
Speaker 2: Sicily once and I love it. I know other people
Speaker 2: who've been time and time again. Lance has organized something
Speaker 2: for the second half of June, and it's very special
Speaker 2: and it's only for a very small number of people.
Speaker 2: The journey focuses on two destinations, castell Mare de Gulfo
Speaker 2: and Palermo, it's designed to immerse us in the environment
Speaker 2: where we're staying, no rushing from place to place. Now,
Speaker 2: this journey is for no more than eight guests. Tolder
Speaker 2: was small and if you would like further information then
Speaker 2: you need to contact Lance by email at Lance at
Speaker 2: Lance Green dot endz, Lance at Lance Green dot en
Speaker 2: z and he will fill you in with all the detail.
Speaker 2: But you better be quick, I think, because this is
Speaker 2: only for a few people.
Speaker 1: Layton Smith.
Speaker 2: Ramesh the Kur is well known to most of the
Speaker 2: people listening to the podcast. For those who are not
Speaker 2: quite so familiar or those who need a reminder, he
Speaker 2: is an emeritus professor from the Crawford School of Public
Speaker 2: Policy at the Australian National University. Prior to that, he
Speaker 2: was at a Tiger University for a number of years.
Speaker 2: He has also taught in other places, including Hong Kong
Speaker 2: and in Britain. And should I include Canada there, Yes,
Speaker 2: of course, and that's very important. We'll get onto that
Speaker 2: short pig. But it's very good to have you back
Speaker 2: on the podcast, and I thank you.
Speaker 3: You're welcome listener. It's good to be back. Thank you
Speaker 3: for having me again.
Speaker 2: You have just returned from a three week journey. I
Speaker 2: understand to Singapore and London. Feel free to cough if
Speaker 2: you need to after picking up a bug on the plane,
Speaker 2: but I want to I want to start with a
Speaker 2: very general question because I have a long list of,
Speaker 2: shall we say, headers that I would love to get into.
Speaker 2: There is much going on in the world. There are
Speaker 2: people who are even here in this country who are
Speaker 2: very nervous about where things might be headed. But there
Speaker 2: are so many things happening, and they're happening, some of
Speaker 2: them predictable, others are happening from out of darkness. So
Speaker 2: it seems I'm sure you agree with what I've said.
Speaker 2: What I'm interested to know from you is what is
Speaker 2: the connection do you think between things that are happening
Speaker 2: in different parts of the world that maybe seem to
Speaker 2: have no connection.
Speaker 3: I think the shortest answer to that, which obviously I'm
Speaker 3: going to elaborate on, is that there is a definite
Speaker 3: thingdisiacal air about it, that we're coming to the end
Speaker 3: of one major era and transforming into another. So if
Speaker 3: we are in the midst of a transformative change, and
Speaker 3: hence the sense of unease and volatility and instability, but
Speaker 3: that has both domestic and international components, and it spreads
Speaker 3: across political, economic, trade, environmental, social, cultural issues, etc. And
Speaker 3: all of that adds to this growing sense of unease
Speaker 3: and anxiety, even as to aviare headed, who are potential
Speaker 3: allies and trends on the one side and adversaries and
Speaker 3: enemies on the other, Are we in fact going to
Speaker 3: end up with a major war? Bearing in mind that
Speaker 3: such major transformation in the past have been unleashed as
Speaker 3: a result of wars, which themselves have come at the
Speaker 3: moments of transition. So I think there is justified fear
Speaker 3: and anxiety. The great unknown is known and knowns if
Speaker 3: you like, and I doubt that anyone can predict what
Speaker 3: will come out into in the world on the other
Speaker 3: side of this turmoil.
Speaker 2: How much of a restraint do you think nuclear weapons are.
Speaker 3: It's a restraint, but it's a minor restraint. I've always
Speaker 3: thought that its role was exaggerated. Yes, it adds an
Speaker 3: element of caution, but it doesn't really change the un
Speaker 3: the mine underlying dynamics, and it certainly doesn't affect the
Speaker 3: domestic issues all that much. If you think of environmental
Speaker 3: issues there the trading order it introduced elements of caution.
Speaker 3: People might be more hesitant to go to a lot
Speaker 3: of war than they were in the past, but that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that wars have become history and that the
Speaker 3: use of force has been ruled out. Exhibit A, Russia
Speaker 3: and Ukraine, Exhibit B. The Middle East.
Speaker 2: There is as we speak, also a constant change in politics.
Speaker 2: I mean, at the moment as we speak, the Canadian
Speaker 2: election is being held. It's got a couple of hours
Speaker 2: to go before and a thing comes to the fore.
Speaker 2: So we'll leave that to others. But on your trip,
Speaker 2: of course to London, you undoubtedly had conversation with people
Speaker 2: about the about the local elections in Britain and then
Speaker 2: and then of course and you being in Australia, so
Speaker 2: this involves you. You have the Australian election in three
Speaker 2: or four days time, so give us your thoughts. And
Speaker 2: I'm particularly interested in in what you picked up from
Speaker 2: the local body election in Britain.
Speaker 3: Okay, again, let me break it into two sets of issues,
Speaker 3: one domestic one international. I think domestically, there is a
Speaker 3: very pronounced sense that democracy is under stress across the
Speaker 3: Western world, if not further beyond. And what we've seen
Speaker 3: is decades of the so called mass to the institutions
Speaker 3: by the center left and the social justice activists and
Speaker 3: the misnamed progressives, which has embedded cultural and social policies
Speaker 3: from one side of the archeological spectrum into the dominant institutions.
Speaker 3: And as the political atmosphere or landscape changes, they are
Speaker 3: mounting a ferocious resistance two attempts to reset the balance
Speaker 3: into a more traditional, to the most traditional center. And
Speaker 3: we've seen that in Europe and the rise of people
Speaker 3: like Giorgio Mulioni in Italy, center right parties in the Netherlands,
Speaker 3: center right parties rising to the four quite dramatically in Germany,
Speaker 3: in France. Reformed UK is part of that. Pierre Polieva
Speaker 3: in Canada was on the ascendant quite substantially for months
Speaker 3: and months and months until the governing Liberal Party replaced
Speaker 3: Justin Trudeau with Mark Karney. And I think if it
Speaker 3: had elections in another month, Kolievo would have been home comfortably.
Speaker 3: As we speak, it's on the knife page. And in
Speaker 3: Australia the Liberal should have been in this similar position.
Speaker 3: But I have to say this is a single most
Speaker 3: inept campaign I've experienced anywhere in the world from a
Speaker 3: center right party that had so many open goals to
Speaker 3: shoot that maybe is so confused that doesn't know which
Speaker 3: goal to aim at and as a result is shooting
Speaker 3: all over the ground that anywherey other, anywhere but the goal.
Speaker 3: So it looks like Anthony Albanesi and Labor will be
Speaker 3: back in. But we have a paradoxical situation where Poles
Speaker 3: confirm the widespread sense that Labor deserves to lose, but
Speaker 3: the Liberals don't deserve to win, and that is something
Speaker 3: again that I haven't experienced elsewhere. So we'll see how
Speaker 3: that goes as well. But the issues that are under
Speaker 3: contention in all these countries are backlash to net zero,
Speaker 3: and you'll have seen overnight as we speak, the massive
Speaker 3: power blackouts in Spain and Portugal and the good chance
Speaker 3: that they result from the switch to unreliables from the
Speaker 3: good old reliables of fossil fuel and nuclear power. They
Speaker 3: include elements of DEI and a pushback against that, with
Speaker 3: many firms now starting to react to that. They include
Speaker 3: elements of gender identity and the insanity of insisting that
Speaker 3: biology is less real than self perception, and the problems
Speaker 3: that they have caused. And remember for Trump, it's now
Speaker 3: I admit that that a single most effective campaign slogan
Speaker 3: against the Democrats was Trump is for you, Kamala Harris
Speaker 3: is for their them, referring to the pronouns.
Speaker 4: Was And then even more importantly in a sense, if
Speaker 4: you take this to the internet dimension, the pushback against
Speaker 4: globalization on the trade front and globalism.
Speaker 3: On the political front, and the real emergence of hard
Speaker 3: frontiers the state and a desire to reclaim national identity
Speaker 3: and the sense that national identity has been lost to
Speaker 3: ideological extremism. And at the end of the day, we
Speaker 3: are citizens of political systems, not economic systems, and desire
Speaker 3: to reprioritize politics and make politics control economics rather than
Speaker 3: be subservient to it. So that's a wise spread phenomenon,
Speaker 3: and then the Trump policies come into that. But internationally,
Speaker 3: if the state is back, then inevitably we are witnessing
Speaker 3: the return of geopolitics and the retreat of global institutions,
Speaker 3: and the sense that global institutions have begun to dominate
Speaker 3: the nation states instead of being servant to the nation states.
Speaker 3: And that also goes across a number of fronts and
Speaker 3: included the reaction with the policies on COVID management as well.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of disparate issues, but there is
Speaker 3: a way of connecting the dots in these terms of
Speaker 3: resetting the normative dominant normative points for governing both domestic
Speaker 3: and international regimes and political systems and therefore effectively governing
Speaker 3: our lives. And they're very pronounced. Desire for citizens to
Speaker 3: reassert control over the processes instead of being norm takers
Speaker 3: and value takers and economy takers, etc. And the pushback
Speaker 3: against technocratic expertise, which has been proven to be not
Speaker 3: very smart.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, you have provided me
Speaker 2: with almost countless exits along the way to pursue some
Speaker 2: of the things that you that you mentioned.
Speaker 3: Well, it is a time for a big picture look
Speaker 3: and analysis, I think.
Speaker 2: But there are things, there are certain things happening that
Speaker 2: are counter to what and I agree with what you said,
Speaker 2: by the way that that count counter what you said
Speaker 2: and what and what I agree with I mean, for instance,
Speaker 2: the situation with judicial matters all over the well what
Speaker 2: we what we call the Western world, but mainly in
Speaker 2: the anglosphere, and stretching a little beyond but specifically.
Speaker 3: The Germany and coming also yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Is something that would confuse a lot of people. I think. So,
Speaker 2: so here's here's the question. It's happening in Australia, it's
Speaker 2: happening in New Zealand, it's happening specifically in America, and
Speaker 2: I think that's where it kicked off in Britain and
Speaker 2: the other and the other place. As you mentioned, why
Speaker 2: is it happening?
Speaker 3: I think we've been presented with certain ideological perspectives dressed
Speaker 3: up as scientific consensus and facts. Take environment net zero,
Speaker 3: climate change what used to be global warming. Until things change,
Speaker 3: It's hard to argue that science is settled, because science
Speaker 3: is always work in progress. But if you get the
Speaker 3: illusion of scientific consensus, then you engage in de legitimization
Speaker 3: of any opposing points of view by attaching the labeled
Speaker 3: denialism and deniers picking up on the pejorative views of
Speaker 3: that with regard to those who for example, deny the Holocaust,
Speaker 3: and COVID fell into that as well, and well credential
Speaker 3: people who raised skeptical questions about what was being done
Speaker 3: or quickly pushed away from the public square and deny
Speaker 3: the voice and stuff Now if you extend that, then
Speaker 3: what happens is people with a different point of view.
Speaker 3: Our treat is not as people with a different but
Speaker 3: legitimate point of view who need to be engaged within conversation,
Speaker 3: but people who are science denies at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, even evil and deserve to be hounded out
Speaker 3: of the public space. And then political leaders go down
Speaker 3: that path, you say, well, we can use the law
Speaker 3: to put them in jail. So the long efforts to
Speaker 3: use weaponized laarfare against Trump, the things they're doing in
Speaker 3: Germany in denying legitimacy and trying to suppress.
Speaker 5: The AfD, the verdict against Marine le Pen in France,
Speaker 5: and talking to me, you mentioned my visit to the
Speaker 5: UK to talking to people there.
Speaker 3: I hadn't realized, but they are afraid that the slightest
Speaker 3: opportunity the laws will be used to silence and perhaps
Speaker 3: even imprisoned Nigel Farage, so he's got to be extremely
Speaker 3: careful in things he says. So there is that sense of,
Speaker 3: you know, the phrase that has become common in the
Speaker 3: UK to fear justice, and it's hard to deny the
Speaker 3: reality of that in the UK and in the US
Speaker 3: and in other places. So yes, there is a sense
Speaker 3: that law which should be impartial and objective, and no
Speaker 3: one is above the law, but no one is under
Speaker 3: the law, and that everyone is equal and deserves the
Speaker 3: equal protection of the law. That sense seems to have
Speaker 3: been thrown out, and there is again a lot of
Speaker 3: unease over that. So I said at the start that
Speaker 3: democracy is under stress, but I think there is a
Speaker 3: deep division as to whether the greater threat to demoocracy
Speaker 3: comes from the right or the left. And as one example,
Speaker 3: as one if you like trivia, yet telling example of
Speaker 3: that is you can have a very interesting and real
Speaker 3: debate on whether the greater threat to democracy and our
Speaker 3: freedoms comes from censorship of free speech. And that is
Speaker 3: something that we are all undergoing as well. But to
Speaker 3: say that you can't have the debate that there is
Speaker 3: no compensation. That's what has happened across a range of issues,
Speaker 3: and people are repelling against that.
Speaker 2: I think it's intriguing because I've been battling against the
Speaker 2: scam of man made climate change for decades and we
Speaker 2: got to the point where you started to wonder if
Speaker 2: it was really worth it. Well, it was, of course,
Speaker 2: but all of a sudden from seemingly out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: It started to turn, and it's turning. It's turning very
Speaker 2: strongly in some areas, except New Zealand. We have a
Speaker 2: supposedly right of center government elected last year and they're
Speaker 2: pursuing the net zero full force. It's just absurd in
Speaker 2: the first place.
Speaker 3: I think on that later, and it helps to break
Speaker 3: it down into different components of the tibate. One is
Speaker 3: the science, and this claim to scientific consensus is very questionable. Now. Also,
Speaker 3: of course, science doesn't rely on majority opinion. It can
Speaker 3: be overturned with time, and it does change with time,
Speaker 3: so there is a genuine quot for questioning the basic
Speaker 3: thesis and the details of the science. Second, even if
Speaker 3: you agree or have a majority view on science, there's
Speaker 3: still the question of how you convert that into public policy.
Speaker 3: And the third part, separate from that, is the politics
Speaker 3: of it. If you have a consensus amongst the governing
Speaker 3: elite and the ruling elite, and the cultural elit and
Speaker 3: the economists and the environmentalists, you still have to deal
Speaker 3: with the fact that there are serious empirical consequences of
Speaker 3: climate change policies which will result in impoverishment and emiseration
Speaker 3: of people's substantial drop in lifestyles and a transfer of
Speaker 3: wealth and power to potential enemies internationally. And then you think, well,
Speaker 3: what is the contribution of Australia and the UK in
Speaker 3: the global issue on the global landscape environmental landscape? And
Speaker 3: the answer it's very very modest. If VIEWO to reach
Speaker 3: near zero tomorrow for practical purposes, given the existing policies
Speaker 3: of China, Russia, India and now in the United States,
Speaker 3: that would not even amount to a drop in the bucket.
Speaker 3: Now if you extend that to New Zealand, it becomes
Speaker 3: even more absurd. So why should we accept substantial drops
Speaker 3: in our living standards? Then that makes not the slightest
Speaker 3: different to the overall goal. How many call for stations
Speaker 3: and are being opened by China and by India every month?
Speaker 2: Well, I think I think I need to inject another
Speaker 2: aspect of this debate, and that is the media and
Speaker 2: the media. The media in different sets in different parts
Speaker 2: of the world has had different different approaches. In New
Speaker 2: Zealand and you would probably be familiar, the media put
Speaker 2: a blank on it. They won't discuss it, they won't
Speaker 2: they won't entertain anything. But the official line. Now I'll
Speaker 2: give you two. I'll give you two responses, relatively recently
Speaker 2: over the last few months, two queries to various people
Speaker 2: in positions of shall we say unfortunately authority. One answer
Speaker 2: to a to a serious question was well, you've got
Speaker 2: your science and we've got our science, and we believe
Speaker 2: our science. End of story, end of discussion. I challenged
Speaker 2: various people too, in particular Prime Minister and the Prime
Speaker 2: Minister Scientific Advisor, over the years over it, and it
Speaker 2: was it was The reaction was simply, this is what
Speaker 2: the science says and that's where we're going with it.
Speaker 2: And that's the end of it. Again, no discussion. And
Speaker 2: if you if you put up somebody to discuss somebody
Speaker 2: of authority, no one will turn up. No one will
Speaker 2: take them on. We witness that here on a number
Speaker 2: of occasions over a good ten years.
Speaker 3: Anyway, The old thing on that is the same people,
Speaker 3: the same authorities you like in court, are the ones
Speaker 3: who will insist that Mauri myths have equal status with
Speaker 3: Western empurple science.
Speaker 2: There's nothing I can say about that that I could
Speaker 2: get away with, no because and.
Speaker 3: The same people have been saying for the last three
Speaker 3: to four years that a man can grow a cervix
Speaker 3: and women can have a penis. Even kirs Tama said
Speaker 3: one percent of visions going around with women are going
Speaker 3: around with penises, which we're tut with something like thirty
Speaker 3: thousand visions in that category. He's now, of course going
Speaker 3: back on that after the Supreme Wourt judgment there. But yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right, it's amazing that they don't see the contradictions
Speaker 3: and often the hypocrisy in terms of what they proclaim
Speaker 3: as the science and then the individual behavior.
Speaker 2: Well, my belief is that I'm thinking of one or
Speaker 2: two people in particular. My belief is that they they're
Speaker 2: playing a different game. The The other one that I've
Speaker 2: recalled is the other response that I have recalled is
Speaker 2: that when challenged with the size of New Zealand and
Speaker 2: its output, well we have to do our share. And
Speaker 2: it's the dumbest, most stupid response that you that you
Speaker 2: can give for the simple reass as you have explained,
Speaker 2: the size of the size of the country, the upper
Speaker 2: of the country and the influence that it has on
Speaker 2: anything is zero.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: So it's a dumb thing to say. Sorry, I get
Speaker 2: carried away on this. I want to quote you, sure
Speaker 2: you happen to be back in India based in New
Speaker 2: Delhi doing archival and interview research for your PhD. The
Speaker 2: experience of the overnight transition from a rambunctious democracy to
Speaker 2: which argumentative Indians had taken with gusto, to a stifling
Speaker 2: and oppressive rule by state feat was deeply and permanently sobering.
Speaker 2: It led to my first academic article on returning to Canada,
Speaker 2: the fate of India's Parliamentary democracy in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2: What effect did that have on you?
Speaker 3: A permanent and passionate believer in democracy, freedoms and the
Speaker 3: central importance of free speech. I do not like to
Speaker 3: delegitimize people with different points of view. I'm happy to
Speaker 3: engage people in debate endlessly if need be, And maybe
Speaker 3: that's my Indian character. Provided that discussion is carried on
Speaker 3: with civility and mutual respect. It can be passionate, it
Speaker 3: can be robust, but there's no need for it to
Speaker 3: degenerate into name calling and vulgarity and abuse. And what
Speaker 3: has happened since that I wrote that, to my great astonishment,
Speaker 3: is the walk back from those principles. You know, the
Speaker 3: famous saying I will disagree with you, but I'll defend
Speaker 3: your right to disagree with me to the death. We
Speaker 3: walked back from that and lost our core values in
Speaker 3: the process, and we need to re establish that. And
Speaker 3: the media, I agree with you. The media is guilty
Speaker 3: of that. But the media is part of the institutions,
Speaker 3: and as part of the institutional structure, the media has
Speaker 3: suffered as much, if not more than most other institutions
Speaker 3: in the decline of public trust, and that has been
Speaker 3: documented year after year around the Western worldmar the substantial
Speaker 3: drop in trust of public institutions, including media, including doctors,
Speaker 3: including governments, experts in general.
Speaker 2: Speaking of speaking of doctors, there is an issue regarding
Speaker 2: the medical professions, particularly public medicine hospital systems. We have
Speaker 2: a crisis. Australia has a crisis. Britain certainly has a crisis.
Speaker 2: What do you put that down too, that's.
Speaker 3: Harder to say. Well, medicine is starting to be politicized,
Speaker 3: and we see that again in the States, and I
Speaker 3: hope we don't import some of their tendencies in that,
Speaker 3: but I suspect we might. So that's one element. Indoctrination
Speaker 3: in medical schools indoctrination into dominant political and cultural ideologies
Speaker 3: as well. I think we have lost control of public
Speaker 3: expenditure in pursuit of luxury beliefs like climate change. Therefore
Speaker 3: have reduced capacity unless we want to keep on increasing
Speaker 3: taxation to cover core issues. Now in the Australian context,
Speaker 3: the best example of that is the so called NDIS
Speaker 3: National Disability Insurance Scheme, which was introduced by the Gillard
Speaker 3: government a decade ago, and the budget I think for
Speaker 3: the NDIS now has already overtaken or is set to overtake.
Speaker 3: The entire Medicare budget is completely out of control. Many
Speaker 3: of us predicted at the time that because it was
Speaker 3: based on the field good factor, they would not be
Speaker 3: able to control it. More and more groups who want
Speaker 3: to be eligible for that there will be a lot
Speaker 3: of routing and fraud, and that has happened. So that's
Speaker 3: another side to it. Throwing money into all sorts of
Speaker 3: activist causes means you're diverting money that should be spent
Speaker 3: on core health issues into other areas. So I think
Speaker 3: that whole you know what we've ended up in many countries,
Speaker 3: including Australia, and then be very surprised if New Zealand
Speaker 3: was not worse than this is that number of net
Speaker 3: beneficiaries of government largess is more than half, and that
Speaker 3: means they can use the voting numbers to keep demanding more.
Speaker 3: I'm not aware of too many expenditure budget lines that
Speaker 3: managed to get abolished. And we've seen the effort by
Speaker 3: elln Mosque in the stage and the terminal that is created.
Speaker 3: And yet that's what we need for any additional expendites
Speaker 3: to propose there should be a requirement to identify equivalent
Speaker 3: cutback somewhere else. But instead what's granted today is becomes
Speaker 3: a line in the sand that must not be questioned
Speaker 3: in due course. And then other demands crop up and
Speaker 3: what used to be regarded almost with shame, the need
Speaker 3: to receive government handout is now regarded as a matter
Speaker 3: of entitlement. And that has that's a change that has
Speaker 3: happened within our lifetime. If you think back to it,
Speaker 3: yes that our parents would never have agreed and will
Speaker 3: be horrified to think what has happened today. And now
Speaker 3: you get aggressive demands that you know, it's just a
Speaker 3: cup of coffee for you, and it's this and this
Speaker 3: for me sort of thing. So I think that basic
Speaker 3: element of balancing books, of restricting government to minimum flow
Speaker 3: rather than the ceiling in terms of what it should
Speaker 3: be doing, the idea that it's my right to be
Speaker 3: looked after over the government, which came to a head
Speaker 3: again under COVID with massive handouts and subsidies and did
Speaker 3: a renewals as well. So if you just take energy security, okay, affordable, accessible, reliable,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Can you find when you find any.
Speaker 3: Well, But that's the point I would love to go
Speaker 3: back to the situation that the government says, fine, we
Speaker 3: will let market forces decide. We'll lift in Australia the
Speaker 3: ban on uranium or on nuclear energy, but you won't
Speaker 3: give any subsidy. But we'll also take away subsidies from renewables.
Speaker 3: You've got the abscess situation where with a combination of
Speaker 3: massive subsidies to the renewal sector and physical penalties to
Speaker 3: the fossil fuels, we made it costly to maintain coal
Speaker 3: fout fire stations. But then when the price of that
Speaker 3: hits in terms of power, out of this we start
Speaker 3: directing subsidy again to cold stations to keep going for
Speaker 3: another few months. Another few years. So the distortions are massive.
Speaker 3: And if you just take the state out of that
Speaker 3: and say, let the market decide, we'll get a better
Speaker 3: idea of where people want to put their own money
Speaker 3: rather than taxpayer money. But that's across the board. I'm
Speaker 3: just taking that as an example, but that's across the
Speaker 3: board as a problem. So I think we do need
Speaker 3: It goes back to where I started off. It's a
Speaker 3: transformational moment in world politics and world economics and world order,
Speaker 3: and I'm not sure where it'll end up, but I
Speaker 3: think the sense is that the path we're on was
Speaker 3: simply not sustainable, and I think the instability and volatility
Speaker 3: and problems we are encountering is all that coming to
Speaker 3: a head. As I said earlier, historically these transformational moments
Speaker 3: in going from one order to the next have come
Speaker 3: at the end of major world wars. Unfortunately, given the
Speaker 3: reality of nuclear weapons, they can't afford that. So where
Speaker 3: do we go at the moment. The countries that are
Speaker 3: avoiding the excesses of this insanity are countries outside the West,
Speaker 3: and so we need to look at that as well.
Speaker 3: In this Western world, the hope for something new that's
Speaker 3: most sustainable, not in the environmental sense, but more generally
Speaker 3: is the United States. And you see a battle lines
Speaker 3: being drawn between the United States and Europe on that
Speaker 3: as well, Europe being the state welface welfare state out
Speaker 3: of it and the United States being more of the
Speaker 3: free market and free society side of it. Which is simplifying,
Speaker 3: but there is enough of a truth and that to
Speaker 3: make it as a useful generalization. Are going to have
Speaker 3: to fall into that and decide where you want to go. There.
Speaker 2: There's a family member of ours and it's not my son,
Speaker 2: it's somebody else who who is actually English, lives in London,
Speaker 2: has just returned from a visit to Poland. And while
Speaker 2: I can't detail the picture too much, I can tell
Speaker 2: you that this particular family member was stunned with the
Speaker 2: progress that Poland has made m h. And it's leaving
Speaker 2: the rest of it's going to I read somewhere relatively
Speaker 2: recently that that Poland that Poland was going to be
Speaker 2: the biggest, biggest or the most successful state in Europe
Speaker 2: within a very short period of time.
Speaker 3: It doesn't surprise me. Lad you know something that we
Speaker 3: tend to forget, how many people in the West do
Speaker 3: you think are aware of the history of Polish troops
Speaker 3: intervening in the Great Fight against Islam just outside of
Speaker 3: Vienna and halting the march of Islam into Europe. Not
Speaker 3: many was critical in that, so there is a certain
Speaker 3: history behind that as well. But countries like Poland Hungary
Speaker 3: is another one, countries that have emerged from communist rule
Speaker 3: and are aware of the threats and dangers of totalitarianism
Speaker 3: and the role of the Catholic Church in sustaining the
Speaker 3: nationalism of Poland. So you've got let's say, the soft
Speaker 3: states in the West, which I engaged in an orgy
Speaker 3: of national self abasement and all the evils of the
Speaker 3: world are laid at our own doors. And then you've
Speaker 3: got others who still want to preserve that national identity,
Speaker 3: take pride in their history and their contributions to human
Speaker 3: welfare and progress, through their enlightenment, through the industrial revolution
Speaker 3: led by fossil fuels, which have raised living standards around
Speaker 3: the world, which have made education and better health possible.
Speaker 3: We have made life a lot easier for all of us.
Speaker 3: We have democratized society, breaking the old feudal system of
Speaker 3: law of lords and service. So I think we've lost
Speaker 3: that sense of perspective. Yes, bad things were done, but
Speaker 3: the amount of good that Western civilization has brought to
Speaker 3: the world far out weighs the harms it has caused.
Speaker 3: And I speak as someone who comes from a country
Speaker 3: that was colonized, whether British. Now that you know, there
Speaker 3: were many bad things that were done, but historically speaking,
Speaker 3: I rather it was Britain that colonized India than some
Speaker 3: of the others, which I think would have left us
Speaker 3: in a much worse state. So so you know, and
Speaker 3: like before they came, was not idealic uh and living
Speaker 3: in paradise in Asia. So I think that that that
Speaker 3: whole issue of perspective and and and and teaching history
Speaker 3: with a balance that bad things were done, but which
Speaker 3: was the country that ended slavery and and paid daily
Speaker 3: for that in both treasure and life. It was Britain.
Speaker 3: So I think that I think the national self abasement
Speaker 3: is probably the best phrase in that you know, it
Speaker 3: puzzles me. I don't understand it, and you'll see. And
Speaker 3: I think I've said this in an earlier interview with
Speaker 3: you as well. Some of the most passionate deferent defenders
Speaker 3: of the West's role in progregress and freedoms and manifestry
Speaker 3: humanity are the immigrants, and it tends to be second
Speaker 3: and third gnimeration immigrants who then want to revise history
Speaker 3: and the talk of reparations and the evils of the West, etc.
Speaker 3: So I don't know you. You well, you could talk
Speaker 3: endlessly about that, but it is a great puzzle to
Speaker 3: me aster why we believe we are amongst the most
Speaker 3: be meaning West Christian West, the most evil people ever
Speaker 3: in the world.
Speaker 2: Well, bringing it back home momentarily, there is a scenario
Speaker 2: in this country, and you referred to it earlier with
Speaker 2: regard to universities and the science, et cetera, and the
Speaker 2: nonsense that goes that goes on. But we we have
Speaker 2: brought a lot of people into this country, even just
Speaker 2: in the last year, and I don't have any I
Speaker 2: don't have any faith in the fact that the kids
Speaker 2: of those new arrivals are going to get the education
Speaker 2: that you would believe that they should have and that
Speaker 2: many others of us do as well. So they're going
Speaker 2: to they're going to grow up well with the falsehoods
Speaker 2: and the encouragement to believe other things. And I don't
Speaker 2: know what the answer to that is, because it's it's
Speaker 2: not in the media at this particular point of time.
Speaker 2: It it isn't in the politics really at this at
Speaker 2: this point of time, the politicians themselves appear to be
Speaker 2: either unfamiliar or non caring or frightened of actually standing
Speaker 2: up and being counted. And I got an email from
Speaker 2: I got an email from somebody who, well, this will
Speaker 2: be read in the in the mail room after the
Speaker 2: interview that we are doing. The author said, well, as well,
Speaker 2: America has voted for the man of common sense, Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: And if this was an election year in New Zealand,
Speaker 2: I think that for the very first time, I'm ready
Speaker 2: to vote for Winston Peters because like him or not,
Speaker 2: he has been the man of common sense for literally
Speaker 2: literally all his political life. How much of how much?
Speaker 2: How much of that there there is a wash in
Speaker 2: the community. I don't know, but I've certainly heard similar
Speaker 2: comments in numbers. So you know, who who knows what
Speaker 2: the what the result might be. Because the next election
Speaker 2: is eighteen months off and Winston's getting on of it.
Speaker 3: I think your correspondent has put has put his or
Speaker 3: her finger on a very important point in understanding contemporary
Speaker 3: Western politics, and that is you have an elite consensus.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to have said this in an earlier interview.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that the divide is no longer between Democrats
Speaker 3: and Republicans, or labor and Tories, et cetera. It's actually
Speaker 3: elites versus deplorables, if you like most people what in
Speaker 3: the States they call eighty twenty issues, in that Democrats
Speaker 3: find themselves supporting causes that are supported only by twenty percent.
Speaker 3: It may not be eighty twenty in Australia, but it's
Speaker 3: certainly sixty forty. The percentage that broke down on the
Speaker 3: Voice referendum sixty percent of it, forty percent supported it,
Speaker 3: and I think that will be across the board on
Speaker 3: most issues. Again, I don't know what it will be
Speaker 3: in New Zealand, but where they have had elite consensus
Speaker 3: across parties and hence the notion of UNI parties, there
Speaker 3: is great scope politically for disruptive parties and they are
Speaker 3: derided as populists, but that's because they are identifying with
Speaker 3: causes that are popular. So far from a term of derision,
Speaker 3: populist tractly is an accurate empirical description of where the
Speaker 3: center of gravity lies in the electorate rather than in
Speaker 3: the elites. And what you see is people rising and
Speaker 3: parties rising, whether under charismatical leaders or under normal leaders.
Speaker 3: If you like to occupy that space and to expand
Speaker 3: that space, and when that becomes a threat, that's when
Speaker 3: they start to try and ban them using dubious legal weapons.
Speaker 3: It's certainly true of the AfD epasion. The last couple
Speaker 3: of Poles, I think, for the first time, has majority
Speaker 3: support nationally in the UK. Not forget about local elections
Speaker 3: nationally now reform is polling number one, and conserves and
Speaker 3: labor are buying for number two and three. So this
Speaker 3: both by an eys of farage that he's going to
Speaker 3: be the next prime minister, and most recently, I think
Speaker 3: while I was there he assessed his chances at forty
Speaker 3: five percent that he'll be the next prime minister. There
Speaker 3: is a truth truth to that. It's what explains Trump's
Speaker 3: remarkable political comeback, that he speaks to the majority view
Speaker 3: outside of elite consensus in the medi world centers. And
Speaker 3: that's where Peter doesn't has missed out in Australia. It's
Speaker 3: been true in Canada. Again, it may be that Winston
Speaker 3: Peters represents that gathering majority point of view in New
Speaker 3: Zealand as well. So I think if the elite parties
Speaker 3: maintain the uniparty consensus and give the one finger sign
Speaker 3: to the electorate in terms of what the people want,
Speaker 3: then there will be others who will rise to take
Speaker 3: up that space, and they will complain about the far
Speaker 3: right becoming dominant. Well, the way to avoid the far
Speaker 3: right becoming dominant is to speak to the political center.
Speaker 3: So the overturn window that is called what's become possible
Speaker 3: to discuss and to move on will have to open
Speaker 3: up to these movements and these forces. Otherwise I think
Speaker 3: we're going to head for a revolution which will not
Speaker 3: necessarily be peaceful. So I think my sense is that
Speaker 3: the push track is going to intensify, and either one
Speaker 3: of the established party's senses that and response to that,
Speaker 3: or they get pushed aside and we'll see the emergence
Speaker 3: of so called populist leaders movements parties in every country
Speaker 3: one after the other. And again Poland is a good
Speaker 3: example of a party that remains in this sense sensible
Speaker 3: and prepared to protect what it believes in If you
Speaker 3: don't have core values and convictions that you're prepared to
Speaker 3: act on, you're lost to the society and people who
Speaker 3: demonstrate that. So there is more scope for authenticity, and
Speaker 3: that is another reason for the popularity of Trump, of
Speaker 3: Miloney or Victor oband in Hungary of Nigel Faraje. In
Speaker 3: the UK, people's sense that at least they say what
Speaker 3: they mean, they do what they say, and they prepare
Speaker 3: to fight for what they believe in instead of pandering
Speaker 3: to the latest fad and the latest outbreak of political correctness.
Speaker 3: And there is a great hunger in the electorate for
Speaker 3: those sorts of leaders who can connect both emotionally and intellectually,
Speaker 3: explain why somethings matter, and explain what they intend to
Speaker 3: do and how they intend to get to that shared destination,
Speaker 3: rather than take the knee and bend to the political
Speaker 3: cross windsor so.
Speaker 2: Give me a number out of out of ten that
Speaker 2: you would that you would give Peter Dunton on what
Speaker 2: you've just said.
Speaker 3: I think he's been a disappointment. Give me a number,
Speaker 3: maybe maybe four if you're generous.
Speaker 2: Fudly enough. Given three, yeah, well, funnily enough, the three
Speaker 2: I was going to say the four is close to
Speaker 2: where I was, but three is the best best I
Speaker 2: can do now. The question then is why is he
Speaker 2: the leader of the Liberal Party? Where where is the talent?
Speaker 3: The talent is there? You know who I'd like as
Speaker 3: leader of the liborbody. Of all the people they have today,
Speaker 3: just enterprise, jeez, I'm not surprised she is the closest
Speaker 3: they have. I'm not surprised to people to the sorts
Speaker 3: of people you are discussing, and I like people like
Speaker 3: Alex Antick and Matt Canavan on the front bench.
Speaker 2: You must be a right winger.
Speaker 3: I'm far right, Okay, I'm far right. I just stood
Speaker 3: still in the world turned around and where I was
Speaker 3: far left has become far right, such as life.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, the idea is you improve as you grow,
Speaker 2: so you're on You're on track. Look, I want to
Speaker 2: I want to concentrate on on Trump for the Trump's
Speaker 2: entire political history. You write is a cautionary tale against
Speaker 2: confusing elite and media fury for heartland site sentiment. A
Speaker 2: certain strategic coherence at a common tactic unite Trump's domestic
Speaker 2: and foreign policies in pursuit of the overarching goal of
Speaker 2: making America great again. The bigger concern is not that
Speaker 2: there's no method to his apparent madness, but that the
Speaker 2: implementation of his ambitious national and international agenda could be
Speaker 2: imperiled by incompetence and bumbling, as with the amateurish use
Speaker 2: of signal chat groups for highly sensitive discussions. Pick it
Speaker 2: up from there and tell us why you wrote a column.
Speaker 2: Trump's tariffs make sense.
Speaker 3: Well, if you look at the head lines and the
Speaker 3: analysis in the media and the dominant consensus amos the
Speaker 3: elites on his tariff policy. That's where it started off. Obviously,
Speaker 3: I'm not an economist, and the economic orthodoxy agrees that
Speaker 3: tariffs are a bad idea, that they cause you harm,
Speaker 3: that damage your consumers and effect your bottom line, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera, which may or may not be correct. But
Speaker 3: the reality is decades of globalization and opening up your
Speaker 3: borders and pursuing free trade have resulted in the industrialization
Speaker 3: wastelands where they used to be thriving industrial production, a
Speaker 3: loss of manufacturing capacity, and jobless growth. Whether economy grows overall,
Speaker 3: for the standards of living and wages have not kept pace.
Speaker 3: Even with the rise in cost of living, so that
Speaker 3: for the first time, the next generation will be poorer
Speaker 3: than the previous generation. And the rebellion against that caused
Speaker 3: not the least by pursuit of these crazy policies where
Speaker 3: we want to appoint people not just at a recruitment level,
Speaker 3: but now we're in senior positions of decision making in
Speaker 3: public and private institutions based on criteria of race and gender,
Speaker 3: et cetera, rather than on merit and accomplishments, while providing
Speaker 3: or creating an infrastructure that encourages equality of opportunity rather
Speaker 3: than achieve rather than lifestyle based on inherited attributes. And
Speaker 3: so he's rebelling against that and has tried to act
Speaker 3: with a sense of urgency because he's only got one
Speaker 3: term and he remembers what happened with the elites pushing
Speaker 3: back in the first term. You see these policies in
Speaker 3: opposition to DEI, in abandonment of net zero climate change parispact,
Speaker 3: on the trade front and other areas as well, and
Speaker 3: then immigration as a crossboard or on border issue. You know,
Speaker 3: they don't even know was the ten million or twenty
Speaker 3: million people who came into the US illegally under the
Speaker 3: Bible dustry.
Speaker 2: It's extraordinary variation in numbers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because they didn't move and keep records. But I
Speaker 3: mean it's an extraordinary statistic. Why is that not actually
Speaker 3: any innovation sort of thing? And then internationally, of course,
Speaker 3: the inexorable slide of wealth and power to China, done
Speaker 3: with the help of Western countries and the determination to
Speaker 3: stop that, and if just and how do you say
Speaker 3: that in my forthcoming article, if we just think of that,
Speaker 3: one of the things that has been brought home in
Speaker 3: Ukraine is how quickly Russia was able to upscale its
Speaker 3: armament's production and move from production in the factory to
Speaker 3: delivery on the battlefront, and the glacial speed with which
Speaker 3: the West has tried to respond to that, so that
Speaker 3: the assistance that we've given to Ukraine has ended up
Speaker 3: depleting our own stocks of these munitions, and we can't
Speaker 3: do that. You think of the time it takes to
Speaker 3: build one warship today in the US compared to the
Speaker 3: number they were producing per month during the Second World War,
Speaker 3: and you'll get an idea of the difference. Did you know,
Speaker 3: for example, that in four years recently China has built
Speaker 3: an entire fleet equivalent to the total British Royal Navy fleet.
Speaker 2: Did I know that, not specifically, No.
Speaker 3: That's an extraordinary thing to think about. So China can
Speaker 3: produce these things. And you know, the other thing we
Speaker 3: learned from Ukraine is contrary to initial predictions and commentary,
Speaker 3: in fact, Russia has been able to modernize and to
Speaker 3: readjustice tactics and there is not that great qualitative discrepancy
Speaker 3: between their munitions today and the Western ones that people
Speaker 3: were saying at the start of it, and as German
Speaker 3: products that are failing on the battle, et cetera. So
Speaker 3: I think if you think of that and you think, well,
Speaker 3: what it we were to end up in a shooting
Speaker 3: war with China, short of nuclear war, you will not
Speaker 3: be able to sustain a military conflict for any length
Speaker 3: of time because we don't have the capacity to do
Speaker 3: that today. And that's because we outsourced an offshore and
Speaker 3: made ourselves dependent on critical long supply chains. So the
Speaker 3: tariffs are a way of in that sense, they become
Speaker 3: a strategic choice for which there is an economic price.
Speaker 3: But if you're going to engage in a sustain conflict
Speaker 3: along the lines of the Two Wars to World Wars
Speaker 3: that lasted for several years. You have to have that
Speaker 3: sort of industrial capacity at home, and that applies. I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously you're not in the same skate in Australia and
Speaker 3: usually isn't there at all. But our industrial capacity has
Speaker 3: also holed out all in the name of economic efficiency,
Speaker 3: lower prices for the consumer, whether or not it produces
Speaker 3: more jobs at home, whether or not it increases our
Speaker 3: dependence on potential adversaries. So in that sense, if they're
Speaker 3: convinced that China is a real enemy, the tariffs becomes
Speaker 3: a way means and a strategic tactic, a strategic ploy
Speaker 3: to reverse offshoring and instead reshow manifact in capacity back
Speaker 3: in the American heartland. We already know that the United
Speaker 3: States remains the most innovative and the best balanced economy,
Speaker 3: but I think they want to make it also once
Speaker 3: again the manufacturing powerhouse for the world, or at least
Speaker 3: move away song items from China are two countries like India. Maybe,
Speaker 3: So in that sense, there is a certain strategic logic
Speaker 3: to everything he is doing, and that is we have
Speaker 3: to restore our self confidence. We have to restore pride
Speaker 3: in what we stand forward be, meaning both the America
Speaker 3: and the Western generally, we need to end the orgy
Speaker 3: of national self amazement, and we need to think strategically
Speaker 3: and long term about what if we end up in
Speaker 3: a prolonged trade and heaven forbid milt you over China.
Speaker 3: Are we going to be able to sustain it so
Speaker 3: that at the end of it we prevail or are
Speaker 3: you going to accept defeat? So if you think that
Speaker 3: to any situation, and the old logic of military preparations
Speaker 3: and preparedness, whether you win or lose a war is
Speaker 3: not answered on the day the war breaks out. It's
Speaker 3: answered in the years and decads leading up to that.
Speaker 3: If you have the capacity not just the military, but
Speaker 3: the industrial capacity and the economic capacity to sustain and
Speaker 3: prevail in a major war, and that's the way I
Speaker 3: think the coherence element comes in. But in implementation it's
Speaker 3: been surprisingly amateurs and they're paying a political price for
Speaker 3: that at the moment. I hope they recover in time,
Speaker 3: but we'll wait and see. But one thing I might
Speaker 3: add to that is too many opponents have under estimated
Speaker 3: Donald Trump to their own cost in the past, so
Speaker 3: I think we need to bear that in mind. He
Speaker 3: is not your conventional politician. Everything he says says is
Speaker 3: in as an opening gambit in a complex protected negotiation,
Speaker 3: or sometimes I think he's just trolling his abbondance.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you you read him very well? How did
Speaker 2: that come about? Did you read a book or two?
Speaker 2: Did you work it out yourself? Do you have insight
Speaker 2: into a bit of psychology?
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: Okay? And I accept that.
Speaker 3: I accept that that was only myself.
Speaker 2: That was that was that was only the introduction to
Speaker 2: the question. And I think you just answered it, you
Speaker 2: think for yourself. But why is it that there are
Speaker 2: so many people who can't grasp it? And and that's
Speaker 2: the majority majority of people by far?
Speaker 3: Really well with Trump with Americans, let's stick to that.
Speaker 3: You get two caps. His supporters are only two, well
Speaker 3: aware of his character flaws and other flaws, and are
Speaker 3: prepared to overlook that in looking at policies and results.
Speaker 3: His critics can never get beyond his character flaws and
Speaker 3: his obvious vulgarity and crudeness, and therefore never look at
Speaker 3: his actual policies and achievements. So his supporters discount his
Speaker 3: rhetoric and take his policy seriously. His critics and opponents
Speaker 3: takes his words seriously and ignore and discount his actual policies.
Speaker 3: And that's where the problem comes in. So the effort
Speaker 3: by the Democrats to keep insisting, and he's sitting even
Speaker 3: more loudly. Look at his flaws, look at his well guarage,
Speaker 3: look at his character. He's a convicted fellow. All that
Speaker 3: was pointless in terms of changing the opinion of the
Speaker 3: first group, and I think they've ended up in a
Speaker 3: very strange position as a result. And we'll see what
Speaker 3: next year's MITIM elections in Congress.
Speaker 2: Well, big danger there that I actually agree with if
Speaker 2: if he doesn't get things into place enough, they'll reject him.
Speaker 3: I agree, But again we again, we'll have to be
Speaker 3: careful that you don't mistake for the MSM and the
Speaker 3: public intellectual lettering us call what the people think.
Speaker 2: I want to quote you. I just want to quote you.
Speaker 2: I want to quote you. The scandal over the alleged
Speaker 2: corruption of the founder of the World Economic Forum in
Speaker 2: Davos would be just an anecdote were it not another
Speaker 2: example of what has happened recently with many international institutions.
Speaker 2: The Financial Times reveals that the we HAVE founder faces
Speaker 2: accusations of manipulating the organization's analysis to gain favor with governments.
Speaker 2: Davos went from being a forum for debate to a
Speaker 2: congregation for repeating interventionist dogmas and whitewashing a single extractive mindset.
Speaker 2: Those who defended economic freedom, attractive taxes, and control over
Speaker 2: public spending were gradually ostracized. We have heard enthusiastic applause
Speaker 2: for those demanding more taxes and greater assaults on job creators,
Speaker 2: and one sided debates in which all participants repeated cliches
Speaker 2: and words like resilience and sustainability as trojan horses for
Speaker 2: predatory statism, where the where the idea of creating value
Speaker 2: and wealth was repudiated. Forget the last little bit, but
Speaker 2: the question is was Davos ever really a place of
Speaker 2: any importance.
Speaker 6: I think initially it was a place for networking of
Speaker 6: the high and mighty, the elite, the global elites, and
Speaker 6: people wanted to go and wanted to be invited, and
Speaker 6: it gave them status.
Speaker 3: I think the underestimate the importance of craving states from
Speaker 3: the group that matters to individuals. You know that as
Speaker 3: a minor example. I'm sure that was a major factor
Speaker 3: in Scott Morrison reversing his government's policy on net zero,
Speaker 3: the fact that he got invited to some of these
Speaker 3: G seven summit as a guest stoke phys ego in
Speaker 3: that sense, and to belong to the club he had
Speaker 3: to subscribe to the cop beliefs in Gasgow when he
Speaker 3: first retreated from that. So there is an element of that.
Speaker 3: And once in power, a surprising number of politicians gave
Speaker 3: the status of fellow leaders from around the world, even
Speaker 3: at the cost of their own people's approbation after that,
Speaker 3: and there is that factor. Now will that change after
Speaker 3: this I don't know, but certainly in recent times the
Speaker 3: phrase the divers man has become a presorative phrase rather
Speaker 3: than something to be admired, and I think in the
Speaker 3: current elections in Canada, I think it will happen in Australia.
Speaker 3: People will run to dissociate themselves from ever having attended
Speaker 3: a w A forum or meeting, rather than thought that
Speaker 3: as a credential for voting for them. So I don't
Speaker 3: know how many people in New Zealand have attended any
Speaker 3: of these forums, but certainly important networking them and getting
Speaker 3: them into international positions or advisory boards.
Speaker 2: Sorry I just said yeah, okay, which reminds me. There
Speaker 2: was a There is a piece in the Spectator of
Speaker 2: Australia this week just Cinder a Dern and the empty
Speaker 2: politics of kindness.
Speaker 3: Oh, Michael Jackson, that's actually from Spectator UK. That'd be
Speaker 3: really produced. You know that my Jackon has a New
Speaker 3: Zealand connection. No, he was at Canterbury. He was. He
Speaker 3: was from England and I know him. He was a canyon.
Speaker 3: In fact, in my trip to London, I had lunch
Speaker 3: with him and I talked about this article that he
Speaker 3: was just written. Indeed, but he was at Canterbury. He
Speaker 3: was so disgusted with New Zealand's COVID policies that he
Speaker 3: decided to return to England. He never did get vaccinated
Speaker 3: and he returned home. He was co founder of New
Speaker 3: Zealand's COVID Plan B.
Speaker 2: Do you think there's a Do you think there's a
Speaker 2: case for removing the awards that were given to the
Speaker 2: Prime Minister and her chief Science or her advisor Bluefield.
Speaker 3: For COVID management? Yes? Absolutely. I think there's a very
Speaker 3: strong case for accountability. Yes, and I don't think that's
Speaker 3: going to happened in the imminent future. But you know,
Speaker 3: on one side, you feel angry that amongst Joe Biden's
Speaker 3: final acts was pardoning Anthony Fauci. On the other at
Speaker 3: the very least, that's an implicit admission of guilt. You
Speaker 3: can't get pardoned for something that you haven't done as wrong.
Speaker 3: And it also makes it easier now to demand answers
Speaker 3: from him because he no longer has the defense of
Speaker 3: I don't want to incriminate myself. He can't be prosecuted,
Speaker 3: so he has no reason not to answer. And of
Speaker 3: course one of the things that Trump has done, which
Speaker 3: I like very much, is he's moved into position at
Speaker 3: the top levels people who are early and consistent critics
Speaker 3: of the COVID policy madness, like Jef Dagaria as head
Speaker 3: of the National Institue of Wealth, like Marty McCary as
Speaker 3: head of the FDA, and so on. So I think
Speaker 3: in time they will want accountability, and certainly the awards
Speaker 3: like the knighthoods two people in the UK, like the
Speaker 3: Australian Order of Australia that we've given hearth to people
Speaker 3: who betrayed the interests of the citizens and imposed unnecessary
Speaker 3: and before not twenty twenty, unimaginable cruelty in the name
Speaker 3: of containing COVID. They do need to be held to account,
Speaker 3: and I hope I lot live long enough to see it,
Speaker 3: although I doubt it.
Speaker 2: I'm pondering an answer to that.
Speaker 3: Well, let me explain on that. I think crimes that
Speaker 3: are committed do require punishment, so I include punitive justification
Speaker 3: as one reason. A second justification is emotional closure. The
Speaker 3: number of people who are affected is in the millions.
Speaker 3: People who are not able to say goodbye to elderly
Speaker 3: parents and grandparents before their death, who died deaths of
Speaker 3: despair and loneliness, people who are not able to attend
Speaker 3: other important family landmarks, the loss of schooling for children,
Speaker 3: the whole range of things. There's not going to be
Speaker 3: emotional closure to them unless the wrongs that were done
Speaker 3: are publicly acknowledged and people who were responsible for that
Speaker 3: are shamed and or otherwise punished. And this is something
Speaker 3: that I bring over from my professional interest in masatrocities.
Speaker 3: So that's the second argument for that, and the third
Speaker 3: argument is a simple one of returns. Your best antidote
Speaker 3: or your best strategy for avoiding a repetition of such
Speaker 3: cruelty and anti scientific policy insanity is to punish those
Speaker 3: who are responsible. But if you keep grunting them endless impunity,
Speaker 3: they don't think twice again, they just repeat it. So
Speaker 3: I think there are three powerful arguments of justice being
Speaker 3: seen to be done, emotional closure and the terms of
Speaker 3: such activities in the future. And if you don't do that,
Speaker 3: we will suffer repeat of that in endless cycles until
Speaker 3: someone realizes that we need to take some action against
Speaker 3: the perpetrators, otherwise it will happen again and again.
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of happening again and again, that leads me
Speaker 2: onto the World Health Organization. And I don't know whether
Speaker 2: you've seen David Bell's piece that's on Brownstone today. Yes,
Speaker 2: but but I just I just want again.
Speaker 3: I met with him in London over three days, so
Speaker 3: it's a.
Speaker 2: Small world is shrinking even further now. He's a good man,
Speaker 2: and the two of you have very much in common.
Speaker 2: As I've said the said in the past both of you.
Speaker 2: Both of you have been involved with them, with the
Speaker 2: World Health Organization and the UN, and both of you
Speaker 2: have turned your back on them. So for those who
Speaker 2: don't yet understand, just briefly, the World Health Organization, we
Speaker 2: should as a country go along with their plans at
Speaker 2: this point of time.
Speaker 3: No, No, We both David and I and a lot
Speaker 3: of us subscribe very strongly to the principle of the
Speaker 3: need for an international health organization. But I've been a
Speaker 3: lifelong student of the UN system, as you know, and
Speaker 3: held the senior position in the system. I think any
Speaker 3: international organization that's been in existence for five, six, seven,
Speaker 3: eight decades has accumulated a set of vested interests that
Speaker 3: between them subvert its original mission and mandate to the
Speaker 3: interests of the organization. And we see elements of mission creep,
Speaker 3: and we see elements of compulsion and coalsion, and we
Speaker 3: see elements of elevating the international order above the member states,
Speaker 3: whereas they're meant to be servants of states agent. So
Speaker 3: the principle, if that is the case, what can we
Speaker 3: do to return to the foundational principles and purposes of
Speaker 3: the organization? And more importantly, can we reform the existing
Speaker 3: institutions or do we need to begin afresh? And I've
Speaker 3: concluded after bitter experience, if you like that, if you
Speaker 3: aim for reform, it will be counted the success. If
Speaker 3: you achieve five percent of what you set off with
Speaker 3: as your goals because you get caught in the process
Speaker 3: and it gets taken up by the intergovernmental modalities and prostities,
Speaker 3: and we end up with the lowest common denominator, which
Speaker 3: is just tinkering and no substantial things. And the best
Speaker 3: example of that is the UN Security Council, which is
Speaker 3: totally out of line with the existing reality and therefore
Speaker 3: the odd situation where it's resolutions and decisions have legal
Speaker 3: force but are increasingly illegitimate as well as most of
Speaker 3: the world is concerned. And you see that with countries defined,
Speaker 3: for example, the international Criminal courts indictment of both Plutin
Speaker 3: and Nathan Yahoo. So that's one element of that. And
Speaker 3: if you want to return, on the other hand, to
Speaker 3: foundational things, you are probably better off in terms of
Speaker 3: effort to look for a new organization that restores the
Speaker 3: balance between international, regional and national level authorities. And if
Speaker 3: you think of COVID, the striking feature was the regional
Speaker 3: variation where the big killer diseases in Africa remained the
Speaker 3: traditional ones for malaria, TV, HIV, AIDS, et cetera, and
Speaker 3: COVID was a minor bl bloom rather than a major factor,
Speaker 3: whereas for Western countries for Europe and North America and
Speaker 3: to someone in South America. COVID was a big factor.
Speaker 3: So it's better to return decision making authority to regional
Speaker 3: rather than international organizations and at the international level use
Speaker 3: it for coordination. So we are reverse. You are not
Speaker 3: averse to that, But the agreements that the International Health
Speaker 3: Regulations amendments that were passed and the Pandemic Agreement that
Speaker 3: has been negotiated, I think rewards the WHO for incompetence
Speaker 3: and mismanagement and gives it a vested interest to expand
Speaker 3: its resources and authority and powers by declaring emergencies when
Speaker 3: there is an on necessary reason to do so, and
Speaker 3: I think it becomes a matter of perverse incentives. So
Speaker 3: I think we need an international health organization, but better
Speaker 3: grounded in terms of the distribution of responsibilities and agency
Speaker 3: between international, regional, national, and even individuals level of responsibility.
Speaker 3: So I like to return to the principles of informed consent,
Speaker 3: the sanctity of doctor patient relationship, reliance on doctors in
Speaker 3: the clinic rather than bureaucrats in national and international capitals.
Speaker 3: For what the policy advice should be. Break the links
Speaker 3: between financial interest and decision making, break the links between
Speaker 3: big farmer in terms of funding, structures, et cetera. So
Speaker 3: there's a lot of things that need to be done
Speaker 3: if we have big items and what they are going,
Speaker 3: what they're doing is the wrong way around, and it's
Speaker 3: rewarding failures, is rewarding mafecens in some cases, and putting
Speaker 3: purpose incentives in place. So I'd like to work with
Speaker 3: David on a project where we look at, as I said,
Speaker 3: foundational issues and restructure it accordingly so it can return
Speaker 3: to that. And a good example of what I have
Speaker 3: in mind is if you look at the shift from
Speaker 3: the League of Nations in the interwar period the United
Speaker 3: Nations after the Second World War, many of the items
Speaker 3: in the Charter of the UN were taken over from
Speaker 3: the Covenant of the League of Nations. Many of the
Speaker 3: structures remain the same, many of the policies and goals
Speaker 3: remain the same, but for political reasons you wouldn't have
Speaker 3: got agreement or the powers that be that were important
Speaker 3: get kept the name the same, so we change and
Speaker 3: change the name. Other innovations that were put into the
Speaker 3: constitution of the Charter into the structure, well, I were
Speaker 3: innovations that in practice had already been initiated under the League.
Speaker 3: And then there was a third set, which are ideas
Speaker 3: that were circulating during the League but hadn't been implemented,
Speaker 3: which we implemented in the US system. The world quote
Speaker 3: is an example one that was taken right over from before.
Speaker 3: So you can keep the good parts, drop the bad parts,
Speaker 3: and embed the innovations, but in a much more rational
Speaker 3: and logical and sensible manner, returning to basic science, reducing
Speaker 3: the element of politicization, and cutting back the influence of
Speaker 3: groups that shouldn't have that influence in decision making in
Speaker 3: the first place. So yeah, as you can get from that,
Speaker 3: I think we still believe in the vision of an
Speaker 3: international organization, but want to return it to a minimalist
Speaker 3: coordinating role rather than directive command and control with too
Speaker 3: much power and that too much faith in the discretionary
Speaker 3: and decision making bodies of run by bureaucrats.
Speaker 2: That was an outstanding response, very logical and can I
Speaker 2: use the term common sense again, look very very quickly. Finally,
Speaker 2: I'm doing this for missus producer. She's very keen to
Speaker 2: know your thoughts on Kashmir and the military confrontation that
Speaker 2: took place between India and Pakistan recently. What was the
Speaker 2: twenty six people I think got killed. Is there likely
Speaker 2: to be a response, a military response do you think
Speaker 2: from India?
Speaker 3: Much more likely than not. I think that's because the
Speaker 3: Modi government has been committed to changing the underflying pattern
Speaker 3: of provocative actions and India goes into a reactive mode.
Speaker 3: We drew the lines of the dispute come conflict about
Speaker 3: six years ago now where for the first time Indian
Speaker 3: planes fired missiles deep into Pakistan proper rather than just
Speaker 3: into disputed Kashmi territory, and they up the ante in
Speaker 3: that sense. And the important point of that was not
Speaker 3: the details of what they achieved, but the message that
Speaker 3: were sent was there are no limits set by you
Speaker 3: as to how we will respond, but we will respond
Speaker 3: in a manner and a time of our choosing, and
Speaker 3: on targets of our choosing. That said, the couple of
Speaker 3: things that are different this time. The previous one in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen was an attack by militants on the military
Speaker 3: or paramilitary convoy that killed the last number of people
Speaker 3: in the forties, a thing from memory. This time it
Speaker 3: was deliberately targeting tourists. So while I'll use the word
Speaker 3: militancy for the previous one. This one, and I think
Speaker 3: is satisfies all the core definitions of terrorism. It was
Speaker 3: an ultra terrorism to the point where now remember we're
Speaker 3: talking about Hindus and Muslims and Seeks. Mainly, they got
Speaker 3: the main folk to lower the trousers so they could
Speaker 3: distinguish the circumcise from the uncircumcised, spared the Muslim malls
Speaker 3: and went after the Hindu and Seek mills in this attack.
Speaker 3: I don't think they've succeeded in driving divisions between Hindus
Speaker 3: and Muslim and Seeks in customery yourself, I think there's
Speaker 3: a rare unanimility that as far as I can see
Speaker 3: across the political spectrum and the horror at what was done.
Speaker 3: But it's impossible to imagine the Maori government not taking
Speaker 3: some military action because that will undo decades worth of
Speaker 3: progress they've achieved in the strategic signaling with Pakistan, and
Speaker 3: I think politically they believe in for the exposed one.
Speaker 3: That's for me there's a minor consideration, but obviously for
Speaker 3: them it might be a bigger consideration, modified by the
Speaker 3: fact that they don't have to have elections for some
Speaker 3: time yet, but they're not going to leave themselves vulnerable.
Speaker 3: So I think there will be desperate communications between not
Speaker 3: just Indians and Pakistani authorities, but outside, particularly the Americans
Speaker 3: as well as possibly the Russian than some of the Europeans.
Speaker 3: Will it go out of control? I doubt it. I haven't.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've seen the allegations from the inside, but
Speaker 3: you haven't got evidence that is independently verified of Pakistani
Speaker 3: involvement and the extent of Pakistani involvement. Now, remember in
Speaker 3: Pakistan it's possible for the intelligence services to act independently
Speaker 3: of the government as well, so again there's degrees of
Speaker 3: culpability and deniability. But I just don't see Indian government
Speaker 3: not doing anything and not retaliating in some military form.
Speaker 3: And I don't think it will be just a minor thing.
Speaker 3: I think it will be court substantial.
Speaker 2: But you'll see I have sat here and considered myself
Speaker 2: to be in class for the last hour and a it.
Speaker 2: What I'm saying is that that's what the Education department needs,
Speaker 2: doesn't matter where it is is people of standing that
Speaker 2: you represent, and I say that unashamedly.
Speaker 3: You're very kind lesson as all this thank you, okay,
Speaker 3: look forward to it next time. Well when you what
Speaker 3: the results of the elections are this week in the meantime.
Speaker 2: Indeed, thanks y okay. Take Buckerlan is a natural oral
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Speaker 2: offers cost effective and safe protection from colds and chills.
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Speaker 2: is not intended as an alternative to influenza vaccination, but
Speaker 2: may be used along with the flu vaccination for added protection.
Speaker 2: And keep in mind that millions of doses have been
Speaker 2: taken by Kiwis for over fifty years. Only available from
Speaker 2: your pharmacist. Always read the label and users directed, and
Speaker 2: see your doctor if systems persist. Farmer Broker, Auckland Layton
Speaker 2: Smith Missus producer podcast number two hundred and eighty two,
Speaker 2: and the mail room. How are you later, I'm very well,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 7: And amongst all this mess this morning, Actually I was
Speaker 7: just reading about a book. I think it was a
Speaker 7: Japanese the ancient Japanese art of decluttering. Well, that book
Speaker 7: would never be attached to your library, would it.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't, not at anywhere near it.
Speaker 7: I'm going to be doing some decluttering this morning.
Speaker 2: Actually it may be contagious.
Speaker 7: Not better keep your door shut.
Speaker 2: Anyway, It's there for a purpose, so I can't find
Speaker 2: it now. Steve writes thoroughly enjoyed listening to Nick Kata,
Speaker 2: especially as at the time we were sitting on my
Speaker 2: son and daughter in law's deck overlooking the beach at
Speaker 2: d Y on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. Every time
Speaker 2: I put my phone on there was an advert for
Speaker 2: one of the one or other of the parties in
Speaker 2: the Australian election. But as Nick suggested, it seemed to
Speaker 2: me that areas like that are consumed by their own
Speaker 2: elitism and that it's only the Teals, the Greens or
Speaker 2: labor who really figure in the locals consciousness. What about
Speaker 2: the diggers, the people who do the real work in Australia.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I doubt the existing Liberal party
Speaker 2: really represents them either. And if you're interested, I've attached
Speaker 2: my submission to Phase two of the Royal Commission of
Speaker 2: Inquiry into the New Zealand COVID response which I sent
Speaker 2: in today ANZAC Day, in that I wanted to stress
Speaker 2: that the total inversion of medical ethics and morality propagated
Speaker 2: at the time was akin to the legal profession deciding
Speaker 2: en mass to discount everything to do with the Magna Carta,
Speaker 2: or the engineers discounting everything to do with the euclid's
Speaker 2: systems of measurements. Well, they've done well. I won't go
Speaker 2: out of the engineers. It was that insane. Where would
Speaker 2: the law be without Magna Carta or engineers without EUCLID.
Speaker 2: Everything that doctors and has stood for was intentionally and
Speaker 2: deliberately sabotaged for some nefarious and I personally believe evil purpose.
Speaker 2: I concluded my submission with those two words never again.
Speaker 2: Just my thoughts for the day, Keep well both of you,
Speaker 2: and best wishes. Look, this submission that he made missus
Speaker 2: Producer is so good. I'm going to quote a little
Speaker 2: bit of it at the back end of this.
Speaker 7: Good lighton jin says Kurt Schlickter hit the nail on
Speaker 7: the head regarding the key problem with America when he
Speaker 7: said that America forgot what made America great. It didn't
Speaker 7: matter where you came from, but when you came to America,
Speaker 7: you became an American. You're American first. This was common
Speaker 7: sense until America lost her common sense for a number
Speaker 7: of decades. Kurt pointed out that one of the circuit
Speaker 7: breakers to this American amnesia was nine to eleven when
Speaker 7: it quote knocked America out of its complacency. But it
Speaker 7: appeared that America needed an even bigger jolt of sense
Speaker 7: to really awaken her. I watched a recent Tucker Carlson
Speaker 7: interview with your brother in law George Friedman, who pointed
Speaker 7: to a second circuit breaker with immense cultural impact to
Speaker 7: America and the rest of the world. When Tucker Carlson said,
Speaker 7: it feels like there's got to be some hard pivot
Speaker 7: or something, you know, there's some disaster that resets people's expectations.
Speaker 7: George instantly replied, it's called Donald Trump. What I'm saying
Speaker 7: is whether he planned it or just is it. He's
Speaker 7: the man of the moment. He's the wrecking ball that
Speaker 7: Lincoln was and the wrecking ball that Roosevelt was and
Speaker 7: Jackson was. And he's shifting the country by emphasizing two things.
Speaker 7: One culture wars are untenable, and secondly, you can't keep
Speaker 7: inventing classes. Equal opportunity is not equal outcome. That was
Speaker 7: from George. Then George made this brilliant observation. Experts are important,
Speaker 7: but they need someone with common sense above to tame them. Well,
Speaker 7: Americas voted for the man of common sense, Donald Trump,
Speaker 7: And if this was an election year in New Zealand,
Speaker 7: I think that for the very first time, I'm ready
Speaker 7: to vote for Winston Peters because like him or not,
Speaker 7: he has been the man of common sense for literally
Speaker 7: all his political life. Winston for Prime Minister? Maybe?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I included that last little sentence in the discussion with
Speaker 2: Ramesh because I thought it was appropriate. Now this is
Speaker 2: in response to my request for some comments on what
Speaker 2: I read the Pope's message to his bishops in America
Speaker 2: just a few days before he died, and I suggested
Speaker 2: the engine I'd be interested in hearing opinions. This was
Speaker 2: the best one. What a pile of woke Marxist claptrap.
Speaker 2: That letter from the Pope was that won't be pulling
Speaker 2: lapsed Catholics like me back to the church from somebody
Speaker 2: who lives with armed guards behind walls in a gilded throne,
Speaker 2: on a gilded throne. What a nerve. Maybe he could
Speaker 2: have told jd Vance Vatican City would offer asylum to
Speaker 2: five thousand murderous thugs from MS thirteen. Where is this
Speaker 2: call to illegal migrants into Europe to respect the Christian
Speaker 2: homelands and the people who were giving them shelter, food, clothing,
Speaker 2: medical care and pocket money instead of rape, murder and
Speaker 2: knife crime at all time highs, car attacks and church burnings.
Speaker 2: He could have shown some actual leadership. Instead, he exposes
Speaker 2: himself as another lefty political creature with TDS. The Holy
Speaker 2: See desperately needs strong moral leadership. I wonder if they'd
Speaker 2: consider electing an actual and actual Catholic next time round.
Speaker 2: Paul I asked for it, I got it.
Speaker 7: Thank you, Layton David says, as someone who has had
Speaker 7: to abide by strict immigration laws during the last nine
Speaker 7: years living in Thailand, I don't have any sympathy for
Speaker 7: aliens who illegally entered the United States and are now
Speaker 7: being confronted with the prospect of deportation. Of course, the
Speaker 7: bottom feeding lawyers of the ACLU and corrupt activist judges
Speaker 7: are doing their utmost to keep George Soris and his
Speaker 7: son's globalist agenda alive by blocking deportations. Maybe President Trump
Speaker 7: should change tax and consider relocating illegal alien gang members
Speaker 7: to a purpose built prison camp in Alaska, rather than
Speaker 7: fighting for deportation orders through the crooked court system. Give
Speaker 7: all the illegal aliens the choice of either voluntarily removing
Speaker 7: themselves from the US or end up on a government
Speaker 7: sponsored one way trip to the backwards of Alaska. If
Speaker 7: that approach proved to be successful, maybe the UK and
Speaker 7: EU could be inspired to follow suit with similar schemes
Speaker 7: to thwart the globalists and their resistance through the court
Speaker 7: system to deportations of illegal aliens. Other than pampering illegal
Speaker 7: aliens by housing them enforced our hotels at taxpayer's expense,
Speaker 7: the UK government should offer them the same deal and
Speaker 7: colonization and grievances. Everything about the wars was full of
Speaker 7: Mari language, and TV News had the presenter ran on
Speaker 7: for ages. In her appeasing Mari intro. The day indicated
Speaker 7: that maybe our soldiers weren't united but forought and support
Speaker 7: of Mary, who it appears, dominated our services. When will
Speaker 7: this end? As the country is being more divided every day,
Speaker 7: the media are playing their divisive best. I'm sick and
Speaker 7: tired of this forced narrative where everything must be named
Speaker 7: in Maray and everything it's Mari or it's worthless. Time
Speaker 7: to end this utter nonsense. That's from Steve.
Speaker 2: Steve, appreciate it so very good male, and keep it up, folks.
Speaker 2: And now you may wish to depart if you thank
Speaker 2: you later, I say goodbye because I know you've got
Speaker 2: things to that. We've always got things to do. Thanks Layton,
Speaker 2: see you next week.
Speaker 3: Yes now.
Speaker 2: The submission to Part two of the New Zealand Government
Speaker 2: Royal Commission of Inquiry into the New Zealand COVID response
Speaker 2: from Steve. It's one two three three pages, close print,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to be picky. In April of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: I retired from medical practice. I've been a GP in
Speaker 2: New Zealand since nineteen seventy eight. In December of that year,
Speaker 2: the first rumors of a coronavirus appearing in China began
Speaker 2: to permeate the New Zealand media. In the weeks, months,
Speaker 2: and years that followed, the resultant inversion of and absolute
Speaker 2: perversion of the ethical and moral framework of medicine and
Speaker 2: healthcare could never have been imagined by anyone of sound
Speaker 2: mind or anyone who had a modicum of wisdom until
Speaker 2: it happened. To put this in perspective, the retreat from
Speaker 2: reality which medical practice and healthcare adopted was no less
Speaker 2: extreme than that of the legal profession deciding that the
Speaker 2: Magna Carta was irrelevant, or the engineering profession deciding that
Speaker 2: euclid's system of measurement and its derivatives were irrelevant. Medicine
Speaker 2: turned its back on more than two and a half
Speaker 2: thousand years of patient centered compassion and everything, I mean
Speaker 2: everything that has been the basis of medical practice was upended. Now,
Speaker 2: coming from a medical person, from a doctor of some
Speaker 2: considerable experience, you have to say that puts the boot in.
Speaker 2: Then it's divided. His submission is divided up into the
Speaker 2: New Zealand response. Give you an example, what was the
Speaker 2: New Zealand response to COVID? In short, everything was wrong
Speaker 2: for example, and then runs through who eleven points before
Speaker 2: carrying on first couple just for interest, quarantining healthy people
Speaker 2: was wrong. Number two Using the PCR test as a
Speaker 2: diagnostic tool was scientifically and ethically wrong. Number three quoted
Speaker 2: case fatality rates including x the who was wrong. They
Speaker 2: were intentionally malicious anyway. The next it goes on quite
Speaker 2: a way. Vaccines is covered. Then we get to flawed science.
Speaker 2: I believe it's important for non medical people to understand,
Speaker 2: that's most of us, that the entire premise of mRNA
Speaker 2: injections is fraught. In simple terms, mRNA is a protein which,
Speaker 2: when injected into the body, will immediately be recognized by
Speaker 2: that body's immune system as being foreign, and over millions
Speaker 2: of years, immune systems have developed elegant and sophisticated methods
Speaker 2: to recog dies and promptly destroy such foreign proteins. Part,
Speaker 2: but only part, of this sophistication is now understood by
Speaker 2: molecular biologists, and it was determined that by replacing one
Speaker 2: of the four bases in an mRNA product with a surrogate,
Speaker 2: it would be possible to disguise that foreign protein mRNA
Speaker 2: so that the immune system would not recognize it. In
Speaker 2: doing so, not only does that allow the foreign mRNA
Speaker 2: to enter the cell and execute its function of stimulating
Speaker 2: the productive the production of spike protein in the case
Speaker 2: of COVID vaccines that was in brackets, but because it
Speaker 2: bypasses and disables the immune surveillance system, it effectively makes
Speaker 2: the cell vulnerable to other infections and similarly impairs the
Speaker 2: body's response to the recognition of aber and cell behavior,
Speaker 2: such as in the development of cancer. As a medical scientist,
Speaker 2: to me, it is quite astonishing that the Nobel Prize
Speaker 2: in Medicine in twenty twenty three was awarded to Courico
Speaker 2: and Wisemann, the scientists who devised this method of disabling
Speaker 2: the natural immune system. I fear that we are only
Speaker 2: just at the beginning of the potentially devastating long term
Speaker 2: results of this research into the undermining of the immune system.
Speaker 2: Doesn't that leave you stunned? This is the only submission
Speaker 2: that they need to consider. They don't need another one.
Speaker 2: They just need one hundred thousand of these and then
Speaker 2: it gets to the future for New Zealand. In my view,
Speaker 2: it would be a not unreasonable stance for the Commission
Speaker 2: to propose that future pandemics be managed along the lines
Speaker 2: that pandemic preparedness had been carefully hammered out over the
Speaker 2: decades through the twentieth century. In other words, in a
Speaker 2: diametrically opposite manner in which which the New Zealand government
Speaker 2: and governments of most of the world, at the behest
Speaker 2: of the World Health Organization had dictated that COVID should
Speaker 2: be managed. In essence, the traditional response to pandemics, which
Speaker 2: had been decided and agreed to internationally over many many years,
Speaker 2: was as follows. Quarantine the sick, protect the vulnerable, allow
Speaker 2: the infection that's the virus to propagate through the healthy population,
Speaker 2: to allow the development of natural herd immunity. And number four,
Speaker 2: never vaccinate into an epidemic or pandemic, because by dint
Speaker 2: of evolution, that is bound to lead to the development
Speaker 2: of new variants of the pathogen against which your vaccine
Speaker 2: will likely be ineffective. In large part, this approach mirrors
Speaker 2: the proposal in twenty twenty in the Great Barrington Declaration,
Speaker 2: as proposed by doctor Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, j Baticharia
Speaker 2: of Stanford and Martin Koldorf of Harvard, all of which
Speaker 2: were summarily dismissed by the political and media establishment of
Speaker 2: the Western world. Then this politics and the reckoning at
Speaker 2: the end. But it's I mean, it should be read
Speaker 2: by everybody because it's a brilliant submission and it has authority,
Speaker 2: and I can only refer to the immediacy that Ramash
Speaker 2: the Ker responded to my question about the honors and
Speaker 2: awards that were handed out to people in this country
Speaker 2: who did not and do not deserve them. Thank you, Steve,
Speaker 2: and that is where we'll leave a podcast Umber two
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty two, and don't forget if you have thoughts,
Speaker 2: and don't forget if you have thoughts, write them Laton
Speaker 2: at newstalksb dot co dot nzed or Carolyn at newstalksb
Speaker 2: dot co dot NZ and I only have left to
Speaker 2: say thank you for listening as always, and we shall
Speaker 2: talk soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you for more from News Talks at b Listen
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