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Speaker 3: Welcome to Podcast two hundred and eighty for April sixteen,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five. The Australian election on May third may
Speaker 3: even be more important for New Zealand than our own ballot.
Speaker 4: Of twenty twenty six How is that?
Speaker 5: She might ask?
Speaker 3: And the response is that Australia has become not just
Speaker 3: New Zealand's second home, but a bolt hole for hundreds
Speaker 3: of thousands of Kiwis. The number may well be a
Speaker 3: million or a bit more. The only realistic alternative to
Speaker 3: those who have declared that New Zealand does not hold
Speaker 3: their future not just an overseas experience, but a conviction
Speaker 3: that the grass is greener on the other side of
Speaker 3: the Tasman. There they're going, and there they will stay,
Speaker 3: well maybe. Nick Cator discusses the pros and cons of
Speaker 3: the Lucky Culture, a book that he wrote twelve years ago,
Speaker 3: and how the outcome of the election will affect the
Speaker 3: future unless be blunt. The Australian election so far has
Speaker 3: been described as the most boring, the most tedious, the
Speaker 3: most useless, the most unimaginative, the most unproductive election ever.
Speaker 3: And it makes me think of that great Australian song
Speaker 3: I still call Australia Home, And I guess how out
Speaker 3: of date it might be, sing a songwriter who both
Speaker 3: wrote and performed it, Peter Allen, would be churning in
Speaker 3: his grave. Now, before we get to Nick Cater himself,
Speaker 3: let me quote you something that he wrote recently April seven.
Speaker 3: It's called beyond parody. In November of nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 3: Christopher Pearson speculated in a column in the Australian Financial
Speaker 3: Review on how long the global warming panic would be last.
Speaker 3: Two decades earlier, global cooling and the coming ice age
Speaker 3: had caused similar anxiety, yet had been largely forgotten. Perhaps,
Speaker 3: having safely negotiated the millennium, which is a major cause
Speaker 3: of all this anxiety, we may collectively surrender to about
Speaker 3: of unqualified optimism. He wrote that he wrote more I
Speaker 3: doubt it because the appetite for catastrophe is now highly
Speaker 3: developed and mass media delight in pandering to it. Pearson's
Speaker 3: pessimism was well placed. The climate change narrative proved to
Speaker 3: be exceptionally robust despite its weak empirical foundations. Only now
Speaker 3: a quarter of the way through the twenty first century
Speaker 3: and more than a decade after Pearson's untimely death, is
Speaker 3: the global warming paradigm collapsing under the weight of its
Speaker 3: own complexity. And after the mail room we shall continue
Speaker 3: with Well, we'll expand on what I've just quoted with
Speaker 3: a lot more detail. But note both climate science and
Speaker 3: medical science have much to answer for, as do some
Speaker 3: specific individuals in different areas of both.
Speaker 4: But in a moment. Nic Cato.
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Speaker 3: remember bucklin is not intended as an alternative to influenza vaccination,
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Speaker 4: Now, with the.
Speaker 3: Australian election in mind, back in I'm going to take
Speaker 3: you back to twenty thirteen, twelve years ago, twelve years
Speaker 3: ago almost to the day, when a book was released,
Speaker 3: The Lucky Culture and the Rise of an Australian Ruling Class,
Speaker 3: And the author of the book came to New Zealand
Speaker 3: and I met him for the first time and we
Speaker 3: did an interview and it was very good and we
Speaker 3: have remained good contacts ever since. I want to quote
Speaker 3: you something A bold and provocative book about Australia's national
Speaker 3: identity and how it is threatened by the rise of
Speaker 3: a ruling class. Nick cat, senior editor at The Australian,
Speaker 3: tracks the seismic changes in Australian culture and outlook since
Speaker 3: Donald Horn wrote The Lucky Country in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 3: His belief is that countries don't get lucky.
Speaker 4: People do.
Speaker 3: The secret of Australia's good fortune is not found in
Speaker 3: its geography or history. The key to its success is
Speaker 3: the Australian character, the nation's greatest renewable resource. The commentator
Speaker 3: then concludes, I particularly loved Nick Kato's passion for the
Speaker 3: great Australian dream. It is the first step in restoring
Speaker 3: that dream. The author of that review was one Rupert Murdoch. Nick,
Speaker 3: you must have been very flatted when he wrote that
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes I was. I was quite amazed that he
Speaker 2: had time to read it.
Speaker 5: Really. Yes.
Speaker 2: He was very kind about the book and ordered a
Speaker 2: bunch of copies that we had to send over to
Speaker 2: New York, who was going to give to his senior executive.
Speaker 2: So I was quite pleased about that. So I think
Speaker 2: the book, in its way had had quite an influence
Speaker 2: on the debate at the time.
Speaker 3: Now the question is, and the reason that I wanted
Speaker 3: to quote that was in the twelve years since, what's changed,
Speaker 3: what has happened that might have denied you the goal
Speaker 3: that you set.
Speaker 2: I think I've sort of nailed it really with that
Speaker 2: idea of the rise of a ruling class, you know,
Speaker 2: by which I mean the people that we variously call
Speaker 2: the elite, the anointed. You know, we got all sorts
Speaker 2: of names for them. We haven't really glanded on a name,
Speaker 2: and both we've come up more recently with the idea
Speaker 2: that you know, they are the woke people, the woke class.
Speaker 5: But it's definitely there.
Speaker 2: And and I remember at the time when I wrote
Speaker 2: that book twelve years ago, going on Q and A,
Speaker 2: which is a show on the ABC and the and
Speaker 2: the host was genuinely genuinely confused about what I meant
Speaker 2: by the elite. He said, aren't you're a member of
Speaker 2: the elite. Aren't you're You know I was a member
Speaker 2: of the elite, because I'm at that stage I was
Speaker 2: a senior editor at The Australian and I guess I
Speaker 2: still have various titles classifive years the elite, because that's
Speaker 2: that's to misunderstand what I was saying.
Speaker 5: It's a. It's an attitude of mine.
Speaker 2: It's whether you think you're there, you know you have
Speaker 2: you have have the right to boss other people around
Speaker 2: and tell them what to do, and tell them what's
Speaker 2: the car they can drive, and what they need, what
Speaker 2: kind of how many solar panels, the need to put
Speaker 2: on their roofs, all these things that have crept into
Speaker 2: our lives from people who have this perfect vision of
Speaker 2: how society should be. But they've become very, very power
Speaker 2: and even more much more so since I've been you know,
Speaker 2: in the last twelve years. And it's interesting to note,
Speaker 2: you know, I looked in the book at the big
Speaker 2: issues at the time that were dividing the country, and
Speaker 2: you know, there were things obviously like climate change was
Speaker 2: a big one, the Iraq War, human rights. In the
Speaker 2: terms of race relations, there was all that stuff going
Speaker 2: on back then about the Race Relations Commissioner getting ahead
Speaker 2: of themselves, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 5: But that I didn't mention in that book.
Speaker 2: There's no mention whatsoever of same sex marriage. And yet
Speaker 2: that was that was to come about well, I think
Speaker 2: five years later, but at the time twenty twelve, you
Speaker 2: just didn't it wasn't even talked about nobody spoke about it.
Speaker 2: The Prime minister of the day, Labor prime Minister said
Speaker 2: they believed in traditional marriage to the foreign minister who
Speaker 2: the gaff current foreign minister believed in traditional marriage. So
Speaker 2: then one moment they all believed in traditional marriage and
Speaker 2: the next they didn't. Their whole country sort of flipped.
Speaker 2: So they have these kind of crusades and things which
Speaker 2: come out of the blue and come from nowhere, and
Speaker 2: they're always moving on to the next one.
Speaker 3: Do you think do you think that Obama headed anything
Speaker 3: to do with that that change?
Speaker 2: He was, Yeah, I don't. I mean, I don't think.
Speaker 2: My theory is not that they these people an individual
Speaker 2: will influence it to the extent they'll drive it. But
Speaker 2: they certainly empower people. You know, if Obama parmas, Obama
Speaker 2: certainly empowered people to get quite aggressive on these kind
Speaker 2: of issues, and that spreads the course around the globe,
Speaker 2: just as Trump is empowering people in the opposite direction
Speaker 2: now and a kind of counter revolution against that. You know,
Speaker 2: people feel people who don't go along with this woke
Speaker 2: nonsense feel empowered now to say so in a way
Speaker 2: that they didn't before. Because Trump's sort of paved away,
Speaker 2: and so it's okay, nothing happens if you just if
Speaker 2: you state that a man and a woman at two
Speaker 2: different things.
Speaker 5: You know, those sort of statements.
Speaker 3: So the title the Lucky Culture it was as you
Speaker 3: saw at them. Would it be the same title now
Speaker 3: were you writing it again?
Speaker 5: I know it wouldn't be the same title. I don't think.
Speaker 2: I think I've been writing much more about this division,
Speaker 2: cultural division between the elite and the rest of the country,
Speaker 2: which is so pronounced, and it's really the driving force
Speaker 2: in politics now. As I said in the book, I
Speaker 2: wrote that it was the cultural The new political dividing
Speaker 2: line in the country was not left versus right in
Speaker 2: the traditional sense. It wasn't labor versus liberal and national.
Speaker 2: It wasn't Catholic versus Protestants as it once was in
Speaker 2: this country. It was this division and that holds good.
Speaker 2: That's the way people vote. And you've seen in that
Speaker 2: seeing politics in Australia evolve to try and adjust to
Speaker 2: those new lines. So you know, we had this rise
Speaker 2: of the Teal MPs, which you might have read about
Speaker 2: the last the last election when there were five seats
Speaker 2: six in all because they'd lost one of the previous election,
Speaker 2: six coalition seats, six conservative seats that were just suddenly
Speaker 2: taken over by this new party. It is a party.
Speaker 2: They style themselves as community independents, but in every way
Speaker 2: they got their justice parties. They operate as parties, but
Speaker 2: they are how would you describe them political terms? I mean,
Speaker 2: the first thing to notice that they're funded largely by
Speaker 2: the renewable energy industry, and that's two huge amounts of money.
Speaker 2: But that's because they're very pro say, doing something for
Speaker 2: the climate. But they sort of styled themselves as a
Speaker 2: slightly nicer version of the Liberal Party. In fact, there's
Speaker 2: something quite different than more kinder the Green Party if
Speaker 2: you look at their voting patterns. But that's that's what's happened,
Speaker 2: you know. It's it's the old blue collar, solid conservative
Speaker 2: coalition territory in the inner metropolitan areas has just defected
Speaker 2: from the mainstream parties, and.
Speaker 3: The and the and the the seats that they have
Speaker 3: been successful in, you'd have to say, would you not
Speaker 3: in practically every case the top end.
Speaker 2: Oh, in every case, the top end, it's stark, It's
Speaker 2: it's absolutely stark. So it seats well if you come
Speaker 2: in if you if you were to come in by
Speaker 2: boat to Sydney. I don't know any anybody does that
Speaker 2: for New Zealand these days. But as you enter the heads,
Speaker 2: you know, to the left and right to the north
Speaker 2: and south, you've got Teal territory lining the harbor right
Speaker 2: the way along to the city, and then it extends
Speaker 2: up to the north up right up to Pittwater. There's
Speaker 2: another Teal seat and so on in Melbourne, the same
Speaker 2: in you know what was men this blue ribbon seat
Speaker 2: of tour of Kuyon, you know around Turak and that
Speaker 2: sort of territory that is now Teal country. And so
Speaker 2: that exactly the electorates they've got. And it's interesting if
Speaker 2: you look at the demographics, they are starkly different to
Speaker 2: the rest of the country, largely because of their wealth.
Speaker 5: You know that.
Speaker 2: Their average household wealth is probably about twice the national average.
Speaker 2: They're very comfortably off. They don't actually drive much. They
Speaker 2: drive a little bit, but they don't have big car
Speaker 2: journeys to work or anything like that. They live completely
Speaker 2: different lives in many respects. Very large number of people,
Speaker 2: something like fifty percent or up to fifty percent own
Speaker 2: their own home outright, and there's only about twenty five
Speaker 2: percent on a mortgage, so they have quite a different life.
Speaker 2: And you can imagine what we've been through recently with
Speaker 2: rising interest rates. They've been largely untouched. You know, there's
Speaker 2: no household recession happening in those parts of Australia. They're
Speaker 2: completely out of touch. The very people I described in
Speaker 2: my book, you know, the sort of strangers in their
Speaker 2: own country in a way, but they don't know that
Speaker 2: there's things that they are Australia. They think the rest
Speaker 2: of Australia thinks the way that they do, because it doesn't.
Speaker 2: It thinks in a very different way. Well let's get
Speaker 2: to that well shortly.
Speaker 3: But you mentioned Coujong and you mentioned Mensis, the Prime
Speaker 3: minister who established the Liberal Party, which is supposedly the
Speaker 3: equivalent of National here. But there are differences that well
Speaker 3: we won't waste time on. But what popped into my
Speaker 3: head when I heard you mentioned both those names, Coujong
Speaker 3: and Mensis, how do you because you've done a lot
Speaker 3: of work on Mensis, how would he react today to
Speaker 3: well to the teals.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, it's a very interesting question.
Speaker 2: I've never addressed that I'm going to now though, and
Speaker 2: maybe there's a basis for a column in this he well,
Speaker 2: Mensi's Mensi's great strength was political strength was his appeal
Speaker 2: to what he called the forgotten people. And and they're
Speaker 2: you know, they're they're the middle class people, hard working
Speaker 2: people most of them, but not particularly wealthy and not
Speaker 2: not particularly poor. They're just people that want their kids
Speaker 2: to do well at school and build themselves a better life.
Speaker 2: Their their homeowners, and Men's has made them homeowners, homeowning.
Speaker 2: Home ownership went up dramatically under his goal, because under
Speaker 2: his years, because he saw that as a vital part
Speaker 2: of a stable society and making families prosperous. So yeah,
Speaker 2: so he's supporting those people. Well, he's the people that
Speaker 2: we're talking about who now occupy Kuyong and these suburbs.
Speaker 2: And not exactly those people for the most part, you know,
Speaker 2: they are they are the wealthy ones. Mensis described some,
Speaker 2: you know, the sort of upper class or the wealthy
Speaker 2: class in his famous Forgotten People's speech as people that's
Speaker 2: not what the Liberal Party is for, because they are
Speaker 2: pretty they can look after themselves. They don't need, you know,
Speaker 2: a government to to speak to come out and speak
Speaker 2: and do things on their behalf. They can get on
Speaker 2: with life, just as the trade unions could.
Speaker 5: His views.
Speaker 2: So the middle the middle class come in the middle
Speaker 2: of that, and these are the very people that have
Speaker 2: been dispossessed. So I think he might be quite appalled
Speaker 2: at some of the attitudes of the teals and their
Speaker 2: their sneering approach to ordinary people, and how they condemn
Speaker 2: them because they don't you pack the right things in
Speaker 2: the lunch boxes, and you know, they they don't drive
Speaker 2: electric cars, and so he would he would find that
Speaker 2: are wrong, because men's at the heart of Mensis. The
Speaker 2: key to understanding Mensis is really the Christian Gospel. Although
Speaker 2: he didn't he wasn't a God bother in the sense
Speaker 2: he didn't talk, you know, shake people believing in God
Speaker 2: or anything like that. But he was deeply Christian and
Speaker 2: he believed that everybody was equal before God. And the
Speaker 2: translation of that in politics is everybody deserves equal respect,
Speaker 2: everybody deserves a fair go. And that's an expression which
Speaker 2: we talked about so much. When I first came to
Speaker 2: Australia in nineteen eighty nine, knew about what a fair
Speaker 2: go was. You hardly hear that expression. These days. But
Speaker 2: that's at the basis of how Australians used to treat
Speaker 2: one another as just a matter of course, that everybody
Speaker 2: deserved a fair go, and you didn't judge somebody just
Speaker 2: simply because they were, you know, they had a lowly
Speaker 2: job or they were down on their life. You said
Speaker 2: a low to them and you tried to help them
Speaker 2: out if you could.
Speaker 3: I don't know whether I mentioned this to you, but
Speaker 3: my grandfather was the mirror of Preston for a period
Speaker 3: of time in Melbourne, and I remember them as a
Speaker 3: young kid. I remember both him and both both Granddad
Speaker 3: and or Mama and Papa as we call them, going
Speaker 3: off to lunch with with mensies on on one occasion,
Speaker 3: and I think there was I think there was more
Speaker 3: than one. What this might be an unfair question for you,
Speaker 3: but how would you describe Preston today?
Speaker 5: I can't even place Preston.
Speaker 3: I must I must have been well, I had just
Speaker 3: had had due north from Leigon Street and and you'll
Speaker 3: get to Preston.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: This is extending this part of the conversation too long,
Speaker 3: I know. But we we went to Melbourne and did
Speaker 3: a tour with with a cousin of mine a few
Speaker 3: years ago and we went to Preston. I was born
Speaker 3: in Preston Hospital and we went and looked at the
Speaker 3: building in High Street, Preston where he ran a real
Speaker 3: estate business, and out the back there was a sort
Speaker 3: of a shack arrangement and that was my first home.
Speaker 3: And we went and looked through the through the hole
Speaker 3: in the back gate and it's still there.
Speaker 4: It was amazing.
Speaker 3: But what disturbed me the most was that the town hall,
Speaker 3: and I think I'm right in saying the town hall
Speaker 3: where my mother had her twenty first birthday was now
Speaker 3: a mosque.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, no, I've called it up on Google Maps.
Speaker 2: I can see exactly what you mean. Yes, that doesn't
Speaker 2: surprise me. That would be that kind of territory. It's
Speaker 2: just north of the sort of inner city bubble, which
Speaker 2: is where the greenshold sway with the seat of Melbourne,
Speaker 2: which has been a Green seat for I think since
Speaker 2: twenty ten from memory. So yeah, you get into that
Speaker 2: territory where it becomes much more mixed. You get these
Speaker 2: large pockets of Islamic community and other ethnic groups, and
Speaker 2: then you also get the sort of working poor. You're
Speaker 2: in working poor territory. I would imagine that up there,
Speaker 2: because it's where people, you know, have maybe two jobs,
Speaker 2: the wife works and they've got a few kids. And
Speaker 2: they were but they're not getting ahead. In fact, they're
Speaker 2: getting back. They're going backwards at the moment, particularly because
Speaker 2: of inflation and mortgage rate rises. So yeah, those places
Speaker 2: are quite different. And I've visited similar places in Sydney
Speaker 2: recently during the election campaign and you go, is this
Speaker 2: for real? Like how could people live one way here
Speaker 2: and in a completely different way when you get into Sydney. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's striking.
Speaker 3: And in many cases disturbing. Now, now let's get down
Speaker 3: the basics. What are the main issues in this election?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't I don't know that they're Well, the
Speaker 2: main issue is cost of living, and the second main
Speaker 2: issue is cost of living, and the third is cost
Speaker 2: of living, and then you get a whole lot of
Speaker 2: things related to that, like the price of energy because
Speaker 2: energy has gone up an enormous amount. You have to
Speaker 2: go a long way down people's list before you get
Speaker 2: the climate change. Even actually, interestingly in the till seats
Speaker 2: these days, they've moved on to other things, so that
Speaker 2: is overwhelmingly the big issue, and both parties have been
Speaker 2: trying to address this in various ways, neither of them
Speaker 2: in really adequate ways, I must say. I mean, the
Speaker 2: Labor Party solution to high energy prices is to subsidize them,
Speaker 2: so you still pay for them. You just pay for
Speaker 2: them in your taxes, I guess, or your children end
Speaker 2: up paying for them by paying off your debt. So
Speaker 2: it's very poor policy. And with housing prices, well, you
Speaker 2: know that both parties have really come out with ways
Speaker 2: to try to ease the pathway for peace to get
Speaker 2: into housing by the first time ever under if you
Speaker 2: get a coalition government under Peter Dunton, they will make
Speaker 2: your interest rate payments on more is tax deductible for
Speaker 2: certain people.
Speaker 3: Certain I think that was a clever strike.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's very clever strike. I haven't looked at how
Speaker 2: they're going to manage that fiscally, how they're going to
Speaker 2: pay for it, but I think it's it's great. I mean,
Speaker 2: you certainly, going back to Mensis, you certainly need right
Speaker 2: now some way of altering things so that people can
Speaker 2: get into the housing market, because you know, Mensis changed
Speaker 2: homage and ownership from about fifty percent to seventy percent
Speaker 2: of the country. You know, it's now going backwards to
Speaker 2: about sixty five or sixty six. So that's a bad thing.
Speaker 2: It's a bad thing for people, and it's a bad
Speaker 2: thing for the country, and it's a very bad thing
Speaker 2: for the Liberal Party because they are a party of
Speaker 2: homeowners and they do very well amongst people who own
Speaker 2: their own homes, are buying their own homes. They do
Speaker 2: less well from renters. So you know, in every respect
Speaker 2: that's a that's a key policy and a key part
Speaker 2: of the house of living, cost of living equation, and
Speaker 2: so yeah, it's the cost of living. Even for the
Speaker 2: Greens Party incidentally, which you used to be the party
Speaker 2: that campaigned on saving the planet and climate change. Not
Speaker 2: hardly a word from them about that this time around.
Speaker 2: Their two big policies are free dental care.
Speaker 3: And here comes the good one, folks, free dental care.
Speaker 3: Which the next one, oh that well, housing, the one
Speaker 3: where they want to lock in housing rents. You know,
Speaker 3: they're not strict restrictions on on on landlords are raising
Speaker 3: rents those sort of things, so got price restrictions there.
Speaker 3: And the other one, of course is free university education,
Speaker 3: so you know that's it's a school nightmare and the policy. Luckily,
Speaker 3: they'll never be empowered. Don't you have free university education already?
Speaker 5: No, No, we don't.
Speaker 1: We have.
Speaker 5: We have a were you're smarter than we are, Well,
Speaker 5: we have.
Speaker 2: We have a system of loans called the HEX loans,
Speaker 2: the higher education something. I don't know what it stands
Speaker 2: for actually, but you know, so you get you get
Speaker 2: a very you get a soft loan from the government
Speaker 2: to pay your fees. And actually the courses are heavily
Speaker 2: subsidized by the government anyway, so you end up paying.
Speaker 2: You end up with the debt, the hex STET, which
Speaker 2: is a problem in itself because that means that you
Speaker 2: come out of university, and people come out of university
Speaker 2: later and later these days, have done more and more degrees.
Speaker 2: They've lost a few working years when they could have been,
Speaker 2: you know, putting a bit of savings in the bank,
Speaker 2: and they've got a massive debt.
Speaker 5: They've got to pay off their hex.
Speaker 2: Stet, and how on earth can they afford to save
Speaker 2: for a house. So that is part of the housing
Speaker 2: policy issue too. But I don't I think we want
Speaker 2: to go back to free education. That's surely surely not
Speaker 2: the answer.
Speaker 3: Well, you've got insane people running the country. In part,
Speaker 3: let me quote Adam Bant's latest socialist brainchild, The renter's
Speaker 3: right to solo is the dumbest policy in Australian history.
Speaker 3: And I'll give you the next sentence. Band obviously thinks
Speaker 3: that investors are so desperate that they'll invest in the
Speaker 3: housing regardless of the regulations the Greens will enforce. The
Speaker 3: Greens will force Elmo to adopt when Adam becomes the
Speaker 3: Prime alt Minister. Now what does that mean?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so Labor is not going to win by
Speaker 2: a majority, although the polls might suggest that they are.
Speaker 2: I can tell you categorically exclusive to this podcast, that
Speaker 2: they will not win a majority because the way that
Speaker 2: the seats fall and the fact that the national swing
Speaker 2: doesn't really reflect the local mood anymore. So you know,
Speaker 2: there's a wide variation in spring in swings between different seats.
Speaker 2: That's what's happening in successive elections here. So you can't
Speaker 2: take the national swing and say well that's how it's.
Speaker 5: Going to go.
Speaker 2: So he'll end up with a minority in Parliament. He
Speaker 2: will have to lean on the Greens and the Teal
Speaker 2: MPs who sit on the cross benches to help him.
Speaker 2: There's a few independents, but they won't be enough. So
Speaker 2: he's going to be hostage to the Greens that they're
Speaker 2: going to want to do deals with him, and they're
Speaker 2: going to want to trade off. They want you know, housing,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of slap landlords in chains in return
Speaker 2: for something else, you know.
Speaker 5: So they're in that territory.
Speaker 2: It's not going to be it's not going to be pretty,
Speaker 2: it's not going to be good for the country. It's
Speaker 2: not going to be good for labor ultimately, because it
Speaker 2: will mean that the backlash will come against them and
Speaker 2: we may get a more decisive result against them at
Speaker 2: the next election. But that's where we're heading. The Greens
Speaker 2: will be pulling the strings and frighteningly, the big thing,
Speaker 2: I think, in a way, the most fearsome thing of
Speaker 2: all that the Greens are driving and is coming from
Speaker 2: some sections of the Labor Party, is an anti Israel policy.
Speaker 2: So you know, decades, ever since Israel's creation in the forties,
Speaker 2: the Australia has always been a solid ally of Israel.
Speaker 2: We are no longer because the Labor Party has changed
Speaker 2: our policy and the Greens are even worse. You know,
Speaker 2: they're really off with the Palestinian extreme line from the.
Speaker 5: River to the sea. They don't believe.
Speaker 2: They say Israel has a right to exist, but they
Speaker 2: don't actors if it does, et cetera, et cetera. So
Speaker 2: I find that deeply distressing and it's been deeply divisive
Speaker 2: in this country where we have a very, very very
Speaker 2: successful Jewish community that have contributed so much to this
Speaker 2: country and still do so.
Speaker 3: It's going to be interesting to see how that comes apart,
Speaker 3: because it must come apart at some stage. Let me
Speaker 3: ask you where do you think for a new Zealander
Speaker 3: to go for the best coverage and advice on Australian matters?
Speaker 3: Where do you suggest that would be? And I'm talking print?
Speaker 5: Oh, in print?
Speaker 2: Well, I think the Australian is still a solid newspaper.
Speaker 2: I would work for The Australian for many years as
Speaker 2: part of the Murder group of companies. Look, it's stayed
Speaker 2: remarkably solid. You know, the values that it really had
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty four and it's established have stayed with
Speaker 2: it against all the odds. Not many newspapers have done that.
Speaker 2: So I'd put the Australian in the same league as
Speaker 2: the Wall Street Journal as being a paper that really
Speaker 2: will give you a reasonably fair and balanced coverage but
Speaker 2: will not sort of skew wildly to the left as
Speaker 2: most newspapers do, including yours.
Speaker 5: Course.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's a good start. Spectator has some good
Speaker 2: comment and I must express my bias here. I write
Speaker 2: for all these publications, but the Quadrant magazine, which is
Speaker 2: a monthly magazine has been going since nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 2: That's much more of a thoughtful long form magazine with
Speaker 2: long form essays that I think is going great guns
Speaker 2: at the moment. I should first all acknowledge the death
Speaker 2: last week of the former editor, Keith Winshuttle, who was
Speaker 2: a great man and really got that magazine to where
Speaker 2: it is now, and the current editor, who is my wife,
Speaker 2: Rebecca Weier. So I'm deeply conflicted and I should say that.
Speaker 2: But I think that if you wanted to get an
Speaker 2: idea of the debate where it's going on crucial issues,
Speaker 2: Quadrants always a good publication subscribed, is that, And that's
Speaker 2: probably about it.
Speaker 5: I mean that you.
Speaker 2: I mean, I find maybe it's just me getting more
Speaker 2: and more narrow minded, but I find less and less
Speaker 2: to read in what we used to know as the
Speaker 2: Fairfax Press, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, now
Speaker 2: owned by nine Newspapers, which is a division of Channel nine,
Speaker 2: the television company. So you know there's those, there's slimmer
Speaker 2: and slimmer papers. I haven't adjusted to the to the
Speaker 2: modern digital world terribly much. The only exception in that
Speaker 2: stable is the Australian Financial Review, which interestingly is doing
Speaker 2: better than any of those once great papers that used
Speaker 2: to be the rivers of gold. The Financial Review is
Speaker 2: now the strong one because it's providing some you know,
Speaker 2: a bit more quality information, particularly on business matters. So
Speaker 2: that's that's about a lot. But it's we're pretty well off. Really,
Speaker 2: we were certainly compared to New Zealand.
Speaker 3: Well, of course, of course, Well Spectator was what I
Speaker 3: was goaling for when I asked you the question, because
Speaker 3: being a weekly publication, and I'm quote from it quite
Speaker 3: regularly because it's because I think it's so on target.
Speaker 3: But having said that, let me refer you to because
Speaker 3: you've raised climate climate issues. This was from the April
Speaker 3: second edition, the leading of Article Australia. And let's not
Speaker 3: forget that Spectator now devotes a page to New Zealand
Speaker 3: pretty much every issue, and I'd like to see more
Speaker 3: of it anyway. This was from the April second edition. Labor,
Speaker 3: in cahoots with the Greens and the Teals have introduced
Speaker 3: mandatory climate reporting laws, where even small businesses and suppliers
Speaker 3: to larger businesses will be increasingly forced to comply with
Speaker 3: onerous carbon emissions reporting. The continuation of these laws was
Speaker 3: reiterated but largely ignored in Treasurer Jim Chalmers budget, despite
Speaker 3: the devastating impact it'll have on productivity and profit margins
Speaker 3: across the nation now, Michael Bohm wrote, carrying severe penalties
Speaker 3: including prison. The new law is aimed at forcing the
Speaker 3: private sector to meet the government's net zero climate agenda.
Speaker 3: At the private sectors and ultimately Australian consumers huge cost.
Speaker 3: The fact that you see we've got we've got a
Speaker 3: problem here. We've got the National Party as the main
Speaker 3: party in government. The Minister for Climate Matters is a dope.
Speaker 3: He's pushing net zero at a time when well so
Speaker 3: is your government. But it's one of the left, at
Speaker 3: a time when the rest of the world, with any
Speaker 3: intelligence is letting it go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean net zero is one of the great
Speaker 2: projects of the of the anointed ones that you know,
Speaker 2: the world class that that's and that goes across parties.
Speaker 2: So doesn't surprise me that you you've unfortunately got somebody
Speaker 2: who's still going along with that there because of the
Speaker 2: Conservative Party in Britain got sucked into it under Tony Blair. Sorry,
Speaker 2: so I'm terribly bloud under under Boris Johnson, of course.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean it's a nonsense and it's it's
Speaker 2: collapsing all around the world now, not in Australia where
Speaker 2: we've got a Labor Party which is just so driven
Speaker 2: by it. It's painful. It's painful for all of us
Speaker 2: in our electricity bills and that the nutty projects that
Speaker 2: are getting funded and the amount of Australian countryside that's
Speaker 2: been ripped up, national parks being ripped up to put
Speaker 2: windmills and pipelines and everything else.
Speaker 5: This is nuts.
Speaker 2: So yes, of course, that's that's that's really disappearing around
Speaker 2: the world now. European countries are desperately looking for a
Speaker 2: way out of these commitments that they made and the
Speaker 2: course of action which they took leaning heavily on unreliable
Speaker 2: renewable energy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: New Zealand's are slightly different cases that you've got so
Speaker 2: much hydro electricity, of course, but that's to get you
Speaker 2: so far, and you don't want to be going down.
Speaker 3: We've got we've got everything's going up here, water is
Speaker 3: going up, power is going up and not just once
Speaker 3: but more and people are really feeling it. So there's
Speaker 3: a commonality of issues between Australia and New Zealand, unquestionably.
Speaker 2: But our housing prices too, I think that's a big
Speaker 2: issue with you too, and housing availability.
Speaker 3: Well they're building trash as well. Now, yeah, that's the
Speaker 3: that's the problem. Now, look, we should get onto the
Speaker 3: two leaders. And there's been quite a bit of criticism.
Speaker 3: It was only yesterday that they had the party launch.
Speaker 2: Your take on it, Well, you're like quick summing up
Speaker 2: of the two leaders. Antony Alberanezi we know has been
Speaker 2: in government now for one term for three years. It
Speaker 2: feels like he's been in government for four terms in
Speaker 2: the sense that they look look like one of those
Speaker 2: exhausted governments with no clue known them what to do.
Speaker 2: But that's just a comment on the But he's a government.
Speaker 2: What did they do in their first term?
Speaker 5: I don't know. You tell me.
Speaker 2: You remember he spent a year and a half with
Speaker 2: this Voice campaign to get an Aboriginal voice to Parliament,
Speaker 2: went to a referendum, failed dramatically sixty forty against and
Speaker 2: so that was his first half of his prime minister
Speaker 2: first term gone. And since then, well nothing. You can't
Speaker 2: put your finger at anything he's done, except anything that's helpful,
Speaker 2: that is, except drivers further and further down this renewable
Speaker 2: energy path, and disastrously in my view, refusing to look
Speaker 2: at any other alternative sources of energy. Power stations of
Speaker 2: collapsing for lack of maintenance because nobody wants to invest
Speaker 2: in them. It's not a pretty sight. All that's added
Speaker 2: to inflation. They spent big so spending. Government spending as
Speaker 2: a proportion of GDP used to be below twenty five
Speaker 2: percent for really the whole of the century, really, for
Speaker 2: instance John Howard's day, around twenty four to twenty five percent.
Speaker 2: Now it's now twenty seven and a bit. So they've
Speaker 2: pushed up government spending with age by huge amount, by
Speaker 2: a lot, and on rubbish stuff like they're not spending
Speaker 2: it on defense that'd be a good thing to do
Speaker 2: right now, but no, it's it's going on things like
Speaker 2: the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which is everybody knows it's
Speaker 2: heavily rotted, but nobody knows how to fix it. And
Speaker 2: these education we're spending so much on education now per pupil,
Speaker 2: so we're just yeading.
Speaker 3: But you're yes, but you're you're sufferings as we have
Speaker 3: been in both mathematics and literacy.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, that simple kind of equation. We're spending probably
Speaker 2: forty percent more in real terms per child on education
Speaker 2: these days, but they're doing worse or by international standards
Speaker 2: than they were ten years ago, twelve years ago. Ye,
Speaker 2: we're paying more for a worse outcome. You know, if
Speaker 2: you were a commercial buyer, you'd say, I'm not buying
Speaker 2: this product anymore. I'm going to look at a different
Speaker 2: way of doing it. But because government's never worked like that,
Speaker 2: so yeah, we're stuck with this high spending as in
Speaker 2: New Zealand would be the biggest challenge for an incoming
Speaker 2: courlish government to get spending back under control, but while
Speaker 2: at the same time ramp up our defense spending, which
Speaker 2: for obvious reasons, has to be done.
Speaker 3: All right, so you've covered el been easy to some degree.
Speaker 3: What about Dutton.
Speaker 2: Dutton is he is a former Queensland policeman. He looks
Speaker 2: like a form Queensland policeman, he sounds like one, and
Speaker 2: in public he gives that air. He's actually a deeply intelligent,
Speaker 2: thinking guy and is on the I suppose you know
Speaker 2: he's a conservative. He has very conservative values and so
Speaker 2: forth and policies. But he's done a remarkable job in
Speaker 2: picking up the party after the collapse at the last
Speaker 2: election three years ago, unifying the party room in Canberra
Speaker 2: and remarkably because there haven't been any noticeable splits or leaks,
Speaker 2: and then getting them into a position where, certainly at
Speaker 2: the start of this year there were many people that
Speaker 2: were confident that he would actually win this election. I
Speaker 2: think I was always doubtful about that because of the numbers,
Speaker 2: but he's certainly making a go of it. And if
Speaker 2: Albanez is forced into minority government and the Liberals and
Speaker 2: win a substantial number of seats, as I believe they will,
Speaker 2: particularly in labor areas like in former labor strongholds, then
Speaker 2: he'll have achieved a gal for the party. Even if
Speaker 2: he doesn't become Prime Minister this time around and set
Speaker 2: it up for a win next time. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: think he's he's been great. I mean, people have been
Speaker 2: very sometimes a bit critical of him because he doesn't
Speaker 2: have the sort of he doesn't have the sort of
Speaker 2: drive or that Tony Abbott did in the sense that
Speaker 2: he's not sort of bouncing around the place and speaking,
Speaker 2: and sometimes he does hold back on issues where people
Speaker 2: would like him to speak out. They wanted to be
Speaker 2: more vocal on some of these issues. But one of
Speaker 2: the problems for him at the moment is that the
Speaker 2: Albanezy government keeps wanting to call him Donald Trump for Australia,
Speaker 2: which isn't of course, but that's now become a slur
Speaker 2: among some people, although there's certainly people here, myself included,
Speaker 2: who would like to see a little bit more and
Speaker 2: more of the Trump's style, if not the substance.
Speaker 5: In the Conservative I read.
Speaker 3: Something earlier today that that was going back to net
Speaker 3: zero and he has been Dunman's been reluctant to pursue
Speaker 3: it publicly. I gather I have the opinion that he
Speaker 3: privately is in favor of dumping that zero. Yeah, you
Speaker 3: may be able to confirmed.
Speaker 2: Well, that would be correct, I think, without wishing to
Speaker 2: sort of give his ways secrets. But where the Liberal
Speaker 2: Party landed on this Liberal Parties remember and Malcolm Turmble
Speaker 2: was deeply divided on this.
Speaker 5: Malcolm Turble was all on for the full green economy nonsense.
Speaker 2: And most of his party weren't, so that it was
Speaker 2: the deeply divisive issue in twenty nineteen at that election.
Speaker 5: They came to a.
Speaker 2: Position where they decided, well, we're okay, we will agree
Speaker 2: with we will go along with what we've agreed to
Speaker 2: do in our Paris agreements and international agreements, but we're
Speaker 2: not going to go crazy and if Australian jobs are affected,
Speaker 2: we'll think again. That was the position they came up with,
Speaker 2: and they did that quite deliberately, because when you looked
Speaker 2: at the way the country was split on this issue,
Speaker 2: you had about twenty percent who in you're in my
Speaker 2: camp here saying this is rubbish, let's get out of it.
Speaker 2: You know, there's the evidence for climate change doesn't justify this.
Speaker 2: And then you've got another twenty percent at the other end,
Speaker 2: which are the sort of the whole world's about to
Speaker 2: catch fire, and we've got to hide under our beds
Speaker 2: and what can we do to save the planet. And
Speaker 2: then in the middle you've got sixty percent, which is
Speaker 2: just the ordinary people who think, well, yeah, sounds fair enough.
Speaker 2: We'll go along with it, we'll recycle our rubbish and yes,
Speaker 2: we should do what we can, but let's not go
Speaker 2: bar me. So that's where the Liberal Party is, and
Speaker 2: by doing so, it captures that ground, and I think
Speaker 2: from polling that I've seen, I think it's still that way.
Speaker 2: I think if you came out and said, oh, we
Speaker 2: think climate change is crap and we're going to abandon
Speaker 2: net zero, that would be politically difficult to do right now,
Speaker 2: certainly in some seats in the city seats. So I
Speaker 2: think he's playing it safe really, But.
Speaker 4: Are Bay City seats he's not going to win anyway?
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's right. Some of them we will,
Speaker 2: but we're never going to. You know, I don't think
Speaker 2: it helped us at the last election, signing up for
Speaker 2: net zero, for instance. You know a lot of MPs
Speaker 2: in those kind of seats told me it would, but
Speaker 2: it didn't. Categorically it didn't. We lost those seats to
Speaker 2: the Teals. So yeah, I don't think it's a useful path.
Speaker 2: So he's not going to buy into that yet, I
Speaker 2: think what we're buying into it in practical ways. I
Speaker 2: think in his so he's going to stop all these
Speaker 2: new transmission lines which are costing us a fortune and
Speaker 2: ripping up, you know, areas of farmland and indeed natural
Speaker 2: areas of natural beauty, you know, unspoilt native forest.
Speaker 5: So he's going to be stopping that.
Speaker 2: And in stopping that, then that kind of winds everything
Speaker 2: back anyway, because if you can't have the transmission lines,
Speaker 2: you can't you can't put the new solar farms in,
Speaker 2: the new solar industrial estates, so I prefertical, you can't
Speaker 2: put the new turbines in. So it will pull back
Speaker 2: and we'll move to a much more sensible policy, which
Speaker 2: is gas. In the short term, we're going to get
Speaker 2: a lot of gas going with nuclear. In the long term,
Speaker 2: what is long term? Oh, probably realistically, I guess you'd
Speaker 2: have to say twenty years from now by the time
Speaker 2: we get the first one online, by the time we
Speaker 2: get the regulationary things done. Yeah, it's a bit of
Speaker 2: a myth that the nuclear takes a long time to build,
Speaker 2: you know, it's actually, I think the average worldwide is
Speaker 2: seven and a half years from start to finish. But
Speaker 2: before that you've got all the regulatory and nonsense to
Speaker 2: get through. So that's what takes time, and that takes time.
Speaker 2: Whatever you're doing, it takes time with solar or pumped
Speaker 2: tydro So it is a myth in my view to
Speaker 2: say that it takes too long.
Speaker 5: But what does too long mean? With nuclear?
Speaker 2: I mean I knew this is when New Zealanders obviously
Speaker 2: be moving too. If we put in a nuclear power
Speaker 2: station today, if we were able to start one today,
Speaker 2: it would its life would be eighty years minimum, probably
Speaker 2: ninety years, maybe even one hundred. So that means, let's
Speaker 2: work it out. My granddaughter's great grandchildren or certainly grandchildren
Speaker 2: will be using that electricity from that power station. That's
Speaker 2: the sort of long term investment we really need to make.
Speaker 2: But the other countries are doing it very successfully, but
Speaker 2: we seem to have an aversion to it in this
Speaker 2: part of the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's worth here on the same subject mining,
Speaker 3: there's gold, and you've had a couple of gold stories
Speaker 3: and companies being prohibited from doing from from digging and
Speaker 3: what have you. But then I read the other day
Speaker 3: something about two of the special minerals, and I couldn't
Speaker 3: I'd not seen either of them before. But Australia apparently
Speaker 3: has a good supply of these two particular minerals. Now,
Speaker 3: who was it that wrote the letter to to Donald Trump?
Speaker 3: When I say the letter to Donald Trump, I think
Speaker 3: it was published in the papers as such, I don't
Speaker 3: think I don't think it was sent to him on
Speaker 3: a personal basis. But it was an argument that was
Speaker 3: laid out about how Trump should treat Australia a little
Speaker 3: differently because you've got a good supply of these two
Speaker 3: very important minerals, and there is America has a shortage
Speaker 3: of them. So, in other words, be kind to your
Speaker 3: next provider.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well I think that that makes a lot
Speaker 2: of sense. We've got we've got a lot of almost
Speaker 2: everything here, and we've got got we've got a lot
Speaker 2: of lithium for the batteries. We've got a lot of
Speaker 2: these rare earths. Although they're rare, earths are actually more
Speaker 2: common than you think. The rare doesn't mean they're rare.
Speaker 2: It just means you have to refine a lot of
Speaker 2: dirt before you get to the minerals inside and anyway,
Speaker 2: there's lots there's lots of this stuff here and for
Speaker 2: their modern economy silicon for instance. So if you want
Speaker 2: to if you want to build some good, solid trading
Speaker 2: partnerships that don't enrich China, then yeah, sure we should
Speaker 2: be doing more with the US. You mentioned you mentioned gold. Incidentally,
Speaker 2: that's a real boom trade at the moment between Australia
Speaker 2: and the US because Americans are investing in gold because
Speaker 2: the economics are so uncertain. But you know, there's much
Speaker 2: more we should be able to do. Uranium is the
Speaker 2: big one. Why aren't Well, you know, we have I
Speaker 2: think sixteen percent of the world's uranium known uranium reserves,
Speaker 2: and we only mine about eight percent. We're only contributing
Speaker 2: about eight percent of the world's uranium market. We should
Speaker 2: be opening uranium minds in the Albanezer government blocked one,
Speaker 2: but we should be doing that. I mean, that's the
Speaker 2: US will need uranium. We're all going to need uranium
Speaker 2: as we expand energy generation. Eventually every day I think
Speaker 2: will have to come round to that, and so we're
Speaker 2: key to it. We've got that stuff. We could be
Speaker 2: the Saudi Ira Arabia Iranian, but not really because you
Speaker 2: can get it in Canada and Kazakhstan and other places.
Speaker 2: But we've got you know, we could be very helpful
Speaker 2: trading relationships with the US, secure ones that don't involve
Speaker 2: the Middle East or China.
Speaker 3: I was going to ask you a question about the States.
Speaker 3: I did see something that Victoria might be the big
Speaker 3: decider in the end. But for people, what I've got
Speaker 3: in my mind is people moving from here to Australia
Speaker 3: and they're still leaving in fairly large numbers.
Speaker 5: I believe.
Speaker 3: Queensland is the place that most people go for retirement.
Speaker 3: I think Victoria, for whatever reason, is the place that
Speaker 3: people go to work more Sydney also, of course, and
Speaker 3: other places as well, but I'm talking about the dominant numbers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me give you an update on that. So Queensland. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a big retirement statement. It is also a big bustling,
Speaker 2: growing economy. And I would think if you're a New
Speaker 2: Zealander and you're looking for somewhere you're going to find work,
Speaker 2: then I would say Queenstand's a very good place right now.
Speaker 2: One of the factors in that is the Olympics in
Speaker 2: twenty thirty two. Excuse me if I haven't got that
Speaker 2: date right, I haven't focused on it, but where they're
Speaker 2: hosting the Olympics in Brisbane. And this is leading, of course,
Speaker 2: as it does around the world, to massive investments in infrastructure, roads, railways, stadiums.
Speaker 2: So if you're in construction or engineering or any anything
Speaker 2: related to that, then it's a great town to move to.
Speaker 5: Right now.
Speaker 2: My son's an engineer and geo technical engineer and I
Speaker 2: keep telling him to move up there, but he's quite
Speaker 2: happy in Newcastle. So yeah, I mean there is that
Speaker 2: that is going well. It's got a coalition government of
Speaker 2: conservative government that's pulling back, interestingly from a lot of
Speaker 2: the net zero stuff. They're winding back their commitment to
Speaker 2: this stuff. Uh, and we will have to keep the
Speaker 2: coal stations, coal fire out cold fire, coal fired power
Speaker 2: stations going for longer. They've already scrapped one of these
Speaker 2: pumped hydro projects. They should scrap the other, but maybe
Speaker 2: they'll get round of that.
Speaker 5: So yeah.
Speaker 2: So I think Queensland is looking relatively good. New South
Speaker 2: Wales likewise, very strong economy, very probably the most mixed
Speaker 2: economy in the country. So it's resilient and it's it's
Speaker 2: got great infrastructure. Now anybody who hasn't been the Sydney
Speaker 2: recently should come and just ride our Metro, which is
Speaker 2: the most brilliant piece of suburban railway I've been on
Speaker 2: anywhere in the world.
Speaker 4: I've been on it, so I know what you mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So and the tunnels, like you know, Sydney used
Speaker 2: to be shocking for traffic. Well now you go just
Speaker 2: drive for kilometer after kilometer underground. I mean, I've been
Speaker 2: going out to Western Sydney a fair bit recently and
Speaker 2: I would spend the first fifteen to twenty kilometers underground,
Speaker 2: you know, doing a very respectable ninety k is an hour,
Speaker 2: whereas before it would have been stop start and traffic lights.
Speaker 2: So Sydney is a great city and New South Wales
Speaker 2: is doing relatively well. And then you get to Victoria
Speaker 2: and it's really going downhill, like big time in every respect.
Speaker 2: It's got the highest debt of any state. It's on
Speaker 2: on lots of measures. It's losing industry, it's losing employment.
Speaker 2: The only thing it's not losing is education. Employment. There
Speaker 2: that a lot of overseas students. The universities are basically
Speaker 2: the big earners in Melbourne these days. So it's a
Speaker 2: very sad and sorry state in many ways, and that's
Speaker 2: why you know, it's been that way under a labor
Speaker 2: government out of Dan Andrews of course are sort of
Speaker 2: the covid ogre. So it's going back to be it's
Speaker 2: swinging back definitely in the Coalition's direction. In the federal election.
Speaker 2: That will mean that they will gain possibly as many
Speaker 2: as five seats there, which is a lot and will
Speaker 2: help done a lot. But they're winning seats interestingly in
Speaker 2: those outer metropolitan places, places like Preston and beyond where
Speaker 2: people are just sick of it and they've been doing
Speaker 2: it tough for the last three years, these seats that
Speaker 2: they've never held, like Carwell is even in play, that's
Speaker 2: round Melbourne Airport and beyond. So yeah, so yeah, there's big,
Speaker 2: big change there. There'll be sweets seats go to the
Speaker 2: Coalition in New South Wales to a similar kind of areas.
Speaker 2: But Victoria is going to be the big mover, so
Speaker 2: that that gets some some gets done in some way
Speaker 2: towards it. Tasmania, well it's Tasmay who is Tasmania, But
Speaker 2: it's it's doing okay and reasonably okay as a state.
Speaker 2: So that's lot of a head place to be either.
Speaker 2: And South Australia is always South Australia. It's always about
Speaker 2: to chance on the next big thing and never actually
Speaker 2: does you know it's it's it's becoming more and more
Speaker 2: kind of government town in you know, the government expenditure
Speaker 2: on public servants and other publicly funded jobs is big.
Speaker 2: Is the big earner there, and yeah, there's nothing much
Speaker 2: else in side.
Speaker 4: So I take it. I take it. It's a it's
Speaker 4: a labor government.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, went back to that. I had one term
Speaker 2: of coalition government, not very successful at all under Stephen Marshall,
Speaker 2: and it's now back to a very good peterman. Anawskis
Speaker 2: is the premier. He's a very good premiere, well respected
Speaker 2: by the business community, much much more to the right
Speaker 2: of the Labor Party and much more sensible and less radical.
Speaker 2: And he is for nuclear. Incidentally, he's said so a
Speaker 2: number of times. He doesn't say so too much because
Speaker 2: that puts him at odds with the federal Labor government
Speaker 2: and they don't like that. But he would jump on
Speaker 2: board with nuclear right away, with one of the biggest
Speaker 2: uranium right mines is in South Australia, so yeah, there's
Speaker 2: there's great potentially in South Australia. As always, it's always
Speaker 2: a state of potential. And then WA, which is you know,
Speaker 2: the economic engine room of the country. Won't you won't
Speaker 2: be able to work in WA and but they swung
Speaker 2: dramatically to Labor at the last election, even though the
Speaker 2: coalition has much more mining friendly policy is so one
Speaker 2: of the big issues there at the moment is the
Speaker 2: Browse Basin, which is its massive offshore gas reserve off
Speaker 2: the Northwest coast, and that's reaching the end of its life.
Speaker 2: It needs an extension. It needs legislation to allow it
Speaker 2: to go for another thirty years and the Labor government
Speaker 2: is sitting on that. It has not agreed to give it.
Speaker 2: It doesn't really want to because there's lots of opposition
Speaker 2: from greenees for absolutely stupid reasons. Liberals Dunton has committed
Speaker 2: to do that within thirty days are coming to power,
Speaker 2: so I think in way Libs will probably pick up
Speaker 2: a seat or two, but they won't do remarkably well there.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you can see around the country where we'll
Speaker 2: pick up some seats and hopefully that's a bit of
Speaker 2: a guide. Also to the state of the States in
Speaker 2: a way.
Speaker 3: Well, you didn't cover Northern Territory. I know it's not
Speaker 3: a state, but just Center helped me out.
Speaker 2: Just Center in Napajinta Price Senator.
Speaker 3: I noted on television yesterday she was referred to as
Speaker 3: the best speaker by far in the party, in the
Speaker 3: in the coalition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well she I think she she really came to
Speaker 2: prominence with the Voice Aboriginal Voice to Parliament referendum she
Speaker 2: opposed and she gave the Liberal Party in the National
Speaker 2: Party of the confidence to oppose it to and I
Speaker 2: think I think she was she was the turning point
Speaker 2: in that debate. She is a remarkable woman. She's just
Speaker 2: written a biography which I haven't read. I must read it,
Speaker 2: which everybody tells me is fantastic. It's about this terrible
Speaker 2: upbringing she she had in an Aboriginal community in in
Speaker 2: in the Northern Territory. You know, the long history of
Speaker 2: family violence, murdered, death, horrible things. But she risen from
Speaker 2: that to become the great champion. I think for for
Speaker 2: all Australians.
Speaker 5: She would say she would score us.
Speaker 2: So she doesn't think of herself as a champion for
Speaker 2: Aboriginal Australian. She's a champion for all Australians. So's she's
Speaker 2: great and she's a senator from there, and we'd like
Speaker 2: we would like to see more of her. We would
Speaker 2: definitely like to see more of her on the platform.
Speaker 2: And I think Dunton's gradually bringing her into it more
Speaker 2: and more. And but this in Northern Territory has a
Speaker 2: great future, if any if only we could introduce capitalism
Speaker 2: to it. Really, you know, much of the state is
Speaker 2: really not capitalist. World is run by the government and
Speaker 2: government housing and you can't open up anything any kind
Speaker 2: of business without government permission, and it's really locked into
Speaker 2: that mindset. But Northern Territory, I believe, watch it go
Speaker 2: once they open up the Beterloop Basin gas field, which
Speaker 2: is massive, not just gas but oil. Incidentally, if they
Speaker 2: want to go there and this, this would transform the
Speaker 2: Northern Territory. If we let, if we did the drill
Speaker 2: baby draw philosophy, that will transform the Northern Territory and
Speaker 2: die we will be the new Dallas. In my in
Speaker 2: my in my belief.
Speaker 4: But the two word a two word comment.
Speaker 2: Do it exactly exactly look it's very exciting. I have
Speaker 2: been up there and seen some of the trest test
Speaker 2: drilling that's going on, and it's just you just go, what,
Speaker 2: You've got that much oil and gas under under here
Speaker 2: and relatively easily extracted, and we're using modern tracking technology
Speaker 2: and get it on the boats, get it down or here.
Speaker 2: We'll solve our energy crisis in one fell swoop.
Speaker 3: Nick, just a quick comment on immigration, is that is
Speaker 3: that likely to be an issue?
Speaker 2: It's a massive issue with people here. It's a huge issue,
Speaker 2: i'd say, you know, in terms of issues cost living,
Speaker 2: cost living, cost live, and then probably energy and immigration.
Speaker 2: Immigration though is is it's not the people don't want
Speaker 2: my We are a country of migrants. We're really accepting
Speaker 2: of them. We've got you know, most of them. Almost
Speaker 2: everyone settles in eventually and becomes a great Australian citizen
Speaker 2: in my experiences. Some who don't, of course, But yeah,
Speaker 2: not that we don't want them. It's just to we're going, well,
Speaker 2: this is just nuts. It's bringing in more than a
Speaker 2: million migrants under the Albanesi government. We're not building you know,
Speaker 2: three hundred thousand homes. It's probably what we'd need to
Speaker 2: do to keep up, So they're adding to the housing
Speaker 2: pressure and that's causing resentment.
Speaker 3: Have you considered that's Albanesi might be doing that for
Speaker 3: the same reason that Biden did.
Speaker 4: And that's to that's to Rea.
Speaker 5: What's the word away.
Speaker 2: Look, it's a theory, but I don't think it doesn't
Speaker 2: Like as with Trump, it doesn't work because migrants are
Speaker 2: not rusted on labor voters anymore, even if they ever were,
Speaker 2: you know, they are not. The Indian community, for instance,
Speaker 2: is now. You know, if you if you look at
Speaker 2: an area, if you're if you're a part conservative MP,
Speaker 2: and you see there's a lot of Indians in an area,
Speaker 2: you go, oh, great, that'll be a good one. Because
Speaker 2: the Indians are very into the democratic process and they
Speaker 2: understand it well and they're largely well, there's you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of them are small business owners. They certainly
Speaker 2: want the kids to have an education, and they're conservative.
Speaker 2: You know, they've got family values. They don't like stuff
Speaker 2: like same sex marriage and all this stuff. So they
Speaker 2: are naturally on our side of politics. And I think
Speaker 2: this is absolutely true right across even with the Muslim community,
Speaker 2: which has been for a long time. We thought that
Speaker 2: was just rusted onto labor. Well they're peeling away from
Speaker 2: labor now big time. And I was out in the
Speaker 2: western suburbs with a candidate for the Coalition who is
Speaker 2: a Muslim. Actually he has about fifteen percent Muslim in
Speaker 2: his area, and I said to him, well, what's the
Speaker 2: big issue right now for your Islamic voters and he said,
Speaker 2: we'll cost are living. Course, like they're no different, and
Speaker 2: they're small business owners and they're very doing very well,
Speaker 2: a lot of them and even set up their own charities,
Speaker 2: and they're great people. Really, they've just been Our impression
Speaker 2: of them has been badly skewed by about the ten
Speaker 2: percent radical minority, so you know who support Hamas and
Speaker 2: all those extremist things. So but that's really only about
Speaker 2: that ten percent. So it's like saying, you don't judge
Speaker 2: the Islamic community by those nutcases any more than you
Speaker 2: judge Melbourne by the green MP Adam Banto holds the seat.
Speaker 2: You know, It's it's just not like that.
Speaker 3: Not a different note. You wrote a piece on BP
Speaker 3: the petrol company. Yes, can you summarize it for us
Speaker 3: in three minutes or four minutes or five minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, British petroleum as they became in the fifties, been
Speaker 2: going since the start of the centially one of the
Speaker 2: most successful all companies in the world, right, going from
Speaker 2: about in the twentieth century and then and then when
Speaker 2: Tony Blair came to power in the late nineteen nineties
Speaker 2: and Britain was going all sort of modern and Tony
Speaker 2: Blairish BP was one of the first companies to come
Speaker 2: out and say, well, we're going green. And they changed
Speaker 2: their logo. You might remember they had a yellow shield
Speaker 2: and yellow and green shield and they changed it to
Speaker 2: this sort of flower and the words BP. They let
Speaker 2: us BEP shrunk in this logo and went down to lowercase.
Speaker 5: They didn't like.
Speaker 2: Being called British Petroleum, so they started to call themselves
Speaker 2: Beyond Petroleum and they were going to get into renewable
Speaker 2: energy and everything and save the planet. And there was
Speaker 2: groundbreaking in the late nineties and early two thousands. Well
Speaker 2: what happened, you know, share prices went down. They also
Speaker 2: had a couple of big disasters, if you remember, big
Speaker 2: bus and people killed, and that was because they hadn't
Speaker 2: put money into oil maintenance, because they thought the oil
Speaker 2: bit of their business was dying. And they wouldn't waste
Speaker 2: money on maintaining it. So oil and gas, so they
Speaker 2: were going big time into renewables. Well, it was absolute disaster.
Speaker 2: It was twenty five years of hemorrhaging profits. They should
Speaker 2: call instead of beyond petroleum, they should have been called
Speaker 2: beyond profit at that point. But they've turned around. They've
Speaker 2: now seen the light and they've they've said we're not
Speaker 2: going to do that anymore, dropping our twenty thirty clean
Speaker 2: energy goals and we're getting back to drilling. We're going
Speaker 2: back to our basic business. And I think that's great.
Speaker 2: It shows the way a lot of these corporates are going.
Speaker 2: They're waking up to this nonsense now and just getting
Speaker 2: on with things. But I just it took twenty five
Speaker 2: years for them to realize that. Twenty five years with
Speaker 2: the share price tanking and everybody's saying how badly they're performing,
Speaker 2: But it took them all that time before they realized
Speaker 2: that they had to change course. And I think that
Speaker 2: as Peace are writing quadrant on this, it shows the
Speaker 2: strength of this climate change narrative, this sort of almost
Speaker 2: religious narrative that nobody dares resist, even though in practice
Speaker 2: it turns out bad but it does show that things
Speaker 2: change eventually, and I think this is what's happening in
Speaker 2: slowly in Australia, certainly in the US and Europe. People
Speaker 2: are realizing that this green dream isn't working and we're
Speaker 2: just going to get a bit more grounded in the
Speaker 2: way we deal with the energy policy and the environment.
Speaker 4: Well said.
Speaker 3: So as a conclusion, a very quick prediction for the outcome.
Speaker 2: I can confidently say will be a hung parliament, no
Speaker 2: clear majority, and will almost certainly be in Labour's favor.
Speaker 2: So Labor will form the next government with the help
Speaker 2: of Greens, Teals and Independence, and Albinizi will come out.
Speaker 2: He'll look, he'll feel triumphant, but it won't be a
Speaker 2: triumphant victory. It'll be very split victory. Country will not
Speaker 2: be behind him. He won't have a clear mandate for
Speaker 2: anything except just sitting in Curably House for the next
Speaker 2: three years.
Speaker 5: So that's that's the outlook.
Speaker 2: Really, he's not very exciting or enticing.
Speaker 4: An early election the next one.
Speaker 2: Well, let's see. I think they're averse to early elections
Speaker 2: in principle. I think now I think he would he'll
Speaker 2: muddle through in some way for three years. I don't
Speaker 2: think there's any doubt about that. But what he has
Speaker 2: to trade off in terms of good policy to do
Speaker 2: so is another thing. And what state the country is in?
Speaker 2: What state? Yeah, it doesn't be a thinking about really,
Speaker 2: but anyway, we'll just have to get on with it.
Speaker 3: Will be after the election we'll do another another shorter
Speaker 3: podcast than this, but just to cover off things. How
Speaker 3: they how they went, and with I might go from there.
Speaker 2: Good on you like always good to talk to, and
Speaker 2: I'll look forward. I will have egg on my face
Speaker 2: or otherwise, we'll see great to.
Speaker 3: Talk to you, and I appreciate it as always, and
Speaker 3: we'll talk to them. It's a pleasure. Now before we
Speaker 3: get to the mail room, there was something I meant
Speaker 3: to do at the top of the program, and having
Speaker 3: failed to remember that, I'm going to insert it here.
Speaker 3: I want to refer you to an article that I
Speaker 3: insist you must read. There's no other way I can
Speaker 3: put it. It is a must read. I have a
Speaker 3: in my head. I have a collection of authors in
Speaker 3: this country who I consider to be the best. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to break them up, but there is a
Speaker 3: collection of them at the top, not many, but a
Speaker 3: few and one of them is Anthony Willie, retired judge,
Speaker 3: and Anthony Willy has penned the piece that it comes
Speaker 3: from ENZCPR dot com, NZCPR dot com Muriel Newman's website.
Speaker 3: It's entitled there are none so blind as those who
Speaker 3: will not see, and it covers a number of areas
Speaker 3: that are concerning much, if not most, of the country
Speaker 3: at the moment. And it is probably the best article
Speaker 3: I've seen for well some considerable time on this particular
Speaker 3: area especially. Let me just give you an idea. Here
Speaker 3: are some subheadings separatist, marianfiltration, public land ownership, coastal marine,
Speaker 3: title partnership, language, education, the rule of law, democracy, These
Speaker 3: are all subheadings and political courage. And somewhere in there
Speaker 3: there is another one that and here it is science.
Speaker 3: It's the shortest one of all the others run different lengths.
Speaker 3: This one Science runs three lines, and properly, that's all
Speaker 3: that's needed. The legacy of hundreds of years of fact
Speaker 3: based science is being devalued by attempts to introduce Maori
Speaker 3: spiritual values and experiences. Scientists are being deplatformed for speaking out.
Speaker 3: That's it, doesn't it whet your appetite. Now after the
Speaker 3: mail room, I'm going to extend the discussion on that
Speaker 3: area of science, not from Anthony Willie, but from elsewhere.
Speaker 3: But this article is one that you really must go
Speaker 3: and find and read NZCPR dot com. Anthony Willie, there
Speaker 3: are none so blind as those who will not see.
Speaker 3: I leave it with you, Layton Smith, now business producer.
Speaker 3: We are here for podcast number two hundred and eighty.
Speaker 3: We'll get the three hundred mIRC before much longer. Obviously,
Speaker 3: are you good today?
Speaker 1: Late?
Speaker 4: And I'm great? Why do I keep us as usual
Speaker 4: as always? Life is good?
Speaker 6: Go, Christine says regarding your interview with Professor James Allen.
Speaker 6: I'm just listening to your interview with James. It made
Speaker 6: me smile, as what Trump is really doing is the
Speaker 6: greatest reset, taking the opposite direction of the WEF and
Speaker 6: Grant Robertson's the great reset. I hope the American people
Speaker 6: have the strength to keep the faith and let Trump
Speaker 6: get on with the job. God bless Donald Trump and
Speaker 6: help him succeed. Kind regards to you both.
Speaker 3: That's from Chris Chris Well stated, I believe thank you
Speaker 3: now from Michael Interesting Matt bargoldas a podcast to sevenate
Speaker 3: the message or the messenger dilemma. And he refers to
Speaker 3: me and says, you, as an old time broadcaster, well
Speaker 3: well know the value of the voice. It used to
Speaker 3: be a prerequisite on radio. Matt Magalis may write well,
Speaker 3: but his vocal delivery is poor. In spite of your efforts,
Speaker 3: des Gorman had the two of the four strong, clear,
Speaker 3: direct and uncluttered. Oh well, I don't know quite where
Speaker 3: he's going with this a reflection on the judicial takeover
Speaker 3: attempts both here in France and the USA. When I
Speaker 3: was young, opposition groups merely assassinated their undesirables, such as Kennedy.
Speaker 4: Is this progress? Also?
Speaker 3: When we were young, we threw out the old, ushered
Speaker 3: in the new, and through hell and high water, we
Speaker 3: enjoyed our lives. We are both now old. You're assuming
Speaker 3: a lot. You know, you're only as old as you feel.
Speaker 3: Maybe you feel older than I do. We are both
Speaker 3: now old, but wiser but older. We are being thrown out.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. What is the real reason here?
Speaker 3: Give me the courage to change the things I can,
Speaker 3: the grace to accept the things I cannot, and the
Speaker 3: wisdom to know the difference. Now, I got to go
Speaker 3: back and say, as far as Matt was concerned, it
Speaker 3: was a day that I don't think I mentioned this,
Speaker 3: but there was chaos and we didn't resolve the chaos
Speaker 3: until two minutes before recording time, like it was two
Speaker 3: minutes to nine, and at three minutes past nine, this
Speaker 3: is before I'd actually got to him. Missus producer had
Speaker 3: a text, are we still on today?
Speaker 4: Anyway?
Speaker 3: By the time she got here with the text, we
Speaker 3: were already underway. But it was that the problem continued,
Speaker 3: I should say, and it was a recording problem, and
Speaker 3: it was a recording problem at outside the outside the studio,
Speaker 3: so that things worked here fine, but the voice coming
Speaker 3: in didn't. And I have to say it was a
Speaker 3: lot worse than you realized, Michael, because the talented technician
Speaker 3: who took to it proved it dramatically. But we got
Speaker 3: there and I think everybody understood what he had to say.
Speaker 6: Latin Judy says she's talking about unconsented spiritual instruction in kindergartens.
Speaker 6: That's her subject. She says, I'm writing as the sole
Speaker 6: caregiver of my four year old son to raise an
Speaker 6: issue that may interest you as someone who values freedom
Speaker 6: of thought, parental rights, and transparency in public institutions. In
Speaker 6: many state funded kindergartens, including my son's Maori, panthetic beliefs
Speaker 6: such as artur that means gods and karaka addressed to
Speaker 6: them are being taught not as cultural stories, but as
Speaker 6: spiritual fact. This is embedded into daily routines, often via
Speaker 6: in viro schools and other EC programming, without parental consent
Speaker 6: or even disclosure. This to me, raises important questions. Why
Speaker 6: is spiritual content being introduced at all secular taxpayer funded ECE.
Speaker 6: Why are parent's not informed and no opt out of it?
Speaker 6: Why is only one belief system being normalized while others
Speaker 6: are excluded? Is this yet another example of creeping ideology
Speaker 6: and public institutions, this time reaching our youngest children. I
Speaker 6: now have a folder of official correspondence and documentation ready
Speaker 6: to share your Duey or team be interested in pursuing
Speaker 6: this further for your podcast.
Speaker 4: And that's from Judy and Judy. We'll give it some thought.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 3: That sounded familiar and I was pondering whether we've done
Speaker 3: it before, but I think it was me reading it
Speaker 3: when it came in. Now from Mark. Greetings from the
Speaker 3: disunited Kingdom of once Great Britain and parts of still
Speaker 3: occupied Ireland, where we celebrate the twelve thousand arrests made
Speaker 3: per year by our brave and fearless Please of hardened
Speaker 3: and desperate criminals endangering everyone by writing very bad things
Speaker 3: on Facebook, rendered even more dangerous by quite often being
Speaker 3: the truth. I was musing over the necessity of your
Speaker 3: splendidly DEI supporting them, Minister Chris or will it soon
Speaker 3: be Clarissa Luxen or possibly Fluxen asking coming in for
Speaker 3: a bit of that these days, asking their Minister for
Speaker 3: Sport that the next Rugby All team of Colors include
Speaker 3: at least seven women with a similar proportion on the bench,
Speaker 3: and guaranteeing it consists of differently abled people with a
Speaker 3: proportionate mix of ethnicities reflective of ayetroas diversity. Notwithstanding tityrity
Speaker 3: rights enabling the chiefs to have a never relinquished sovereign
Speaker 3: right to also pick the squad. Of course, they should
Speaker 3: encourage their next opponents to follow suit, and President Macron
Speaker 3: may well oblige. But should they disappointingly utter a gallic
Speaker 3: non then even if diversity fails to deliver the greater
Speaker 3: number of points on the score, the all team of
Speaker 3: Colors will have demonstrated to the world that they win
Speaker 3: the Equality Cup, if not the Bledislow, and show that
Speaker 3: Ayatiroa leads the planet in replacing privileged merit with equity.
Speaker 3: Yours in diversity thirteams leyden.
Speaker 6: Jin says, firstly, congratulations on your thirteenth wedding anniversary. I
Speaker 6: have not seen you both in real life together, but honestly,
Speaker 6: both sounds so right for each other on the radio.
Speaker 5: Isn't that nice?
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
Speaker 6: Jim James Allen was right. It's not Donald Trump's job
Speaker 6: to look after the rest of the world. It may
Speaker 6: sound selfish at the outset, but Trump's America First agenda
Speaker 6: gets one thing right. The president or prime minister's primary
Speaker 6: job is to look after their own people and country.
Speaker 6: If they fail that, nothing else they do matters. And
Speaker 6: Trump doesn't care nor worry about how negatively mainstream media
Speaker 6: betrays him because he knows he is doing exactly what
Speaker 6: he promised at the election. And then Jine goes on
Speaker 6: to talk about our own outfit here and he says,
Speaker 6: if national is going to be in James Allen's words,
Speaker 6: Gutler's about protecting our nation from unelected bodies like the
Speaker 6: United Nations, the leftist mainstream media and the co governance cabal.
Speaker 6: Then we will end up with the diabolical three headed
Speaker 6: demon that is Labor, Greens and the Mari Party. And
Speaker 6: he says, Leighton, We're off to Australia for the next
Speaker 6: ten days, but I'll still tune in because you're too addictive.
Speaker 3: That's very nice. Now this is also in the same category.
Speaker 3: When I read this, I felt a motive to be honest.
Speaker 3: I listened to all your podcasts and enjoy them all,
Speaker 3: whether agreeing or disagreeing. I love the discussion with James Allen.
Speaker 3: I could not find anything that I would challenge him on.
Speaker 3: It's a connected world. And when you mentioned Leyton Smith
Speaker 3: of Southland and cycle accident, well, I was one of
Speaker 3: the ambulance officers who attended his accident, Shane. That moved me,
Speaker 3: it really did, because that was I figured that was
Speaker 3: around the thirty year ago Mark. I haven't tracked it back,
Speaker 3: but if mister Smith in Southland is listening, then maybe
Speaker 3: he can.
Speaker 4: He can just remind me of what the.
Speaker 3: Actual date of it was where he lost his leg
Speaker 3: and his hip and life changed forever. But it's an
Speaker 3: amazing I love it. It's the sort of coincidence that oh, and.
Speaker 6: You have to you know wonderful people like Shane who
Speaker 6: No Wonder he remembers it thirty years later, those sorts
Speaker 6: of events that those people deal with all the time,
Speaker 6: all the time, not just once.
Speaker 4: You know, No Wonder he recalls it.
Speaker 6: And missus producer, that's it, No late, and I have
Speaker 6: one more, don't cut me short. Ian says, most people
Speaker 6: have had a guts full of activist judges. It was
Speaker 6: pretty clear to most of us that Parliament made the
Speaker 6: law and the courts enforced it, not interpreted, not updated,
Speaker 6: and certainly not created it. The key example of judicial
Speaker 6: activism is around the Treaty and now a court is
Speaker 6: being asked to rule that the government's decision to reintroduce
Speaker 6: higher speed limits is illegal on what planet. Time to
Speaker 6: shut down unelected activist judges once, and.
Speaker 3: Time to start naming and shaming them and going for
Speaker 3: the jugular. And of course I don't mean that literally,
Speaker 3: but the email I read the couple back, which was
Speaker 3: having a bit of a go at the Prime minister,
Speaker 3: I agree with you, you know, and so do so many
Speaker 3: so do an increasing number of people. Missus producer, We
Speaker 3: see you next week, Thanks Layton, thank you. Okay, Now
Speaker 3: let's deal with the two sciences, climate science and medical
Speaker 3: science and see where things are at. This is the
Speaker 3: sort of thing that you won't find anywhere in the
Speaker 3: mainstream media. Why because they're still blind, Going back to
Speaker 3: Anthony Willie's title, as unso blind as those who will
Speaker 3: not see. I think some of them do see and
Speaker 3: they still deny it, which is a great failing, a
Speaker 3: great character failing in journalism and editorial staff, et cetera. Anyway,
Speaker 3: the silencing of scientific curiosity. Mary and Demasi is a
Speaker 3: scientific writer. She worked for the ABC in Australia for
Speaker 3: quite some time, and then she fronted television for a
Speaker 3: while a scientific program, and then she decided that she
Speaker 3: couldn't there anymore and she got out and went independent. Now,
Speaker 3: when she published her first article, I was enraptured by
Speaker 3: it from memory, and I made contact with her and
Speaker 3: she declined to come on the podcast, and I understood
Speaker 3: why she'd only just broken free.
Speaker 4: She did not.
Speaker 3: She explained she did not want to get tard with
Speaker 3: a brush of any kind that would betray her independence
Speaker 3: as she understood it and wanted to maintain it. And
Speaker 3: I get that, so I forgave her and haven't bothered
Speaker 3: the since. But she continues to make a good contribution
Speaker 3: to this particular area, the silencing of scientific curiosity. As
Speaker 3: a scientific writer and researcher, I've witnessed the decline of
Speaker 3: medical journals firsthand. Once forums for open debates and intellectual rigor,
Speaker 3: they've morphed into gatekeepers more concerned with preserving a narrow
Speaker 3: orthodoxy than pursuing truth. US work has exposed how journals
Speaker 3: suppress uncomfortable questions, avoid studies that challenge dominant narratives, and
Speaker 3: operate under a peer review system distorted by bias and
Speaker 3: external influence. But never have I seen a more absurd
Speaker 3: example of this decay than the retraction of a hypothesis paper, Yes,
Speaker 3: a hypothesis authored by doctor Sabine Hazan in Frontiers in Microbiology.
Speaker 3: Her twenty twenty two article hypothesized that ivermectin might mitigate
Speaker 3: COVID nineteen severity by promoting the growth of Bifidobacterium, reducing
Speaker 3: inflammation via the gut lung axis. She cited preliminary observations
Speaker 3: in twenty four hypoxic patients who recovered without hospitalization after
Speaker 3: combination therapy including ivermectin. She made no claims of definitive proof. Instead,
Speaker 3: she proposed a mexia mechanism worth investigating. That's the point
Speaker 3: of scientific hypothesis. But in May of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: more than a year after the article was peer reviewed
Speaker 3: and published, the journal retracted the paper following a series
Speaker 3: of complaints on pub peer that's what it's called pub peer,
Speaker 3: offering only a vague explanation about scientific soundness. Seeking clarity,
Speaker 3: I contacted both the journal's editorial office and the editor
Speaker 3: who handled the paper, Professor Mohammad Alikhani at Hamerden University. Specifically,
Speaker 3: I sought an explanation for retracting a hypothesis, but I
Speaker 3: did not receive a response. This silence is damning. Retraction
Speaker 3: is a serious step, historically reserved for cases of fraud
Speaker 3: or clear ethical misconduct, but here no such claim was made,
Speaker 3: nor could one be substantiated. The journal simply erased the paper,
Speaker 3: offering no transparent justification, no engagement with the scientific process,
Speaker 3: and no accountability in fact, it violated the very guidelines
Speaker 3: that journals are supposed to follow. The Committee on Publication
Speaker 3: Ethics advised that publications should only be retracted if they
Speaker 3: contain seriously flawed or fabricated data or plagiarism that cannot
Speaker 3: be addressed through a correction. Hassan's paper was transparent about
Speaker 3: its speculative nature. In a January twenty twenty three tweet,
Speaker 3: Hasan challenged her critics, it's a hypothesis. Prove me wrong
Speaker 3: her capitals. She wrote, After all, that's the essence of science.
Speaker 3: But the journal's decision to retract sends a message that
Speaker 3: even theoretical propositions are now intolerable. Now there, I will cease.
Speaker 3: It goes on for a little bit longer. Well, actually
Speaker 3: it's not long. It's not too long, so let me
Speaker 3: carry on. Wasn't my intention, but I will. Having tasted blood,
Speaker 3: Hassan's critics kept digging. In January twenty twenty five, Future
Speaker 3: Microbiology retracted another of her studies, this one examining ivermectin
Speaker 3: based multi drug therapy. Hazzan her co author Australian immunologist
Speaker 3: doctor Robert Clancy. This man is top of the class.
Speaker 3: At the University of Newcastle and others strongly disputed the
Speaker 3: decision after the journal failed to conduct a meaningful investigation
Speaker 3: into the alleged data integrity issues. The irony is palpable.
Speaker 3: While pundits argued over Ivermectin's efficacy during the pandemic, Haszan
Speaker 3: was one of the few actually doing the hard work
Speaker 3: to test its effects, collecting data, proposing mechanisms, engaging with
Speaker 3: the science, and yet she's the one being silenced, which
Speaker 3: begs the question why is there professional jealousy in the
Speaker 3: microbiome space. Are pharmaceutical companies threatened by low cost alternatives
Speaker 3: like ivermecton pressuring journals to kill competing narratives. If so,
Speaker 3: the Securities in Exchange Commission the SEC should investigate suppressing
Speaker 3: research that could affect investor decisions by inflating the perceived
Speaker 3: value of anti virals or vaccines could amount to securities fraud.
Speaker 3: While there's no definitive evidence, the pattern is hard to ignore.
Speaker 3: Two retractions, no clear misconduct, and a growing campaign to
Speaker 3: discredit a scientist whose work challenges are profitable status quo.
Speaker 3: So if you want to find it for yourself. Mary
Speaker 3: Anne Demasi, mari Anne mary Ane Demasi is d Emasi.
Speaker 4: You'll find her now.
Speaker 3: The next one is longer, and I'm going to make
Speaker 3: a much less reference to it because you can find
Speaker 3: it's from Brownstone at the Brownstone Brownstone dot org. Ethical
Speaker 3: collapse in the peer review of a leading vaccine journal.
Speaker 3: This article tells the story of one of the most
Speaker 3: disturbing breaches of scientific ethics that we've encountered. There are
Speaker 3: two authors that we've encountered in our academic careers, buried
Speaker 3: in the peer review process of one of the world's
Speaker 3: leading vaccination journals in the midst of a global health crisis.
Speaker 3: Our story begins, as many many things do in science,
Speaker 3: with a question. A provocative study published in Vaccine, a
Speaker 3: highly influential medical journal, asked our intelligent people more likely
Speaker 3: to get vaccinated. The study, conducted by Zerr and colleagues
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, examined soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces
Speaker 3: during the COVID nineteen pandemic and concluded that quote higher
Speaker 3: intelligence was the strongest predictor for vaccine adherents. We read
Speaker 3: the study with growing unease. The conceptual leap was striking
Speaker 3: the methodological The methodological choices questionable and the ethical implications
Speaker 3: deeply troubling, especially given the context. These were not civilians
Speaker 3: making autonomous medical decisions in ordinary times. These were young
Speaker 3: conscripts operating within the rigid military hierarchy, subjected to intense
Speaker 3: social and institutional pressure to vaccinate during a historical moment
Speaker 3: when a strict COVID nineteen vaccine passport policy was in force.
Speaker 3: We drafted a brief letter to the editor just five
Speaker 3: hundred words, in accordance with the journal submissions guidelines. In
Speaker 3: this letter, we raised both scientific concerns at ethical red flags,
Speaker 3: questioning whether what the authors labeled adherents could truly be
Speaker 3: considered voluntary under the circumstances. We also argued that if
Speaker 3: the authors genuinely sought to measure medical adherents rather than
Speaker 3: institutional compliance, they should have focused on the fourth dose
Speaker 3: of the vaccine. To the two authors, Yakov Affir O
Speaker 3: Phi R and Yaffer schir Ras Yaffa s h I R.
Speaker 3: Dash A Z from Brownstone dot org. Very easy to
Speaker 3: find and I'd get onto it straight away if you're interested,
Speaker 3: because it'll be still on the homepage. Now the other
Speaker 3: area of climate science. Two articles again. Again I'm going
Speaker 3: to reduce them to the essential first one is very easy.
Speaker 3: New study finds human CO two impact too weak to
Speaker 3: play dominant role. In a new study, geology professor doctor
Speaker 3: of my guess here Wogiku Stankowski sta Nkowski has summarized
Speaker 3: some of the reasons why the prevailing narrative that humans
Speaker 3: can drive climate change by burning more or less fossil
Speaker 3: fuels cannot be supported by the evidence. Past natural climate changes,
Speaker 3: such as Greenland's temperature increases of up to ten degrees
Speaker 3: centigrade within just fifty years fourteen thousand, seven hundred and
Speaker 3: eleven thousand, seven hundred years ago, confirm that the modern
Speaker 3: climate change rate just zero point zero five degree celsius
Speaker 3: per decade since eighteen sixty falls well into the range
Speaker 3: of natural variability. Further, a CO two concentration change from
Speaker 3: zero point zero three percent to zero point zero four
Speaker 3: percent is not signal dificant enough to impact temperature change
Speaker 3: in the global ocean, which covers seventy one percent of
Speaker 3: the Earth's surface. If carbon dioxide were the main driver
Speaker 3: of temperature fluctuations, its concentration variations would have to be enormous. Currently,
Speaker 3: CO two levels around the world four hundred parts per million.
Speaker 3: If this entire difference is attributed to human activity, anthropogenic
Speaker 3: pressure accounts for no more than fifteen to eighteen percent.
Speaker 3: Natural factors such as tectonics, changes in galactic phenomena, and
Speaker 3: the Sun's magnetic fluctuations continue to modulate climate changes. Remember
Speaker 3: how anybody who mentioned the Sun had anything to do
Speaker 3: with so called climate change or global warming got pilloried
Speaker 3: from the get go, torn to shreds. Human activity can
Speaker 3: only play a non dominant modifying role at most. The
Speaker 3: overall trends in climate change rhythms will continue to be
Speaker 3: determined by the complex nature of galactic phenomena, the energy
Speaker 3: magnetic fluctuations of the Sun, and their interactions with Earth's
Speaker 3: magnetic field. That article can be found at climate Change
Speaker 3: Dispatch now. The last article is ten environmentalists Myths by
Speaker 3: Edward Ring from am greatness dot com. The first Earth
Speaker 3: Day was organized in nineteen seventy in response to a
Speaker 3: growing public concern for the environment. Many of these concerns
Speaker 3: were entirely justified. In nineteen sixty nine, for example, a
Speaker 3: slick oil along the industrialized stretch of a river in
Speaker 3: Ohio caught fire, generating national awareness of the need to
Speaker 3: reduce water pollution. Similarly, in coastal cities in California, most
Speaker 3: notably Los Angeles, the exhaust from unleaded gasoline created air
Speaker 3: pollution so dense you couldn't see the hills of a
Speaker 3: few miles away. That would be like some of the
Speaker 3: cities in China even today. So there are ten issues
Speaker 3: where environmentalism has been misused with consequences that have either
Speaker 3: been of no benefit whatsoever to the environment or have
Speaker 3: even caused harm at our list them for you. We
Speaker 3: are in a climate crisis, and then the author explains
Speaker 3: why that's not true. Second, there are too many people,
Speaker 3: and the author explains why that's not true. Number three,
Speaker 3: we're running out of fossil fuel. The author says, while
Speaker 3: this is technically correct, the situation is nowhere close to
Speaker 3: what was famously predicted in nineteen fifty six and by
Speaker 3: American geologist m. Hubbardt, who claimed oil production in the
Speaker 3: use would peak by nineteen seventy. Number four, biofuel is
Speaker 3: renewable and sustainable. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Speaker 3: Number five offshore wind energy is renewable and sustainable, absolutely not.
Speaker 3: Number six, renewables are renewable, No, they're not. Number seven
Speaker 3: renewables can replace fossil fuels, not any time soon. Number
Speaker 3: eight new housing must be confined to the footprint of
Speaker 3: existing cities. He then concentrates on California. Really, this is
Speaker 3: not true for California nor for the United States. Also
Speaker 3: talks about India and other places. Number nine, mass transit
Speaker 3: is necessary to achieve sustainability. It's hard to imagine a
Speaker 3: claim more at odds with reality. And finally, number ten,
Speaker 3: wilderness areas are sacred dis mantra has caused more harm
Speaker 3: than good to the wilderness and as a lengthy piece
Speaker 3: on why that is the case. The ten myths identified
Speaker 3: above are some of the fundamental premises of invironmentalism, and
Speaker 3: they are flawed. They are exploited by special interests for
Speaker 3: profit and control. Our challenge is to restore environmentalism to
Speaker 3: its honorable routes. We have to recognize and reject these
Speaker 3: flawed premises wherever they are applied. And that article, of
Speaker 3: course is I think I said that at the beginning
Speaker 3: of it is from climate change dispatch dot com, and
Speaker 3: that will take us out for podcasts. Number two hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty go look up those articles if you're interested,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure plenty of you are, and you'll find
Speaker 3: a much more fulsome explanation than I've led you into. Now,
Speaker 3: those four articles are only representative of what's available and
Speaker 3: what's happening that we are kept in the dark about
Speaker 3: by both politicians and most of the media, and it
Speaker 3: is getting extremely frustrating and we should not be taught it.
Speaker 3: So what have we got. We've got kids in school
Speaker 3: who are still being misled I'd say lied to, but
Speaker 3: that might be encompassing too many of the teaching staff,
Speaker 3: but some certainly are but misled into believing things that
Speaker 3: simply are not true, and not being taught to think
Speaker 3: for themselves or even given the opportunity. So we're also
Speaker 3: dealing with politicians who don't know what they're talking about,
Speaker 3: and like previous governments, they repeat the they repeat the
Speaker 3: talking points that are handed down to them, which is
Speaker 3: why they won't debate them. And that's been the case
Speaker 3: for well over a decade, but even longer. So that
Speaker 3: will take us out for podcasts two hundred and eighty.
Speaker 3: I've got high hopes for to eighty one will be
Speaker 3: interesting to see. So if you would like to correspond
Speaker 3: with us later at News Talks and be dot co
Speaker 3: dot zi or Caraln at NEWSTALKSB dot co dot nz.
Speaker 3: We shall return with two hundred and eighty one in
Speaker 3: a few days. Until then, thank you for listening and
Speaker 3: we'll talk soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you for more from News Talks at B listen
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