Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks B. Follow
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Speaker 1: It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
Speaker 1: the information, all the debates of the Union. Now the
Speaker 1: Leyton Smith podcast Coward by news Talks it B.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Podcasts two hundred and fifty one for August fourteen,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. Professor Robert McCulloch has a resume and
Speaker 2: that is to be en beat. He began his tertiary
Speaker 2: education at the University of Auckland, continued at the London
Speaker 2: School of Economics, Princeton University of America. He was director
Speaker 2: of the PhD program at Imperial College in London. He's
Speaker 2: been awarded with numerous prizes along the way, and returned
Speaker 2: to New Zealand twelve years ago. He is Professor of
Speaker 2: Macroeconomics at Auckland University and publishes widely, including his own
Speaker 2: sites down to Worth Kiwi. And that's another statement. And
Speaker 2: in spite of his career success, he appears to be modest,
Speaker 2: but with the ability and the intent to ruffle feathers.
Speaker 2: I think you'll enjoy this particular discussion. Now, please keep
Speaker 2: in mind that this was recorded and put to bed
Speaker 2: before Adrian or the Governor of the Reserve Bank made
Speaker 2: his announcement with regard to it to interest rates, so
Speaker 2: that could or may not affect anything that we've said
Speaker 2: in the discussion. Just a few moments ago, I was
Speaker 2: filling in a bit of time looking at an article
Speaker 2: written by somebody I've previously interviewed. The said article runs
Speaker 2: twenty eight printed pages. Yes, I've printed all of it,
Speaker 2: and I'm wondering whether to interview the author again in
Speaker 2: one setting or turn twenty eight pages into a series
Speaker 2: because it covers a hell of a lot of current
Speaker 2: and important matter. Now, on a more serious note, I
Speaker 2: received this from a a friend and it relates to
Speaker 2: the plane crash in Brazil, which was last week I
Speaker 2: think on Friday their time. But it gives some detail
Speaker 2: with regard to some of the passengers. Now, you may
Speaker 2: have heard of this by the time you listened to
Speaker 2: the podcast, but either way it doesn't matter. Doctors killed
Speaker 2: in plane crash vowed to release evidence linking mRNA to
Speaker 2: Turbo cancer. Eight cancer doctors who dedicated their lives to
Speaker 2: saving others and blowing the whistle on the devastating turbocancer
Speaker 2: epidemics sweeping the world have been found dead. The bodies
Speaker 2: of six world leading oncologists and two resident medics were
Speaker 2: found on Friday in the wreckage of the plane that
Speaker 2: plunged from the sky in Brazil and exploded in a fireball,
Speaker 2: killing all sixty two people on board. The doctors were
Speaker 2: on their way to an international conference in South Paulo,
Speaker 2: where they were set to present their findings that mRNA
Speaker 2: and COVID nineteen vaccines are responsible for the explosion of
Speaker 2: turbocancers and autoimmune disease, wreaking havoc around the world. Today,
Speaker 2: mainstream media are working over time to brush this story
Speaker 2: under the carpet. Now that sounds a little conspiratorial, and
Speaker 2: if it does to you, then my only suggestion is
Speaker 2: keep an open mind, because there's more going on behind
Speaker 2: the scenes than any of us really aware of. And
Speaker 2: so to Professor Robert McCulloch after the break, there are
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Speaker 2: Farmer Broker Auckland. Robert McCulloch is Professor of macro Economics
Speaker 2: at Auckland University. Now he has a very long resume,
Speaker 2: but we will stick with the professorship at the moment
Speaker 2: because that's all that matters to us. He is a Kiwi,
Speaker 2: he's a New Zealander. He's worked and studied in various
Speaker 2: universities and places around the world. Very very impressive. When
Speaker 2: did you return to by the way, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2: When did you return to.
Speaker 3: New Zealand about twelve years ago?
Speaker 2: Have you been at Auckland University all that time?
Speaker 3: About a decade?
Speaker 4: And when I left school in univisity, I work in
Speaker 4: Wellington at Reserve Bank of New Zealand for a couple
Speaker 4: of years before going abroad.
Speaker 2: How buried are you in the subject of macroeconomics?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it's the subject I've been studying for about
Speaker 4: twenty thirty years in not just in this country, around
Speaker 4: around the world, and I take a great interest not
Speaker 4: just in economics but also politics as it relates to
Speaker 4: the subject. I used to attend the meetings of the
Speaker 4: Zet Initiative, which is this sort of think tank national
Speaker 4: party advisor on behalf of one of their members, the
Speaker 4: former bear Baron, Sir Douglas Myers, who died a number
Speaker 4: of years ago.
Speaker 3: So I take an interest.
Speaker 4: It's not just sort of public sector, but private sector
Speaker 4: quite quite a range as well as politics.
Speaker 2: The Reserve Bank, of course, is another interest that you
Speaker 2: would have. Yes, so we'll get to the Reserve Bank shortly.
Speaker 2: But the state of the country at the moment financially economically,
Speaker 2: how do you view it?
Speaker 3: Well, it's not great, of course. Why isn't it great?
Speaker 4: A lot of it has to do with how the
Speaker 4: country was managed during the COVID years and the finance
Speaker 4: minister back then, Robertson, who's popped up as vice chancellor
Speaker 4: of Otaga University on six hundred and twenty nine thousand
Speaker 4: a year.
Speaker 3: By the way, Grant Robertson.
Speaker 4: Assured us that he really staked his reputation on the
Speaker 4: fact that he said the COVID policy of the government
Speaker 4: would create good health outcomes and good economic outcomes.
Speaker 3: The two went exactly had in hand.
Speaker 4: Well, that's been proven to be false, and that line
Speaker 4: was also promoted by Michael Baker at the epidemiologist at
Speaker 4: Otaga University.
Speaker 3: That's just not true.
Speaker 4: As a result of the policies during the COVID year
Speaker 4: in which they are reserving printed fifty billion bucks of
Speaker 4: cash on top of a massive fiscal expansion of the
Speaker 4: government of Robertson financed by debt. Those over the top
Speaker 4: policies have landed us have a large part of the
Speaker 4: responsibility for landing us in the mess we're currently in,
Speaker 4: which is a recession. Westpac economists of predicting it might
Speaker 4: even be a triple dip recession. And so we're still
Speaker 4: emerging from the carnage of those six years of mismanagement
Speaker 4: by Grant Robertson. So you know, good luck to Otaga
Speaker 4: University because Robinson's been hired by them to sort out
Speaker 4: their financial situation, while Grant has left the financial situation
Speaker 4: of this country in an utter shambles.
Speaker 2: So you singled him out. As far as the government
Speaker 2: is concerned, is the then Prime Minister have a percentage
Speaker 2: of responsibility for that?
Speaker 4: Well, of course, because there was this view that they
Speaker 4: brought into coming from their advisors like Baker and Otago.
Speaker 4: The theme of their government was good health outcomes go
Speaker 4: hand in hand with good economic outcomes. They thought everything
Speaker 4: they were doing in terms of COVID would lead to
Speaker 4: the best economic outcomes in the world, so they argued,
Speaker 4: we're the best health outcomes and we'd have the best
Speaker 4: economic outcomes. Well, funnily enough, America is currently booming and
Speaker 4: we're in a recession.
Speaker 3: So heck that was a bit off, wasn't it.
Speaker 4: And what really stuffed the country was towards the end
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty one, going right quite recently into twenty
Speaker 4: twenty two, Auckland was in a full scale lockdown. So
Speaker 4: the city where almost forty percent of the country to live,
Speaker 4: the hub of much of its economic output, was shut
Speaker 4: down and the entire city was locked up. And you
Speaker 4: know that, I think took away the mojo of Auckland.
Speaker 4: It took away our confidence, and Hipkins and a Deern
Speaker 4: were largely responsible for that. It seems at some sort
Speaker 4: of quite deep level Hepkins really doesn't like Auckland, and
Speaker 4: Auckland doesn't really like him, so it's hard to see
Speaker 4: how he could ever really hope being Prime Minister again
Speaker 4: when he did that to forty percent of the country's
Speaker 4: population and stuffed the economy in the process.
Speaker 2: It's a very interesting and I think very accurate take
Speaker 2: but there were other things that contributed to the to
Speaker 2: the situation in Auckland. Of course, we'll get onto one
Speaker 2: of those. No, we'll get onto a couple of those shortly.
Speaker 2: There is another matter that has bugged this country for
Speaker 2: a long time, productivity or lack of it. More importantly,
Speaker 2: why is it that our productivity has been stemied for
Speaker 2: so long and nobody seems to be able to make
Speaker 2: what is a worthwhile impact upon it.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, productivity. It's in the news all the time.
Speaker 4: It has been for the last twenty odd years. And
Speaker 4: my view of.
Speaker 3: That is that the so called experts.
Speaker 4: And you know, some folks would say, and I'm meant
Speaker 4: to be an expert. Well, the government set up the
Speaker 4: Productivity Commission, which was focused entirely on that matter, how
Speaker 4: to find out what was causing low productivity and how
Speaker 4: to fix it, and it's recently been wound up, it's
Speaker 4: been abolished by the government. So my view on that is,
Speaker 4: if you're briefly honest about it, we still don't know
Speaker 4: exactly what has held back productivity growth in the country,
Speaker 4: and I.
Speaker 3: Think that's the fair solution.
Speaker 4: Instead, you have a different person every week saying they
Speaker 4: blame red tape. Others blame how geographic isolation. Some people
Speaker 4: say there's something wrong with the tax system and that
Speaker 4: should be changed. The Productivity Commission said, where you know,
Speaker 4: so far away from our major markets.
Speaker 3: We're a small country.
Speaker 4: But the Productivity Commission ended up listing about twenty different factors.
Speaker 4: And in a way that's unsatisfactory because you really want
Speaker 4: to know what's the most important factor, and you know,
Speaker 4: a ranking of the factors, what's the thing we should
Speaker 4: really focus on.
Speaker 3: Is it, say, red tape?
Speaker 4: And you know, David Seymour's are going to head up
Speaker 4: a new Ministry of Regulation to try to cut that.
Speaker 4: But is that the main issue or is it something else?
Speaker 4: And I think the Productivity Commission failed because it never
Speaker 4: really ranked that long list in order of most to
Speaker 4: least important. So it is unsatisfactory that for that reason,
Speaker 4: because you know, the experts have never definitively identified what
Speaker 4: it is. And it's become also confused by the fact
Speaker 4: that productivity has been slowing in other countries like the
Speaker 4: United States and in Europe, that many of those countries
Speaker 4: have been suffering a productivity slow down, and some of
Speaker 4: them are pointing to issues like the aging population, they're
Speaker 4: just not as sort of many young people who tend
Speaker 4: to be more innovative than older people. So it's incredibly
Speaker 4: hard to identify exactly what the cause is. My suspicion
Speaker 4: in this country over the last ten or so years
Speaker 4: is that we've drifted into not becoming a meritocracy and
Speaker 4: the people, the students we have, the ones who work
Speaker 4: hardest get the highest grades.
Speaker 3: They're not getting the best jobs.
Speaker 4: Other factors are coming into play, and certainly we know
Speaker 4: if you try to run a nation where the best
Speaker 4: people are not promoted to the top, productivity we know
Speaker 4: for a fact in economics is really.
Speaker 3: Going to suffer.
Speaker 4: Market economies are built on rewarding effort and ability. And
Speaker 4: so my sort of preferred suspect as to what's holding
Speaker 4: us back is we have to get back to a
Speaker 4: country where meritocracy is rewarded. And if you look at
Speaker 4: the outstanding performance of our applet, how is the Olympic
Speaker 4: team chosen? Is it chosen on sort of other factors
Speaker 4: coming into play, on what kind of team that looks
Speaker 4: nice that you want, or is it done on who
Speaker 4: got that, who was the fastest, who was the fastest canoeist,
Speaker 4: who was the quickest, who could jump the highest and
Speaker 4: high jump.
Speaker 3: No, they select.
Speaker 4: The team on who was the best, the highest, the strongest.
Speaker 4: They don't select it on other factors. And look at
Speaker 4: what the Kiwi athletes did, one of the best performances
Speaker 4: in the world. So I think, I think as a
Speaker 4: country we respond to incentives, and I think, particularly over
Speaker 4: the last six years, certainly labor virtually destroyed the idea
Speaker 4: of meritocracy in the country. I think it's unforgivable what
Speaker 4: they did in that respect.
Speaker 3: We have to get back to rewarding merit. That's my view.
Speaker 2: That's I'm not going to prove easy I feel, but
Speaker 2: I very much appreciated you pointing out the dying off
Speaker 2: of a certain class of the population. I don't want
Speaker 2: to narrow it down, but just the dying off of
Speaker 2: an attitude that came out of the Second World War.
Speaker 2: If it wasn't there before, uh and and and stayed
Speaker 2: for a long time, and then all of us, well,
Speaker 2: not all of a sudden, but it seemed all of
Speaker 2: a sudden you had a different approach from those who
Speaker 2: were exiting school going on to wherever else they went
Speaker 2: that lacked lacked an attitude now I can. I can
Speaker 2: point to that in the in the industry or the
Speaker 2: business that I've been in, when they've experienced people applying
Speaker 2: for jobs and it's nights or weekends or a bit
Speaker 2: of both or what no, no, no, no, I don't
Speaker 2: work weekends. I don't work nights. I've got other things
Speaker 2: to do. And this has been an attitude, and the minuture,
Speaker 2: the minuture hear that it's really a case of I
Speaker 2: want the corner office. Not did you have officers anymore
Speaker 2: in broadcasting, but I want the corner office, and I
Speaker 2: want at least three phones and a television and by
Speaker 2: the way, while you're at it, get me a maid.
Speaker 2: That's the attitude that.
Speaker 4: Has entered the arena, and I think I think that's
Speaker 4: why it's been very hard to identify it. You know,
Speaker 4: if you're looking at statistics and numbers, it's very hard
Speaker 4: to prove it when it's sort of a cultural change
Speaker 4: in an attitude. But that's what my suspicion is. It
Speaker 4: is that kind of attitude change you're changing or you're describing.
Speaker 4: You know, I've heard, by the way, it was that
Speaker 4: from the wife whose husband was the former chief executive
Speaker 4: of Southern cross medical insurance, so they know all the
Speaker 4: sort of doctors in the country. She said, there is
Speaker 4: no doctor shortage in the country. That's all a myth. Apparently,
Speaker 4: the talk is as you say that a large number
Speaker 4: of medical school graduates now don't want to work.
Speaker 3: Are you know five seven days a week.
Speaker 4: My dad was a GP work seven days a week
Speaker 4: for many years when I was growing up.
Speaker 3: He was on call frequently in the weekends.
Speaker 4: Apparently, she said, you know, a lot of graduates now
Speaker 4: want to work Tuesday to Thursday. You know, have these
Speaker 4: sort of hours of their choosing, and they're just as
Speaker 4: an attitude, they don't want to work like the previous
Speaker 4: generation did.
Speaker 2: Well, there's another aspect to the medical side of things,
Speaker 2: and that is the changes in well the attempted changes
Speaker 2: in hospitals by boards of how doctors conduct themselves. And
Speaker 2: I have to include, because I can't avoid it, the
Speaker 2: racial aspects of it with and I've been shown numerous,
Speaker 2: on numerous occasions examples of this where if you are
Speaker 2: mari then you are entitled to first and more of
Speaker 2: much of the health system. And there's no avoiding it.
Speaker 2: And I said to one doctor, a very good specialist,
Speaker 2: when he was actually showing me what he had to
Speaker 2: deal with. I said, would you consider leaving the country
Speaker 2: without breathing? He said yes. And that probably has led
Speaker 2: to the belief, well contributed to the belief that we
Speaker 2: have a shortage of doctors, and maybe we have a
Speaker 2: shortage of specialists. I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, the entire health system needs to be changed.
Speaker 4: It's not a matter of just changing the person at
Speaker 4: the top, like Lester Levy. The entire system has to
Speaker 4: be changed. My preferred reform, which I don't think that
Speaker 4: the NATS have got the guts to do, is to.
Speaker 3: Keep the single payer structure that we have.
Speaker 4: That as the government pays the bills universal health care,
Speaker 4: so no one has to worry, but it negotiates prices
Speaker 4: at the hospitals for all different procedures. Barmac already does
Speaker 4: that with the private drug companies. The medical laboratories are private,
Speaker 4: gps are private practices. So the government negotiates prices and
Speaker 4: then anyone public or private can offer their services at
Speaker 4: those prices. And if it turns out that over half
Speaker 4: of the hill system that people prefer to go private,
Speaker 4: and over half of it is private suppliers, and that's fantastic,
Speaker 4: and the public hospitals maybe become smaller, or if the
Speaker 4: public sector is able to outcompete the private that's great
Speaker 4: as well. But we need massive influx of competition, probably
Speaker 4: a huge expansion of private suppliers. Everyone's covered, and you
Speaker 4: can choose whether you go public and private. But having
Speaker 4: this system of a single payer, which is fine, but
Speaker 4: also essentially single supplier that is the big public hospitals,
Speaker 4: you get into all of this mess where the government's
Speaker 4: policies on all sorts of matters, not just medical help,
Speaker 4: but all sorts of ideology of the government creeps into
Speaker 4: the supply side, and I think that needs to change.
Speaker 2: I want to back up just a moment, when you
Speaker 2: were mentioning the pandemic and the effect that it had
Speaker 2: in the reaction to it on both the health and
Speaker 2: economic front, what advice would you have because undoubtedly, well
Speaker 2: I'm guessing that you won't ask for any advice, But
Speaker 2: what advice would you have given the government if they
Speaker 2: if they'd sorted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, the government had their chosen advisors. I think
Speaker 4: that led to Durn's downfall because she didn't.
Speaker 3: Listen to a range of advice.
Speaker 4: She just had the advisors who she loves, and she
Speaker 4: listened to pretty much everything they had to say. So
Speaker 4: this isn't with hindsight. By the way, Robertson accused some
Speaker 4: of us who do commentary on this as just commenting
Speaker 4: with the benefit of hindsight. At the time, I was
Speaker 4: writing that on the blog in the papers that given
Speaker 4: there was such an extraordinary large fiscal expansion of borrowing
Speaker 4: financed by borrowing, it was unnecessary to do such a
Speaker 4: large monetary expansion as well.
Speaker 3: So at the time my view was that was a
Speaker 3: major mistake. Of course, the.
Speaker 4: Wage substy scheme, that sort of thing was all good.
Speaker 4: But when you had the wage substy scheme in place,
Speaker 4: why on top of that did you need to print
Speaker 4: fifty billion bucks. So I think it's virtually criminal what
Speaker 4: the Reserve Bank did. We already had one of the
Speaker 4: world's largest fiscal expansions and to put on top of
Speaker 4: that one of the world just monetary expansion.
Speaker 3: So at the time, with all the limited power I have.
Speaker 4: Which is doing things like your show, I was arguing
Speaker 4: one should not do that monetary expansion.
Speaker 3: What did it do? It blew up inflation.
Speaker 4: And then the Reserve Bank governor said well, we have
Speaker 4: to now engineer recession to get the inflation I created
Speaker 4: back down again. He actually got that wrong as well.
Speaker 4: He did an engineer recession. It looks like he's engineered
Speaker 4: three recessions, and so he threw the country into a
Speaker 4: cost of living crisis as people struggled to pay their mortgages.
Speaker 4: So I think that was a fundamental mistake that was made.
Speaker 2: Do you do shopping as in food.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Were you constantly aware of the increase in the bill
Speaker 2: that you had to pay every time you went shopping?
Speaker 4: Oh, of course, of course. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 4: have three children, of course we can. It's just astronomical.
Speaker 4: The ow food bill is probably you know, higher than
Speaker 4: the average wage in the in the in the country.
Speaker 3: It's just just phenomenal.
Speaker 4: And you know that means, you know, to bring up
Speaker 4: children now just to pay the groceries, both parents have
Speaker 4: to work.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 4: You can't buy grocery bills in a million years in
Speaker 4: this country with one parent working on the average wage,
Speaker 4: you you can't. You can't afford food. So of course
Speaker 4: that was a Now on that topic, can you believe
Speaker 4: it that it's in the news every other day that
Speaker 4: we have this duopoly with the supermarkets. So what did
Speaker 4: Adarn do in her infinite wisdom during the lockdowns? He
Speaker 4: granted the duopoly, the monopoly enshrined in law that no
Speaker 4: one else in the country could sell food during the
Speaker 4: locko downs, only the two super big supermarket chains chain.
Speaker 3: So every small business.
Speaker 4: And grosser got wiped out and that was the law
Speaker 4: of the country. So that was another I think economic
Speaker 4: policy where a Dern and Hipkins and Robertson enshrined the
Speaker 4: power of monopolies in the economy. And I still don't
Speaker 4: think we pulled out of that.
Speaker 2: Do you think that that was just plain ignorance or
Speaker 2: did that did that deploy some shall we say socialist approach?
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean the ideology of socialism was there with
Speaker 4: just command and control essentially it you know, it's called
Speaker 4: an economics command and control regulations that every the idea
Speaker 4: was we can sort everything out through by by command
Speaker 4: and and I think in Dern's head the idea was, well,
Speaker 4: we listened to Baker at Otago.
Speaker 3: Because he said we should lock down.
Speaker 4: The only practical way of doing that, we grant him
Speaker 4: monopoly to the chains. And then, of course, gosh, if
Speaker 4: the supermacher chains have made. If people like that have
Speaker 4: made too much money because of our policy, well we'll
Speaker 4: call David Parker and ask him with mister Pickeaty how
Speaker 4: to design capital at wealth taxes in the country to
Speaker 4: get the money back.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is just a.
Speaker 4: Shambalaquay of conducting, conducting, you know, a country's management.
Speaker 2: Well, shambolic and ignorant.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to slip in here that I did
Speaker 2: some economics, and I'm reluctant to do it because I
Speaker 2: never finished anything. But I did some economics and my favorite,
Speaker 2: my favorite class was comparative economic systems, and it set
Speaker 2: me on a path that ended up with me being
Speaker 2: in the Soviet Union as it still was in January
Speaker 2: of nineteen eighty nine, and I saw firsthand and experience
Speaker 2: firsthand as a guest of Navosity Press, all sorts of
Speaker 2: aspects of life that we avoided, of course, But how
Speaker 2: anybody with the history that socialism has, Marxism has, I
Speaker 2: just don't know how anyone can be a part of it.
Speaker 2: It's absurd. Now you want to take any issue with that.
Speaker 4: No, we'll ask a Dern because she still wildly embraces it.
Speaker 4: And of course the Labor Party is wildly embracing it.
Speaker 4: So surprisingly, there was some very strong comments earlier this
Speaker 4: week anti charter school comments.
Speaker 3: By the late a shadow education.
Speaker 4: Spokesperson, and it was sort of a vitriolic spewing of
Speaker 4: invective on the idea that privately supplied anything that's privately
Speaker 4: supplied was really a sort of horrible idea, and the idea,
Speaker 4: even though charter schools are publicly funded, the idea that
Speaker 4: private suppliers would run them was just went against everything
Speaker 4: the Labor Party stood for, which is amazing to hear
Speaker 4: that in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Think that you really think it's amazing, Well maybe not.
Speaker 4: I was surprised because that the only way out of
Speaker 4: the mess of not just education but the health system
Speaker 4: is that that kind of model of public funding which
Speaker 4: ensures equity, that regardless whether you're or wealthy, whatever, everyone
Speaker 4: can go to a charter school, or regardless of wealth,
Speaker 4: you can go to any medical supplier of your choice.
Speaker 4: But you, of course to have competition between public and
Speaker 4: private suppliers is a great thing.
Speaker 3: That competition is fantastic.
Speaker 4: So to here Labor coming out anti competition.
Speaker 3: I find unbelievable there.
Speaker 2: Well, I follow the charter school game for the last
Speaker 2: few years and done a number of interviews around it,
Speaker 2: and it's to me it comes back to the to
Speaker 2: the power of the teachers unions essentially.
Speaker 4: Yes, And I mean what struck me was that labor
Speaker 4: must really really want the education of young Maori to suffer.
Speaker 4: Because President Obama in America, his words were he lauded
Speaker 4: charter schools in America as a beacon of hope for
Speaker 4: young Black americ and children. And they also were showing
Speaker 4: great results for young Mari children because that model of
Speaker 4: independence and you know, you can design the schools policies
Speaker 4: with more freedom from the state was showing great results.
Speaker 4: So it seems that some level labor really have it
Speaker 4: in for the education of young Mari.
Speaker 2: The subject of infrastructure has had a big play in
Speaker 2: the last few weeks. It was brought home to me
Speaker 2: when I was listening to the radio and heard commentary
Speaker 2: with regard to the necessary machinery for infrastructure, and it's
Speaker 2: basically all left. All the big stuff has left the
Speaker 2: country and getting it back isn't going to be easy.
Speaker 2: How much is that going to hinder the development of
Speaker 2: well the comeback for this and any other government, let
Speaker 2: alone the people.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, the infrastructure thing has rumbled on course for.
Speaker 3: A long time.
Speaker 4: The most important infrastructure is probably the ones of our cities. Surprisingly,
Speaker 4: some infrastructure projects like highways can be more controversial.
Speaker 3: In America, there's there's this.
Speaker 4: Thing called the highway movement, and they want all these
Speaker 4: interstate highways to be fantastic, and some urban economists have
Speaker 4: been a bit critical of some of that focus. We
Speaker 4: invited the world seating urban economist Ed Glazer out here
Speaker 4: many years ago, and their priority is to get the
Speaker 4: cities right, because the more you have magnificent highways leaving
Speaker 4: the cities, that that can be responsible for sprawl, you know,
Speaker 4: miles out of the cities.
Speaker 3: It can encourage you know, less densification.
Speaker 4: So I think on infrastructure it's you know, the cities
Speaker 4: are vital.
Speaker 3: You know, Auckland's going towards forty percent.
Speaker 4: Of the country's population, and the infrastructure of cities like
Speaker 4: Auckland Christis really has to be great to otherwise if
Speaker 4: our big cities fail, the country will fail.
Speaker 3: So yes, that's you know, that debate has rumbled on for.
Speaker 4: Many years, and I mean, what can I do about it.
Speaker 4: A decade ago we invited the world seeding urban economists.
Speaker 4: He made all of these points, He met all the
Speaker 4: people in government and the council. They ignored every piece
Speaker 4: of advice he gave. He told them a decade ago,
Speaker 4: you've got to introduce toll roads congestion charges. Now what
Speaker 4: ten or twelve years have passed and they're still discussing
Speaker 4: congestion charges and tolls.
Speaker 3: I mean, what more can we do.
Speaker 4: We invite the world's experts out, we sit them in
Speaker 4: front of Labor and national prime ministers, we carry on
Speaker 4: about infrastructure. I used to attend the meetings of the
Speaker 4: NZET Initiative.
Speaker 3: I lobbied.
Speaker 4: I remember when John Key was Prime Minister for more
Speaker 4: of the spending. They all shut me up. They said,
Speaker 4: oh mate, what would you know that? You know, we're
Speaker 4: rebuilding christ Church, so we don't have any money for Auckland.
Speaker 4: I mean this, whether it's National or Labor, I'm just
Speaker 4: I'm just tired of all this bull crap.
Speaker 2: Does that encourage you to think about leaving the country.
Speaker 4: Oh it doesn't. I think it's still a great place
Speaker 4: to live. Look the irony of this country in terms
Speaker 4: of leaving. There is a great almost paradox that we're
Speaker 4: doing badly on productivity, but in terms of these quality
Speaker 4: of life and disease, which I take quite seriously, how
Speaker 4: sort of happy people are in countries. New Zealand has
Speaker 4: typically been in the top ten Kiwi's rank is having
Speaker 4: extremely high levels of overall quality of life, and you know,
Speaker 4: thank god that's the case, even though financially we haven't
Speaker 4: been doing great that the overall quality of life is
Speaker 4: what keeps many of us here, and so I think
Speaker 4: I think we still have a very powerful card to
Speaker 4: play with that overall.
Speaker 3: Quality of life.
Speaker 4: And if and if our cities are made very you know,
Speaker 4: edgy and diverse, livable, but also with great opportunities, they're
Speaker 4: a real melting pot of innovation and hubs of entrepreneurship
Speaker 4: that you know, if we can just get that mix
Speaker 4: right with the lifestyle and the proximity to the beaches
Speaker 4: and the mild climate, I mean, we still have extraordinary
Speaker 4: natural assets.
Speaker 3: So I think I think that is we still have
Speaker 3: reason for hope.
Speaker 2: Well, as somebody said recently, hope isn't the what's the
Speaker 2: term hope? Hope is not a plan anyway, Just speaking
Speaker 2: of people leaving the country. You must know because you
Speaker 2: you teach, you must know the number of graduates who
Speaker 2: are packing their bags and leaving the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's phenomenal.
Speaker 4: I mean most of the ones who've done well typically
Speaker 4: say they wouldn't apply for a job here in a
Speaker 4: million years, so they're off.
Speaker 3: There is an exodus at that level.
Speaker 4: You know, it's not widely reported in the media sort
Speaker 4: of what's driving part of that because it's not even
Speaker 4: after people have finished training here. There's an unprecedented move
Speaker 4: where people are leaving even after finishing up at school.
Speaker 4: So it's not just posh private schools, but if you
Speaker 4: look at from McLean's College and organ rang A Toto College,
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of public and private schools, roughly the
Speaker 4: top twenty students from when they're seven eighteen years old
Speaker 4: are leaving the country at eighteen and that's a very
Speaker 4: young age and they'll probably never come back. And so
Speaker 4: the trend is for increasingly star performers at young ages
Speaker 4: to go.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons for that is.
Speaker 4: I think in the name of egalitarianism, even if you
Speaker 4: do amazingly at school here, it doesn't really help you
Speaker 4: because you can be a star student. That everyone just
Speaker 4: goes to the local training college, the local university. Everyone
Speaker 4: just piles into Victoria or Otago Auckland. Whether you've been
Speaker 4: top of your year or Ducks, whether you're a star athlete, whatever,
Speaker 4: you all just go to the same place. The whole
Speaker 4: point of working hard at school in nearly every country,
Speaker 4: from China to India to England to France the United
Speaker 4: States is it sets you up to go to an
Speaker 4: amazing college. If you're a sports star in the US,
Speaker 4: you get into Stanford, if you're an amazing swimmer. That's
Speaker 4: the game. So that's what incentivizes people here. You bust
Speaker 4: your US at school, you do great, and then in
Speaker 4: the name of egoitarianism, oh, let's just.
Speaker 3: Pretend that never happened.
Speaker 4: Pretend you didn't become a sports star or an academic star.
Speaker 4: You know, and if you did, it's probably because you're
Speaker 4: from a privileged background, So screw you, and you can
Speaker 4: all start the same at university again. Well that I
Speaker 4: think that's creating a massive brain grain for the country
Speaker 4: because these kids are you know, I think everyone knows
Speaker 4: the truth. Now, these are the Ivy League schools in America.
Speaker 4: Universities around the world are targeting our star athletes, our
Speaker 4: star performances, and they're putting them on full scholarships. So
Speaker 4: this isn't happening when they're older. This is happening at eighteen.
Speaker 4: We're losing the cream of the country at eighteen years.
Speaker 2: Well, are we losing many students to elite universities in
Speaker 2: the States, Because I've got to carry, I've got it.
Speaker 2: Are we losing many?
Speaker 4: Well, I can tell you because the schools I see
Speaker 4: are from a range of schools. Now, when they send
Speaker 4: their reports, they list down the number of students who
Speaker 4: are going to overseas universities, and off the top schools
Speaker 4: in Auckland, you'll see roughly the top ten twenty students,
Speaker 4: nearly all of them are going to overseas universities.
Speaker 2: See, I've got to count you a little, and I'll
Speaker 2: be interested in your reaction, because there is a change
Speaker 2: in America that elite colleges are not worth going to. Now,
Speaker 2: I was reading something just a few days ago, and
Speaker 2: let me get this. Right to go to Yale, for instance,
Speaker 2: which will cost you something like six hundred and something
Speaker 2: on thousand dollars. Take that debt if you've got to
Speaker 2: borrow the money, take that debt and work out how
Speaker 2: much of your life is going to be spent repaying
Speaker 2: that there is a there is a swing away is
Speaker 2: what is what I'm suggesting from what I've seen in
Speaker 2: the last few months, that the kids are kids and
Speaker 2: their parents recognizing that the elite universities are now a
Speaker 2: waste of money because of their DEI and and all
Speaker 2: the other alphabet soups.
Speaker 4: Well, the key we kids this top group, this elite group,
Speaker 4: which you know, by the way, for a small country
Speaker 4: like us, it's devastating. They're they're being offered full scholarships.
Speaker 4: They're not paying anything. So if you're a top tennis player,
Speaker 4: swimmer row, you know that they are coming out and
Speaker 4: fully funding you. So I don't think many would turn
Speaker 4: down a full you know, in fact, they've been given
Speaker 4: six hundred thousand by the likes of Yale.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't I would, I wouldn't argue with you on
Speaker 2: that at all. It's it's just it's the home team
Speaker 2: that seems to be seems to be reacting anyway.
Speaker 4: By the way, by the way, a large group the
Speaker 4: majority of piling into the Australian universities. So that's sort
Speaker 4: of a well known fact. They're piling into Melbourne and Sydney.
Speaker 4: Melbourne's got a world sort of roughly top.
Speaker 3: Ten ranked university.
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's sort of sixteenth in the world
Speaker 4: or something, and they've become enormously attractive to Keew students.
Speaker 4: I think Chris Suckson's daughter, he was in the paper
Speaker 4: going to her graduation in Melbourne. That's a very large
Speaker 4: part of the scene.
Speaker 2: Now interesting because there was another little home event one
Speaker 2: of my boys. We went in twenty ten. We went
Speaker 2: to when he was some sort school. At the end,
Speaker 2: we went to Melbourne, we did interviews, he was accepted
Speaker 2: into law and he was accepted into the only house
Speaker 2: that he wanted to stay in to live in color College.
Speaker 2: And we weren't looked at it and it was it
Speaker 2: was stunning. But in the end he decided to go
Speaker 2: to a target.
Speaker 3: Hmmm.
Speaker 2: I think it had I think it had as much
Speaker 2: to do with mates as.
Speaker 4: He might have he might have made he might have
Speaker 4: made a mistake. I mean, I call Otago the party university.
Speaker 4: So I trust that wasn't his motive. No, I can,
Speaker 4: I can.
Speaker 2: Tell you it wasn't, but that doesn't mean he didn't
Speaker 2: fringe on it. Look expanding some of the some of
Speaker 2: the matters that we've already discussed. Infrastructure, for instance, the
Speaker 2: state of the of the biggest city in the country
Speaker 2: is still disastrous, still appalling. I've forgotten now how many
Speaker 2: more years the underground is going to take. I've also
Speaker 2: forgotten what the latest pricing is. All I know is that,
Speaker 2: as expected from the beginning, it's blown out of all
Speaker 2: proportioned to to what it was going to cost in
Speaker 2: the first place. Anybody with any vision and experience watching
Speaker 2: the cost of large scale infrastructure could have could have
Speaker 2: told them that, but it has anyway. They're still in
Speaker 2: a state of flux. They've ruined Queen Street, They've ruined
Speaker 2: Custom Street and Key Street, They've they've screwed up just
Speaker 2: about everything and wild there's been a bit of a
Speaker 2: reprise for Smith and Coe. The big historic store is
Speaker 2: no more and people are not even wanting to live
Speaker 2: in the city now. So where does that Where does
Speaker 2: that leave us with regard to our discussion, Let me
Speaker 2: make a suggestion. Auckland Transport, which I've termed the biggest
Speaker 2: example of the administrative state in this country has has
Speaker 2: contributed to the wreck that Auckland CBD has become. And
Speaker 2: they're still not over doing it. They still want more.
Speaker 4: You see, yeah, look, you know it's it's it's just
Speaker 4: leaves you speechless. The Empire State Building, by the way,
Speaker 4: from before the spot that was in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 4: in America, from before the site even the foundations were dug,
Speaker 4: it was just flat land.
Speaker 3: From the time the.
Speaker 4: Starting date where the foundations were dug to the opening
Speaker 4: of the Empire State Building is a completed building. Do
Speaker 4: you know how that Take a guess how long was that?
Speaker 4: Three years, fifteen months.
Speaker 2: I knew it was now, but I didn't realize it
Speaker 2: that quick.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So then you take a look at lovely, our lovely
Speaker 4: Fletcher Building building up the Convention Center, which is about
Speaker 4: one percent zero point one percent the size of the
Speaker 4: Empire State Building coming up for what ten years, coming
Speaker 4: up for ten years. Fletchers can't even put up a
Speaker 4: tiny little building in ten years. And then they blame
Speaker 4: a fire and everyone blames everyone, and it just descends
Speaker 4: into the usual blame game of the leaky home crisis
Speaker 4: and god knows what.
Speaker 3: So it's a disgrace, isn't it.
Speaker 4: And Auckland Transport, I mean, what an organization. Obviously in
Speaker 4: its current form it should be disbanded.
Speaker 3: The mirror is right via the whole board.
Speaker 4: But the catch crow of the American Revolution was no
Speaker 4: taxation without representation.
Speaker 3: So where does it.
Speaker 4: Augan Transport get its money from our taxes, but we're
Speaker 4: not represented by it. It's not responsive to what the
Speaker 4: people want. We all keepe its guts. It's got an
Speaker 4: approval rating of like negative one hundred, and the whole
Speaker 4: thing should go. So either it's put more directly under
Speaker 4: the control, directly under the control of the mayor, the
Speaker 4: council or the minister, and emergency action is taken. You know,
Speaker 4: maybe there is some reason for optimism. Although people critique
Speaker 4: Chrys Luxen for being a CEO and knowing more about
Speaker 4: sort of management maybe than governing the country.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's a good thing.
Speaker 4: Maybe if he can go through all these organizations with
Speaker 4: a fine tooth comb, get rid of the boards.
Speaker 3: You know they've done that in the health end Z.
Speaker 4: And he can look at the way all of these
Speaker 4: things are running like divisions of a company, and he
Speaker 4: can get things running more efficiently and the reporting lines changed.
Speaker 4: Maybe you know, he could prove to be a very
Speaker 4: good leader. Maybe that is what the country does need,
Speaker 4: some you know, competent manager going through the shambles of
Speaker 4: these organizations. If you look at the board of Auckland Transport,
Speaker 4: a lot of them seem to be showing off saying
Speaker 4: we're on the boards of ten other companies and directors.
Speaker 3: I mean, what is this? What is this old style kei.
Speaker 4: We game where you know, at cocktail parties and social
Speaker 4: scenes you say, oh, I'm on the board of ten companies. Well,
Speaker 4: obviously they don't have time for any one of them.
Speaker 4: It's sort of a social game in this country to
Speaker 4: be on these boards. And then you take twenty thirty
Speaker 4: forty fifty thousand for each board, and when you multiply
Speaker 4: it by ten boards, you're on five hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 4: a year for doing nothing. So I think there needs
Speaker 4: to be a really a real change in the way
Speaker 4: that Fletcher's Boards, by the way, is no better Fletcher Buildings.
Speaker 4: So there needs to be a change in the way
Speaker 4: that the governance has done. And let's trust that Luxon
Speaker 4: will take aim at all these places and sort them out.
Speaker 3: In the next couple of years.
Speaker 2: All right, off the back of people leaving the country,
Speaker 2: have the have we got the intellect left behind who
Speaker 2: can achieve the things that you're talking of.
Speaker 4: Well, we've got to fall back on this fact that
Speaker 4: we were in the top ten in the world in
Speaker 4: quality of life, and so we've got that to back
Speaker 4: us up. It's promoting I think, you know, in the
Speaker 4: famous words of John F.
Speaker 3: Kennedy, you know, a new generation.
Speaker 4: We've got to take some risks and bets on the
Speaker 4: new talent coming through and you know, put them in positions,
Speaker 4: often of power, and get the best offer someone who
Speaker 4: might be thinking of leaving the country the top position
Speaker 4: to sort out these sorts of these sorts of places,
Speaker 4: not the usual boring suspects of you know, there's a
Speaker 4: chairman of one of New Zealand's largest public companies that
Speaker 4: I bought a product from. I can't name his name
Speaker 4: or you get sued, but it broke and they blame
Speaker 4: me for it. And I went to cirk and after
Speaker 4: a month or two I got in touch with the
Speaker 4: chairman of this major public company and virtually he's actually uncontactable.
Speaker 4: And then I discovered where he's living he's living in Wanaka,
Speaker 4: for God's sake, skiing half the day, barting around. I mean,
Speaker 4: is this the new Zealand? We want this old stuff
Speaker 4: thing where you're on the boards of twenty companies, nothing's
Speaker 4: running properly, you're basing yourself online and Wanaka there. I
Speaker 4: think there does need an attitude and culture shift and
Speaker 4: let's trust that Chris Hucksen will try to sort it out.
Speaker 2: Watch this space very carefully. There's a couple of things
Speaker 2: that I want to I want to spring on you
Speaker 2: and if it's if it's not your field, then just
Speaker 2: say so. But I'm first, first of all intrigued with
Speaker 2: what your feelings might be about artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, my feelings are that it is is probably
Speaker 4: going to be a revolutionary technology. I'll tell you my
Speaker 4: sources for this. I met about six or seven years
Speaker 4: ago Shane leg who's a key we born in Rotarua,
Speaker 4: who's in charge of Google's worldwide efforts to.
Speaker 3: Advanced artificial intelligence.
Speaker 4: And Shane Legg's company, deep Mind, was really the company
Speaker 4: that started the AI revolution. So it's remarkable that we
Speaker 4: have a kiwi. He sold that to Google one hundred
Speaker 4: million pounds. It was backed by Peter Teal, who's a
Speaker 4: New Zealand citizen. He was the first investor, so leg
Speaker 4: is part of that musk sort of Teal group.
Speaker 3: He's a classic case of a talented.
Speaker 4: Kiwi who is not returning to the country and is
Speaker 4: based in London. But obviously he's no fool, and he's
Speaker 4: absolutely convinced that this is a revolutionary technology, which, ironically,
Speaker 4: going back to your productivity issue, if it is a
Speaker 4: lot of those issue issues could melt away to the
Speaker 4: extent it transforms our lives. The other point of view,
Speaker 4: there is a counterpoint of view. I have a friend
Speaker 4: James Lowry, who was sort of another example of our
Speaker 4: brain drain. He was ducks of his school all the
Speaker 4: way through New Zealand and then he left. He lives
Speaker 4: in New York, also working for Google, and I asked
Speaker 4: him about this question because he comes out here a lot.
Speaker 4: He was a bit more skeptical. He said that many
Speaker 4: people are using it more as a toy. He used
Speaker 4: the word toy to describe it, and it's still yet
Speaker 4: to prove its sort of practical applicability. And I see
Speaker 4: a certain resonance with what James Sarry is saying that.
Speaker 4: You know, many people are saying, oh, isn't it cool
Speaker 4: what AI can do? But it's a bit has that aspect.
Speaker 4: Isn't it fun? It's like a game, It's like a toy.
Speaker 4: So you know, you've got Shane leg and this other
Speaker 4: point of view. But certainly it's a shame New Zealand
Speaker 4: can't get more involved in this technology through people like
Speaker 4: Shane and also Peter tal But of course the christ
Speaker 4: Church Judge went and told Eel that she didn't want
Speaker 4: to building houses in the South Island and to you know,
Speaker 4: go jump in Lake Wanaka and you know what a
Speaker 4: jerk he was for trying to build the most environmentally
Speaker 4: friendly house in the South Island. So being a libertarian,
Speaker 4: I don't think he'll spend much time here. So good
Speaker 4: on the christ Church judge he decided to you know,
Speaker 4: reject his house.
Speaker 2: Well there's another matter we could have discussed. But activist
Speaker 2: activist judges, I want to just counter you gently with
Speaker 2: something I read this morning. We continually hear from globalists
Speaker 2: at the World Economic Forum and other elitist institutions that
Speaker 2: AI is the catalyst for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a
Speaker 2: technological singularity that will supposedly change every aspect of our society. Forever,
Speaker 2: I keep waiting for the moment that AI does something
Speaker 2: significant in terms of advancing human knowledge or making our
Speaker 2: lives better. The moment never comes. In fact, the globalists
Speaker 2: keep moving the goldpost for what AI really is. I
Speaker 2: would note that the w EF zealots like Juvil Harari
Speaker 2: talk about AI like it is the rise of an
Speaker 2: all powerful deity. Yet Harari has also recently downplayed AI
Speaker 2: as a sentient intelligence. He argues that it does not
Speaker 2: need to achieve self awareness or consciousness in order to
Speaker 2: be considered a super super being or living entity. He
Speaker 2: even suggests that the popular image of a terminator like
Speaker 2: AI with individual agency and desire is not a legitimate expectation.
Speaker 2: In other words, AI as it stands today is nothing
Speaker 2: more than a mindless algorithm, and thus it is not AI.
Speaker 2: He goes on for a few pages, what do you think.
Speaker 4: Well, there is a debate about this, of course going around,
Speaker 4: and because it's so new, it is still a debate.
Speaker 4: We don't of course, we don't know at least if
Speaker 4: you fall back on we fall back on our economics.
Speaker 4: It's not the first time there's been the possibility of
Speaker 4: a huge change in technology, because one of the most
Speaker 4: studied episodes in the subject of the Industrial Revolution in
Speaker 4: England and you know, in the seventeenth eighteenth century, and
Speaker 4: that did transform life, you know, so that the Industrial
Speaker 4: Age is obviously a big part of our history. It
Speaker 4: turned Britain into the world's leading superpower of its time.
Speaker 4: That was really responsible for the British Empire. It had
Speaker 4: the largest GDP in the world, and the steam engine
Speaker 4: and all those inventions did transform a human life. So
Speaker 4: these things do happen. And you know, if you listen
Speaker 4: to I've listened to. My source is shape League, who
Speaker 4: I spoke to a number of years ago, and he's
Speaker 4: convinced it amounts to a revolution. He's absolutely convinced. And
Speaker 4: he there's a book called Soulful Machines. I think on
Speaker 4: the topic of what you were saying of can these machines.
Speaker 3: Have a soul?
Speaker 4: There is a I'll try to fall back on the
Speaker 4: debate because heck, you know, it's not my field of expertise.
Speaker 4: On specifically a bit more the economic consequences. There's a
Speaker 4: chap that in America who is sort of the big
Speaker 4: name economist works in this field of technological progress and change,
Speaker 4: and a guy Darren as Moglin's. He says he's concerned
Speaker 4: about AI because he said they seem to be designing
Speaker 4: it to replicate what humans do. And he says, the
Speaker 4: thing is technology should really be supporting what we do.
Speaker 4: It should be making human life better and enabling human
Speaker 4: to be more productive. And when humans work with machines
Speaker 4: that make them more productive, that leads to higher wages
Speaker 4: because your labor productivity goes up the more capital you're
Speaker 4: working with. It enhances what you can do as a human.
Speaker 4: And he doesn't like the idea that sort of the
Speaker 4: AI people are trying to not complement what humans do,
Speaker 4: but substitute for them, almost like say, you know, sucked in,
Speaker 4: you're a human, but here this machine can talk better
Speaker 4: than you, write better than you. And even the robots,
Speaker 4: like the Terminator, they look like you.
Speaker 3: And he's sort of a bit disturbed, like what's.
Speaker 4: Going on where they're trying to copy and substitute for
Speaker 4: what humans do, which could make more humans unemployed. We
Speaker 4: asked another economist about eight years ago called Larry Popley
Speaker 4: cough from America, and you may think it's a bit funny,
Speaker 4: but he made this comment on what technology can do where.
Speaker 3: By comparing humans with horses.
Speaker 4: Apparently there were apparently one hundred years ago there was
Speaker 4: something like a million working horses. No, I think tens
Speaker 4: tens of millions of working horses in America. Now there
Speaker 4: are only a few hundred thousand, because once they invented
Speaker 4: the car and all these sort of technologies, there was
Speaker 4: nothing for horses.
Speaker 3: To do anymore.
Speaker 4: So there's only a handful of horses in America that
Speaker 4: are mainly race horses, and there's no other use for
Speaker 4: a horse. And he threw up the side here that
Speaker 4: maybe we could go the way of horses. So this
Speaker 4: is subject to sort of wild debate and conjecture.
Speaker 2: Then I think finally you mentioned the well, we mentioned
Speaker 2: the Reserve Bank, and you mentioned the governor, et cetera.
Speaker 2: I want to give you my take very briefly on
Speaker 2: central bank digital currencies. And you'd be aware, of course
Speaker 2: that the bank announced that it's goaling at for twenty thirty,
Speaker 2: But don't worry about it. It'll be okay because it
Speaker 2: will still be cash available and you'll still be running
Speaker 2: in parallel. Now, anybody who believes that because the only
Speaker 2: time we've heard that is after that crash a few
Speaker 2: weeks back, and of course that provided a beautiful rebuttal
Speaker 2: of getting forgetting a central bank digital currency that they
Speaker 2: own and control, and therefore they will have control over
Speaker 2: each and every one of our lives in the end.
Speaker 2: Now that's my feeling. Freedom is the most important thing
Speaker 2: in our lives. Without freedom, forget it. It's all over
Speaker 2: in my opinion. And I don't trust Adrian Orr or
Speaker 2: the next bloke to follow, or the bank itself in general,
Speaker 2: or politicians not to utilize in particularly in cases of
Speaker 2: a agency, the gradual and then sped up introduction of
Speaker 2: a single currency that they control.
Speaker 4: Your thoughts, Yeah, I'm a great fan of cash too,
Speaker 4: I mean, like you, it's sort of highly disturbing the
Speaker 4: idea that the government and my bank and the accountants
Speaker 4: virtually know what time you go to the toilet each
Speaker 4: day because they can trace that you've been to the
Speaker 4: supermarket and bought some toilet paper, and every single thing
Speaker 4: you do is listed on your godamn you know, set
Speaker 4: of internet transactions. So essentially there's never been a greater
Speaker 4: loss of privacy as you know, ever, because of this
Speaker 4: tracking of of of all of our habits and and
Speaker 4: that's the great sort of story of our age. The
Speaker 4: internet companies have available unprecedented amounts of data and know
Speaker 4: exactly what what what what we're up to. So you know,
Speaker 4: those are my thoughts too. That ASH is very important.
Speaker 4: The Reserve Bank has said that it reports maintaining ASH.
Speaker 4: As you said, the digital currency is quite a techy
Speaker 4: area in economics. Our trading banks West Pakay and z
Speaker 4: already they have accounts at the Reserve Bank and they're
Speaker 4: called the settlements accounts, and that essentially is a digital
Speaker 4: currency for them. That's where they hold instead of physical
Speaker 4: cash that they're given these accounts that they hold at
Speaker 4: the central bank and the reserve banks. Proposing we can
Speaker 4: essentially all old accounts like the trading banks directly.
Speaker 3: At the reserve bank.
Speaker 4: And maybe that has benefits because then where in set
Speaker 4: our accounts at Westpac and Westpac.
Speaker 3: Bankrupted, we're up that we could be up the creek.
Speaker 4: But if our funds are held at the Reserve Bank,
Speaker 4: it's safer. So but as you say, the risk is
Speaker 4: if that proves to be wildly popular, maybe it is
Speaker 4: a move that fear and fewer people actually sort of
Speaker 4: even want to have cash, and then with so few
Speaker 4: people paying with cash, it just does gradually disappear, So
Speaker 4: that could happen.
Speaker 2: I'm very pleased to say that I'm running into more
Speaker 2: people who are saying I'm spending cash more than I
Speaker 2: used to do because I don't want this coming my way.
Speaker 4: It's interesting, Well, well, of course the banks, if there
Speaker 4: is a conspiracy. Of course, the banks probably hate themselves
Speaker 4: the idea of cash, because if all key we simply
Speaker 4: went to the bank and took out they're spending money
Speaker 4: for the week from their check account and just spent
Speaker 4: the cash, they wouldn't be paying this godamn rip off
Speaker 4: one or two percent of this payWave a scandal.
Speaker 3: It's gripping the nation that they think it's.
Speaker 4: Convenient that every time you flash your card you transfer
Speaker 4: a chunk of your money.
Speaker 3: To the banks.
Speaker 4: Just love you paying with plastic and if you paid
Speaker 4: with good old fashioned cash, should be saving a lot
Speaker 4: of your money.
Speaker 2: What a delightful idea, Robert. I've got to say, it's
Speaker 2: been a very very pleasant period talking with you, and
Speaker 2: maybe we'll do it again sometime. I can only imagine
Speaker 2: that when when there is a worthwhile when there is
Speaker 2: a worthwhile matter that deserves your attention. You'll say yes, yes,
Speaker 2: of course I commit now, as long as you're not
Speaker 2: committed there, yeah, committed here all right. I appreciate it
Speaker 2: was very enjoyable and very informative.
Speaker 3: Very good, Thank you. Thanks Robert.
Speaker 2: Now into the mail room for podcast two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty one. Guess who's here, miss producer?
Speaker 5: Late?
Speaker 6: How the devil?
Speaker 4: Are you?
Speaker 3: Very good?
Speaker 2: We record this at no particular time. It depends on when.
Speaker 5: I can find five minutes out of my busy schedule.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, when we can coincide. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 5: So, so it's mid afternoon on a beautiful sunny day.
Speaker 2: Hold it z, missus producer. It's been a busy week actually,
Speaker 2: so let's go. Why don't you you?
Speaker 5: I shall late, and Daniel says, I have finally found
Speaker 5: the time to listen to episode two fifty and just
Speaker 5: finish your interview with Andrew Hollis. You made the suggestion
Speaker 5: that someone might be happy to buy a few copies
Speaker 5: of their books for interested schools. Well you can count
Speaker 5: me in for one thousand dollars contribution. Just let me
Speaker 5: know where to send it, or feel free to put
Speaker 5: me in touch with the school principle and I can
Speaker 5: place an order on their behalf.
Speaker 6: Is that nice of her?
Speaker 2: Isn't that really nice?
Speaker 5: Would be great, he says, to see schools finally take
Speaker 5: a critical thinking approach to climate change and many other subjects.
Speaker 5: Thanks for the suggestion and as always the compelling guests,
Speaker 5: and Daniel gives you his kind regards, and then he says, PS,
Speaker 5: if you ever do consider hanging up the microphone, and
Speaker 5: I hope you don't for a very long time, please
Speaker 5: consider bringing on a replacement to try and keep your
Speaker 5: podcast going. We can't afford to lose voices like yours.
Speaker 5: All power to you.
Speaker 2: Is that nice, Daniel. That's very generous of you on
Speaker 2: all fronts. Now, I'll let you into a little secret.
Speaker 2: We almost bankrupted you because what you just heard was
Speaker 2: the second take. Now we don't do that normally, but
Speaker 2: on this occasion we did because when missus producer read
Speaker 2: it first time, she committed you to one hundred.
Speaker 5: Thousand, Lake said, how much. That's very generous. So sorry
Speaker 5: about that, Daniel. Nearly nearly bankrupted.
Speaker 2: Jew So another along not dissimilar alliance from Craig. I
Speaker 2: am keenly listening to podcast two hundred and fifty with
Speaker 2: Andrew Hollis on climate change. Like Andrew, I see the
Speaker 2: bigger picture on the long term climate change fraud and
Speaker 2: conclude that if I cannot understand how stupid and gullible politicians, media, scientists,
Speaker 2: and corporates are, I simply do not understand the human condition.
Speaker 2: I found some enlightenment recently in a book that made
Speaker 2: me realize that the wholesale coercion of science is nothing new.
Speaker 2: The book is Hitler's Scientists by John Cornwall, published two
Speaker 2: thousand and three. Cornwell's book details science and politics in
Speaker 2: Germany and Europe from the late eighteen hundreds through until
Speaker 2: the end of World War II. I'm not naturally into
Speaker 2: the boring topics of physics, eugenics, and psychiatry, but I've
Speaker 2: found the book a fore telling revelation of our modern world.
Speaker 2: Those that refused to bow to the prevailing sentiments were
Speaker 2: ostracized and canceled. The lucky ones left their homeland for
Speaker 2: other continents Einstein, for example. It makes me realize that
Speaker 2: modern science has never been unbiased. It has always been
Speaker 2: based on money, politics, and ideology. We would it's modern science.
Speaker 2: He is talking about We would do well to take
Speaker 2: that into account when scientists revealed their decrees and then
Speaker 2: claim that the science is settled. Follow the money selling
Speaker 2: your scientific soul to pursue the almighty funding dollar and
Speaker 2: plumb university chairs is nothing new. Neither is cancel culture,
Speaker 2: media bias and racial ideology unique to our current scientific, corporate,
Speaker 2: and political situation in New Zealand. We would do well
Speaker 2: to look at history without cringing and observed where other civilizations,
Speaker 2: including pre war Germany, went wrong. Congratulations on fifty years
Speaker 2: of work. Unfortunately, I think your work and vital role
Speaker 2: is unfinished. Z I relax and enjoy the riots.
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 5: I think lateron you're up for another couple of years
Speaker 5: of this. So are you not so well? We're hoping
Speaker 5: that you'll continue on.
Speaker 2: Will see.
Speaker 5: Laton Christopher says, I enjoyed your interview with Brian Leyland
Speaker 5: in podcast two fifty and am delighted that you discussed
Speaker 5: nuclear power with him. During an earlier podcast. You suggested
Speaker 5: to him that New Zealanders weren't yet ready for nuclear power,
Speaker 5: and he said, wait until the lights go out. If
Speaker 5: not yet at that stage, we must be very close
Speaker 5: in nineteen sixty nine, Christopher says the Electricity Department had
Speaker 5: plans to build a nuclear power station at Oyster Point
Speaker 5: on the Kaipra Harbor, plans that were deferred because Maui
Speaker 5: gas became available. It will take us a decade to
Speaker 5: plan for and build a nuclear power station, so we
Speaker 5: must start now importing natural gas in the meantime and
Speaker 5: doing everything possible to stop the insanity of building more renewables.
Speaker 5: In addition to all their other issues, wind and solar
Speaker 5: farms are destroying the visual landscape and creating an enormous
Speaker 5: dismantling and disposal problem when they're short working lives end
Speaker 5: actually late. And I must just say, my daughters and
Speaker 5: I spent five days in costs and Greece a few
Speaker 5: weeks ago and lying on the beach looking up at
Speaker 5: the mountains behind us. There were wind turbines and it
Speaker 5: was quite the juxtaposition in views, really, you know, just
Speaker 5: to see these great, big things on top of these
Speaker 5: beautiful hills that had nothing else on them. Chris goes
Speaker 5: on to say you might enjoy the attached short essay
Speaker 5: by Professor Wade Allison, and he sends you that Professor
Speaker 5: Wade Allison is the name of the person, and it
Speaker 5: summarizes the energy situation succinctly.
Speaker 2: Christopher, very good, Christopher, I shall as soon as we've finished.
Speaker 2: I've just been reading one that I was really looking
Speaker 2: forward to reading. As I read it, I thought, I'm
Speaker 2: looking forward to reading this, and then I get to
Speaker 2: the bottom says, please don't read this out loud if
Speaker 2: you read this on air. Oh there you gay see
Speaker 2: he's given me enough or they have. If you read
Speaker 2: this on air, please don't mention my name. And there's
Speaker 2: me a reason I better sit on that for the
Speaker 2: moment because it looks like it might be easily identified
Speaker 2: by some Sorry, but I'm mean. I didn't mean to tease.
Speaker 2: It's just this is happening as we speak. That's all
Speaker 2: from Steve. Congratulations on the two hundred and fiftieth podcast.
Speaker 2: I hope this is doubled as the truth we hear
Speaker 2: weekly from your podcasts and guests is always enlightening and informative.
Speaker 2: I cannot tell you how pleasing it is to receive
Speaker 2: that sort of comment, because you know we do our
Speaker 2: best and there are plenty to try and disrupt us.
Speaker 5: Well, it's something that you just adore doing latent, isn't it?
Speaker 5: And you spend pretty much all your time on it,
Speaker 5: so it's definitely a labor of love.
Speaker 2: It's frustration exactly right. So where was I? Over the
Speaker 2: last weeks, the regular Mary have spouted their rubbish as
Speaker 2: they try to exert their race over the rights of others.
Speaker 2: The behavior of Mary party leader Packer and the way
Speaker 2: both speak would never be accepted if anyone else spoke
Speaker 2: such venomous hatred Right there? I feel If other New Zealanders,
Speaker 2: like myself with part Mary blood, feel like I do,
Speaker 2: then there is hope to stop this anti all New
Speaker 2: Zealander retric unless you are a Mariy radical. I'm sick
Speaker 2: and tired of the news which stirs the pod daily
Speaker 2: with Mary and spired stories of the continually perpetuated myth
Speaker 2: have hard done by poor Mary, oppressed since European arrival.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't it be a revelation if these groups actually acknowledge
Speaker 2: the benefits they actually have like clothes, phones, TVs, vehicles, hospitals, roads,
Speaker 2: modern housing, power, real boats, and far too much to
Speaker 2: mention they were tribaled and engaged in slavery, conquest and
Speaker 2: killing and eating anything they could inclusive of other tribes members.
Speaker 2: They were lawless, yet blame everything on colonization, of which
Speaker 2: they gladly did to each other's tribes. These marry blame
Speaker 2: the past and blame the present, yet failed to own
Speaker 2: or take any responsibility. Marie lost my interest years ago.
Speaker 2: Winge moown grizzle fall on my deaf ears. They become
Speaker 2: white noise to me, Yes, what a great saying. And
Speaker 2: how I laugh at how they would cry, what a
Speaker 2: racist saying that is, as they just add to the
Speaker 2: white noise. I hear. See. That was a bit well complicated,
Speaker 2: but we got there.
Speaker 3: In the end.
Speaker 5: Lighton Bronwin says you mentioned several topics that you felt
Speaker 5: needed covering at the beginning of episode two fifty, including
Speaker 5: the New Zealand pandemic plan. I thought this short article
Speaker 5: from The Centrist might interest you and should you wish
Speaker 5: to do an interview on the topic. Kirsten Murphett seems
Speaker 5: to have her finger on the pulse and Bromin sends
Speaker 5: you that piece from Centris dot co dot zid, and
Speaker 5: then Brown goes on to say, I hope you might
Speaker 5: feel inspired to take on another year of podcasts when
Speaker 5: the contract comes up for renewal again as voices like
Speaker 5: yours are much needed. If not, what would happen? Would
Speaker 5: the podcast cease to exist or would someone else take
Speaker 5: up the contract? And finally says Bronwyn, I have a
Speaker 5: copy of your book beyond the microphone, which I would
Speaker 5: like to give to somebody who would appreciate it. Would
Speaker 5: you be willing to read this out and pass on
Speaker 5: my number to the first person to email you wanting
Speaker 5: it located Marlborough, free to a good home, to a local,
Speaker 5: or just cover postage if you love elsewhere.
Speaker 2: And that's from bromwyin generous.
Speaker 5: I take great delight, latent, don't ie, and whenever I'm
Speaker 5: in a hospice shop or a Red Cross shop and
Speaker 5: phoning you and telling you that there it is for
Speaker 5: two dollars inevitable, really well thumbed of course, of course.
Speaker 2: And finally from Liz, congratulations on your fifty years in
Speaker 2: broadcasting and Carolyn's thirty six working with you well, working
Speaker 2: is a loose word, isn't it?
Speaker 6: Settled down?
Speaker 2: Fifty years in business is also my goal. Next year
Speaker 2: the gold card will arrive and I am not as
Speaker 2: some of my friends are waiting by the letterbox for it.
Speaker 2: I relish every day that I'm still able to contribute
Speaker 2: to the company result. I don't have to do it.
Speaker 2: I am fortunate enough to get to do it. I
Speaker 2: hope that in four years time, when my fifty years
Speaker 2: rolls around, that I am still spending the early hours
Speaker 2: of my Saturday catching up on your podcasts. Best wishes, Liz, Liz,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you what. I'll do a deal with you.
Speaker 2: If you want to listen, I'll post them. But it
Speaker 2: might be about the fourth time you've heard them all repeats.
Speaker 6: Yeah don't.
Speaker 5: You're not on your own because he's spending the early
Speaker 5: hours of his Saturday actually doing it.
Speaker 6: So think of that when you're listening.
Speaker 2: Now there is one more you want to read it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Why not?
Speaker 5: Jin says I will not remember Jacinda Durn for her
Speaker 5: so called kindness, her performative donning of the hijabb nor
Speaker 5: her opportunistic use of COVID powers. But there are three
Speaker 5: things that will constantly remind me of Jacinda in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four, power outages, power price increases, and enforced power cuts,
Speaker 5: amongst a plethora of other crises. Safe Welcome to Jacinder
Speaker 5: our Durn and Megan Woods remain unrepentant for single handedly
Speaker 5: causing our current crisis with their bloody call to ban
Speaker 5: offshore oil and gas exploration in New Zealand. Who would
Speaker 5: have thought that my generation's nuclear free moment in twenty
Speaker 5: eighteen would result in the next generation's lights out moment
Speaker 5: in twenty four I love Andrew Hollis quote that becoming
Speaker 5: a climate scientist now is detrimental to critical thinking. It's
Speaker 5: clear neither our Dern nor Woods have any critical thinking
Speaker 5: faculties when it comes to climate change. I was very
Speaker 5: surprised to learn from Andrew Hollis that New Zealand's vast
Speaker 5: grasslands are completely ignored in New Zealand's carbon counting. What
Speaker 5: kind of stupid science are our climate change policies based on? Meanwhile,
Speaker 5: the next generation of labor and green MPs continues to
Speaker 5: march to the same rhetorical beat that our deurn spouted
Speaker 5: for six whole years, with great dollops of racism thrown
Speaker 5: and from Depati MAUI, I mean, what kind of word salad?
Speaker 6: Hell?
Speaker 5: Is the word ethnicide that's been spouted by Debbie nari Wapaka.
Speaker 5: These inmates that are trying to run the asylum need
Speaker 5: to be locked up forever. Their idea is subject of
Speaker 5: philosophical hell for all eternity. If there's a time for
Speaker 5: vaccine mandates, it's now. It's time to vaccinate against these
Speaker 5: idea virus superspreaders once and for all. Oh, and I
Speaker 5: also want to heartily congratulate you later on five decades
Speaker 5: of broadcasting. You've been pretty much broadcasting ever since.
Speaker 6: I was born. What a milestone.
Speaker 5: I'm looking forward to your new book Between the Microphone
Speaker 5: and the Bridge us. There won't be one of those,
Speaker 5: Jen I can tell you thank you so much.
Speaker 6: That was That was exceptional, wasn't it.
Speaker 2: Yes, Senda will remind me of the Podium of truth,
Speaker 2: Karl Marx and the dentist. So as a producer, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you, and I look forward to seeing you next week.
Speaker 6: Oh that'll be good.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: By the way, Leyton at news talks at me dot
Speaker 2: co dot ensaid or Carolyn, she hasn't had a letter
Speaker 2: for a while. She gets included Dear Layton, Carolyn, or
Speaker 2: dear mister and missus producer. It's nice included anyway, Layton,
Speaker 2: that news talks of me dot co dot and said,
Speaker 2: or Carolyn with a Y at Newstalks said, be somebody
Speaker 2: sent one in with a Y N.
Speaker 5: E yes, I get the odd one like that too.
Speaker 2: They got the Y.
Speaker 6: That's good. I applaud that. See you later, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Leighton Smith.
Speaker 2: Now in the mailroom, missus producer read a letter from
Speaker 2: Chris and at the end of it there was an
Speaker 2: inclusion and I said that I'd have a look at
Speaker 2: it soon as we finished, and I did, and it
Speaker 2: has led me to wish to share it with you
Speaker 2: because it slots in beautifully with some of the subject
Speaker 2: matter of this podcast. Productivity is something that we're hearing
Speaker 2: an awful lot about we have for years. I know
Speaker 2: it's been said already in the podcast, but it seems
Speaker 2: to be intensifying and with good cause. So this is
Speaker 2: written by Professor Emeritus and fellow of Keble College, Oxford.
Speaker 2: His name is Wade Allison, and it's entitled Energy for Productivity.
Speaker 2: Energy for Productivity means more than the words would suggest,
Speaker 2: and it goes like this, starting with a summary, If
Speaker 2: the productivity of nations is to increase despite aging and
Speaker 2: shrinking populations, a dynamic energy policy with generous provision for
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence is needed. The new sources should be energy intensive, controllable,
Speaker 2: available twenty four to seven, compact, safe, environmental, secure, reliable,
Speaker 2: and locatable where required. Sounds perfect, doesn't it. In the past,
Speaker 2: energy and productivity increases have accompanied revolutionary strides in understanding,
Speaker 2: culture and application. Growing public confidence in nuclear power and
Speaker 2: the demand of AI suggests that a new revolutionary energy
Speaker 2: expansion is imminent. In prehistory, humans learnt how to engage
Speaker 2: the energy of fire rather than to flee in fear.
Speaker 2: This gave them a level of productivity that distinguished them
Speaker 2: from other creatures. Nevertheless, life remained short and miserable, and
Speaker 2: a population low. Sources of fuel were restricted, and other
Speaker 2: forms of energy that humans learned to use were weather
Speaker 2: dependent and notoriously unreliable. The Industrial Revolution changed that the
Speaker 2: combustion of energy Dense fossil fuels powered engines able to
Speaker 2: convert heat energy into mechanical effort. The availability of this
Speaker 2: heat and work in quantity, on site and on demand
Speaker 2: transformed productivity and the quantity of human life. It took
Speaker 2: time for the benefits to be realized, but for two
Speaker 2: hundred years, political and economic activity has focused on access
Speaker 2: to these fuels and the engines that use them. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: fire can be difficult to control. It can catch a
Speaker 2: light in a runaway process and even explode, and emissions
Speaker 2: not only of carbon dioxide, but of carbon soots and
Speaker 2: nitrogen oxides too, are discharged in vast quantities into the
Speaker 2: atmosphere and the oceans, where they accumulate over periods up
Speaker 2: to a century. So the international community has agreed that
Speaker 2: the combustion of fossil fuels should be curtailed soon, implicitly
Speaker 2: while maintaining the world economy. Hence the search for a
Speaker 2: cleaner fuel to support higher productivity in the medium and
Speaker 2: longer term, ideally hotter than fire, widely available, controllable and
Speaker 2: compact and safe. Surprisingly, there is a candidate solution to
Speaker 2: this wish list, one that Winston Churchill pointed out already
Speaker 2: ninety three years ago. Writing in the Strand magazine. He
Speaker 2: compared the productivity of human effort coal and nuclear energy.
Speaker 2: The coal a man can get in a day can
Speaker 2: easily do five hundred times as much work as a
Speaker 2: man himself, he wrote, nuclear energy is at least one
Speaker 2: million times more powerful. Still, the discovery and control of
Speaker 2: such sources of power would cause changes in human affairs
Speaker 2: incomparably greater than those produced by the steam engine four
Speaker 2: generations ago. Though nobody knew how to extract and control
Speaker 2: this millionfold energy, in nineteen thirty one, it is explained
Speaker 2: as a simple consequence of quantum physics, and already by
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty four it was safely powering the submarine Nautilus. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty five nuclear energy had been used as
Speaker 2: a weapon, like for gunpowder and T and T earlier,
Speaker 2: the increase in destructive energy was received with fear, and
Speaker 2: then to the evident danger of blast and fire was
Speaker 2: added worries over the health effects of radiation. Without any
Speaker 2: knowledge to the contrary, this radiation scare story was socially
Speaker 2: devastating and rapidly demonized nuclear energy. This had the welcome
Speaker 2: effect of discouraging the deployment of nuclear weapons, so that
Speaker 2: none has been used since nineteen forty five. Nevertheless, the
Speaker 2: health threat from radiation on the scale feared is not
Speaker 2: confirmed by supporting evidence. If society had overcome this fear,
Speaker 2: as it did long ago, when the fear of fire
Speaker 2: threatened human advancement, the full benefit of nuclear energy might
Speaker 2: have been enjoyed for the past seventy years, but no
Speaker 2: attempt was made to explain and convince everyone that radiation
Speaker 2: and nuclear energy are more easily and safely controlled than fire,
Speaker 2: as can be done today. Instead, public apprehension was treated
Speaker 2: with regulations designed to minimize personal exposure to nuclear technology
Speaker 2: except for the life saving health benefits initiated by Maricuri.
Speaker 2: These regulations lack any sound scientific basis, an appeal to
Speaker 2: a philosophy of unqualified caution. Technically, they encourage over design
Speaker 2: and add hugely to the costs and delays of deploying
Speaker 2: nuclear power. Until recently, these artificial hurdles were still widely
Speaker 2: cited as reasons to discourage nuclear energy as a replacement
Speaker 2: for fossil fuels. Instead, the instinctive reaction was to revert
Speaker 2: to the weak and unreliable sources that depend on the
Speaker 2: weather and had proved inadequate before the Industrial Revolution, Deployed
Speaker 2: today with modern technology, their voracious appetite for land and
Speaker 2: resources adds to their unreliability and negative environmental impact. But
Speaker 2: the benefits of nuclear power for productivity that Churchill imagined remain,
Speaker 2: as do simple reassuring facts, as follows the evacuation zone
Speaker 2: at Chernobyl, far from being an uninhabitable desert, is thriving
Speaker 2: with wildlife. Nobody was hurt at all by the radiation
Speaker 2: released in the accidents of Fukushima and Three Mile Island. Overall,
Speaker 2: nuclear power has a better safety record than any other source.
Speaker 2: Healthy human tissue recovers from an exposure to radiation even
Speaker 2: after radiotherapy treatment, with forty thousand times the annual exposure
Speaker 2: set as safe by ultra cautious regulations. I do that again.
Speaker 2: Healthy human tissue recovers from an exposure to radiation even
Speaker 2: after radiotherapy treatment, with forty thousand times the annual exposure
Speaker 2: set as safe by ultra cautious regulations. Natural radiation in
Speaker 2: the environment varies by large factors from place to place
Speaker 2: around the world, with no adverse health effects for inhabitants.
Speaker 2: The world has deluded itself for the past seventy years
Speaker 2: that nuclear energy is especially dangerous. The reasons for its
Speaker 2: unexpected safety are well understood today, and the public view
Speaker 2: is gradually changing. Discussion about risks and safety in the environment,
Speaker 2: including that radiation does not multiply like infection or fire,
Speaker 2: is a matter for schools. The cultural shift will take
Speaker 2: a few years, but so also will the wider roll
Speaker 2: out of nuclear power. The advanced legislation enacted by President
Speaker 2: Biden on nine July, with Bipower and Support, brings a
Speaker 2: more open policy to nuclear development, deployment, and international engagement. Currently,
Speaker 2: nuclear technology offers many plant designs under development, all competing
Speaker 2: for permission to build, but held back until now by
Speaker 2: a risk averse culture. There is room, he concludes, there
Speaker 2: is room for considerable optimism that nuclear power will contribute
Speaker 2: a major uplift in future productivity, as it could have
Speaker 2: earlier if the world had not been scared. There's some
Speaker 2: inport from somebody who should be respected for their opinion.
Speaker 2: Wade Allison, Professor emeritus of Keppel College in Oxford, and
Speaker 2: I have a feeling that New Zealand will follow Australia
Speaker 2: and start to change its mind, if it hasn't already.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The outcasts in this discussion the course of the Greens,
Speaker 2: who no matter what you present them with as far
Speaker 2: as safety is concerned, what new developments are unveiled, they
Speaker 2: will stick to their guns, which is probably not which
Speaker 2: is probably not quite the right way to frame it,
Speaker 2: but it's probably time to drag out a wonderful old
Speaker 2: phrase that I haven't used for a long time, and
Speaker 2: that is that the Greens, if they had their way,
Speaker 2: would have us all living in caves and scrubbing ourselves
Speaker 2: in the creek with a rock, and that will knock
Speaker 2: us out for this week Podcast two hundred and fifty one.
Speaker 2: Don't forget if you'd like to comment on anything or
Speaker 2: suggest anything, if you are to write to us Latent
Speaker 2: at newstalks ab dot co dot ziit or Carolyn at
Speaker 2: newstalks ab dot co dot enz And as I repeat constantly,
Speaker 2: we do enjoy getting your input, so don't hesitate so
Speaker 2: that kicks us for touch and we shall be back
Speaker 2: very shortly with Podcast two hundred and fifty two. In
Speaker 2: the meantime, thank you as always for listening and we'll
Speaker 2: talk soon.
Speaker 3: M hmm.
Speaker 1: Thank you for more from News Talk st B. Listen
Speaker 1: live on air or online, and keep our shows with
Speaker 1: you wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.