Speaker 1: On two GB at network stations. This is Afternoons with
Speaker 1: Michael McClaren.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get it underway. It is Thursday. Nice
Speaker 2: to have you there, beautiful day outside again today June twelve,
Speaker 2: and hope we find you well where he happened to
Speaker 2: be one three one eight seven three. The open line
Speaker 2: number you can of course call. Just get on that
Speaker 2: open line one three one eight seven three. You can
Speaker 2: text zero four six zero eight seven three eight seven three.
Speaker 2: There's always email to GiB dot com. Click on the
Speaker 2: feedback icon. It's Mick Mac with you. Do I get
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars? Do I get that out of Ben's wallet?
Speaker 2: Michael otherwise with you on Afternoons. If you're listening to
Speaker 2: Breakfast this morning, I think Ben's gotta throw a nice
Speaker 2: crisp green note out of his own wallet to the
Speaker 2: first person who calls me Mick Mac on air, or
Speaker 2: so I'm told so. Anyway, there's a little incentive to
Speaker 2: call at some point today. Rex Patrick will join me
Speaker 2: later this hour, the former South Australia senator, a former
Speaker 2: sub mariner. I want to put those two expertise together
Speaker 2: in Rex and speak about what's happening with ORCUS. Many
Speaker 2: have said this was going to happen, and I suspect
Speaker 2: people like Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating will be feeling
Speaker 2: quietly smuged today that the Trump administration has decided that
Speaker 2: they want to review the Orcus arrangements and whether it's
Speaker 2: in the United States best interest. Look, I think Malcolm
Speaker 2: Turnbull makes a valid point, and that is with the
Speaker 2: British reviewing Orcus and the Americans now seemingly open to
Speaker 2: a quote unquote review, it's a little strange that the
Speaker 2: only country that isn't reviewing the arrangement is Australia, and
Speaker 2: I think a review may well be necessary. It is
Speaker 2: looking as though this may not happen in the way
Speaker 2: that we thought it would. Time is not on our side.
Speaker 2: I think it would be a great calamity if it
Speaker 2: did not happen. But you've got to have a plan B.
Speaker 2: And the Prime Minister was asked, I think during the
Speaker 2: election campaign about whether there would be or we need
Speaker 2: there is the need for a plan B and he
Speaker 2: said no words, no where we've got Aucust. Well, of course,
Speaker 2: we have put a lot of faith in two very
Speaker 2: long standing allies. If one or both of them decide
Speaker 2: this isn't in their interests, we are in trouble. Now.
Speaker 2: Let me just say at this point, and I spec
Speaker 2: Rex Patrick would agree that the one nation hoping more
Speaker 2: than any other that the United States decides that AUCUST
Speaker 2: is not in their interest would be China. The Communist
Speaker 2: Party of China would be very much hoping that nuclear
Speaker 2: submarine technology is not afforded to the Australian defense industry
Speaker 2: because they do not like AUCUST. They made that very clear.
Speaker 2: But there are people here that have said from the
Speaker 2: start that this was very, very risky. It was always risky,
Speaker 2: but that it was so risky that we shouldn't have
Speaker 2: entertained the idea. If I were there, I'd hold my
Speaker 2: self congratulation for now. This is not yet over. It
Speaker 2: is still more done deal than undone deal at this stage,
Speaker 2: and I think smart heads will get into Donald Trump
Speaker 2: and say, listen, financially, we are the great beneficiary of
Speaker 2: this arrangement. The Australian has already sent US eight hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars. They will send more so that we can
Speaker 2: increase our domestic submarine capability in the United States. Now,
Speaker 2: part of the arrangement is Okay, we've got to send
Speaker 2: them a couple of Virginia class submarines. But the fine
Speaker 2: print says only if we have surplus to send. So Donald,
Speaker 2: if I was in the Americans, we'll take the money.
Speaker 2: We'll take the money, because there's nothing in there that
Speaker 2: binds them to give us the Virginia class submarines the
Speaker 2: Orcus technology, many of which will be built in Adelaide,
Speaker 2: some in the United Kingdom. That's a different story. The
Speaker 2: Virginia class submarines the stop gap between now and when
Speaker 2: we finally build our own nuclear submarine in you, I
Speaker 2: don't know. Three fifty five A deals, aren't they. The
Speaker 2: Virginias are the stop gap, and there is nothing that
Speaker 2: requires the Americans, as far as I understand it, to
Speaker 2: deliver Virginia class submarines. It's sort of a gentleman's agreement
Speaker 2: that if they've got spare, they will, But it doesn't
Speaker 2: look like they're going to have spare, even though we're
Speaker 2: giving them an enormous amount of cash to try to
Speaker 2: make that happen. So look, it's a bit like the
Speaker 2: free trade agreement between Australia and the United States. If
Speaker 2: this is in anyone's interest, it's in the Americans interests
Speaker 2: and they would be crazy to row it back, but
Speaker 2: you never know. I speak to x Patrick about it now.
Speaker 2: Adam will be here with screen talk Jim Haynes with
Speaker 2: Sydney Siders. It's a great Sydney Sider story today and
Speaker 2: anything else that bubbles up in the news as well.
Speaker 2: I understand there's a bit of a situation at Stratfield
Speaker 2: train station as we speak. I'll get some more details
Speaker 2: on that for you may well be affecting some train
Speaker 2: services through that particular or through the lines that do
Speaker 2: go through that part of Sydney. A very significant train station, Stratfield.
Speaker 2: So I'll give you some details there if they come
Speaker 2: to light. And more so, stay with us, don't go anywhere.
Speaker 2: Have you say one three, one eight seven three the number?
Speaker 2: All right? Quarter past twelve. Look, there is a lot
Speaker 2: of news around today, obviously, the passing of Brian Wilson,
Speaker 2: the review into WUCAS, as we were just saying, the
Speaker 2: monash ivf CEO stepping down, and yet another stuff up there.
Speaker 2: Not to mention the ongoing situation in Los Angeles or
Speaker 2: that does seem to be petering out, the war in Gaza,
Speaker 2: Putin's endless bombardment of Ukraine. It just keeps going. But
Speaker 2: for the majority of you listening now, the story that
Speaker 2: will matter most in the here and now concerns the
Speaker 2: price rises that are coming for a bunch of your
Speaker 2: regular bills. That's what's going to matter to you. And
Speaker 2: from insurance to energy, to phone bills and even subscription services,
Speaker 2: prices are going up everywhere from July the first, and
Speaker 2: in many cases well above inflation. But it's going to
Speaker 2: be the energy bill that hurts the most because, unlike
Speaker 2: your kao's subscription, electricity isn't a discretionary spend and we
Speaker 2: were promised, we haven't forgotten by the government the prices
Speaker 2: would be coming down by now. Instead, we've seen the
Speaker 2: average electricity bill rise by four hundred and ninety five
Speaker 2: dollars since the twenty twenty two election, and there is
Speaker 2: more to come now. As The Herald reports today, consumers
Speaker 2: in New South Wales, South Australia and even parts of
Speaker 2: Southeast Queensland will have to fork out more from July one,
Speaker 2: after the Energy Regulator approved an increase to its price cap,
Speaker 2: or the default market offer, as it's known now. I
Speaker 2: guess the message will be shop around, because depending where
Speaker 2: you go and how you use your appliances, you can
Speaker 2: save more with company A asposed to company B. But
Speaker 2: I'd be buying a lottery ticket if anyone offered you
Speaker 2: a discount on the price you've been paying over the
Speaker 2: previous twelve months. Despite those hollow promises and regularly cited
Speaker 2: modeling that cheaper bills were on the horizon, fat chance
Speaker 2: getting a discount. Now most people in this state will
Speaker 2: be slugged an increase of around eight and a half percent.
Speaker 2: Around that mark. The eight and a half percent now,
Speaker 2: I'm told small businesses will be about the same, and
Speaker 2: obviously many of them will attempt to pass that on
Speaker 2: to the end consumer one way or another. Now we
Speaker 2: all await Chris Bowen's explanation for this, but for what
Speaker 2: it's worth, I had a note from my energy provider
Speaker 2: lobbed into the inbox, in fact, just last night, warning
Speaker 2: me of upcoming changes to rates and fixed service fees. Now,
Speaker 2: in the case of the latter, the daily service to
Speaker 2: property fees for my bill, they're going up twenty five percent.
Speaker 2: And I only recently switched to this particular provider because
Speaker 2: they were cheaper than the mobb I was with. I mean,
Speaker 2: you can't win, but it won't end with electricity, even
Speaker 2: though energy is the economy. And when it comes to prices, well,
Speaker 2: more expensive electricity, naturally everything becomes more expensive up and
Speaker 2: down the supply chain. But as I said earlier, prices
Speaker 2: continue to go up everywhere. And so when the official
Speaker 2: inflation numbers, the CPI data gets released and we're told
Speaker 2: inflation is now back within the RBA's preferred band of
Speaker 2: two to three percent, no wonder many of you write
Speaker 2: to me and ask, well, how do they figure that out?
Speaker 2: What's that based off? Because in your lived reality, inflation
Speaker 2: isn't hovering in the two to three percent. Bad now again,
Speaker 2: according to the Herald, Vodaphone, Optus and Telstra have signaled
Speaker 2: customers on some plans are about to be paying more. Apparently,
Speaker 2: most Telstra customers have already absorbed two price rises in
Speaker 2: just the past twelve months. But mobile internet plans are
Speaker 2: going to go up again, I'm told. And then we
Speaker 2: get to insurance, car insurance, home and content insurance, and
Speaker 2: of course health insurance. Now how half the population can
Speaker 2: afford to be properly insured across all three these days
Speaker 2: is it's a mystery to me. Well, in truth, half
Speaker 2: the population aren't properly insured, stacks are underinsured, and increasing
Speaker 2: numbers are not insured at all. They simply can't afford it.
Speaker 2: And there's always the risk of a so called doom
Speaker 2: loop with insurance, where the more that drop out, the
Speaker 2: higher the tariff charge to those that remain, forcing more
Speaker 2: to walk away and so on. Now anyway, according to Canstar,
Speaker 2: the average cost of a gold hospital insurance policy has
Speaker 2: increased by an average thirteen point eight percent for singles
Speaker 2: and just a tad more for families. It's a long
Speaker 2: way above inflation. And as for comprehensive car insurance, again,
Speaker 2: the average is up one hundred and twenty two dollars
Speaker 2: over the past twelve months. Mind you spare a thought
Speaker 2: for the Victorian motorists. Their bills are up an average
Speaker 2: two hundred and twenty five dollars now. At the end
Speaker 2: of the day, this is money that Australian taxpayers have
Speaker 2: to find out of their monthly budgets, and once it
Speaker 2: goes to the insurer or the energy provider, it's unavailable
Speaker 2: to then be spent at the shop or the local cafe.
Speaker 2: Let alone, gifted to charity. It suppresses the discretionary spend
Speaker 2: and in turn it puts the brakes on the widest
Speaker 2: story of economic growth. Now, considering we were all told
Speaker 2: that the last election was a cost of living election,
Speaker 2: I wonder how voters are going to react when confronted
Speaker 2: with all of these numbers. But then again, if they're
Speaker 2: the same voters who are about to have their hex
Speaker 2: debts wiped, house deposits and home battery subsidized, and childcare
Speaker 2: work tests are raised by the government, well perhaps they'll
Speaker 2: be in a forgiving mood. As for the rest of us,
Speaker 2: I guess we'll just have to reach even deeper into
Speaker 2: our pockets and do it the old fashioned way. Yes,
Speaker 2: speaking of wintery things, by the way, gets set Sydney
Speaker 2: because Twogb's Winter Wheels starts spinning from Monday. This is great.
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Speaker 2: We're spending the wheel in breakfast mornings here and afternoons
Speaker 2: in Clinton with Sydney now two GB's winter Wheel. It
Speaker 2: starts spinning from Monday, so don't miss out. Stay listening
Speaker 2: to Sydney's two GB. That's where it's at. Of course,
Speaker 2: one three, one, eight, seven, three stacks of texts. I'll
Speaker 2: get to them in a moment. Let's go to calls
Speaker 2: first today.
Speaker 3: Joe Gooday, Michael, how are you going? Thank you for
Speaker 3: taking McCall pleasure just had I just been thinking about
Speaker 3: this orcus issue or potentially that we may have.
Speaker 4: We may have.
Speaker 3: This idea stems from I've got a joinery shop. We
Speaker 3: employ about forty blokes. I've been around forty years, and
Speaker 3: from time to time there's some big joinery projects that
Speaker 3: come up and they and they vary from highly detailed
Speaker 3: pieces of furniture to maybe multi production. Now we can't
Speaker 3: do it all, so we in the past have done
Speaker 3: joint ventures with other joinery shops and we've shared shared
Speaker 3: the love, and the builders are happy, the clients are happy,
Speaker 3: everybody's happy. Something. Why doesn't mister Alban easy have it.
Speaker 3: Go at mister Trump and say to him, listen, we
Speaker 3: understand that you might not be able to build all
Speaker 3: the submarines for yourself and everybody else. Why don't we
Speaker 3: share it? We have the facility here where we could
Speaker 3: do that. Now, with some technology sharing, which I think
Speaker 3: we should be able to do, and some financial help,
Speaker 3: we could save millions and bring manufacturing of that high
Speaker 3: technical gear back to Australia.
Speaker 2: I understand, but I'm not sure that the technology. Let
Speaker 2: me put it this way, I'm no expert, Joan. That's
Speaker 2: why I'll speak to experts lad on the show about this.
Speaker 2: I defer to their wisdom. But my understanding is that
Speaker 2: a nuclear submarine is about the most complicated piece of
Speaker 2: equipment man has ever built, and so only a few
Speaker 2: countries have the ability to do it sharing the lovers
Speaker 2: it were very difficult to do. Even I would assume
Speaker 2: building that the tube of the submarine and then having
Speaker 2: the nuclear engine component retrofitted in America or whatever. I
Speaker 2: don't even know how practical that is. Look, but Joe,
Speaker 2: you've raised it. Let me ask Rex Patrick who might
Speaker 2: know the answer. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I understand. I'm thinking we don't have to do
Speaker 3: all of it, but we can do part of it.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not sure, but it's just that we
Speaker 3: do and it's very successful in our industry.
Speaker 2: Yep, I appreciate that in in other industries as well. Look,
Speaker 2: I understand the point, and I thank you for taking
Speaker 2: the time to call. The truth of the Orcus submarines,
Speaker 2: not the Virginia Class from America, but the Orcast submarines,
Speaker 2: is that in some respects your logic is going to
Speaker 2: apply because we're going to have British technology. I think
Speaker 2: it's BAE are going to be behind the design of it,
Speaker 2: and then that's going to be a cookie cutter retrofitted
Speaker 2: to the Osborne Shipyard in Adelaide and South Australia, and
Speaker 2: we're going to build them out here. So build a
Speaker 2: few in the UK, then build them out here and
Speaker 2: once you get underway, then okay, yeah, you can probably
Speaker 2: go back and forth with different bits that others can
Speaker 2: do better than others. But with the Virginia Class subs,
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's going to be practical, but
Speaker 2: I don't know. Thank you, Joe Michael, Good afternoon.
Speaker 5: Good afternoon. How are you today.
Speaker 2: I'm well, mate, I hope you are too.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Look, Glad, I might be a
Speaker 5: silly person, but I got a question. All the big
Speaker 5: companies and everybody's and the government's madly pushing AI into everything,
Speaker 5: and they're just placing workers and replacing with AI and
Speaker 5: or continue to do so. Now the reason they then
Speaker 5: they save money. They don't pay wages, they don't pay superannuation,
Speaker 5: workers comp holidays, sick pay nothing. So therefore the companies
Speaker 5: are making huge profits. Surely the goodness the cost of
Speaker 5: goods and services would be falling like a rock instead
Speaker 5: of increasing first part, second part, with one point two
Speaker 5: trillion dollars worth of debt, plus we're bringing in millions
Speaker 5: of semi skilled and unskilled migrants. Where's all the money
Speaker 5: coming from for the welfare for all of us and
Speaker 5: them when there's no work here anymore because it's all
Speaker 5: replaced BII.
Speaker 2: Well, the answer to the last question is twofold. One
Speaker 2: that's coming from mining royalties and taxes from the mining industry,
Speaker 2: and the other is it's increasingly coming from those that
Speaker 2: do work income tax.
Speaker 5: Well, there you go, So it's the price. So they're
Speaker 5: already getting about forty percent of their revenue from income tax.
Speaker 5: So the few that will have jobs in the next
Speaker 5: five or ten years will be paying what double tax
Speaker 5: and how are they going to pay for all the
Speaker 5: growing welfare with millions of more people coming in, plus
Speaker 5: the debt that the country's blowing up going on green
Speaker 5: windmills and things.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, Chris Jorman very impressive yesterday as you
Speaker 2: would have heard, Michael basically said we're going to go
Speaker 2: broke trying this and this is something that the voters
Speaker 2: had the opportunity to consider only a month or so ago,
Speaker 2: and they denied reality. So you know, that's democracy for you.
Speaker 2: Thank you for the call, Michael. I appreciate it. I
Speaker 2: share your concerns and many listeners do. Rod. Good afternoon, Rod.
Speaker 4: Yep, there you are, mate, Good mate. I'm look. I
Speaker 4: think that you are building sharing would work, except that's
Speaker 4: not what they're reviewing. They're reviewing whether they can trust
Speaker 4: us with the technology, with the information that's linked back
Speaker 4: to them and the Chumps. Well aware, we elected the
Speaker 4: Vishi government in this country, so why would you build
Speaker 4: the subs when they end up in the hands of China.
Speaker 4: That's what their review and mate, to see if they
Speaker 4: can still bloody trust us and feeding and the way
Speaker 4: Wong and all them carry on and hating I wouldn't
Speaker 4: trust you. I wouldn't trust any of them with anything.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that's part of the consideration, Rod, and I
Speaker 2: think the other part, and I'll raise this with Rex shortly,
Speaker 2: is that our commitment to defense expenditure, much of which
Speaker 2: would end up going to the United States because we
Speaker 2: buy their equipment, isn't where the Americans want it. And
Speaker 2: they have a valid point. I mean not everything Trump
Speaker 2: says or does is write or valid or I support,
Speaker 2: but on this global crusade of his to get the
Speaker 2: Allied countries to spend more of their budgets on defense,
Speaker 2: he is I think completely within his rights to demand
Speaker 2: this because the American taxpayers, you know, the people of
Speaker 2: West Virginia, with hardly any money to their name, but
Speaker 2: they're paying their taxes as they go about their manual work.
Speaker 2: They're propping up the American defense budget, which doesn't just
Speaker 2: cover America's defense, it covers a lot of the Allies defense,
Speaker 2: the Europeans particularly, but Australia is the same. We freeload largely,
Speaker 2: we freeload, and Trump saying we hang on, I could
Speaker 2: repurpose a lot of that money and pay down my
Speaker 2: debt or build bridges and infrastructure in the United States,
Speaker 2: or schools or hospitals, or finish the wall or whatever.
Speaker 2: I could do all of that with the money, but
Speaker 2: instead I'm putting it into the American military machine so
Speaker 2: that we can defend ourselves and all of you while
Speaker 2: all of you guys spend all of your money building
Speaker 2: bridges and walls and who knows what else and not
Speaker 2: putting it into your And then you complain about putin,
Speaker 2: You complain about g well, why don't you cough up
Speaker 2: some coin? So this, I'm sure is a bit of
Speaker 2: leverage going on. He knows Anthony Alberanese is due to
Speaker 2: meet him shortly. This is sort of the softening up period.
Speaker 2: This is all time deliberately, and no doubt the White
Speaker 2: House will be hoping that Anthony Albanezi goes there with
Speaker 2: a couple of check books ready to sign for some
Speaker 2: Lockheed Martin equipment and some missile equipment and whatever out
Speaker 2: of the United States, which boosts the percentage of Australian
Speaker 2: GDP being spent on defense. And then I think, you know,
Speaker 2: if we said, yeah, all right, we'll get to three percent,
Speaker 2: we'll do it pretty quickly. I think all of this
Speaker 2: concern and wobble about ORCUS would be how do we
Speaker 2: forgotten rather rapidly in the White House. But I might
Speaker 2: be wrong, but I suspect that's part of what's going
Speaker 2: on right. Appreciate your call, Wendy. You good afternoon.
Speaker 6: On time, Michael, I wanted to talk about when we're
Speaker 6: talking about Orcus and submarines, has anybody stopped to think
Speaker 6: about using drone submarines rather in the orcut path. These
Speaker 6: drone submarines are being used by Israel and they're pretty
Speaker 6: pretty deadly. I can't I don't understand why when we're
Speaker 6: not looking at that not as expensive as nuclear submarates.
Speaker 2: No, they're not. I don't know how well advanced the
Speaker 2: technology is. I don't know how far forward project you
Speaker 2: can from a geographic point of view, use these, Wendy.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I think drones in the sky
Speaker 2: and drones under the sea are going to be increasing
Speaker 2: component of our defense full stop, aren't they?
Speaker 6: Well you would think so. Not to mention the lasers
Speaker 6: that they're now using in place of the iron dome,
Speaker 6: that would pretty cheap. I think that would be ideal
Speaker 6: for Australia up north.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's a very good point you raise, Wendy.
Speaker 2: I thank you for taking the time to call one
Speaker 2: three one eight seven three keep the text coming. Plenty
Speaker 2: of those thank you zero for six zero eight seven
Speaker 2: three eight seven three act you're on the text. This
Speaker 2: one came through yesterday from Mitch and I didn't get
Speaker 2: the to get to it, but might resonate with you.
Speaker 2: He says, I just had some items delivered, and what
Speaker 2: cheeses me off is that the driver doesn't ring the doorbell,
Speaker 2: just leaves them right up against the screen door so
Speaker 2: you can't open the door without shoving it all while
Speaker 2: trying to open the door. I think they do it
Speaker 2: on purpose, and they've got a little chuckle to Themselvesie
Speaker 2: that's Mitch. Now. I don't know if they're that Machiavelian,
Speaker 2: but we've noticed this at home on the odd occasion
Speaker 2: we have something delivered because we're both out or whatever,
Speaker 2: and even when you are at home, they don't ring
Speaker 2: the doorbell. The guy that does some of the Australia posts,
Speaker 2: we've got one that he's very good Australia past rings
Speaker 2: the bell. You know it's there, he says, Hi, And
Speaker 2: that's fine, but a lot of these other sort of
Speaker 2: more private couriers, whoever they are, and we don't get
Speaker 2: stuff delivered often. But on the very rarely do they
Speaker 2: ring the bell. I mean, she's got a point. They
Speaker 2: sort of leave it there and move on, And I
Speaker 2: guess they're time poor. They've got deadlines to meet them.
Speaker 2: But that difficult to go ding a ling and say, oh, listen,
Speaker 2: there's something at your door. I don't know, maybe Mitch
Speaker 2: and Aya just having some bad luck. I suspect it
Speaker 2: goes on in a few places. And there are a
Speaker 2: lot of stories now, of course, about people that just
Speaker 2: sort of roam around in their cars looking out the
Speaker 2: window for parcels on verandas and patios and whatever. They
Speaker 2: just pill for them, they nick them. So a little
Speaker 2: ring on the doorbell wouldn't go astray. Just in case
Speaker 2: you are home, you can get it inside, so no
Speaker 2: one's going to permanently borrow what it is that you've
Speaker 2: paid for twenty five to one, it was pretty clear
Speaker 2: already a lot of you are concerned about this development
Speaker 2: with Orcus and the American review. By the way, it's
Speaker 2: twenty one to one. Good to have you there with
Speaker 2: us one three one eight seven three. Some with good
Speaker 2: memories will recall. Indeed, Jacob my EP has very good
Speaker 2: memories like an elephant. The Prime Minister on April the
Speaker 2: sixteenth was asked about Orcus and whether we need a
Speaker 2: plan B, a backup contingency, as some have been arguing
Speaker 2: we should. Here's his response, mister ALMANEZI, do we need
Speaker 2: some contingency planning?
Speaker 7: No, because this is in the interests of both Australia
Speaker 7: and the United States and the United Kingdom as well.
Speaker 8: So no contingency plans.
Speaker 2: All the chips are on August.
Speaker 7: This is in the interests of the US. We have
Speaker 7: I've been on a US sub there in Wa that's
Speaker 7: been doctor nuclear powered submarine.
Speaker 9: They are Australian.
Speaker 7: There are Australian mariners working on that submarine. We have
Speaker 7: people in the United States, in the United Kingdom working
Speaker 7: on the UCAST project and it has a bipartisan support.
Speaker 10: And what is extraordinary is a.
Speaker 7: Questioning of that does nothing to advance Australia's national interests.
Speaker 7: The important thing about international relations is that you shouldn't
Speaker 7: try to score domestic political points.
Speaker 2: Through it, all right, So it is the Prime Minister
Speaker 2: back on April the sixteenth before the election. No need
Speaker 2: for back up here, because it's got bipartisan support. That's UCUS,
Speaker 2: and it's in the interests of both the United States
Speaker 2: and Australia and obviously Great Britain. Now I would agree
Speaker 2: with that it's got bipartisan support, certainly publicly a few exceptions,
Speaker 2: but by by and large politically it does. And as
Speaker 2: I said earlier, it would be certainly in America's financial interest.
Speaker 2: I think in our long term security interest. It would
Speaker 2: be in our interest to get these submarines as well.
Speaker 2: So it is win win, But there have always been
Speaker 2: clouds hovering around this particular horizon. Now, someone who's been
Speaker 2: healthily skeptical, I think I can say that about the
Speaker 2: whole Orcust arrangement from the start is former sub mariner
Speaker 2: and former Senator Rex Patrick is actually in Sydney at
Speaker 2: the moment and is with me on the line. Good
Speaker 2: to speak again, Rex, Good Mick, Max.
Speaker 10: How are you.
Speaker 2: Now? You get to put your hand in Ben Fordham's
Speaker 2: wallet and pull one hundred out? So well under you? Rex?
Speaker 2: Good for you?
Speaker 11: All right?
Speaker 2: You got me off guard their orcus, what's the go here?
Speaker 2: I mean, is this really the Trump administration questioning whether
Speaker 2: they want to proceed or is this a bit of brinkmanship,
Speaker 2: a bit of gamesmanship before the meeting with Anthony Albanize,
Speaker 2: you trying to get the broader defense spend up.
Speaker 12: Well, you never know how mister Trump is going to
Speaker 12: play out in terms of his negotiations. We've seen what
Speaker 12: he's been trying to do on tariff, which is not
Speaker 12: to approach the United States friends, it's actually to coerce them.
Speaker 12: So you know that could be on the cards. I
Speaker 12: think one of the outcomes of this review, or they're
Speaker 12: too likely outcomes of this review, because we have to
Speaker 12: go back to the ground. In the United States, we
Speaker 12: know that their shipyards, their submarine industrial base, is not
Speaker 12: producing enough submarines. That is, without dispute, they need to
Speaker 12: be producing two point three submarines per annum in order
Speaker 12: to be able to deliver US a Virginia class submarine.
Speaker 12: Last year they are at one point three. They've dropped
Speaker 12: back to about one point two submarines per annum, so
Speaker 12: they are not achieving what is required in order to
Speaker 12: be able to deliver the submarines. So there are two
Speaker 12: likely outcomes, because that's an honest baseline against which any
Speaker 12: discussion can work. It's these are not my words. These
Speaker 12: are the words of the Congressional Research Service and the
Speaker 12: Government Ordered Office in the United States, who keep a
Speaker 12: really close eye on these things. So the two outcomes
Speaker 12: that are likely here is that the United States will
Speaker 12: put up its hand and say, look, this is not
Speaker 12: going to work. We need to pull out. Alternatively, they'll
Speaker 12: put up the hand and say we're not achieving what
Speaker 12: we need to achieve. You need to pay more money. Australia,
Speaker 12: please send more money, more billions.
Speaker 2: Okay, if I were Trump and I'm sitting in the
Speaker 2: White House and I've got the orchest and greevment the
Speaker 2: deal in front of me, I do anything to make
Speaker 2: sure it continues, because we all know it seems to
Speaker 2: I think it's common knowledge now that under the terms
Speaker 2: of the agreement, Australia is to provide money, and we're
Speaker 2: talking a lot of money. I think already eight hundred million,
Speaker 2: if I'm not mistaken, has gone to the American military
Speaker 2: for the purposes of putting on a third production line
Speaker 2: for submarines to get that ratio up and all the rest.
Speaker 2: But there's no obligation on behalf of the Americans to
Speaker 2: send US Virginia class submarines if they can't meet their
Speaker 2: domestic demands first. So I mean, wouldn't you just take
Speaker 2: the money and be quiet.
Speaker 12: It's in US legislation that before any submarines can be
Speaker 12: transferred to the Royal Australian Navy, the President at the
Speaker 12: time must a certificate the fact that the provision of
Speaker 12: those submarines will not undermine US undersea warfare capability, and
Speaker 12: that the US Submarine Industrial base is in fact building
Speaker 12: in those submarines, so that will not be able to
Speaker 12: happen in any foreseeable way, if you believe the Congressional
Speaker 12: Research Service, and if you believe the Government Audited Office
Speaker 12: in the United States.
Speaker 2: So so again, if you were Trump, wouldn't you mean
Speaker 2: someone will tell him all of this, right, And so
Speaker 2: you're just said, okay, well, they can keep sending the money.
Speaker 2: We won't send him any submarines. But you know, eventually
Speaker 2: the nuclear technology will be sent via the British to
Speaker 2: the Australians. They can build whatever they want down at
Speaker 2: Osborne in the never and never, and you know, we're
Speaker 2: financially in front, and good luck to them.
Speaker 12: Yeah, And that's an awful, awful outcome for Australia. We
Speaker 12: end up spending billions. It is ear marked at this
Speaker 12: present moment that will send four point seven billion Australian dollars.
Speaker 12: We've already spent eight hundred have already sent eight hundred
Speaker 12: million dollars. As you know, we know the data that
Speaker 12: it was a couple of days before the United States
Speaker 12: announced a tariff on Australia for our steel. But we've
Speaker 12: sent that money across and there is no clawback. We
Speaker 12: are unable to get that money back. So we'll suffer
Speaker 12: both financially through the lack of delivery, but also from
Speaker 12: a national security perspective. And this is the problem about
Speaker 12: the Plan B that you've referred to. There is no
Speaker 12: plan Plan B is there that we will have no
Speaker 12: submarines and as a maritime nation, that is extremely worrying.
Speaker 12: Submarines are highly capable, they are force multipliers that they
Speaker 12: are absolutely essential to the defense of Australia.
Speaker 2: Okay, one of my listeners earlier said, well, what about
Speaker 2: drone submarines, I mean, drone anything seems to be cheaper
Speaker 2: than the original deal. But I'm no expert. You are,
Speaker 2: but i'd imagine drone submarines rely on GPS. If the
Speaker 2: Chinese were to bung a war on, the first thing
Speaker 2: they'd do is knock out a lot of GPS, So
Speaker 2: I don't know how useful they'd be. But also how
Speaker 2: far is their forward projection compared to a traditional nuclear
Speaker 2: powered submarine.
Speaker 12: Well, this is the difficulty. Is drone technology that we
Speaker 12: see being operated in the air is quite able to
Speaker 12: patch in video feed that back to a controller that
Speaker 12: can be on the other side of the globe using
Speaker 12: satellite systems. The moment you penetrate seawater, all of a sudden,
Speaker 12: the signal simply dies and so there is no control
Speaker 12: like a like there is for any airborne drone. The
Speaker 12: big antenas off Northwest Cape in Australia transmit really low
Speaker 12: frequency transmissions to underwater submarines and the message rate is
Speaker 12: really really slow. So it's just not possible to control
Speaker 12: submarines in the same way that we control drones. So
Speaker 12: it's sort of There are small drone submarines that are
Speaker 12: being built which will operate off mother submarines that will
Speaker 12: be sent off to do particular tasks and to come back,
Speaker 12: but they won't be in a position to be able
Speaker 12: to deployed, deploy across the Indian Ocean, or the Pacific
Speaker 12: Ocean or our northern waters, and I operate autonomously for
Speaker 12: the weeks that a submarine does.
Speaker 2: Now, all right, I'm still trying to just get my
Speaker 2: head around this review, what this is actually about, and
Speaker 2: whether from the White House the retric seems to be
Speaker 2: We'll have a look as to whether Orcus actually dovetails
Speaker 2: into the America First platform because there's a sign under
Speaker 2: Biden the Democrat, the Republican Trump's Now they've got different ideologies.
Speaker 2: So okay, but I'm almost coming to the conclusion that
Speaker 2: this is just a shakedown before Anthony Alberonezi arrives.
Speaker 12: Well, it could well be, because we know how Donald
Speaker 12: Trump plays this game. But Australia needs to look at
Speaker 12: this through a very cold lens, understanding what the situation
Speaker 12: is in the United States.
Speaker 2: This is actually an.
Speaker 12: Opportunity for us to actually baseline the program itself, to
Speaker 12: properly debate this and to work out what is in
Speaker 12: the best interests of Australia. The ORCHEST program is a
Speaker 12: bankrupting three hundred and sixty eight billion dollar program that
Speaker 12: is sapping money from a whole bunch of other capability
Speaker 12: that the Australian Defense Force requires. It has a sovereign
Speaker 12: risks in terms of its ability for us to be
Speaker 12: able to use these submarines independently, and the national security
Speaker 12: risk here is that if they are not delivered, we
Speaker 12: are left without submarines.
Speaker 2: Mind. I guess that's the risk all the time when
Speaker 2: we look at big purchases, right, I mean, okay, we
Speaker 2: could have done a deal with the French with Turnbull,
Speaker 2: but I mean would they have could they have delivered
Speaker 2: on time? I guess because we don't do a lot
Speaker 2: of this ourselves, there is always a sovereign is concerned. Granted,
Speaker 2: this is the big Daddy, but UCUS is also more
Speaker 2: than just the submarines, and I think people forget that
Speaker 2: it's potentially a three pillar agreement.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it does have other elements to ORCUS, and Pillar
Speaker 12: one is in fact the submarine element of it, but
Speaker 12: in my view it's the most important element. We can
Speaker 12: probably stick with things like Aucus Pillar two, which involve
Speaker 12: a bunch of high technology cooperation, but in the end
Speaker 12: we've got to be able to have a submarine capability
Speaker 12: Australia announced in two thousand and nine that we were
Speaker 12: going to get new submarines to replace the Colins class submarines.
Speaker 12: It is almost two decades later and we do not
Speaker 12: have a contract in place, and we have spent over
Speaker 12: six billion dollars not getting a single boat to put
Speaker 12: in the water. The Australian the Australian public's confidence in
Speaker 12: our Defense Department's ability to steward this in a proper
Speaker 12: direction to make the right choices, I think is quite
Speaker 12: undermined by all of the conduct to date. We really
Speaker 12: this is an opportunity for us this review because we
Speaker 12: can look at it from our own perspective as they
Speaker 12: are looking at it from their perspective.
Speaker 2: Just very very quickly, though, let's say we decided this
Speaker 2: is all too much, We're out, and that would be
Speaker 2: I think very problematic for the relationships with America and
Speaker 2: the White House at the moment, which would have its
Speaker 2: own cost. But where do we go then, I mean,
Speaker 2: we still don't have submarines.
Speaker 12: Well, Australia could get into contract relatively quickly for an
Speaker 12: off the shelf air independent propulsion submarine capability from either Korea, Germany,
Speaker 12: Spain or France. I'm talking about a capability where we
Speaker 12: don't tamper highly capable boats, and we could be building
Speaker 12: them in South Australia in the next twelve months. Again
Speaker 12: if we didn't tamper, and we're now at that stage
Speaker 12: where that's the sort of thing we would have to do.
Speaker 12: But we could buy twenty of these submarines for about
Speaker 12: thirty billion dollars and that gives US three hundred and
Speaker 12: thirty eight billion dollars in change two basically buy other
Speaker 12: capability that our defense force desperately needs.
Speaker 2: That is certainly a mouthful of food for thought. Rex,
Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate your time and your expertise.
Speaker 12: Good on now.
Speaker 2: Thank you well the best. Rex Patrick, former senator, former
Speaker 2: sub mariner. Certainly food for thought. It's nine minutes to
Speaker 2: one read the drone subs. A lot of people getting
Speaker 2: in touch with the ghost Shark. I'll have a good
Speaker 2: look at that. I have heard of that. I'm just
Speaker 2: not sure if it's total capabilities, but I've been sending
Speaker 2: a lot of links. Thanking you for that. Breaking news
Speaker 2: coming through in the world of rugby league. This is
Speaker 2: breaking news. Mitchell Moses is out of origin too. He's
Speaker 2: injured his left car for training today. So the performance
Speaker 2: manager confirmed the news at the team's hotel in Lua.
Speaker 2: This is just coming through. So Mitchell Moses is out.
Speaker 2: Matt Burton's the eighteenth man and five eighth option. Maybe
Speaker 2: Jerome Leway I'm seeing here, let's see, so Mitch Moses
Speaker 2: is out. Now. Trouble on the roads. There's a two
Speaker 2: truck crash. This is on the M seven between Woodstock
Speaker 2: Avenue and Richmond Road. I'm told the M seven has
Speaker 2: closed northbound. This is just coming through a two truck
Speaker 2: crash on the M seven motorway between Woodstock Avenue and
Speaker 2: Richmond Road. The M seven closed northbound. There are diversions
Speaker 2: at Woodstock Avenue, Rudy Hill Road north and then back
Speaker 2: onto the M seven. Just to repeat, the M seven
Speaker 2: closed northbound from Rudy Hill to Oakhurst due to that
Speaker 2: two truck crash between Woodstock Avenue and Richmond Road. Northbound
Speaker 2: traffic being diverted off the wood Stock Avenue rejoining the
Speaker 2: M seven at the Richmond Road on ramp.
Speaker 1: Now onto GB and Network stations.
Speaker 10: Back to afternoons with Michael McLaren.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think of it joining us just before the
Speaker 2: news obviously giving you the details about what's happening on
Speaker 2: them seven with that two truck crash. But on the
Speaker 2: trains there is some issues as well. On the railways today,
Speaker 2: passengers are being advised to allow some extra travel time
Speaker 2: on the T one Western and North Shore lines. On
Speaker 2: the T nine Northern Line, that's due to an incident
Speaker 2: requiring emergency services at Strathfield. Trains may stop on platforms
Speaker 2: or between stations for longer than normal and may also
Speaker 2: change at short notice. Okay, so there is also the
Speaker 2: potential for delays on the T too Leppington and in
Speaker 2: a West line, the T three Liverpool and in the
Speaker 2: West Line, and the Central Coast and Newcastle and Blue
Speaker 2: Mountains lines as well. I mean, I think they all
Speaker 2: run through Strathfield. It's a big term, a big, a
Speaker 2: big thoroughfare there. So passengers should listen to announcements and
Speaker 2: check information displays for service updates because of what's happening
Speaker 2: there at Strathfield. News just coming through out of the
Speaker 2: United States that a mob called the Pown They're a
Speaker 2: US based company that are involved in the battery game.
Speaker 2: They also happen to be the main supply to Australia's
Speaker 2: most powerful big battery. I think that's the Waratar battery. Well,
Speaker 2: they've filed for Chapter eleven bankruptcy in New Jersey, thro
Speaker 2: a New Economy, saying that they've reported more than three
Speaker 2: hundred million US in debt. It's better part of half
Speaker 2: a half a billion dollars. A bankruptcy petition filed on Tuesday,
Speaker 2: US Time said that the company had between one thousand
Speaker 2: and five thousand creditors, but also liabilities estimated at between
Speaker 2: one hundred and five hundred million US. The Colorado based
Speaker 2: company last month did warn local authorities that it may
Speaker 2: have to completely shut down the business and lay off
Speaker 2: its employees by the end of July if its financial
Speaker 2: situation did not improve. As I said, there's an Australian
Speaker 2: connection here. I believe they supply a number of batteries,
Speaker 2: but the Waratar battery I think is the big one.
Speaker 2: And although the battery there has already been installed, as
Speaker 2: it says here, it's unclear how Power's bankruptcy declaration will
Speaker 2: affect integration and maintenance going forward. So yes, it is possible.
Speaker 2: Even with all the government money and everything being thrown
Speaker 2: at renewable energies, it is still possible. To go bankrupt
Speaker 2: if you don't play it right. One three one eight
Speaker 2: seven three Darren I was speaking about deliveries earlier. Yours
Speaker 2: ended up in a rather difficult position.
Speaker 5: That tried.
Speaker 11: Michael. I ordered a lovely expensive pair of headphones to
Speaker 11: be delivered, and a contractor subjected out or got a
Speaker 11: delivery person to deliver it. Anyway, what happened was await
Speaker 11: of weeks and I said to the I rang them
Speaker 11: up and they said, look, it was delivered. We've contacted
Speaker 11: the delivery, but he left it in your letter box.
Speaker 11: I said, well, I've got to drive by one hundred
Speaker 11: and eighty meters long, and the leader box is a
Speaker 11: sustained letter box. And he said, if he could fit
Speaker 11: that parcel in my letter box, I could fit a
Speaker 11: thousand golf balls in the petrol tag mate. I said,
Speaker 11: there's no way he could have left it in the
Speaker 11: letter box. So I went back and forward, I took photos,
Speaker 11: got a long story short. After about three months they
Speaker 11: decided they'd replace the headphone, so that was good. Then
Speaker 11: my regular delivery guy came back about three weeks later
Speaker 11: with after his holidays, and he was telling me by
Speaker 11: telling him about it. He said made check your roof.
Speaker 11: He said, why, he said they put it. They put
Speaker 11: a bake off about a month ago because people were
Speaker 11: fighting stuff on their roofs. And I got the ladder
Speaker 11: and here's my headphone's been sitting on the roof.
Speaker 5: He threw them up on the roof.
Speaker 2: Pop doing the deliveries.
Speaker 11: But they're supposed to take a photo when they deliver
Speaker 11: it to say where they show the you know where
Speaker 11: they they.
Speaker 13: Delivered in a safe spot.
Speaker 11: But he didn't have any photos.
Speaker 13: And I went up on the roof and his maye,
Speaker 13: here's a box sort of it was still in a
Speaker 13: plastic sitting on the roof. And apparently I wasn't the
Speaker 13: first one.
Speaker 2: Well, they were safe because no robber would have thought
Speaker 2: about climbing up on a ladder to steal your parcel.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I was looking around for a great big blackboot
Speaker 13: or someone with a.
Speaker 2: That's right, very good. Well, next time I get something delivered,
Speaker 2: I might I might sort of invite them to throw
Speaker 2: it on the roof. At least that way it'll be safe.
Speaker 2: Just keep I always do. Got to clean those guns out.
Speaker 2: Thanks Darren, great story, all the best mate appreciated. One
Speaker 2: three one eight seven three. Yes, the deliveries that have
Speaker 2: gone wrong. Now, I've got to say, I love this story.
Speaker 2: I love this sort of thing. It's the wanna be
Speaker 2: archaeologist in me. I think that gets all excited thinking
Speaker 2: that there's still wonderful things to be discovered and recovered.
Speaker 2: I'm referring here to the Colombian government announcing, I think overnight,
Speaker 2: an expedition to remove items of so called incalculable value
Speaker 2: from the wreck of the legendary San Jose Gallion. Now
Speaker 2: that one sank back in seventeen eight, but it was
Speaker 2: a particularly important vessel because it was laden with gold
Speaker 2: and silver and emeralds, and they were headed back to Spain.
Speaker 2: Didn't get there because the British decided to put a
Speaker 2: couple of cannon balls in the side of it hit
Speaker 2: the munition's area of the boat, and up she went,
Speaker 2: and then down she went. Well, the Culture Minister of
Speaker 2: Columbia said that seven years after the discovery of the wreck,
Speaker 2: and that was off Columbia's coast, an underwater robot would
Speaker 2: now be sent to recover some of the bounty. The
Speaker 2: bounty Bindo was estimated to be worth billions of dollars.
Speaker 2: The ABC reporting that the robot will work at a
Speaker 2: depth of about six hundred meters and it's going to
Speaker 2: remove items such as ceramics, pieces of wood, and shells
Speaker 2: without modifying or damaging the wreck. Well, I mean that's
Speaker 2: all exciting, but all eyes are going to obviously be
Speaker 2: on the glittery stuff, chests full of emeralds. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's the thing people want to see. You you can
Speaker 2: hold your ceramics. We want to see the jewels. But
Speaker 2: it's thought that after three centuries underwater, most of the
Speaker 2: items on board will have undergone some sort of physical
Speaker 2: or chemical change and they could will disintegrate when pulled
Speaker 2: out of the water. So they've got to do this
Speaker 2: very carefully. There's experts involved. But the precise location of
Speaker 2: the expedition is going to be kept secret because there
Speaker 2: are obviously bounty hunters treasure hunters that would want to
Speaker 2: get there. So the government knows where it is and
Speaker 2: they're going in. Now the fight will now be should
Speaker 2: anything of value be recovered, who owns it? Okay, So
Speaker 2: the tug of war has begun according to this article
Speaker 2: in the ABC as to who gets custody of the bounty. Now,
Speaker 2: Spain quick out of the block said, oh, we should
Speaker 2: get it because it was a board of Spanish ship.
Speaker 2: Bolivia's Karacara nation said that they should get the treasures
Speaker 2: because the Spanish forced the community way back when to
Speaker 2: mine the precious metals. They're sort of indentured labor. Columbia's
Speaker 2: government wants to use the country's own resources to recover
Speaker 2: the wreck and then to make sure that they then
Speaker 2: get it. So you can see. You know, it's a
Speaker 2: three way fight at the moment. Others in there for
Speaker 2: their take. It could be worth a lot of money.
Speaker 2: So let's watch this space. But the history is absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 2: We might speak to someone tomorrow if we get the chance.
Speaker 2: The San Jose Gallion was owned by the Spanish crown
Speaker 2: when it was sunk by the British navy that was
Speaker 2: near Cartagena in seventeen eight, and only a handful of
Speaker 2: the six hundred crew survived. The ship had been heading
Speaker 2: back from what was known as the New World to
Speaker 2: the court at King Philip the fifth of Spain, and
Speaker 2: as I said, it was laden with the treasures, particularly
Speaker 2: those chests of emeralds. There was said to be something
Speaker 2: like two hundred ton of gold coins. God pay your
Speaker 2: power bill for six months at least with that. So
Speaker 2: the fighters on to first recover things safely and then
Speaker 2: to get custody of them. I suspect, like with most things,
Speaker 2: when there's a custody battle, the people that actually get
Speaker 2: the real loot at the end will be the lawyers.
Speaker 2: It's a quarter past one. Well, look good to have
Speaker 2: you there with us. Last year I read a fascion book.
Speaker 2: It's called The Secret History of Flight one for nine. Now.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you a little more about this flight in
Speaker 2: a moment. But the story was an interesting one, and
Speaker 2: it honestly could have been a fiction piece if it
Speaker 2: wasn't actually telling the very real story of nearly four
Speaker 2: hundred passengers on board b A one four nine. Now.
Speaker 2: The flight in question departed from Heathrow Airport. It was
Speaker 2: destined for Kuala Lumpa, never made it, and it stopped
Speaker 2: to refuel, as you did back in the early nineties
Speaker 2: in Q eight. Now. That was very unfortunate timing because
Speaker 2: it was just as a rak had launched that full
Speaker 2: scale invasion of Q eight. Now. The landing led to
Speaker 2: almost four hundred passengers and crew who were simply flying
Speaker 2: to Malaysia being taken hostage. Now, look, i'd sort of
Speaker 2: let the story sit in the back of my mind
Speaker 2: for a while. I read that, I said, I got
Speaker 2: the book last year and I read it and I
Speaker 2: couldn't really put it down. It was a fascinating well
Speaker 2: written But by chance the story reappeared in the newspaper
Speaker 2: I think it was the Sydney Morning Herald late last
Speaker 2: week because there's a case in court about this very
Speaker 2: incident right now over in the UK, with the airline,
Speaker 2: British Airways and the UK Government fighting a High Court
Speaker 2: lawsuit brought by passengers and crew on board. Now in total,
Speaker 2: there's more than one hundred claimants, including the estates of
Speaker 2: several deceased individuals listed on the court filing accusing the
Speaker 2: airline of acting quote unquote in concert with the UK
Speaker 2: government to deliver spies to what was a war zone.
Speaker 2: And they're saying we just as paying passengers were collateral.
Speaker 2: Now a coincidence that's pretty relevant to me actually in this,
Speaker 2: I guess, is why in some ways I was hooked
Speaker 2: on the story from the start. Is this whole flight
Speaker 2: BA one four nine landed in Q eight on the
Speaker 2: day that was actually my birthday, August second, nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: I was turning five and all these poor people were
Speaker 2: about to have their lives turned upside down. Now a
Speaker 2: journalist got whiff of the story early in nineteen Well,
Speaker 2: when I say early, early after the events of August
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety, and it never left his conscious. Now his
Speaker 2: name is Stephen Davis, and after years of research, hundreds
Speaker 2: of interviews people all over the world, he's put together
Speaker 2: the book The Secret History of Flight one four nine.
Speaker 2: And as it says on the cover of the book,
Speaker 2: well he claims it's the most shocking government cover up
Speaker 2: of the last thirty years. I'm pleased to say, he
Speaker 2: joins me on the line. Stephen, it's wonderful to speak
Speaker 2: with you, and thank you for your time.
Speaker 14: Thank you for having me. Michael, You've already made me
Speaker 14: feel slightly old because when you were five, I was
Speaker 14: a journalist on the Independent on side.
Speaker 2: Okay, well you were there on the desk of the
Speaker 2: Independent back then you got whiff of this story. So
Speaker 2: we're back in very early August nineteen ninety. This aeroplane
Speaker 2: BA one for nine is landed in Q eight. The
Speaker 2: Iraq War is on the Iraqis are rolling the tanks
Speaker 2: at the airport in Q eight. They've taken the whole
Speaker 2: show over, and you think there might be a little
Speaker 2: bit more to this story than meets the eye.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I got a.
Speaker 14: Call from a contact who was familiar with the operations
Speaker 14: of the intelligence services and the plane had landed and
Speaker 14: the people had been captured by the Iraqis. But the
Speaker 14: spin being put out by the UK government was, you know,
Speaker 14: don't worry too much, it's just sort of an extended
Speaker 14: holiday for these people. There they were in luxury hotels,
Speaker 14: they're sipping cocktails by the pool and the sunshine, which
Speaker 14: ironically enough, was true for about three days because the
Speaker 14: Iraqis were shocked to have this plane delivered into their
Speaker 14: hands and didn't know what to what to do about it.
Speaker 14: The British the government's spin was, yeah, it's just all okay,
Speaker 14: and the plane landed before the invasion started, and my contacts,
Speaker 14: you've got to start looking into this. What they're saying
Speaker 14: about this plane isn't true. And that was the start
Speaker 14: of an epoch three decade plus long investigation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, epic. Indeed, it's still ongoing. And as we were saying,
Speaker 2: actually before we started speaking on a documentary debut on
Speaker 2: Sky UK last night about all of this. So others
Speaker 2: have picked up the story, leveraging off a lot of
Speaker 2: your research and their own research. I think we're now
Speaker 2: starting to get a bit of a sense of what happened. Now,
Speaker 2: let's go back to those before the plane even lands
Speaker 2: in Kwait, because this is where potentially the real crux
Speaker 2: of the story begins. So these the whole bunch of passengers,
Speaker 2: they think they're flying to more than their plan is.
Speaker 2: They're going to fly to Malaysia. They're taking BA. We
Speaker 2: know things are brewing in the Middle East, but BA.
Speaker 2: The flighters on the tarmac, they're sort of ready to
Speaker 2: take off, and then all of a sudden, a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of fit looking guys turn up and are seated
Speaker 2: on the plane. And this is the start of the story,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 14: Yes. The context is that as people got to the
Speaker 14: airport that morning, the BBC was already reporting that Iraqi
Speaker 14: troops had gathered on the border of Kuwait. Sadam had
Speaker 14: been threatening to invade for months. So the passengers are
Speaker 14: sitting there, there's a delay, and this group gets on
Speaker 14: board and they walked past. They were seen by about
Speaker 14: half the people on the plane. Ironically, and up Ba
Speaker 14: still denies that a group got on board, even though
Speaker 14: so many people saw them. And as they walked past,
Speaker 14: a few people looked at them and thought, hmm, this.
Speaker 2: Is a way.
Speaker 14: They looked like soldiers to me. And so I set
Speaker 14: out to find out who those people were, and it
Speaker 14: turns out they were, and I've interviewed some of them,
Speaker 14: and I've interviewed the mission planner. It turns out they
Speaker 14: were part of a sort of to put it in
Speaker 14: populace terms of black ops group. It's known in the
Speaker 14: business as the Increment. It's a deniable group who work
Speaker 14: for British intelligence who they use on missions that you know,
Speaker 14: they don't want you to know about. And that plane
Speaker 14: should never have flow it, It should never have landed.
Speaker 14: It was the only plane Michael to land that night.
Speaker 14: In fact, a Kuwaiti Airlines plane which was due to
Speaker 14: land at about the same time, got an urgent message
Speaker 14: shaing divert to Bahrain Airport closed emergency. And yet there's
Speaker 14: BA one four nine flying in landing and the tanks
Speaker 14: had already surrounded the airport Iraqi tanks.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the theory. Therefore, and this is your theory
Speaker 2: in the book. The plane landed for a reason, and
Speaker 2: the reason was that the British government wanted to offload
Speaker 2: these fit looking fellows that had got on the flight
Speaker 2: rather late.
Speaker 14: Yes, their job was to the British government wanted to
Speaker 14: get a team and to keep an eye on the
Speaker 14: movements of Iraqi troops. Because the Great Fear was taking
Speaker 14: you back to that era, Michael, that if Saddam Hussein
Speaker 14: successfully invaded Kuwait and then went on to invade Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 14: Northern Saudi Arabia, this dictator would control forty percent of
Speaker 14: the world's oil supply. So this team, yeah oil, absolutely
Speaker 14: inevitably with the Middle East oil. This team were to
Speaker 14: keep an eye on the movement of the Saddam's troops
Speaker 14: to report back if he looked like invading. That was
Speaker 14: their job, and they they planned the mission several days
Speaker 14: in advance. Indeed, one of my big discoveries in the investigation,
Speaker 14: I got some CIA files and the CIA had issued
Speaker 14: a formal warning of attack about seven days beforehand. So
Speaker 14: it was absolutely outrageous that these people were delivered into
Speaker 14: the hands of Sada Hussein and then of course, even
Speaker 14: worse for them was the British government commissioned this report
Speaker 14: after they all got back, was called Operation sand Castle,
Speaker 14: and it documented hundreds of war crimes committed against them
Speaker 14: and Allied citizens or Australians on the plane, by the way,
Speaker 14: were talking raps, mock executions, starvation, psychological torture. No sooner
Speaker 14: had this report been commissioned, that was in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 14: than that was suppressed as well. So not only were
Speaker 14: these people landed in a war zone, they were denied
Speaker 14: even the public knowledge of the terrible things that happened
Speaker 14: to them.
Speaker 2: And some of their lives have been, for better or
Speaker 2: worse ruined. I think the terminology one should use. And
Speaker 2: you've spoken to them and the book it's all outlined
Speaker 2: and whatnot. But over the years the British governant have
Speaker 2: had different positions on what had happened and what they knew,
Speaker 2: and that position has changed with time, hasn't it.
Speaker 14: Yes, it's a clever use of language. For instance, a
Speaker 14: couple of years after the event, John Major made a
Speaker 14: statement he was Prime Minister then saying there were no
Speaker 14: serving British military personnel on the plane, the keyword being
Speaker 14: serving they've twisted and turned, and they've given various variations
Speaker 14: of that statement. But I can tell you something remarkable
Speaker 14: in the defense that they just filed to this court case.
Speaker 14: The UK government lawyers, in a little note by the way,
Speaker 14: on the bottom of one of the pages, says, oh,
Speaker 14: we cannot rule out that there were military or military
Speaker 14: intelligence people on the plane by coincidence. So three decades
Speaker 14: after Major's statement, they've essentially reversed it. The factor is
Speaker 14: these INK people are not formally special forces or intelligence there.
Speaker 14: You know, they're a deniable group.
Speaker 2: Okay. Now, as for British Airways itself, they had an
Speaker 2: office in Bahrain. I think at the time small or
Speaker 2: that it might have been. I guess this is a
Speaker 2: two pronged story. On the one hand, you've got the
Speaker 2: British government. On the other hand, you've got British Airways
Speaker 2: and they've been peppered with legal cases over the years.
Speaker 2: What's their take been on this? Has that changed over
Speaker 2: time as well?
Speaker 14: No, British always deny all responsibility. They've been allowed to
Speaker 14: get away with various statements in the media which are
Speaker 14: simply untrue. Most recently they said they had succeeded in
Speaker 14: legal action in France and in Texas. In fact, the
Speaker 14: French passengers sued they won the case against BA. They've
Speaker 14: got a lot of money, so did the passengers in Texas.
Speaker 14: BA as I said, deny that this group got on
Speaker 14: the plane even though their own cabin services direct to
Speaker 14: Clive Irthy in a formal statement and in the documentary
Speaker 14: state that's what happened. But the crucial thing is also
Speaker 14: that late night meeting, so ba's manager went off to
Speaker 14: the British embassy to get some advice on this potential invasion,
Speaker 14: and he spoke to a man called Tony Pace, who
Speaker 14: had many titles but actually was the MI six station
Speaker 14: chief in Kuwait. Tony appears in my book and in
Speaker 14: the documentary, and Tony Pace very carefully said, if you've
Speaker 14: got a plane coming through it this particular time, that
Speaker 14: is the time one four nine was due to land,
Speaker 14: it would not be advisable to fly that plane. BA
Speaker 14: had been saying for three decades. They were told it
Speaker 14: was safe to fly, and the government, in a statement
Speaker 14: a few years ago, finally confirmed what Pace said was true.
Speaker 14: So you know, this entire story has been surrounded by
Speaker 14: the most sort of blatant deception. I've been in the
Speaker 14: VESCA to reporter for a long time, done a lot
Speaker 14: of different investigations, and seldom have I seen such sustained lying.
Speaker 2: Really Okay, the plane itself, the actual physical BA Jet
Speaker 2: was the Coniston Water and some people might remember it
Speaker 2: because there was a rather iconic image at the end
Speaker 2: of the war in nineteen ninety one where just the
Speaker 2: tail of it was left. The rest of it was
Speaker 2: sort of a smoldering, blown up heap on the tarmac
Speaker 2: of Q eight. And as you say in the book,
Speaker 2: the Akis were well regarded for basically pilfering anything they
Speaker 2: could get their hands on as they retreated. Here was
Speaker 2: the opportunity to take one hell of a bounty prize.
Speaker 2: They could have had a BA jet and flown it
Speaker 2: back to Bagdad, but instead we're told they just blew
Speaker 2: it up on the tarmac on the way out as
Speaker 2: sort of a I don't know, two fingered salute to
Speaker 2: the Allies or something. Is that the story or was
Speaker 2: there something more to it? Again?
Speaker 14: Oh, there's much more to it. So I always thought
Speaker 14: that story was very strange, simply because, as you said,
Speaker 14: the Iraqis took everything when they left. They you know,
Speaker 14: they took tats and light bulbs and chairs and deaths
Speaker 14: and everything they could lay the hands on. Why leave
Speaker 14: this prize on the ground. It turns out I know
Speaker 14: from an absolutely impeachable source that the plane wasn't blown
Speaker 14: up by their arkies. It was actually blown up, as
Speaker 14: it were, by our side, by the US Air Force.
Speaker 14: Now bear in mind, did an interesting thing about the
Speaker 14: act of it being destroyed. That meant that British Airways
Speaker 14: got a huge insurance payout nineteen ninety money seven pounds,
Speaker 14: So they got a huge insurance payout while fighting through
Speaker 14: the courts for years to deny the passengers and crew compensation.
Speaker 14: And they're still fighting through the courts to deny that.
Speaker 2: I guess at the end of this though your story,
Speaker 2: and no doubt this will come through in this documentary
Speaker 2: on Sky in the UK will see it here eventually
Speaker 2: New Zealand etc. When it comes. But the story is
Speaker 2: really of all the individuals, the innocent people that were
Speaker 2: simply thinking they were booking a flight on a BA
Speaker 2: aeroplane to get to Malaysia. They didn't get there, and
Speaker 2: as we said, many of their lives were ruined. A
Speaker 2: number of these people were young children who were mentally
Speaker 2: scarred by the events that took place subsequent to the
Speaker 2: Iraqis taking control of that aircraft.
Speaker 14: Yeah, Jennifer Chapel was twelve years old at the time
Speaker 14: of the flight, celebrated, if that's the word, her thirteenth
Speaker 14: birthday while in captivity. Her life has been destroyed, her
Speaker 14: sense of trust, She's never been able to hold down
Speaker 14: a proper job. She sadly tried to kill herself several times.
Speaker 14: I spoke to Jennifer quite recently and she's still in counseling. So,
Speaker 14: you know, that kind of stuff makes me angry because
Speaker 14: I said they were denied even the publication of the
Speaker 14: report about the terrible things that happened to them. You know,
Speaker 14: lives were ruined, and because of the government spin. By
Speaker 14: the way, Michael, when they got back after four months
Speaker 14: in captivity, people were saying, oh, yeah, you had a
Speaker 14: bit of a holiday, didn't you. But you're okay, you're
Speaker 14: right now, You're alive. Just imagine, just imagine having people
Speaker 14: say that to you when you've actually really really struggled.
Speaker 14: And there were so many stories like that. I've sat
Speaker 14: in living rooms where people have remembered what happened to
Speaker 14: them decades later, and they've started to shake, they've started
Speaker 14: to cry because they're still suffering from PTSD.
Speaker 2: It is a fascinating story and by the sound of things,
Speaker 2: although it all started to take place on August two,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety, here we are well into twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: There are still many chapters yet to play out. Thank
Speaker 2: you for your time, Steven, I appreciate it.
Speaker 14: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Michael Stephen Davis, as I said, he's the author of
Speaker 2: the secret History of Flight one four nine and a
Speaker 2: story indeed. Now, legal action being brought by former passengers
Speaker 2: and staff on board BA flight one four nine against
Speaker 2: the UK Governor Brush Airways was announced last year. A
Speaker 2: date for trial, though has not been set. Passengers and
Speaker 2: crew were suing the UK govern and the airline for
Speaker 2: damages over their injuries, both physical and psychiatric, as well
Speaker 2: as special damages for their consequential losses and aggravated and
Speaker 2: punitive images due to the alleged wrong doing. Now, while
Speaker 2: files from the British government released in November twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one do show that the UK Ambassador to Quate had
Speaker 2: warned the UK government of the Iraqi invasion. The British
Speaker 2: government denies that it knowingly put passengers at risk by
Speaker 2: using the flight for military purposes. British Airways denies any
Speaker 2: wrongdoing over the incident. Well from a story in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety to the present. Let's get to the newsroom, Katie Fuller,
Speaker 2: Good afternoon.
Speaker 15: Good afternoon. Michael accused Marshroom killer Aaron Patterson has finished
Speaker 15: her cross examination, denying allegations she swapped simcards while she
Speaker 15: was given time to call a lawyer during a police search.
Speaker 15: Three people are in custody arrested over a public place
Speaker 15: shooting and car fire in Sydney's West. Some analysts believe
Speaker 15: the White House may be preparing to reduce its commitments
Speaker 15: or walk away from the orcas packed altogether after the
Speaker 15: US announced it would review the nuclear submarine deal and
Speaker 15: Australian women are bearing the brunt of the cost of
Speaker 15: living crisis. A survey suggests women are twenty one percent
Speaker 15: less confident than men when it comes to preparing for retirement.
Speaker 15: In sports, Jerome Louis or Matt Burton are expected to
Speaker 15: take over at five eighth from the injured Mitchell Moses
Speaker 15: for the Blues. In State of origin TiO Moses has
Speaker 15: been ruled out with a calf injury. Michael More news
Speaker 15: in about twenty five minutes on afternoons.
Speaker 1: Oh weather update, We'll be here to help in unexpected weather.
Speaker 10: Nurmain Insurance a help company.
Speaker 2: Okay, Sydney a shower or two developing today, top of
Speaker 2: seventeen in the city, fifteen for Terry Hills, sixteen to Paramatta,
Speaker 2: seventeen for Campbelltown, Bondi, Richmond and Penrith. Tomorrow sixteen the
Speaker 2: top shower or two expected. They say maybe six mil.
Speaker 2: Another three mil potentially on Saturday, most likely in the
Speaker 2: morning and the afternoon. However, a top of seventeen degrees
Speaker 2: now canbra excuse me thirteen the top today morning frost
Speaker 2: and partly cloudy conditions. Tugrenong's the same, somewhere between minus
Speaker 2: one and thirteen depending on the time. Tomorrow morning frost
Speaker 2: and a partly cloudy day. Similar story on Saturday, top
Speaker 2: of probably about fourteen. Morning frost and partly cloudy conditions
Speaker 2: in the Capitol Lithgo gooday through two Olt eleven the
Speaker 2: max today for you, morning frost, partly cloudy, just nine
Speaker 2: for Orange Mude. You'll get to thirteen, Bathist twelve, Cotomber
Speaker 2: ten spring Wood will get to about fifteen tomorrow somewhere
Speaker 2: between zero and eleven in Lithgo partly cloudy after a
Speaker 2: bit of morning frost, and then a partly cloudy Saturday,
Speaker 2: a top of twelve one three, one, eight seven three
Speaker 2: will take a break when we come back, Anna with
Speaker 2: the world of entertainment.
Speaker 10: Now one afternoons Squen Torch.
Speaker 2: Well, after the world of screens we go, and who
Speaker 2: better to occupy that space than the wonderful and a
Speaker 2: core day and a good afternoon noon Michael the small
Speaker 2: screen first, in the truest sense of the word, your
Speaker 2: midday movie. Now, you've got two I.
Speaker 16: Do because there were two choices that I just couldn't
Speaker 16: tear my eyes away from, and they were absolutely horrific.
Speaker 16: So I had to just bring everyone into the experience
Speaker 16: that I had. So first up, we have Dying to Win,
Speaker 16: which aired on nine Go yesterday, but it is available
Speaker 16: on nine now, so don't fret. You can still watch
Speaker 16: this one. Limber up because Dying to Win. Jesse is
Speaker 16: a gold medal winning gymnast. She's coming to terms with
Speaker 16: a tragic accident that killed her friend and fellow competitor.
Speaker 16: Her mum is this classic overbearing, will threaten to kill
Speaker 16: anyone who crosses her daughter kind of parent, which makes
Speaker 16: you think maybe she knocked off this teammate. But when
Speaker 16: her mother and stepdad are found murdered at home, Jesse
Speaker 16: finds herself tangled up in a messy web of lies.
Speaker 16: It was so bad. This web of lies is not
Speaker 16: very tangled, and it's not a very good web. I've
Speaker 16: got to worry about the spider that's woven it together.
Speaker 16: And no disrespect for the lead actress, but I honestly
Speaker 16: think a plank of wood could have done a better
Speaker 16: job in the lead there. But as I said, look,
Speaker 16: if you don't have anything better to do than with
Speaker 16: an hour and twenty five minutes of your time, it
Speaker 16: is available on nine now. But the other one is
Speaker 16: quite an outstanding midday movie. It's currently on seven right now,
Speaker 16: But again I have checked it is on seven plus,
Speaker 16: so you do not have to run to your TV
Speaker 16: too quickly. But to give you a setup, this is
Speaker 16: called a sister's grudge. Lindsey is the perfect daughter and
Speaker 16: her mother dies in mysterious circumstances and at her mum's funeral.
Speaker 16: She gets the shock of her life when she learns
Speaker 16: that she has a half sister, and very quickly, this
Speaker 16: perfect life of hers starts to unravel and she begins
Speaker 16: to suspect maybe her sister is to blame. I do
Speaker 16: think the title of the film does kind of give
Speaker 16: it away for you there. But I had a few thoughts.
Speaker 16: Three main thoughts really while I was watching this. First,
Speaker 16: was this written by robots? Second was have the actors
Speaker 16: ever seen a movie before? Scratch that has anyone involved
Speaker 16: ever seen a movie in their lives? And Three, I
Speaker 16: hope seven didn't pay a single cent to get the
Speaker 16: rights for this.
Speaker 2: Well, as a loyal employee of nine, I hope they
Speaker 2: paid overs for it.
Speaker 16: That's true. That's true. One, I don't understand who's paying
Speaker 16: who to put this movie on air right now. I
Speaker 16: was absolutely shocked. The other thing I was shocked about
Speaker 16: this week, the Wedding Singer has somehow become a midday movie.
Speaker 16: I was absolutely outraged. I don't understand. I thought midday
Speaker 16: movies were meant to be rogue classics from the fifties,
Speaker 16: and these really bad, practically homemade movies from circa twenty
Speaker 16: twenty two to twenty twenty three. I don't understand how
Speaker 16: an eighties classic like The Wedding Singer could be a
Speaker 16: midday movie.
Speaker 2: Dear, dear, Okay, Well, stressful times people got the radio
Speaker 2: one now probably thinking well, that's the reason why I
Speaker 2: gave up the idiot box during the day. Let's go
Speaker 2: to the real thing. Materialists pluy.
Speaker 16: Yes, this is an actual cinematic masterpiece. Maybe not quite.
Speaker 16: I wouldn't maybe take it that far, but it is
Speaker 16: a very good film. So Materialist stars at Dakota Johnson
Speaker 16: as Lucy. She's a thirty something living in New York
Speaker 16: making a living as a professional matchmaker. She's single when
Speaker 16: we meet her, but she soon meets this charming guy
Speaker 16: who ticks all the supposed boxes. He's ultra rich, tall, handsome,
Speaker 16: great personality, also has a penthouse in New York. You know,
Speaker 16: can't go past that. But when Lucy also runs into
Speaker 16: her broke, struggling actor ex boyfriend, old feelings are reignited.
Speaker 16: Who will she choose? Does she follow her heart or
Speaker 16: her head? There is much much, much more to the
Speaker 16: film than that. That is a very simple kind of
Speaker 16: overview of it. It also does, you know, expertly navigate
Speaker 16: the modern dating world and it's serious pitfalls. But look,
Speaker 16: we've also got alongside Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascalaman of the Moment,
Speaker 16: and Chris Evans. I love a good romance. Romance. This
Speaker 16: was a great romance.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to put it out there not having
Speaker 2: seen it. But if I had to put the house
Speaker 2: on it, she follows the heart.
Speaker 16: Oh look, I'm not not gonna spoil anything. I'm not
Speaker 16: gonna spoil it.
Speaker 2: Okay, How to Train your Dragon?
Speaker 16: Yes, lots of questions that will be answered in this film.
Speaker 16: If you are a Viking living on the Isle of Burke.
Speaker 16: So if you've been living under a rock for the
Speaker 16: past fifteen years, you might have missed the animated masterpiece
Speaker 16: that came out in twenty ten. That is How to
Speaker 16: Train your Dragon. Strap in for a wild ride, Because
Speaker 16: if you haven't seen it, this is the live action
Speaker 16: remake of that original film.
Speaker 2: It is arab.
Speaker 16: Absolutely of course, only real dragons in a live action remake.
Speaker 16: Definitely not CGI. But to give you a quick rundown,
Speaker 16: Hiccup is a kid. He's the Viking. He's the kid
Speaker 16: of Viking King Stoic. The vast Hiccup doesn't have a lot,
Speaker 16: he's not really living up to his dad's expectations, but
Speaker 16: that all changes when he finds and befriends Toothless, who
Speaker 16: is a knight fury dragon and you know they're feared
Speaker 16: on the Isle of Burke. But Hiccup and Toothless set
Speaker 16: out to challenge those perceptions of dragons and also fight
Speaker 16: together against a pretty bad threat to Burke. I highly
Speaker 16: recommend this movie. It is stunning. It is a really
Speaker 16: worthy live action remake of what is really an animation classic.
Speaker 16: Gerard Butler has chucked on about forty kilo's worth of
Speaker 16: Viking gear to reply reprise his role as Stoic, but
Speaker 16: it's also a really great young cast in the movie
Speaker 16: as well. Lots of family fun, fun for adults, fun
Speaker 16: for everyone.
Speaker 2: By the way, before we go and that sounds nice,
Speaker 2: Mitch on the Tech says, thanks for the tip and
Speaker 2: a ree stick with Owen Wilson. I'm enjoying it.
Speaker 11: It is.
Speaker 16: It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: That's what he says. It's really enjoying effect.
Speaker 16: If you love golf like my dad, you'll be right on.
Speaker 2: Deep cover. This is on Prime Video.
Speaker 16: Yes, this one is out today and it is just
Speaker 16: one of those silly streaming romps. So it follows three
Speaker 16: improv actors who take on the role of a lifetime.
Speaker 16: They're hired by the police to do sting operations and
Speaker 16: they have to infiltrate the London criminal underworld one yes
Speaker 16: and at a time, because that, of course is the
Speaker 16: rule of improv. You always have to say yes. And
Speaker 16: so we've got Bryce Dallis, Howard, Orlando Bloom, Nick Muhammad
Speaker 16: from ted Lasso fame. They're our trio of actors, and
Speaker 16: we also have Sean Been as the policeman in charge
Speaker 16: of this slightly bumbling trio. It's a really, really fun one.
Speaker 16: Orlando Bloom is surprisingly funny. I didn't look he's.
Speaker 2: Not normally stand up comedy sort of stuff.
Speaker 16: He's not. He's not usually funny, and you know, we
Speaker 16: kind of know him as legalis and you know, those
Speaker 16: kind of more serious, gritty kind of roles. But he
Speaker 16: is surprisingly funny in this and it's a great movie
Speaker 16: to watch on the couch. And the good news is
Speaker 16: it is on Prime video today.
Speaker 2: I've got another one where they get back together. Here
Speaker 2: mix tape on binge.
Speaker 16: Just giving out all the spoilers there, but yes, we've
Speaker 16: got a new Aussie original today. It was also co
Speaker 16: made with Screen Ireland. So the series hops between nineteen
Speaker 16: eighty nine and present day. In nineteen eighty nine, we're
Speaker 16: in Sheffield, England. We meet teenagers Daniel and Allison. They're
Speaker 16: young and in love. But cut to present day where
Speaker 16: we reunite with the pair, but they're living very different,
Speaker 16: very separate lives. But over the course of this four
Speaker 16: episode mini series we learn how their paths kind of deviated,
Speaker 16: but also how they are brought back together through their
Speaker 16: shared music memories. Hence obviously the title mix tape. Theresa
Speaker 16: Pamer in the lead of the series along at Jim Sturgis.
Speaker 16: It's a really lovely series, a great drama, lots of
Speaker 16: romance and it has a banging soundtrack, as it should
Speaker 16: if it's called mixtapes. That's on Binge today.
Speaker 2: And this one would be good. I think everyone will
Speaker 2: know the story because it was in the news not
Speaker 2: that long ago. Titan the Ocean Gate submersible disaster. Netflix
Speaker 2: has this, yes.
Speaker 16: And this is streaming now. There are two things that
Speaker 16: I'm endlessly fascinated about, and I go on really big,
Speaker 16: deep Internet dives on it. The Titanic and this Titan subdisaster.
Speaker 16: I cannot get my mind out of it. I'm just obsessed.
Speaker 16: But this is obviously the Titan sub disaster is the
Speaker 16: subject of this new documentary. It's fascinating but also harrowing
Speaker 16: when they kind of take us into how on earth
Speaker 16: this submersible disaster happened two years ago now pretty much
Speaker 16: exactly to the day. So the doco takes us through
Speaker 16: the near decade of bad decisions and lies and mistakes
Speaker 16: that led up to the moment that the implosion happened,
Speaker 16: and as well, you know that subsequent desperate search and
Speaker 16: the investigation that followed. As I said, it's scary, it's
Speaker 16: harrowing it but also infuriating, and we painted a pretty
Speaker 16: clear picture through the use of the ocean Gate company footage, whistleblowers,
Speaker 16: former employees, data investigators. It's all pretty comprehensive. I mean, I,
Speaker 16: like you said, we all remember when it happened. I
Speaker 16: was losing I would waking up in the middle of
Speaker 16: the night to see if there were updates when we
Speaker 16: thought maybe they were still alive. But you know, it's
Speaker 16: it still leaves us with a few questions who is
Speaker 16: responsible for all of this? It's a really really interesting watch. So,
Speaker 16: like I said, that's on Netflix now.
Speaker 2: Mind you, that result hasn't stopped others trying to do
Speaker 2: the same, right, So the quest lives on. That's human nature.
Speaker 16: I suppose for you, wasn't it The ocean is terrifying?
Speaker 16: Why would you go down deep into it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sort of with you on that. Mind you,
Speaker 2: if fathers are willing to do it, they can discover in.
Speaker 16: Robot down there's a we're getting come up with that technology.
Speaker 2: I know we're getting there, aren't we. Good on you, Anna,
Speaker 2: thank you, appreciate you. While you've been talking, I've just
Speaker 2: had my right eye glancing over to that Channel seven.
Speaker 16: Program you are in for a treat.
Speaker 2: I get to read the subtitles and even better, could
Speaker 2: be ai you could be right.
Speaker 16: I really think that that's how they're doing it. Chatty
Speaker 16: GPT is getting too smart.
Speaker 2: They got their money's worth, all right. God on you
Speaker 2: to thank you, enjoy your weekend. Thank you, and a
Speaker 2: cor day there with screen talk tend to okay For
Speaker 2: those of you who are going to be taking the
Speaker 2: train home this afternoon. Just an update here read what
Speaker 2: was happening at Strathfield. I'm being told that train services
Speaker 2: are returning to normal following an incident requiring emergency services
Speaker 2: at Stratfield earlier today. There had been delays to services
Speaker 2: on some lines. However those delays have mostly eased. I'm
Speaker 2: told passengers should continue to listen to announcements and check
Speaker 2: information displays for the latest service updates. Of course, you've
Speaker 2: always got the websites and the apps Transport NSW dot info,
Speaker 2: Transport NSW dot info or you can download that Transport app.
Speaker 2: But it does look as though things are returning to
Speaker 2: normal slowly after that incident earlier at Strathfield one three
Speaker 2: one eight seven three five and a half minutes to
Speaker 2: two Frank, what was your take on orcas?
Speaker 17: Look, we send over a team of engineers and everyone
Speaker 17: and help them out to build the subs, because we're
Speaker 17: going to need them to maintain them. So that would
Speaker 17: also help our military capability as well, instead of just
Speaker 17: canceling the whole thing. I mean, we're going to need experts,
Speaker 17: so why don't we send over our top military people
Speaker 17: in nuclear and also to help build the subs. We've
Speaker 17: got very good tradesmen.
Speaker 2: One of those. Just to add to one of those points.
Speaker 2: We have no top military people in nuclear I mean,
Speaker 2: that's part of the issue here, right, so we had none,
Speaker 2: but there is already an exchange of personnel going on.
Speaker 2: There are sub mariners being trained in the United States,
Speaker 2: and some of that training has continued out here. I
Speaker 2: have no doubt that some of the top brass have
Speaker 2: been back and forth a few times in initial discussions
Speaker 2: about what's going to happen here. Perhaps some engineers and
Speaker 2: technical people as well from Osborne in adelaide about where
Speaker 2: this could all end up and what's required. That would
Speaker 2: already be happening. But Weather sending a bevy of people
Speaker 2: over to the United States on the third production liner,
Speaker 2: so we'll get cracking. Whether that would help, I don't know,
Speaker 2: but if it would, we should consider it. I thank
Speaker 2: you for the call. We had the two o'clock news
Speaker 2: just around the corner. Jim Haynes will be in the
Speaker 2: building straight after that with Sydney's Siders. A wonderful Sydney
Speaker 2: Siders story today for you. With they all are, but
Speaker 2: this is particularly one of the one and a whole
Speaker 2: lot more so stay with us. News is up in
Speaker 2: just a.
Speaker 1: Moment now onto GB and Network stations. Back to afternoons
Speaker 1: with Michael McLaren.
Speaker 2: Good. Nice to have you there with us. Beautiful Friday,
Speaker 2: a little bit of cloud in the sky, but nothing
Speaker 2: too much to worry about there. Good to be with you.
Speaker 2: One three one eight seven three. If you've just come along,
Speaker 2: you've come at a good time. Jim Haynes and Sydney
Speaker 2: Siders in just a moment. Another wonderful edition of that
Speaker 2: chapter of the show later on. And I will ask
Speaker 2: you also about the NDS. I know we've been over
Speaker 2: this a thousand times. Who hasn't, But there was a
Speaker 2: development overnight and that is that the Disability Agency, the NDA,
Speaker 2: they oversee the whole thing, have revealed they're going to
Speaker 2: slash the maximum fees that service providers can charge NDS participants.
Speaker 2: So these are the fees that physiotherapists, dietitians whatever can charge,
Speaker 2: the maximum fees they can charge a participant on the scheme. Now,
Speaker 2: as The Australian reported last night, as part of the
Speaker 2: annual review into the scheme's costs, and they've got to
Speaker 2: be rained in, there's no doubt about it. The National
Speaker 2: Disability Insurance Agency said that it would lower price limits
Speaker 2: for a range of services in an effort to bring
Speaker 2: them back in line to what Australians not on the
Speaker 2: NDS we're paying now. Of course, this has long been
Speaker 2: a huge issue with the NDIS. Those four letters NDIS
Speaker 2: seem to be akin to the word wedding, the hospitality trade.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a license just inflate the price of
Speaker 2: a similar service. And many people I know that have
Speaker 2: had interactions with the NDIS say, well, look, I could
Speaker 2: have got this piece of equipment or that service or
Speaker 2: whatever it is for about a third of the price
Speaker 2: if I were able to do it outside of the parameters.
Speaker 2: And they are restrictive of the NDIS scheme that THESS schemically.
Speaker 2: So this is an issue. If you've got a government
Speaker 2: scheme where the people that are providing services to it,
Speaker 2: but also to the wider community seem to think they
Speaker 2: can charge an enormous premium to the NDIS participants or
Speaker 2: their careers or whoever pays the bills as opposed to
Speaker 2: somebody else who's not on the NDIS for a very
Speaker 2: similar service, then we've got a problem. I think most
Speaker 2: would say that is just inappropriate, and it would go
Speaker 2: a long way to explaining why the scheme is so
Speaker 2: damn expensive, miles above what the maximum for forecast was
Speaker 2: when it was first put together all those years ago
Speaker 2: with Julia Gillard and Jenny Macklin, I think, and all
Speaker 2: of the others involved at the time. So I'll get
Speaker 2: some of your stories about the examples where because you've
Speaker 2: had to do something through the ndis that you could
Speaker 2: have done as a non participant outside the scheme, that
Speaker 2: the price has just been so outrageously inflated that you
Speaker 2: just roll your eyes say, hang, this is why this
Speaker 2: thing's going to cost fifty billion a year in rising.
Speaker 2: We'll deal with that later in the hour one three
Speaker 2: one eight seven three.
Speaker 18: There were history makers, frauds and fakers, ladies and renowned
Speaker 18: good ones, bad ones, quite a few mad ones lived
Speaker 18: in Sydney Town. There were fascinating characters, convicts, Parrister's servants
Speaker 18: of the Crown. Con means strong men, all the wrong men.
Speaker 8: There's a ton of them, and every one of them
Speaker 8: lived in Sydneytown.
Speaker 10: Now on afternoons Sydney with Jim Haynes.
Speaker 2: Well, here he is has promised and he's in a
Speaker 2: very subtle jacket too, I might add hello, Jim Hayes bike. Yes,
Speaker 2: this is my speaking jacket.
Speaker 8: I was going to take it off in the basement
Speaker 8: and car park.
Speaker 2: It's too cough, so I left and on.
Speaker 8: But I was talking to the lovely people out at
Speaker 8: Castle Hill, Kellyville Hill's probus and they told me that
Speaker 8: you know, then they're our calling you, Mick Mac.
Speaker 2: See this is something Ben Fordham's start. Oh okay, now
Speaker 2: this is yes. So Ben had to give one hundred
Speaker 2: dollars to a former senator today. He was the first
Speaker 2: one on here to call me Mick Mac. That was
Speaker 2: the deal. Oh, first call through to do it. And
Speaker 2: so it's Rex Patrick. So there you go.
Speaker 8: Well it didn't take long to reach Castle Hill. Let
Speaker 8: me tell you. They lovely bunch of people out there, Yes,
Speaker 8: and most of them are listeners, of course, and we're
Speaker 8: going to talk. We're going way back today. It's it's
Speaker 8: always a little difficult to find the number of females
Speaker 8: because a lot of our Sydney Siders are colonial from
Speaker 8: the colonial period, and then we have the twentieth century
Speaker 8: even and of course there's more men who are chronicled
Speaker 8: in the colonial era. But you know, the women are there,
Speaker 8: you just have to search for them. And some of
Speaker 8: the archivists at the various schools, and my old school
Speaker 8: has a big archive happening now on a website. I
Speaker 8: got the magazine, so we might be asking the archivist
Speaker 8: at Sydney Boys, who are the great Sydney Siders that
Speaker 8: we've produced. I just saw one of them on TV,
Speaker 8: Scott Morrison. But we don't talk about living people. It's
Speaker 8: too dangerous. So we're going way back in time to
Speaker 8: talk about this amazing woman and her name now the Aura.
Speaker 8: And you always want to say the Aora people, but
Speaker 8: it's like Fuji. You don't say Mount Fuji because Fuji
Speaker 8: means the mountain, so you don't say if you say
Speaker 8: Mount Fuji, you're saying, oh, mountain, mountain. And if you
Speaker 8: say Aora people, you're saying people people, right, because.
Speaker 2: We say wogga wog Well that's different.
Speaker 8: That means a lot of something, yes, but in that's
Speaker 8: where Agerie language. But you know, so we just say
Speaker 8: the Aura. The people who inhabited the Sydney Basin. There
Speaker 8: were a number of tribal groups. Okay, so this one.
Speaker 8: Her name was Bourrong, also known as Abaru and in
Speaker 8: various journals, and sadly most of the or the only
Speaker 8: information we really have about these people, the first Aura
Speaker 8: who were met by the on the people of the
Speaker 8: First Fleet, is that we only know them through the
Speaker 8: journals of the British people who were writing things, so
Speaker 8: you know, you've got to search your way through. But
Speaker 8: we do know a bit about her, which is interesting.
Speaker 8: She was the daughter of Macgren who was barum Margatal,
Speaker 8: which is basically looks just let's say Paramatta, right, all
Speaker 8: these Barromatta, Galea, and they're just different ways of saying
Speaker 8: what we now call Paramatta. And he was an elder.
Speaker 8: Her mother's name. We even know her mother's name, which
Speaker 8: is very strange for the time. It was Gurubera, which means.
Speaker 10: The fire stick.
Speaker 8: I don't know if she was a fiery sort of
Speaker 8: a woman. Anyway, she was from the Paramatta area and
Speaker 8: she was about twelve when the First Fleet arrived we
Speaker 8: think now eighteen months into the British colonization invasion, whatever
Speaker 8: you want to call that, small pox spread virulently through
Speaker 8: and wiped out possibly something like seventy percent of the
Speaker 8: Aura and her family were wiped out and so were
Speaker 8: the family of another boy to whom she was related,
Speaker 8: and they were brought into John White. Now, John White
Speaker 8: is an really interesting bloke. He was a surgeon on
Speaker 8: the First Fleet and the Surge in Sydney until he
Speaker 8: went home, and he was an amazing person. He was
Speaker 8: one of the few who tried to understand the Aora
Speaker 8: and you know he well, he adopted the boy Nanbury,
Speaker 8: gave him an English name and raised him as his own.
Speaker 8: And the girl, the one we're talking about, Bourrong, he
Speaker 8: saved her life and she then went to live with
Speaker 8: the Reverend Johnson, who was the minister on the first Fleet.
Speaker 8: Right now, he and his wife were very interesting people. Now,
Speaker 8: for a start, those of you who know that the
Speaker 8: politics of the Anglican Church, there's the high Church who
Speaker 8: were sort of, you know, we're here for the people
Speaker 8: who believe like us, and they're the people we cater to.
Speaker 8: And then there were the Evangelicals who caused a bit
Speaker 8: of a fuss at times because they believed that you
Speaker 8: had to teach that if you if everyone in the
Speaker 8: world learned the Bible, then the world would be a
Speaker 8: better place and everyone would become a Christian. And there
Speaker 8: were a He was an evangelical Reverend Johnson, and so
Speaker 8: he took Bourroon into his house and she lived there
Speaker 8: for almost two years with the Johnson family. And interestingly,
Speaker 8: they had a daughter, and they had given her an
Speaker 8: a name. They actually had one of their own daughters.
Speaker 8: And I'm looking for the name now. I can't quite
Speaker 8: find it, but I'll find it in a minute. And so, unfortunately,
Speaker 8: the Reverend Johnson thought that the best thing he could
Speaker 8: do for this girl was to teach her the Lord's Prayer.
Speaker 8: So she learned the Lord's Prayer.
Speaker 2: Wrote.
Speaker 8: But look, he did teach her to read and write,
Speaker 8: and she could speak English quite well, and she could
Speaker 8: do some writing as well, although she was only there,
Speaker 8: you know, with them for a couple of years. Then
Speaker 8: she went back to her own people. But we'll get
Speaker 8: to that. So she was encouraged to wear clothes and speak.
Speaker 8: And as I said, he taught her the Lord's Prayer.
Speaker 8: And there's a lovely quote which I've got in here,
Speaker 8: where he thinks that teaching her the Lord's Prayer will
Speaker 8: save her. You know, I wish to see these poor
Speaker 8: heathen brought to the knowledge of Christianity, he said, which
Speaker 8: might have been a good aim, but there were other
Speaker 8: things that they really needed to learn about each other
Speaker 8: other than reciting the Lord's Prayer parrot fashion. Anyway, now
Speaker 8: what had happened, we've got to do a little bit
Speaker 8: of politics here. The first thing, Philip, Governor Philip was
Speaker 8: an interesting bloke. He really wanted to carry out the
Speaker 8: King's orders, which was to befriend and help what they
Speaker 8: call the native people. Now, of course that didn't turn
Speaker 8: out too well, but he did make an effort, and
Speaker 8: he wasn't doing very well with trying to communicate, so
Speaker 8: he actually kidnapped one. They kidnapped a blow called Arabanu,
Speaker 8: and he came to live in Government House and eventually
Speaker 8: stayed of his own free will. But unfortunately he died
Speaker 8: in the smallpox epidemic, so he was gone and they
Speaker 8: needed so Philip said, well, look we'll get two more,
Speaker 8: and he did. He kidnapped to ben Along, who everybody
Speaker 8: a lot of people know about, and they were taken
Speaker 8: by force. But ben Along then stayed at Government House
Speaker 8: of his own free will for quite a long time. Colby,
Speaker 8: his cousin. He sort of got rid of his shackles
Speaker 8: quite early and ran away but ben Along stayed and
Speaker 8: then he did go back to his own people, and
Speaker 8: Philip was very upset about this. He said, you know,
Speaker 8: we need to understand one another. We need to talk,
Speaker 8: we need to find out what they're thinking and so on.
Speaker 8: And it was arab It was Boo Wrong Arabou, who
Speaker 8: was another name for the same person who did the mediation.
Speaker 8: So she was really important because she and Nanbry who
Speaker 8: was the boy who was adopted by the Surgeon General,
Speaker 8: they were the go betweens and Bourrong translated when the
Speaker 8: Reverend Johnson and Lieutenant Dawes went to find out who
Speaker 8: speared Philip and what you remember, they Governor Philip was
Speaker 8: speared at Manly Cove and it was a ritual retaliation
Speaker 8: for stealing ben Along and Colby, but they didn't know
Speaker 8: that at the time. So she was out there, she
Speaker 8: was translating, and when ben Along went back to his people,
Speaker 8: she went and tried to convince him to come back,
Speaker 8: and he did, and then Governor Philip built him his
Speaker 8: own house at ben Along.
Speaker 2: Point, nice to digs, not a.
Speaker 8: Bad bit of real estate, and it was titled you
Speaker 8: know that that was title. It was a little island
Speaker 8: and you could only cross at low tide.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, a lot of islands in Sydney Harbor have now
Speaker 8: been joined to the mainland. So he did come back.
Speaker 8: Now she was to become ben Along's third wife after Barangaroo.
Speaker 19: Right.
Speaker 8: Barangaroo was ben Along's second wife. And we should say
Speaker 8: that ben Along didn't call himself. It was one of
Speaker 8: his names. He called himself was his main name. Ben
Speaker 8: Along was actually another one of his names. It's complicated.
Speaker 8: They had lots of names. So Barangaroo was his second wife.
Speaker 8: And she did not want to, you know, do this
Speaker 8: sort of getting friendly with the British. So she didn't
Speaker 8: want him to go back, and she said, what will
Speaker 8: happen to him? You know, they might hurt him or something.
Speaker 8: So the Reverend Johnson, along with Bourong, who had been
Speaker 8: living in his house as as a child, as one
Speaker 8: of his own kids sort of thing, they stayed with
Speaker 8: Barangaroo as hostages while ben Along went back to talk
Speaker 8: to Philip. So, you know, that's the sort of stuff
Speaker 8: that she was doing. Fascinating, it is, it's amazing. And
Speaker 8: after the peace was made, the Reverend Johnson said that
Speaker 8: that whole you know, arrangement between the Aora or some
Speaker 8: of them, the ones who were Benelong's and Colby's mob
Speaker 8: was all brought about by Burrong. She mediated the whole thing.
Speaker 8: So she then decided she'd go back to her own people.
Speaker 8: She had learned to speak English, she'd learned to read
Speaker 8: and write a bit, and so away she went, but
Speaker 8: she kept visiting. They were up the Parramatta River, but
Speaker 8: they'd come back to town and she'd go and visit
Speaker 8: the Reverend Johnson and his wife Mary and their little girl.
Speaker 8: But she would do so quite naked, and they were
Speaker 8: a little embarrassed about that. So evidently there was a
Speaker 8: dress hanging at the door, and she would put the
Speaker 8: dress on, go and have a cup of tea, and
Speaker 8: they'd leave it at the door and go off in
Speaker 8: the nutty back to the canoe. So it's a great
Speaker 8: story now around. Well, it was seventeen ninety seven. She's
Speaker 8: about twenty one years old. Now Barangaroo has passed away.
Speaker 8: She marries ben Along, so she becomes his third wife
Speaker 8: and they have a child. They have a child called
Speaker 8: known as Dicky ben Along, and they both lived with
Speaker 8: about there were about one hundred a group of about
Speaker 8: one hundred Aura living on James Squire's property at Kissing Point,
Speaker 8: and James Squire was incredibly good to.
Speaker 2: Them and friendly to them and letting them have, you know.
Speaker 8: The use of their own land.
Speaker 14: Again.
Speaker 8: Now, James Squire's very interesting. I think we've have spoken
Speaker 8: about James Squire and Sydney Siders. He was a gypsy,
Speaker 8: which was interesting because he was really sympatico with the
Speaker 8: Aura and that's where they lived Bourong and ban Along
Speaker 8: who were married and they died there around eighteen fourteen.
Speaker 2: We know that.
Speaker 8: Because it was too many details we know. No, we
Speaker 8: don't know much because they're mentioned in all the journals
Speaker 8: of the first Fleet. But you know, we've got a
Speaker 8: piece it all together because there was no written history
Speaker 8: of course of the Aurora. But so she would have
Speaker 8: been about twenty eight when she passed away, which was
Speaker 8: about the lifespan of the time for the Aura, and
Speaker 8: they're buried there. Now. Nanbury had a wonderful double life.
Speaker 8: He was in the navy, but he also went through
Speaker 8: initiation and when it and performed or participated in ritual spearings.
Speaker 8: So he was really living between two cultures, as was
Speaker 8: Bural and he died after he was speared in a
Speaker 8: ritual spearing, and he asked to be buried with ben
Speaker 8: Along and Bural in the same grave or the same place,
Speaker 8: so they're all buried together. And believe it or not,
Speaker 8: we found out where the grave was and we only
Speaker 8: did this in twenty eighteen. There was a Hunter's Hill,
Speaker 8: I know the Hunters Hill Rotary were involved in Michael
Speaker 8: Parsons and they discovered they found the place and unfortunately
Speaker 8: there was a house over it because can I give
Speaker 8: the address on there? Of course it was they found
Speaker 8: that twenty five Watson Street, Putney, and so the New
Speaker 8: Southwest government bought the house and I assume they're knocking
Speaker 8: it down and it's going to be a premonial place
Speaker 8: for bent Along and Nanbury and this amazing woman Bourong.
Speaker 2: Important in our history, in our story.
Speaker 8: And there is a drawing of her. It's not a
Speaker 8: particularly flattering one. It's a very primitive drawing and she's
Speaker 8: in ceremonial paint there because that was her brother's funeral
Speaker 8: when somebody drew up. So we actually have a portrait
Speaker 8: of her. As I said that, it's not a pattern,
Speaker 8: maybe a good like almost complete picture. We have something,
Speaker 8: and we have all this information about this amazing woman.
Speaker 8: And there was there were attempts to bring the you know,
Speaker 8: the British and the Aora together in spite of the
Speaker 8: horror of the small pox epidemic and the fact that well,
Speaker 8: let's be honest, it all didn't work. Really, there were
Speaker 8: people of goodwill trying to make it happen.
Speaker 2: It's a great story story of Bong. Thank you, Jim.
Speaker 2: A pleasure, wonderful part of Sydney's history. It is twenty
Speaker 2: if I passed two more after this.
Speaker 1: It's that time of the afternoon. Time to find out
Speaker 1: what's coming up on Sydney. Now for the Serrato successor,
Speaker 1: the turbo charged Kia K four kias on new small
Speaker 1: sedan GT line veryant available Now find out more about
Speaker 1: Kia's latest small car.
Speaker 2: All right over to Clinton we go. He'll be with
Speaker 2: you after three o'clock. He's back from the airport. He's
Speaker 2: back in town for us. Now, Hello Clinton.
Speaker 9: Always to be a pleasure on the Mick Mac Show.
Speaker 9: How much money have you given away?
Speaker 19: Now?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not giving it. Ben's giving it away. Bends
Speaker 2: down thousands, pay rise time.
Speaker 9: I think it's good cross promotion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so, hopefully drives the tea as well.
Speaker 9: Look, I love Laurie Daily. I think he's I think
Speaker 9: he's going to win this series three nil.
Speaker 2: There's a caveat car But did he.
Speaker 9: Realize when the Blues hold a state of origin camp
Speaker 9: in the Blue Mountains, it's cursed. So the news out
Speaker 9: today that Mitch moses he's got calf injury has gone.
Speaker 9: Maybe your man Jerome Leui could be called into the team.
Speaker 9: I think I should bring it in.
Speaker 2: All right, it's a buy. We'd probably been back burdened anyway.
Speaker 9: Now, Laurie, I know he's a student of history of
Speaker 9: rugby league history. Cast your mind back to when Wayne
Speaker 9: Pearce was the coach of the New South Wales Blues.
Speaker 9: Now this was around the turn of the century. Many
Speaker 9: of our listeners will remember this. The tradition was you
Speaker 9: take the Blues to around Coogie, so you can go
Speaker 9: to the Coojie Bay Hotel have a bonding session. Well,
Speaker 9: Junior Pierce, as you know, not a drinker, clean living,
Speaker 9: so he said, look, end of the bonding session, we're
Speaker 9: not going to the pub anymore. We're going to the
Speaker 9: Blue Mountains. So he's taken the whole team to the
Speaker 9: Blue Mountains.
Speaker 10: As Laurie has done.
Speaker 9: He did put them on horseback and they went riding.
Speaker 9: I think was Robbie Kerns prop forward fell off the
Speaker 9: horse that was ruled out because of the drama with.
Speaker 2: The horse, poor poor horse.
Speaker 9: I had Robbie Kerns, Yes, and the vow was their mate,
Speaker 9: we're not going back to Blue Mountains cursed. I think
Speaker 9: there might have been another starting to Cops Harbor. Yes,
Speaker 9: well Laurie should have learned the lesson from the early
Speaker 9: two thousands and Robbie Kerns. And now I don't believe
Speaker 9: Mitchell Moses was on a horse this afternoon.
Speaker 2: No, I don't know. Why couldn't they just gone to
Speaker 2: the Center of Excellent on paramatter row to.
Speaker 9: Concord the Tiger Center of Excess. Well, there's also a
Speaker 9: new South Wales State of Origin Center of Excellence. That's
Speaker 9: his name for a gym I believe at Sidney Olympic
Speaker 9: Park they have an underground tunnel to go to the stadium.
Speaker 9: So what they do is that they warm up at
Speaker 9: their center of gym, go under the tunnel to the
Speaker 9: stadium for their origin games. But no, we had to
Speaker 9: go back to the Blue Mountains. Now I've lost Mitchell
Speaker 9: Moses right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's the curse strikes again. Now, no curses
Speaker 2: after three o'clock for years. So what's coming up now?
Speaker 9: Look, we'll be bringing you an exclusive story about the
Speaker 9: transition to electric buses in Sydney. There is a long
Speaker 9: term plan to convert the entire fleet to electric. Successive
Speaker 9: state governments have backed this plan.
Speaker 2: It's not working.
Speaker 9: I'll bring you the details after three o'clock and we'll
Speaker 9: look back at the influence of Brian Wilson. I'm going
Speaker 9: to talk to an expert in the area from the
Speaker 9: Conservatory of Music. I regard Brian Wilson as one of
Speaker 9: the twentieth century's greatest musicians. Without it a growing up
Speaker 9: in a house with a Sixties obsessed father, you grew
Speaker 9: up on the Beatles, you grew up on the Beach Boys,
Speaker 9: and listening back to some of that music today that
Speaker 9: I've done, like so many of us have, it just
Speaker 9: feels like the end of an era with Brian Wilson
Speaker 9: gone a long time since, since John Lennon's life was
Speaker 9: taken away from us. So I'm going to look at
Speaker 9: the impact of Brian Wilson on the brain.
Speaker 2: That's a great idea. All right, thank you Clinton, look
Speaker 2: forward to listening to this. Ontington Maynard with Sydney now
Speaker 2: straight after three. All right, let's get all the latest ars.
Speaker 2: Katie Fuller standing by Hei Katie Hi.
Speaker 15: Michael, a home belonging to the head of the Alamdine
Speaker 15: crime group has been hit with bullets in Sydney's West
Speaker 15: just moments after he left the house. Three men have
Speaker 15: been arrested. Australia's corruption watchdog has found no evidence of
Speaker 15: wrongdoing in the government's handling of Britney higgins two point
Speaker 15: four million dollar compensation payout. Blue infections have risen by
Speaker 15: ten percent in just one week in New South Wales,
Speaker 15: with calls for people to get vaccinated, and the Royal
Speaker 15: Australian Mint is launching a set of collectible coints featuring
Speaker 15: twelve designs from the Women's Weekly Birthday cakebook. In Sport,
Speaker 15: the Indiana Pacers have taken a two to one lead
Speaker 15: over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals. The
Speaker 15: Pacers have won Game three at home one hundred and
Speaker 15: sixteen to one hundred and seven, and Michael there'll be
Speaker 15: more news in about twenty eight minutes on afternoons.
Speaker 1: A finance update for Pretzel Wealth and finance for Trusted
Speaker 1: Financial Planning.
Speaker 10: Just Google, Blake went to Pretzel.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's catch up with Scott Phillips from Themotley full
Speaker 2: dot com DOTU and see what's happening on this Thursday
Speaker 2: across the markets. But before we look at those, Scott, not
Speaker 2: too much of a surprise, I guess, but from July one,
Speaker 2: so I was talking about a little earlier. Actually, we're
Speaker 2: expecting the cost of a number of everyday utilities to
Speaker 2: go up.
Speaker 20: Michael, Yes, another day. Another price increase in good afternoon
Speaker 20: energy bills, the major one in South Wales, the average
Speaker 20: bills going up between eight and a half and nine
Speaker 20: point one percent from July one. If you're a small
Speaker 20: business up to eight and a half percent higher. No
Speaker 20: good news. There also internet and phone plans votaphone, opice
Speaker 20: in Telstra have all announced increases from July one, Votaphones
Speaker 20: raising some plans by four dollars a month, Telstra's increase
Speaker 20: in THEIRS by up to five dollars a month. Off
Speaker 20: this apparently are as well. Streaming service if you're a
Speaker 20: KO subscriber watching the sport, which I am, I'm paying
Speaker 20: another five bucks a month from next month now thirty
Speaker 20: dollars a month for KO that's existing is extinct subscribers
Speaker 20: in particular. So yeah, across the board, unfortunately, not great news.
Speaker 20: July one tends to be a date when most of
Speaker 20: those things happen. Yes, they're not going to be pretty
Speaker 20: and we know, of course the insurance prices keep going
Speaker 20: up as well as at the till, so yeah, I
Speaker 20: can't give you much. Yeah right, well, looks you have
Speaker 20: been in terms of inflation. Insurance has been one of
Speaker 20: the major major drivers, particularly recently. As other things have
Speaker 20: come down, insurance continues to go up. So yes, a
Speaker 20: tough time. Unfortunately for bill players, not going to get
Speaker 20: any better help. The choangs already went up in of
Speaker 20: course that won't go up again, thankfully, that's one that
Speaker 20: won't go up. But general insurance likely to continue to increase.
Speaker 20: A can Star found the average cost of car insurance
Speaker 20: comprehensive increased one hundred and twenty two dollars a year
Speaker 20: over the past twelve months.
Speaker 2: Mind you, as I said earlier, you've got all of
Speaker 2: these people listening saying, well, we see the official CPI
Speaker 2: data says where we've got the rbas now got it
Speaker 2: within the two to three percent banned happy days? What
Speaker 2: people that lay on, how do they figure that? Because
Speaker 2: all of this is going up five, six, seven, eight, ten, fourteen,
Speaker 2: insurance case I was twenty percent, where's this two to
Speaker 2: three percent thing coming from?
Speaker 20: Yeah, it's not great, is it. I mean, well, frankly,
Speaker 20: one of the goodest petrols come down. That's been nice,
Speaker 20: and it's one of the major costs for a whole
Speaker 20: lot of people. But you're right, much after I mean,
Speaker 20: food's come out a little bit to the rate of increase,
Speaker 20: still going up. So some of the staples the only
Speaker 20: good thing I suppose to some of those are changed,
Speaker 20: but it doesn't get much more staple and insurance and
Speaker 20: energy and they're still going up. Unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Now that's it. Certainly the energy is not a discretion.
Speaker 20: We spend the markets of the dollar market dead flat,
Speaker 20: down zero point eight points to eight hundred and nineteen.
Speaker 20: That's about three decimal places worth of decline. We'll call
Speaker 20: that pretty much flat. I remember of the US dollars
Speaker 20: down against all the major countries, quite a bit actually
Speaker 20: one point one percent lower against the euro, one per
Speaker 20: cent lower against the pound, and the end a quarter
Speaker 20: of a percent low against the US dollar sixty four
Speaker 20: point nine six US sins.
Speaker 2: All right, well, thank you, Scott. We'll speak tomorrow for
Speaker 2: Friday Finance. Scott Phillips there, the chief investment officer from
Speaker 2: the Motley fool full dot com dot A. You now,
Speaker 2: don't forget get set toy because Twogb's Winter Wheel starts
Speaker 2: spinning from Monday. We're turning up the heat with a
Speaker 2: I think up to forty thousand dollars worth of cash
Speaker 2: and prizes to be won. That's right now. You can
Speaker 2: listen across the day. You should do it for your
Speaker 2: chance to spin the wheel and you could be warming
Speaker 2: up your winter with cold, hard cash and prizes. Now
Speaker 2: we're spinning the wheel in breakfast mornings here on afternoons
Speaker 2: and with Clinton on Sydney. Now Twogb's Winter Wheel, it
Speaker 2: starts spinning from Monday. Something to look forward to there,
Speaker 2: don't miss out. Stay listening to Sydney's two GB. That's
Speaker 2: where you're at. It's twenty three to three, where it
Speaker 2: is nineteen minutes to three. Apologies for a bit of
Speaker 2: the the double up there during the AD break, but
Speaker 2: you know, the gremlins getting the system sometime. A lot
Speaker 2: of feedback coming through earlier in the day, still about
Speaker 2: this whole orchest thing. People a bit concerned about where
Speaker 2: we might be heading here. But on the broader issue
Speaker 2: of talking about defense and military and battles and all
Speaker 2: of that. Ray wrote earlier to say, I think future generations,
Speaker 2: say a thousand years from now, we'll look back on
Speaker 2: all of this warring and see it as so childish. Look.
Speaker 2: I hope you're right, but I suspect you're not, because
Speaker 2: when you think back over the previous thousand years, So
Speaker 2: go back to you know, where are we twenty twenty five?
Speaker 2: So go back to one thy twenty five AD. All
Speaker 2: of our ancestors were scrapping with each other, in fact,
Speaker 2: far more than we are today. And you go back
Speaker 2: another thousand years before that, about the time of Jesus Christ,
Speaker 2: they were fighting all over the place between the Romans
Speaker 2: and who knows who else, and the previous millennias before that,
Speaker 2: they were all fighting each other. It's sadly just human nature,
Speaker 2: where one can't agree with the other over resources or
Speaker 2: who knows what else. They turn to fisticuffs, and these
Speaker 2: days fisticuffs can come in the form of an atomic weapon.
Speaker 2: So look, I'd love to think that utopia will break
Speaker 2: out in the next millennia, but I suspect it won't.
Speaker 2: But anyway, Ray, you and I won't be here to
Speaker 2: toss the coin and see who won, Sarah says Mick Mack.
Speaker 2: Thanks there. I think the US thinks our defense if
Speaker 2: it's pathetic, and I think our PM will do anything
Speaker 2: to keep in favor with China and spurm Trump. Also,
Speaker 2: the Labor Party are anti nuclear. We're a backward country
Speaker 2: with uninspiring leaders. That's Sarah's take. This is from Michael,
Speaker 2: who says, tell Trump we are rescinding the Pine Gap
Speaker 2: agreement and then let's see how he reacts. Now, your
Speaker 2: first him as the taco. That's an acronym for Trump
Speaker 2: always chickens out. This is something that's coming through America
Speaker 2: now about near trade deals and all these things. Talks
Speaker 2: a big game but then backs out. Trump always chickens
Speaker 2: out a taco. Let's see. This is from Brent, who
Speaker 2: says the immediate solution to the Orcus subs problem should
Speaker 2: be this one the Prime Minister needs to commit to
Speaker 2: greater immediate Defense expenditure two, a stopgap measure of B
Speaker 2: twenty one bombers and long range firers purchased with costs
Speaker 2: sent to the US for Orcus subs already Part three
Speaker 2: or three. Start working on a nuclear submarine pact with
Speaker 2: the UK and Japan. That's from Brent. Thank you everybody
Speaker 2: for you feedback and all of that still coming through.
Speaker 2: Read the story of Booong that Jim was outlining. Fascinating
Speaker 2: all that sort of part of early colonial history. Chris says,
Speaker 2: I grew up at sixteen Watson Street, Putney. Now that
Speaker 2: street was mentioned, I think it was number twenty four
Speaker 2: to twenty five by Jim. But as Chris says, we
Speaker 2: used to play on these grounds growing up where Ben
Speaker 2: Along is now buried. My mate's mum sold the house
Speaker 2: to the New South Wales government. Not sure what they're
Speaker 2: doing with it now, but the house is still there,
Speaker 2: so I've spent a lot of time next to ben Along.
Speaker 2: Funnily enough, he says, when all the pools in our
Speaker 2: street were being dug up, the council would inspect just
Speaker 2: in case they actually dug up Ben Along true story,
Speaker 2: says Chris. It's a fascinating inside Chris, thank you for
Speaker 2: that appreciated one three, one eight seven three the open
Speaker 2: line number. Now do you have any famous relatives? You know,
Speaker 2: I asked, because everyone's now getting involved in all this
Speaker 2: ancestry dot com thing, and everyone's doing saliva swabs and
Speaker 2: DNA samples and working out you're related to some king
Speaker 2: or queen from Spain or something. But there's an interesting
Speaker 2: piece out of the UK Telegraph to do with the
Speaker 2: Vinci clan of Tuscany. Now, of course the Vinci names famous,
Speaker 2: Leonardo da Vinci being at the apex of the fame.
Speaker 2: But as it says here, the Vinci's of northern Italy
Speaker 2: lived for years without knowledge of their rich family heritage,
Speaker 2: that is until now. A team of Italian scholars and
Speaker 2: scientists believe they've traced back the family of Leonardo da
Speaker 2: Vinci all the way back to thirteen thirty one, that's
Speaker 2: just before the Bubonic plague arrived in Italy, and using
Speaker 2: bone fragments from Leonardo's family burial tomb that's at the
Speaker 2: church of the Santa Crocea in the town of Vinci,
Speaker 2: they've now formerly identified at least five heirs of the
Speaker 2: great inventor. Now, the five men still living in Tuscany
Speaker 2: and in fact not far from Leonardo's hometown, all have
Speaker 2: DNA that matches segments of the Y chromosome from the
Speaker 2: bone fragment. And though they may never become as famous
Speaker 2: as their forefather, they appear to share some of the
Speaker 2: inventors quirks and passions. And so there's photos of all
Speaker 2: of them here and who they are and what It's
Speaker 2: all very interesting. But that would be that would be
Speaker 2: something quite special. I think if you know, you did
Speaker 2: the whole DNA thing and it turned out that one
Speaker 2: of the relatives was none other than Leonardo da Vinci,
Speaker 2: you'd be thinking, well, I should have gone a selective
Speaker 2: school or something. But do you have any do you
Speaker 2: have any famous relatives? When you shake the family tree,
Speaker 2: any of them fall out? Who was it? And when
Speaker 2: did you find out? How did you find out? One? Three,
Speaker 2: one eight seven three the open line number. Okay, what
Speaker 2: I was saying earlier regarding the NDEs back to that
Speaker 2: the NDIA have done their annual review into the scheme,
Speaker 2: the cost of the scheme, and it's unsustainable. It's got
Speaker 2: to be rained in and so you've got to look
Speaker 2: at the number of people accessing the NDIS as well
Speaker 2: as the services provided and the costs that are associated
Speaker 2: with those services. Now, the takeaway message from many who
Speaker 2: are grateful to be on the scheme or who have
Speaker 2: relatives that are benefiting benefiting from the scheme. One of
Speaker 2: the takeaway messages that keeps coming out, however, is that
Speaker 2: it is being abused by some of the providers. They
Speaker 2: are simply charging a premium because those four letters NDS
Speaker 2: are being applied and that's where the money's coming from
Speaker 2: from the service. And to prove it, they say, well, look,
Speaker 2: I could have got this shower handrail, or I could
Speaker 2: have got this non slip mat, or I could have
Speaker 2: got this particular wheelchair, or I could have got this
Speaker 2: particular massage whatever it is for X dollars if i'd
Speaker 2: just gone to the provided director's Joe, average citizen. But
Speaker 2: the moment I went via the NDIS because I have
Speaker 2: to do that to access the capital. The price was this,
Speaker 2: you know, X to the power of ten or something
Speaker 2: right forward. And they said, well, this is ridiculous because
Speaker 2: we're benefiting, but others are not able to benefit because
Speaker 2: there's no money left in the kiddy, and we've got
Speaker 2: to rain this in. So the NDA are onto it,
Speaker 2: and they've said, okay, we're going to have to do
Speaker 2: something about this. So it looks like as though they
Speaker 2: have slashed the maximum fees that service providers can charge
Speaker 2: NDS participants. Okay, well, good, good. Anyway, you might have
Speaker 2: a story that you wish to share, an example of
Speaker 2: one of these products just outrageously inflated price because you
Speaker 2: came waiving the piece of paper that said NDS. As
Speaker 2: I said earlier when Jim was in the studio, the NDS,
Speaker 2: those four letters NDS, they're sort of akin to the
Speaker 2: word wedding, you know, in the hospitality trade, it's a license.
Speaker 2: It seems to inflate the price for a similar service
Speaker 2: that one could get outside of the scheme. Now that's
Speaker 2: not good enough, and taxpayers should demand significant oversight here.
Speaker 2: So I think the NDIA is on the right track.
Speaker 2: There'll be people saying, oh, no, this is wrong and
Speaker 2: we can't do this, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: the whole thing will collapse under its own weight unless
Speaker 2: efforts like this are instigated. One three, one eight seven
Speaker 2: three Sue good afternoon.
Speaker 3: Hi Michael, how are you good? How are you good?
Speaker 8: I love your show, Thank you sir.
Speaker 19: Watch it. Listen to it every single afternoon.
Speaker 2: Oh wonderful thing, wonderful than you.
Speaker 17: That's pleasure.
Speaker 19: My ancestor is Alan Cunningham explorer. He's one of the
Speaker 19: first bottanists in Australia. He came over from England. He
Speaker 19: also had a brother, Robert, who was a botanist and
Speaker 19: he got killed.
Speaker 4: By the Aboriginals.
Speaker 19: He has a singing in the botanic gardens like this
Speaker 19: big statue. Not a statue, like a memorial in the
Speaker 19: lake there.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, Oh, I know where the lake is. So
Speaker 2: he's got a memorial in there, does he?
Speaker 17: Yeah?
Speaker 19: In the lake itself here. How we found out was
Speaker 19: my father. They were doing the family tree and they
Speaker 19: found out it was Alan Cunningham, cunning Ham scap all
Speaker 19: that sort of thing. It's truly interesting because on the
Speaker 19: weekend my grandmother, my auntie, gave me a list of
Speaker 19: my father and grandmother were doing, and then there's all
Speaker 19: this stuff and there's a cunning hand. So I've yet
Speaker 19: to look into it. I've got about, oh about one
Speaker 19: hundred pages. I've got letters from about eighteen fifty to
Speaker 19: go through. It's incredible.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a wonderful thing. I think it's one of
Speaker 2: those things, isn't it. So when you start the deep dive,
Speaker 2: you've got to take a deep breath because you'll be
Speaker 2: under for a long time, just being absorbed by all
Speaker 2: of the different layers and the different generations and the stories,
Speaker 2: and you will uncover some very very interesting stuff. So
Speaker 2: good for you. There you go. So related to Alan Cunningham,
Speaker 2: one of the first botanists in New South Wales. I'm
Speaker 2: being told, Jacob, apparently it's related to James Ruce. Are
Speaker 2: you didn't they had a green thumb. Good on you, Jacob,
Speaker 2: Well done. There you go. See interesting. I was always
Speaker 2: told our family line went back to Charles the first
Speaker 2: but he was one that lost his head was and
Speaker 2: he so whether we boast or complain, I don't know
Speaker 2: that was the story. I haven't seen the full lineage
Speaker 2: to prove the tale, but it might be true. I
Speaker 2: don't know. It is eleven minutes to three now, one afternoons.
Speaker 2: Track of the day, al right, I want to give
Speaker 2: away a double pass to Riviera Revenge. The storyline is
Speaker 2: this on the sunny French Riviera A family revelation spirals
Speaker 2: into a mischievous journey, bringing with love, vengeance and surprises.
Speaker 2: No one ever said marriage or zazy and who could
Speaker 2: resist retribution by the seaside? Riviera Revenge a French smash
Speaker 2: hit romantic comedy. It's in Australian cinemas from June twenty
Speaker 2: sixth If you want to go double pass one three,
Speaker 2: one eight seven three, here's the question, And yeah, it's
Speaker 2: an interesting question. Actually. The Celsius scale was officially adopted
Speaker 2: by Australia on this day, But in what year? In
Speaker 2: what year did we officially adopt the Celsius scale in Australia?
Speaker 2: It was on this day, but in what year? If
Speaker 2: you know, you want to have a go one three,
Speaker 2: one eight seven three, here's a little bit of a
Speaker 2: Celsius related music. All right, let's see if we can
Speaker 2: find a winner. Celsius The scale was officially adopted in
Speaker 2: Australia on this day in what year?
Speaker 11: Paul, nineteen seventy three?
Speaker 2: Close but not quite right? Not quite right? Dare I
Speaker 2: say warm but not hot? Yvonne? What do you reckon?
Speaker 6: Nineteen seventy one?
Speaker 2: Even closer but not quite right, Thank you, Yvon, have
Speaker 2: a good one.
Speaker 5: John, gooday John, nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 2: Now are you going in the wrong direction? John, Thanks
Speaker 2: for trying. Janet Afternoon nineteen seventy correct, correct, correct nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy it was You're off to see Riviera Revenge. Hang
Speaker 2: on their Janet. We'll grab your details and we'll be
Speaker 2: back after the break. Well, that's it for us today.
Speaker 2: Thank you. We'll go and enjoy what's left of the
Speaker 2: afternoon and the blue sky and all the rest of it.
Speaker 2: Tomorrow Busy show. Ian Baker Finch, the Australian golfing legend,
Speaker 2: will join me. Biography out about Ian, looking forward to
Speaker 2: reading and speaking about his life the domain real estate segment.
Speaker 2: Of course, Friday Food. Got a bit of a treat
Speaker 2: on Friday Food, and a whole lot more so stay
Speaker 2: with us after the news. The One and Only Clinton,
Speaker 2: Maynard and Sydney now bid