Speaker 1: On two gv AT network stations. This is Afternoons with
Speaker 1: Michael McLaren.
Speaker 2: It is good to be with you another week, beautiful
Speaker 2: day outside. We are conscious of factors happening around the world,
Speaker 2: of course, but we are very blessed and lucky to
Speaker 2: be living here. One three, one eight seven three is
Speaker 2: our open line number. And take advantage of the democracy
Speaker 2: of the open line. One three, one eight seven three.
Speaker 2: Lots to talk about, lots to get our teeth into.
Speaker 2: You can text if you like zero six zero eight
Speaker 2: seven three eight seventh three, but you know, talk radio
Speaker 2: is meant to be a communication, a conversation between me
Speaker 2: and you, so it's always the open line that takes precedent. Well,
Speaker 2: you can email as well, obviously there is just go
Speaker 2: to TGB dot com click on the feedback icon. I'll
Speaker 2: have a few words to say in just a moment
Speaker 2: about the very significant events, and they are very significant
Speaker 2: events over the weekend. The Americans haven't militarily involved themselves
Speaker 2: in Iranian territory since nineteen seventy nine, so the fact
Speaker 2: that that has been happening over the weekend is significant
Speaker 2: in and of itself. But other things are happening I'll
Speaker 2: speak later this hour. As I was saying to Mark
Speaker 2: to Tom Ducevich is the policy editor at the Australian
Speaker 2: Rights Well and he had a very interesting article to
Speaker 2: do with the decline in birth rates in Australia. But
Speaker 2: this is now becoming a global issue. There are some areas,
Speaker 2: parts of Africa, subcontinent, whatever, where having babies are certainly
Speaker 2: still very much the thing. But in many other places,
Speaker 2: certainly in the more productive parts of the world economy,
Speaker 2: people are having fewer and fewer children. Now. The South
Speaker 2: Koreans have forgotten how to have babies. I think they
Speaker 2: need a bit of a sort of birds and bees lesson.
Speaker 2: They're in soul because they're just not having any. But
Speaker 2: in other places, even Italy, Germany, other places in Europe,
Speaker 2: the Russians, the population is in decline. If it weren't
Speaker 2: for migration, Japan's a mess in that respect, and if
Speaker 2: it weren't for migration going backwards as well. The truth is,
Speaker 2: with no productivity growth, it is only immigration which is
Speaker 2: growing the national GDP per capita, there's no growth. In fact,
Speaker 2: there's been a recession for I think nine of the
Speaker 2: last twelve quarters or something. But for a national GDP figure.
Speaker 2: The growth, unbroken growth is only coming because we are
Speaker 2: importing more than we're exporting as far as human capital
Speaker 2: is concerned. Now, that won't go on forever either, and
Speaker 2: even if it does, the quality that comes in might decline.
Speaker 2: And so we've got to look at this. The whole
Speaker 2: world has to look at this. And I said to Mark,
Speaker 2: and we've raised this a few times on this show,
Speaker 2: because it's a big issue that needs thinking. Let's just
Speaker 2: assume that some of the boffins, the bright people are
Speaker 2: now right, and by twenty one hundred the global population
Speaker 2: reaches its zenith, after which it starts to decline. Even
Speaker 2: Africa and India or aren't going to prop us up.
Speaker 2: They're having fewer and fewer by that point. So the
Speaker 2: modeling suggests, what does that mean for your superbalance? What
Speaker 2: does that mean for how we understand trade? Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean these are things we've got to consider. The entire
Speaker 2: global stock market system is predicated on more and more
Speaker 2: consumers turning up every five minutes. If they don't, and
Speaker 2: we can't do anything about productivity, and by that point,
Speaker 2: of course, AI will be running a muck. What does
Speaker 2: that mean for the value of your assets or that
Speaker 2: which you will hand down to your children and your grandchildren.
Speaker 2: What does this mean for government tax? What does this
Speaker 2: mean for all sorts of different things. These are big issues.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure we've yet got the answers. I'll talk
Speaker 2: to Tom Ducevich about that. Michael Pembroke after one o'clock
Speaker 2: a fascinating manner historian and author. You might have known
Speaker 2: his work because years ago, I'm sure I spoke to
Speaker 2: him about his book to do with Arthur Phillipp, credible book.
Speaker 2: When he's got another one out now, it's called Silk, Silver, Opium,
Speaker 2: The trade with China that change history. And if you
Speaker 2: want to understand what's going on in the West China
Speaker 2: relationship at the moment, you've got to understand the Chinese
Speaker 2: perspective as much as the Western perspective. Now, as you know,
Speaker 2: I am not sympathetic in any way to the Chinese
Speaker 2: Communist Party or any of their ideology. They are dangerous
Speaker 2: that I've made my points about that very clear a
Speaker 2: million times. But equally, if we want to ride this
Speaker 2: out as best as possible, if we want to avoid
Speaker 2: war with China, and that should be the goal, to
Speaker 2: avoid war with China, because that would be bloody and messy.
Speaker 2: They're not Iran, They're a different kettle offici altogether, you
Speaker 2: don't want to be messing with them. So if we
Speaker 2: want to avoid it, we've got to understand their point
Speaker 2: of view as well. I'm not sure enough people do.
Speaker 2: And part of the Chinese mental position is informed by
Speaker 2: the events from the late eighteen hundreds through to nineteen twelve,
Speaker 2: and by nineteen twelve they lost control of their own
Speaker 2: sovereignty effectively at the hands of Western traders, Western governments,
Speaker 2: western imperialists. They call it the Great Humiliation. They're not
Speaker 2: going to let that happen again, not without a fight.
Speaker 2: And so that's what's informing their positioning. And you look
Speaker 2: at a lot of the pinch points at the moment
Speaker 2: South China see Tai one whatever I mean, these were
Speaker 2: all critical areas in that decline of the Chinese imperial
Speaker 2: system at the hands of Western traders and Western governments.
Speaker 2: Now that's all outlined in this book, Silk Silver Opiu.
Speaker 2: It's a rather beautiful book to look at as well.
Speaker 2: I'll speak to the author after one o'clock. Sam Purcell
Speaker 2: will be in for Trent today for drive. Sam does
Speaker 2: wonderful job. So if you've got some questions about your
Speaker 2: motor vehicle one point thirty give us a call. Sam
Speaker 2: Purcell will be here. A Legras spender will join me
Speaker 2: after two o'clock. The Independent for Wentworth the teal. I
Speaker 2: want to talk to Allegra about tax now. To give
Speaker 2: her some credit, she was basically the only one talking
Speaker 2: about the need for significant taxation reform leading into the
Speaker 2: last election. It did her campaign no end of good
Speaker 2: to talk about that because a lot of people in
Speaker 2: that part of town understand that we need to have
Speaker 2: reform and just on tax, just on tax. By chance,
Speaker 2: I suppose, as you know, my uncle passed away mid
Speaker 2: last week and so as a family we've been looking
Speaker 2: at the funeral and you know, you get the funeral
Speaker 2: parlor in they discuss what has to happen and this
Speaker 2: and that, and you get the summary of costs x
Speaker 2: thousand for a coffin x thousand for the services of
Speaker 2: the undertakers, and you go through and then as one
Speaker 2: of the bylines, one of the items itemized figures popped
Speaker 2: up sixty three dollars. They said, what's that? That is
Speaker 2: the New South Wales government clipping the ticket sixty three dollars.
Speaker 2: Now why do they do that? Did you know they
Speaker 2: taxed you when you died? They do, And I looked
Speaker 2: it up and this is all justified because they say
Speaker 2: cemeteries and crematory at New South Wales CCNSW, they regulate
Speaker 2: cemeteries and crematoria in the state. They say, our work
Speaker 2: is funded by the Internment Services levee. And this is
Speaker 2: a levee. That's a four letter word for tax on
Speaker 2: cemetery and crematoria operators. Now, these people will be paying
Speaker 2: tax anyway, probably payroll tax and company tax and this tax,
Speaker 2: and they'll be paying tax right. But on top there's
Speaker 2: a levee which you give posthumously or your descendants do.
Speaker 2: And for a cremation it's forty one dollars. For an
Speaker 2: ash internment, it's sixty three. For a burial, it's one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty six dollars. You can't avoid it tax
Speaker 2: and you're dead. I mean, this is the we are
Speaker 2: taxed left, right and center. We have discussed not that
Speaker 2: long ago, these parking levees, you know, they call it
Speaker 2: the parking space levee. And there's taxes applied to the CBD,
Speaker 2: North Sydney, Saint Leonard's, Crow's Nest, Paramatta and I think
Speaker 2: somewhere else again and Dijunction. Why because they can they can,
Speaker 2: and so they bung these taxes on the people that
Speaker 2: operate parking facilities. They then have to pass that cost
Speaker 2: on to you the user. And in part that's why
Speaker 2: when you go into the city and you want to park,
Speaker 2: it's eighty three dollars for an hour and a half
Speaker 2: because the operators they've got to make a profit. They're
Speaker 2: not charity, but equally they've got to pay the tax
Speaker 2: per spot per annon to the state government. Now, what
Speaker 2: does the state government do to improve the quality of
Speaker 2: the car park or secure the cars in there? They
Speaker 2: do nothing nothing. They just take the money. Right, And
Speaker 2: these are the same polukahs that's straight face down the
Speaker 2: line of the barel of the camera. We're doing everything
Speaker 2: we can to help with your costal living pressures. Look,
Speaker 2: the more you look into it, the more you realize
Speaker 2: they're lying out the side of their mouth and they
Speaker 2: clip it left, right and center. There's a report today
Speaker 2: in the Australian. This is coming out of the Australian
Speaker 2: Industry group that if you're in business in this country,
Speaker 2: you're being hit with more than one hundred federal and
Speaker 2: state government imposed taxes and levies. Who'd run a business
Speaker 2: who could be bothered when you're being belted by up
Speaker 2: to one hundred different federal and state government taxes and levies,
Speaker 2: And they say here it makes the effective tax rate
Speaker 2: now the second highest among the OECD, only behind Columbia.
Speaker 2: And as the article went on to say, when state
Speaker 2: government and other micro taxes imposed on small, medium, and
Speaker 2: large scale businesses are factored in, it's now estimated that
Speaker 2: the total tax revenue collected by state and federal jurisdictions
Speaker 2: is actually close to three hundred billion dollars a year. Now,
Speaker 2: that's considerably higher than the headline figure for company tax
Speaker 2: of one hundred and forty four billion a year stealth taxes.
Speaker 2: And they wonder why a lot of businesses are going broke.
Speaker 2: Not rocket science. So we'll look at all of that
Speaker 2: with a legal spender after two o'clock, almost twenty past twelve. Well,
Speaker 2: for a few months now, the trader's on Wall Street
Speaker 2: of I've been throwing around that term taco taco, as
Speaker 2: it turns out as an acronym, and it's short for
Speaker 2: Trump always chickens out, the theory being that the president
Speaker 2: talks a big game lob's idle threats, but then gets
Speaker 2: cold feet and backs down when the going gets tough. Well,
Speaker 2: some have been positioning their trades accordingly, hedging that under
Speaker 2: Trump the status quo will eventually prevail. However, after a
Speaker 2: set of American B two bombers drop six thirty thousand
Speaker 2: pound bunker busters on Iran's fourd hour nuclear enrichment facility,
Speaker 2: I think the boys on Wall Street might need to
Speaker 2: look for a different theory. As we said on the
Speaker 2: show last week, it was very unlikely that Israel and
Speaker 2: the United States would settle on diplomacy this time around.
Speaker 2: Certainly Israel America entering the conflict in spectacular fashion. Well
Speaker 2: that's short to grab the headlines. But it's been the
Speaker 2: IDF and Mossad that have softened up Tehran and put
Speaker 2: the Mullers on the back foot. The Americans have then
Speaker 2: come in like a heavyweight fighter and delivered an enormous
Speaker 2: right hook to the regime. It's now on the canvas
Speaker 2: and I think the referees counting to ten now Israel's
Speaker 2: determination to crush Hamas and Hezbolla removed Iran's front line.
Speaker 2: Their opportunistic strikes on Syrian military installations with the fall
Speaker 2: of a Sad further weakened Iran's proxy military machine waves
Speaker 2: of targeted assassinations, exploding pages who could forget them, and
Speaker 2: then strategic aerial bombardment of Iranian missile and nuclear facilities,
Speaker 2: not to mention arms of government like the State TV
Speaker 2: channel have just bludgeoned the Islamic Republic into a corner.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden. The Iotola looks very mortal, indeed,
Speaker 2: and his regime is virtually without leverage, and it's in
Speaker 2: survival mode. As Trump said in his address to the
Speaker 2: Nation yesterday, quote, Iran must now make peace. If they
Speaker 2: do not, future attacks will be far greater and a
Speaker 2: lot easier. The Iotola himself is a potential target. Despite
Speaker 2: the reputation, Trump isn't an isolationist. What the Mullers and
Speaker 2: I think much of the commentary misunderstand is that his
Speaker 2: America First ideology is open to precision and lethal strikes
Speaker 2: on enemies abroad. He authorized such in his first term.
Speaker 2: What they don't countenance, though, in America First, is the
Speaker 2: United States being dragged into lengthy foreign wars in far
Speaker 2: away locations. So look, don't expect to see American boots
Speaker 2: on the ground in Tehran anytime soon. But equally, don't
Speaker 2: think that he won't approve that is Trump additional rounds
Speaker 2: of military intervention in the weeks ahead. If Iran doesn't
Speaker 2: come to the table with a plan that involves the
Speaker 2: complete dismantling of their domestic nuclear capacity and regime change,
Speaker 2: then Israel and America will pound them until they do.
Speaker 2: And interestingly, for all the talk in the Middle East
Speaker 2: of Israel being the great Satan, just watch how few
Speaker 2: Arab states actually protest any of this. Of course, Australia's
Speaker 2: view on what's happening is vers virtually irrelevant, governed as
Speaker 2: we are by people that just don't seem to grasp
Speaker 2: the bigger picture. But it was telling that whilst the
Speaker 2: official reactions from Britain and even the EU tacitly endorsed
Speaker 2: the American intervention by reiterating without qualification that Iran must
Speaker 2: never be able to develop a nuclear weapon, we offered
Speaker 2: a dripping, wet rhetorical fur ball of diplomatic nothingness that
Speaker 2: read and I quote the security situation in the region
Speaker 2: is highly volatile, and we continue to call for de escalation, dialogue,
Speaker 2: and diplomacy. As I said, irrelevant. Whilst the Israelis and
Speaker 2: the Americans drop ordinance, we drop some alliteration. But with
Speaker 2: all of that said, I guess the question turns to
Speaker 2: what next, what next? And this is where the Americans
Speaker 2: have let themselves down in the past, especially in the
Speaker 2: Middle East. Getting Sadam was the easy part, likewise scuttling
Speaker 2: the Taliban from Kabul. But winning the peace, well, that's
Speaker 2: a whole other ball game. And if the Americans learnt
Speaker 2: anything from both Iraq and Afghanistan, it should have been
Speaker 2: that you can't just impose democracy on a country. Rather,
Speaker 2: it has to flourish from within. It's got to be
Speaker 2: fertilized and incubated from within. And the Iranian people are
Speaker 2: wary of Western intervention in their domestic political affairs. After all,
Speaker 2: they had a sort of democracy back in the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties and it paved the way for a fellow called
Speaker 2: Muhammad Mosaday to become the prime minister. Now, the only
Speaker 2: problem for the British in the United States was that
Speaker 2: Mossiday didn't get the memo that under no circumstances was
Speaker 2: he to interfere with their tidy little earner, the Anglo
Speaker 2: Iranian Oil Company today we call it BP. So when
Speaker 2: he nationalized Iran's vast oil assets in nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 2: MI six and the CIA launched Operation Ajax with the
Speaker 2: support of the army, they stirred up street mobs, and
Speaker 2: by nineteen fifty three the kup Datar was complete. Mossiday
Speaker 2: was sent to prison, the Shah took control, but the
Speaker 2: seeds of the Islamic Revolution were simultaneously sown. Fast forward
Speaker 2: some seventy two years, and now it's the revolutionary's turn
Speaker 2: to perhaps face revolution. Waiting in the wings somewhere in
Speaker 2: the United States is Reziplavi, the son of the exiled Shah.
Speaker 2: Other candidates to await the tap on the shoulder to
Speaker 2: replace the Iotola and the Revolutionary Guard should the military
Speaker 2: abandon them. Some reports suggest as few as fifteen percent
Speaker 2: of the Iranian populace actually support the current leadership fifteen percent.
Speaker 2: The average Iranian enjoys an equivalent standard of living as
Speaker 2: a person on Vanuatu, with a per capita GDP of
Speaker 2: just seven thousand dollars sanctions have hurt the economy, Oppressive
Speaker 2: theocratic dogmas have held back innovation and freedom. In other words,
Speaker 2: all the ingredients are there to spark an uprising. However,
Speaker 2: a proud people with great history will be very aware
Speaker 2: that although the Israelian American militaries have smashed the Iyatola's
Speaker 2: ability to project power externally, they haven't completely crippled his
Speaker 2: henchman's capa to project power internally. And in two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine and again in twenty twenty one, huge protests
Speaker 2: swept Iran people calling for change. On both occasions, the
Speaker 2: regime deployed force and they held on. And although there
Speaker 2: is absolutely no doubt this time they are at their
Speaker 2: weakest within Iran itself, the regime still holds the whip hand,
Speaker 2: albeit tenuously. Shaye Grivara knew a thing or two about
Speaker 2: regime change, and he once famously said, a revolution is
Speaker 2: not an apple that falls when it's ripe, rather that
Speaker 2: you have to make it fall. In the case of Iran,
Speaker 2: the apple is certainly ripe. Trump's even just hit it
Speaker 2: with a squirt of glyphosate. But it's the Iranians themselves.
Speaker 2: He'll have to shake it from the tree. So that's
Speaker 2: all going on. It's a rather busy and heavy news cycle.
Speaker 2: We'll cover it all as best as we can for you,
Speaker 2: thinking for the feedback coming through. But of course some
Speaker 2: people are sort of they're living on the same planet
Speaker 2: as us, but they're just in another realm, you know,
Speaker 2: and maybe it's nice where they are. Casein point, the
Speaker 2: story that was presented to me this morning by Brianna
Speaker 2: concerning the artistic community in Tasmania, which I think is
Speaker 2: rather populated, and it says here a Tasmanian museum owner
Speaker 2: has created the world's first animal pooh painting competition because
Speaker 2: she's passionate about destigmatizing feces, but she also likes to
Speaker 2: have fun, right, So this is what I mean. You know,
Speaker 2: like there are certain you know, the bulk of the
Speaker 2: news cycle. The average person who's half tuned in, you know,
Speaker 2: they're seeing bombs drop on Iran and bunker busters and
Speaker 2: beaters and all these names like four Doah and is
Speaker 2: Fahan and mean nothing to us all of a sudden, irrelevant. Yeah,
Speaker 2: down on the Apple aisle, they're down to the Apple
Speaker 2: They've got artists painting with animal pooh. As Joel says,
Speaker 2: a real life artist. Yes, well, that's probably quite right anyway.
Speaker 2: Her name is Karen Kosh and she's the c beator
Speaker 2: and owner of Poosium, a primarily science museum. I think
Speaker 2: that's near Richmond from memory, Richmond, which is a nice
Speaker 2: town in Tasmania. Anyway. Last year she invited artists to
Speaker 2: submit works made with animal pooh in her inaugural competition
Speaker 2: called poo Tastic Tasmanian paid off with a two thousand
Speaker 2: dollar prize on offer for the winner. You know, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not quite the archibals, but you know it will
Speaker 2: get there eventually. After a successful first year, the contest
Speaker 2: has returned this year, asking artists to paint expressive portraits
Speaker 2: made with animal pooh. Oh. Here's a photo of Karen Oh. Yes,
Speaker 2: okay anyway. A commissioned portrait of a former politician and environmentalist,
Speaker 2: Bob Brown, painted with pandomelon droppings, provided inspiration for aspiring
Speaker 2: pooh artists. What Bob thought of that? I mean, it's
Speaker 2: terribly you'd say upcycling, which would be a big thing
Speaker 2: in his ideology. Anyway, So that's going on down in Tasmania.
Speaker 2: You can escape the horrors of the world you've just
Speaker 2: got to go to Richmond in Tasmania and a channel
Speaker 2: You're inner artist one three one eight seven three. Okay, Now,
Speaker 2: just while we was speaking about dogs, this is a
Speaker 2: more serious issue because just as autism diagnoses of skyrocketed
Speaker 2: among people young people, particularly in the NDIS, and the
Speaker 2: way it's funded is obviously behind that, but it appears
Speaker 2: behavioral diagnoses have bloomed among dogs and pets in general
Speaker 2: almost simultaneously. Now I don't have a dog, so you know,
Speaker 2: I understand some dogs have mental health disorders, so they're
Speaker 2: depressed or something, and there is medication for that, but
Speaker 2: it's the quantity of diagnoses which seems to all of
Speaker 2: a sudden be a little concerning. Now, what I want
Speaker 2: to know is what's going on? What's going on? Have
Speaker 2: dogs in general always had a lot of these issues
Speaker 2: and they're just not being diagnosed the medications new and innovative.
Speaker 2: I mean they give them prozac that's hardly new. Or
Speaker 2: is there something else going on here? Are we over
Speaker 2: subscribing because the humans, Yeah, the owners, let's be honest,
Speaker 2: aren't effectively and properly conditioning and training their dogs, or
Speaker 2: they're getting dogs, but they work you know, seven days
Speaker 2: a week or six days a week out of home,
Speaker 2: and so the dogs alone and it gets skittish. And
Speaker 2: what's the real story here? Right? Are we creating the problem?
Speaker 2: Are we over diagnosing a problem? Or is there a
Speaker 2: genuine issue among a lot of dogs. So I've got
Speaker 2: no idea, but plenty of you have pet dogs, any
Speaker 2: of them on these antidepressants. Tell me the story one three, one,
Speaker 2: eight seven three. So the ABC report that this all
Speaker 2: comes about the story of a dog called Mabel, and
Speaker 2: Mabel's one of these tiny little fluffings, and it says
Speaker 2: he one of many dogs on medication called Fluoxeity. It's
Speaker 2: a type of antidepressant. It's sold under the brand name Prozac,
Speaker 2: which I think everyone knows about. As it says, some
Speaker 2: vets only get a fifteen minute appointment. However, to make
Speaker 2: the decision to prescribe. Now, in the human realm, I
Speaker 2: don't think too many doctors will be that keen to
Speaker 2: put people onto zolaf or something with a fifteen minute consultation.
Speaker 2: You tend to have a little bit we should, I think,
Speaker 2: have a bit more of a backstory to work out
Speaker 2: whether someone needs medicating or they need something else. But
Speaker 2: it seems that some vets in and out. You know,
Speaker 2: the old six minute medicine which is afflicting the PBS,
Speaker 2: seems to be an issue with vets. Some yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: dog's got a depression here. Given this, as they say
Speaker 2: in the story, it's creating concerns from some in the
Speaker 2: industry about just how many dogs are going onto anti
Speaker 2: anxiety medication as a first line treatment, not as a
Speaker 2: last resort. A study, and this came out of America.
Speaker 2: It looks at Melily in fact, looked at millions of
Speaker 2: canine medical records from twenty ten to twenty twenty, so
Speaker 2: a ten year period found over that decade a tenfold
Speaker 2: increase in behavioral problems and an increase in antidepressant medication
Speaker 2: to boot. Now, you know, I don't know who makes
Speaker 2: it as a BAY or I don't know someone makes
Speaker 2: these sort of medications. They'll be doing very nicely out
Speaker 2: of it. But it's a justified in these sort of
Speaker 2: quantities and scales. Now, some Australian vets now say they've
Speaker 2: seen an increase in dogs at their clinics with behavioral issues.
Speaker 2: So we're talking abot aggression, separation, anxiety, as well as
Speaker 2: problematic behaviors. But in Australia we don't seem to collect
Speaker 2: too much data. There's a shock and so we don't
Speaker 2: really know via the Australian Vetery Association whether there is
Speaker 2: a significant rise in the use of these antidepressants in
Speaker 2: dogs or not. But there is an Australian pet pharmacy
Speaker 2: group called your Pet PA and they listed fluoxetine on
Speaker 2: the website the Prozac as the third best selling prescription
Speaker 2: medication for the dogs. It gives you a bit of
Speaker 2: a sense. Now, I think antidepressants are the top sellers
Speaker 2: for humans. It doesn't look like it's going to be
Speaker 2: too long before they're the top seller for dogs, now,
Speaker 2: is it? Ok? Maybe it's justified cats. I know some
Speaker 2: cats have been on these things for years to do.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying they shouldn't be prescribed, but do you
Speaker 2: think somewhere, somehow alarm bells should be going off a
Speaker 2: little bit. If you've seen in a decade over an
Speaker 2: American and we followed the trends here a ten time increase,
Speaker 2: tenfold increase, you know, I mean cause and effect. What's
Speaker 2: going on here? You know, if it were happening with humans.
Speaker 2: You'd think we'd have an inquiry, but there again, it
Speaker 2: is happening with humans, but I'm not sure we have
Speaker 2: had those inquiries. One three, one eight seven three. Okay,
Speaker 2: it's nineteen to one. Lot of feedback coming through, particularly
Speaker 2: about the poop painting. So my next guest has no
Speaker 2: idea what we're talking about. I'll explain to Tommy just
Speaker 2: a moment. But Mitch says, do any of the paint
Speaker 2: Winnie the Pooh?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Good question. Mitch Brett says, where would you hang your
Speaker 2: Pooh painting in the outhouse? I don't know if he's
Speaker 2: a for sale, just quietly, but a few people suggesting,
Speaker 2: everyone alone of Jackson Pollock. I understand that. Thank you.
Speaker 2: One three, one eight seven three. Keep it coming. Now,
Speaker 2: Australia's population we touched on this off the very top
Speaker 2: of the show. Several issues. We've outlined them numerous times
Speaker 2: in the past. We could talk about the staggering population
Speaker 2: growth that we've seen through mass migration recently, or we
Speaker 2: could look at the fact that fundamentally people are aging
Speaker 2: more older people than younger ones had has an impact
Speaker 2: on tax and redistribution and whatnot. But going hand in
Speaker 2: hand with all of that is the declining rate of fertility. Now.
Speaker 2: I think Australia is now down to about one point
Speaker 2: seven or something like that, when the replacement rate is
Speaker 2: two point one. In fact, we might even be lower.
Speaker 2: And if it weren't for migration, GDP not per capita
Speaker 2: that's already in the toilet, but GDP for the nation
Speaker 2: would be in reverse. We would be in without a doubt,
Speaker 2: we would be in a recession. So what's going on
Speaker 2: globally because clearly our economic model at the moment is
Speaker 2: one where we're not having enough babies to replace ourselves,
Speaker 2: but we're importing the surplus babies of somewhere else. People
Speaker 2: that say Australia is a better place where I'm living
Speaker 2: better opportunities, I'm going to bring my family, We're going
Speaker 2: to start a new life and wait. So the migrant
Speaker 2: waves come, they tend to have more children initially, but
Speaker 2: as they build into the Australian way of life, they
Speaker 2: don't only just start supporting Australian football teams and get
Speaker 2: a taste for cricket, they also, over time, it seems,
Speaker 2: get a taste having fewer children themselves. And internationally this
Speaker 2: is now a phenomena. By twenty one hundred, it is
Speaker 2: expected that the global population global population will have peaked
Speaker 2: and will start to go into decline reverse. So I
Speaker 2: said to Mark leave earlier. Just think about that from
Speaker 2: a selfish point of view, what does that mean for
Speaker 2: your superbalance? A macroeconomic point of view, what on earth
Speaker 2: does that mean for the way we understand modern economics,
Speaker 2: the stock market and every pillar that we have built
Speaker 2: our wealth on. Fewer consumers. It's not something that anyone
Speaker 2: alive today or indeed for many generations, has ever had
Speaker 2: to countenance. So what's the story at home? Well? Tom
Speaker 2: Duseovich has written brilliantly about all of this in The Australian.
Speaker 2: Is the policy editor there, and he's on the line, Tom,
Speaker 2: good to speak with you. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 4: Good to catch up, Michael.
Speaker 2: We're having fewer kids. Clearly the TV isn't on the
Speaker 2: blink like it was in the sixties. But what are
Speaker 2: we going to do about it? Should we do anything?
Speaker 4: There doesn't seem to be a lot of urgency about it.
Speaker 4: In Australia our fertility rates slipped to one point five.
Speaker 4: That's the sort of lowest we've ever had since records
Speaker 4: have been kept. In the fifties and sixties, you know,
Speaker 4: each each woman was having about three and a half
Speaker 4: or certainly somewhere between three and three and a half children.
Speaker 4: And then for a whole range of reasons, probably to
Speaker 4: do with women's increased participation in the labor market, the
Speaker 4: really high cost of having children, the high cost of
Speaker 4: housing that started to plummet, and it's plummeted all over
Speaker 4: the world. I mean, we haven't experienced the sort of
Speaker 4: declines that they have in Japan. Korea. Careerslevy rate is
Speaker 4: zero point seven, so that's a third of the replacement rate.
Speaker 4: Our population isn't falling because essentially you need two point
Speaker 4: one to keep the population growing, and pretty much eighty
Speaker 4: percent of our population growth is due to migration. Typically
Speaker 4: there's younger people, not whole families that are coming here.
Speaker 4: Bically are people converting from student or work visus temporary
Speaker 4: work visus, and so they tend to be in their
Speaker 4: twenties or thereabouts. It sort of stops your population aging
Speaker 4: for a while. But then you know, our migrants get
Speaker 4: older as well, so you know, we're in this sort
Speaker 4: of delicate position now where our population is aging and
Speaker 4: our fertility rate is falling.
Speaker 2: You're right in your piece of the collapse in the
Speaker 2: birth rate is unmistakable, but maybe it's also unstoppable now.
Speaker 2: Of course, Peter Costello, when we had money in the bank,
Speaker 2: tried to do something about this. One for mom, one
Speaker 2: for dad, one for the country. We don't have money
Speaker 2: in the bank anymore, and that didn't really work out
Speaker 2: that well either. I mean, I don't want to broad
Speaker 2: brushes too much, but in some respects, many of the
Speaker 2: wrong people were having the additional children, and the ones
Speaker 2: that were productive, paying high taxes and whatever weren't taking
Speaker 2: the bait. So what does the nation? What can the
Speaker 2: nation do about it?
Speaker 4: You've got to do it on a multi pronged approach.
Speaker 4: Some of those things. You know, the Prime Minister is
Speaker 4: very keen on universal childcare, so clearly that's one element
Speaker 4: of it. Clearly, women want to work, they want to
Speaker 4: do well in the labor market. They have higher rates
Speaker 4: of education than men do, so we want to make
Speaker 4: sure that those opportunities are available, particularly to get our
Speaker 4: productivity up as well. So on that front, we need
Speaker 4: blokes helping more with child rearing and doing more work
Speaker 4: at home. We need more housing, so the cost of
Speaker 4: housing isn't so prohibitive, and you know, we need to
Speaker 4: try and help people with the costs of raising kids.
Speaker 2: So this is an economic issue. But basically you're saying,
Speaker 2: it's not that people aren't attracted to each other anymore.
Speaker 2: It's not that they have lost the birds and the
Speaker 2: beeze lesson from you eight. It's simply economically. They say, well, look,
Speaker 2: if we want to buy a house in Sidney or Melbourne,
Speaker 2: and we want to have a car, and we want
Speaker 2: to once in a lifetime or twice head over to
Speaker 2: London and see the palace, we can only afford one
Speaker 2: point four children. Otherwise we just can't make it happen.
Speaker 4: Well, that's part of the story. It certainly is, you know,
Speaker 4: the prohibitive cost, a very high cost of having children
Speaker 4: is you know, research tells us the number one factor.
Speaker 4: There's also another thing going on. I kind of tend
Speaker 4: to look at things through an economic and political lens.
Speaker 4: But like you, if you look at what's happening in society,
Speaker 4: there are a lot of you know, really smart people
Speaker 4: who are now starting to assess what the effect of
Speaker 4: the Internet and smartphones has been not only on the
Speaker 4: mental health of young people, as is increasingly being documented
Speaker 4: through social psychologists and the like, but this is growing
Speaker 4: concern that young people have forgotten how to socialize. It's
Speaker 4: too easy to sit at home, you know, get food
Speaker 4: delivered in, watch Netflix or beyond sort of social chats
Speaker 4: or whatnot, and rather than going out and meeting people,
Speaker 4: you know, partnering up being an attractive proposition. Men and
Speaker 4: women are sort of letting that split by the number
Speaker 4: of childless women, I saw one study that said it
Speaker 4: used to be around about eight to ten percent of
Speaker 4: women were childless over the course of their lifetime. Now
Speaker 4: that's crept up to about thirty to thirty five percent.
Speaker 5: A lot of.
Speaker 4: Women are looking. A lot of women are very well educated,
Speaker 4: earning really high incomes, and they're kind of thinking, well,
Speaker 4: you know, the market out there, those blokes aren't that attractive.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: It's they're not dressing up, they're not going out, they're
Speaker 4: sort of they're not very well socialized.
Speaker 2: Well, they should be hanging around the offices of the Australian.
Speaker 2: We're all the handsome men hang out right tom but
Speaker 2: down there at Holt Street to wherever you guys are.
Speaker 2: But you see, there's an issue economically here, because maybe
Speaker 2: this will all just self correct. You know, nature has
Speaker 2: a way of recalibrating the meter when necessary. There's no
Speaker 2: doubt that the rate of population growth the last century
Speaker 2: has been ridiculously high, and that can't go on forever.
Speaker 2: We will simply out resource ourselves. But if it were
Speaker 2: to stop at say twenty one hundred, as a lot
Speaker 2: of the models suggest, and start to tape it down,
Speaker 2: what does that mean?
Speaker 4: For?
Speaker 2: As I said earlier, our superannuation balance is the broader
Speaker 2: economic story, the way we understand markets and trader because
Speaker 2: the whole thing isn't it. Essentially the whole market is
Speaker 2: a Ponzi scheme. It's predicated off more people buying the
Speaker 2: goods that certain producers put out to market, and that's
Speaker 2: where the share price is factored in. So if all
Speaker 2: of a sudden there's fewer consumers and then fewer again
Speaker 2: and fewer again, and Western nations which have been this
Speaker 2: sort of honey pot, aren't going to be able to
Speaker 2: attract people from Africa from the subcontinent because they're not
Speaker 2: there to attract, or if they are, will be depleting
Speaker 2: their own populations. The whole economic model is going to
Speaker 2: be blown up, isn't it.
Speaker 4: There's a whole lot of different things going on. You know,
Speaker 4: you've got to sort of think. Look, one of the
Speaker 4: studies I have looked at, one of the economists and
Speaker 4: the American economists said population may peak in twenty fifty five.
Speaker 4: That's thirty years away. And he says something like, in
Speaker 4: the course of human recorded history sixty thousand years, neither
Speaker 4: wars nor pandemics have ever produced a fall in the
Speaker 4: global population. Look, there are some things going on here,
Speaker 4: like inheritances. You know, as a baby boom generation dies
Speaker 4: off all over the world, someone is going to be
Speaker 4: inheriting that wealth. We're relying on all sorts of technologies
Speaker 4: to raise our ability to produce things to give ourselves
Speaker 4: more leisure time, higher incomes. What we're also seeing is,
Speaker 4: you know, in a lot of countries that you know
Speaker 4: that haven't been doing well, we have very very high populations,
Speaker 4: but they're not big consumers just yet. Whether we're we're
Speaker 4: looking at you know, there's been this tremendous rise in China,
Speaker 4: for instance. We're going to have a tremendous rise in Indonesia,
Speaker 4: in India, Sub Saharan Africa. So you know, on a
Speaker 4: long on a long curve of history, things just might
Speaker 4: kind of recalibrate, but it'll be a huge test for
Speaker 4: the capitalist system, which is geared towards more and more
Speaker 4: and more.
Speaker 2: That's right. We'll have to look at growth through a
Speaker 2: different prison. As sort of a semi student of history.
Speaker 2: Look at what happened with Rome at one point when
Speaker 2: Rome itself got down to a population of tens of
Speaker 2: thousands from the height of a million odd at the
Speaker 2: height of the empire. You've got a sense of decline.
Speaker 2: Ever since, it's grown again, and so is the economy
Speaker 2: with it. So these things often go hand in glove.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating to speak. We haven't exhausted it, but we'll
Speaker 2: return to it down the track.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Tom Jowell, Michael, thank you.
Speaker 2: Well, there's Tom Ducovich's policy editor at the Oars. James
Speaker 2: rather makes a good point of the text is with
Speaker 2: all of that, don't forget all the kids that have
Speaker 2: been brainwashed into believing the world's on the verge of apocalypse,
Speaker 2: and they've chosen not to bring children up for that reason.
Speaker 2: It's a stute observation all right, Stay with this news
Speaker 2: this next beautiful day outside, enjoy it if you can.
Speaker 2: I'll be joined straight after the news by Michael Pembroke,
Speaker 2: author in his story in new book out Silk, Silver, Opium,
Speaker 2: The Trade with China That Changed History. It's a book
Speaker 2: about history, but it's very relevant to the present.
Speaker 1: Now onto gb and network stations, back to afternoons with
Speaker 1: Michael McLaren.
Speaker 2: Where with war brewing again in the Middle East, the
Speaker 2: focus of geopolitical attention that shifted away from China and Taiwan,
Speaker 2: even for just a moment. But it wasn't that long
Speaker 2: ago that the West was preoccupied with the threat of China.
Speaker 2: As they built their military and naval might, their economy grew,
Speaker 2: the balance of power between China and the United States
Speaker 2: continued to shift and in China's favor, and for many analysts, war,
Speaker 2: even with our greatest trading partner, seems inevitable, not a
Speaker 2: matter of if but when. Now, of course that may
Speaker 2: not happen, but history does have a pattern, a way
Speaker 2: of repeating itself. And if you refer to this book
Speaker 2: that I've got in front of me, it's titled Silk,
Speaker 2: Silver and Opium, The Trade with China, the change history.
Speaker 2: You do get a little bit of a sense of history.
Speaker 2: Repeating Michael Pembroke is the author. It's an incredible read,
Speaker 2: but I think it very much informs the situation of
Speaker 2: the present by anchoring it in the stories of the past.
Speaker 2: And Michael Pembroke with me in the studio. Good to
Speaker 2: speak with you, Michael, and thank you for coming.
Speaker 7: Aain, Hello Michael, nice to be here.
Speaker 2: As the title suggests, silk, silver and opium, and you
Speaker 2: write this in the prologue to the book represent the
Speaker 2: highs and lows of the old China trade. Its beginning,
Speaker 2: its middle, and the end. So the beginning is silk,
Speaker 2: the middle is silver, the end opium.
Speaker 7: Yeah, very sad, very sad.
Speaker 5: Ending.
Speaker 2: Well, the story of silk. They goes back to the
Speaker 2: Roman Empire, doesn't it with the Chinese.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 7: So Augustus was the first Roman emperor and he came
Speaker 7: to power in about twenty seven BC, and he had
Speaker 7: just defeated Cleopatra and Antony a quiet Egypt. The riches
Speaker 7: of Egypt came to the Roman Empire. The people of
Speaker 7: Rome became wealthy beyond their dreams, and they wanted all
Speaker 7: the delights and delicacies and exotic products of the East,
Speaker 7: and the trade boomed not just across land, but through
Speaker 7: the Red Sea and around to India, which connected up
Speaker 7: to the west of China.
Speaker 2: So China is expanding westward, Rome eastward, Yes, Persia, I
Speaker 2: suppose as the folkrim in the middle, and through that
Speaker 2: the trade continues exactly. Yes, Okay, So they get hooked
Speaker 2: on silk. I guess, having read your book, Chinese silk
Speaker 2: was for the Romans a little bit like what Chinese
Speaker 2: manufacturing and goods are for us today. They were the
Speaker 2: commodities that you had to have, and they were the
Speaker 2: be all on the endoor.
Speaker 7: Well, they were the bee all on the end or,
Speaker 7: but they were different in this sense. Nothing like silk
Speaker 7: was known to the Romans. They knew wool, they knew furs,
Speaker 7: they knew rough materials that the peasants.
Speaker 2: Wore because Indian cotton hadn't come in.
Speaker 7: It was too early for Indian cotton. So this was
Speaker 7: unlike anything else Linen they knew. And when Augustus introduced
Speaker 7: the trade in silk, the people were just amazed. They'd
Speaker 7: never seen such fine cloth, such beautiful colors, and the
Speaker 7: women went crazy and so did some of the men.
Speaker 2: It's funny actually jumping around here a little bit. Well,
Speaker 2: I was going to the end here, but it's funny
Speaker 2: how women play very central role in the story of
Speaker 2: the Western China. When you think about the wives of
Speaker 2: the traders of the factories down in Canton, and how
Speaker 2: that was a pretext for war, and we'll get to
Speaker 2: that at a second. They do play a prominent role.
Speaker 2: We think of modern China as the manufacturing powerhouse of
Speaker 2: the world, and they are. But this isn't a story
Speaker 2: that's or a label as such that's just bubbled up
Speaker 2: in the last hundred years. I mean, as you point
Speaker 2: out in the book, go back to the ninth century AD,
Speaker 2: China was the manufacturing powerhouse of the world.
Speaker 7: Back then, it certainly was, but especially between the mid
Speaker 7: fifteen hundreds and the eighteen hundreds, China was a global
Speaker 7: manufacturing superpower, as it has returned to become in the
Speaker 7: twenty first century. And the result of that was that
Speaker 7: they mostly demanded payment in silver because there was not
Speaker 7: much else they wanted, and all the world's silver was
Speaker 7: shipped to China. It's so much so that the balance
Speaker 7: of trade got out of control completely out of control.
Speaker 7: Sir Isaac Newton, in one of his many roles, was
Speaker 7: Warden of the Royal Mint in London, and he complained
Speaker 7: that China was carrying away the silver from all Europe.
Speaker 7: And one of the remarks that I really like is
Speaker 7: by Carl Linnaeus, a botanist but also something of a
Speaker 7: public intellectual, and he expressed the view that there is
Speaker 7: nothing more important than to close that gate to China
Speaker 7: through which all the silver of Europe disappears. It sounds
Speaker 7: like a modern trumpion, and I laughed when I came
Speaker 7: across it.
Speaker 2: Europe first, Yes, but that's the thing. This is where
Speaker 2: opium comes in, isn't it. Because the silver was heading
Speaker 2: into China, So that the europe and some of the
Speaker 2: European said, well, hang, we're sending good silver and we're
Speaker 2: buying trinkets back like tea luxuries. You can't build a
Speaker 2: modern wealthy economy or an empire on that. So here's
Speaker 2: an idea. Let's get them hooked on the opium and
Speaker 2: we'll get the silver back.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Some officials in the British government and the East
Speaker 7: India Company came up with the idea in the late
Speaker 7: eighteenth century that they would start to industrialize the production
Speaker 7: of opium in northern India. So over time they created
Speaker 7: a huge eight hundred kilometer stretch of the Lower Ganges
Speaker 7: as an opium growing area. It was the biggest in
Speaker 7: the world, much bigger than put the Talban to shame, yes,
Speaker 7: and put Turkeia to shame, which was the land of
Speaker 7: the poppy. And it was all completely cynical because the
Speaker 7: opium was sold at auctions in Calcutta to private traders.
Speaker 7: The British government and the India Company knew the private
Speaker 7: traders would then smuggle it to China, and they used
Speaker 7: that mechanism as a means for reversing the trade in silver.
Speaker 7: So the Chinese paid silver for opium and the British
Speaker 7: government profited hugely from the profits made on the sale
Speaker 7: of opium.
Speaker 2: Correct me if my pronunciation's wrong. But one of the
Speaker 2: key figures in this story is that qinglong is that
Speaker 2: how you pronounce it, King long es. So between sixteen
Speaker 2: sixty one and seventeen ninety nine you got the three emperors,
Speaker 2: the Qing Emperors. China's that it's apergy, Yes. By nineteen
Speaker 2: twelve they're on their knees yes, how did that happen?
Speaker 7: Well, First of all, the movement of opium into China
Speaker 7: on a massive scale just took off a like drugs do,
Speaker 7: like fentanyl does in the United States, and it weakened society.
Speaker 7: The Emperor was so concerned about the effect of opium
Speaker 7: in the eighteen thirties that he directed one of his
Speaker 7: officials to stop it, to bring it to a halt.
Speaker 7: This very principal man went down to Canton, which was
Speaker 7: the heart of the British trade, and decided to imprison
Speaker 7: anyone smuggling opium and told all the foreign traders in
Speaker 7: Canton that they would have to give up their supplies
Speaker 7: of opium and if they didn't, he would punish them. Well,
Speaker 7: they couldn't believe it. They resisted. The Chinese locked them
Speaker 7: all up in their warehouses and homes in Canton and
Speaker 7: kept them there for about two months whilst the opium
Speaker 7: was collected and destroyed. This was such an affront to
Speaker 7: the British government because so much money was involved, that
Speaker 7: they started the First Opium War in late eighteen thirty
Speaker 7: nine in order to teach the Chinese a lesson, and
Speaker 7: it had no other purpose other than to punish the
Speaker 7: Chinese and make them understand that the British would not
Speaker 7: be interrupted in their trade.
Speaker 2: And the French not so much with opium, but the
Speaker 2: French were involved in trade, the Americans, the Russians, there
Speaker 2: were a number of European powers. Anyone who's watched fifty
Speaker 2: five days in peaking those Yes, there was more than
Speaker 2: just the British. Although the British seemed to be the
Speaker 2: big player.
Speaker 7: On they were dominant, and the Americans started to come
Speaker 7: in after the Revolutionary War and became probably the second
Speaker 7: most powerful trading force in China alongside the British.
Speaker 2: Is there a correlation between the end of slavery and
Speaker 2: the rise of the opium trade as far as chasing
Speaker 2: a prophet.
Speaker 7: It's possible. I mean, that's a perspective that I haven't
Speaker 7: thought about. There was certainly a correlation between the t
Speaker 7: trade and slavery and the sugar trade. Yes, that was
Speaker 7: a triangle of trade that fed off each other.
Speaker 2: Part of this story seemed, and it's beautifully written. I mean,
Speaker 2: I recommend this book for people who want to understand
Speaker 2: a bit about what's going on.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: You've got to understand what's happened because the many China
Speaker 2: observers acknowledge, and that's not to say they support the
Speaker 2: Communist Party or anything like that, but they acknowledge that
Speaker 2: ingrained in the Chinese DNA is this sense of humiliation
Speaker 2: from the past, and they're not going to let it
Speaker 2: happen on their watch second time. And they know what
Speaker 2: happens with trade, and they've seen this and whatnot. So
Speaker 2: there does seem to be a narrative flowing through this
Speaker 2: story that covers many centuries. In many ways, there's a
Speaker 2: conflict between what the traders want and what the governments
Speaker 2: that they are loyal to want, or I shouldn't say loyal.
Speaker 2: In many cases they weren't loyal to their governments at all.
Speaker 2: They were just loyal to money. But they happened to
Speaker 2: be British or they happened to be French. And the
Speaker 2: diplomatic arrivals from Europe often stymied the trade of the traders.
Speaker 2: They got upset that there was a parallel discussion going
Speaker 2: on with the Chinese, wasn't there One was about money
Speaker 2: from the traders, and one was political and geopolitical from
Speaker 2: the governments.
Speaker 7: Well, the merchants and the traders as always were interested
Speaker 7: only in one thing, that is maximizing their profit. They
Speaker 7: didn't care about morality or principles whatsoever. The irony is
Speaker 7: that some in Britain spoke out against the opium trade,
Speaker 7: and many in America spoke out against the opium trade.
Speaker 7: But at the end of the day, money talked, and
Speaker 7: it was money that swung the governments of the United
Speaker 7: States Britain in favor of allowing the trade and not
Speaker 7: intervening until right at the end. It took sixty or
Speaker 7: seventy years before people recognized that they could not allow
Speaker 7: this trade to continue.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're a historian, do you see parallels with
Speaker 2: a lot of the contemporaneous debate going on with China today?
Speaker 2: I mean, take, for example, the position that comes out
Speaker 2: of Wa generally speaking, as opposed to the East coast
Speaker 2: of Australia, where the political class resides about how we.
Speaker 7: Deal with well, Twiggy Forest is the Jardine Matheson of
Speaker 7: his day. Jardine Matheson.
Speaker 2: He may not like that comparison. I was going to
Speaker 2: ask you tell us about this Jardine character.
Speaker 7: Well, putting aside the morality of the opium trade, Jardine
Speaker 7: Matheson wanted to pursue their trade to the hilt and
Speaker 7: they didn't care anything about what the government wanted to do.
Speaker 7: And Twiggy another minerals exporters from West Australia just promote
Speaker 7: the trade, and I have some sympathy for them. I
Speaker 7: believe in a pragmatic approach to political relations, but that's
Speaker 7: not the subject of my book.
Speaker 2: No, But nonetheless there are interesting parallels. Yes, the reason
Speaker 2: we're speaking is trying to understand the present. Yes, And
Speaker 2: to understand the present, you've got to understand the past. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And the past is informing everything that's happening now from China,
Speaker 2: I guess you know, we get a lot of Western perspectives,
Speaker 2: and fair enough on the whole situation. If we were
Speaker 2: sitting in Beijing, and again I'm no sympathiser for what
Speaker 2: goes on out of the Communist Party, far from it.
Speaker 2: But if we were to sit in their chair and
Speaker 2: look out to the Western world with this history that
Speaker 2: you've written about, we would have a different perspective about
Speaker 2: the situation at the moment, wouldn't we. Oh?
Speaker 7: Absolutely, And if anyone's serious about understanding the past and
Speaker 7: the present, but especially the present, it's probably not wise
Speaker 7: to confine your reading and you're listening to Western media.
Speaker 2: Jardine, tell me a bit more about that character, because
Speaker 2: he is central in what happened, isn't he.
Speaker 7: Well Ian and Matheson were two scotsmen. They became partners
Speaker 7: and formed a huge conglomerate called Jardine Matheson. I think
Speaker 7: it's still known by the same name and still exists.
Speaker 7: And they were private traders. Jardine started as an eighteen
Speaker 7: year old with the East India Company and then left
Speaker 7: to run his own business life. They made so much
Speaker 7: money peddling opium in Canton and throughout China that they
Speaker 7: became wealthy beyond their wildest dreams forgotten which one, either
Speaker 7: Jardine or Matheson became the second largest landowner in the
Speaker 7: United Kingdom. Jardine became a member of the House of Commons.
Speaker 2: Does he also chewed the year of the Prime Minister
Speaker 2: to get the first opium more up? Oh?
Speaker 7: Absolutely, yes, yes, it was a bit like I could
Speaker 7: draw some examples with what's happening at the moment in Washington,
Speaker 7: d C. But it's a bit like someone with a
Speaker 7: vital inter in the money side of things controlling government policy,
Speaker 7: because Jardine constantly wrote to the government, constantly wrote to
Speaker 7: the Foreign Minister, Lord Palmerston, and attended on his office
Speaker 7: in London whenever he could. Whenever he was in London,
Speaker 7: went to Whitehall, and he certainly had the air of
Speaker 7: the government, and was there three days before the vital
Speaker 7: Cabinet meeting on which the Government decided to embark on
Speaker 7: the first Opium War. In fact, the plan presented by
Speaker 7: Lord Palmerston at that cabinet meeting at Windsor Castle, strangely enough,
Speaker 7: was a mirror image of what Palmerston had proposed.
Speaker 2: Just to conclude, I go back to the introduction where
Speaker 2: you say, if we fail to understand China's past and
Speaker 2: the history of its trading relationship with the West, we
Speaker 2: risked miscalculation and misreading. We fuel mistrust and we invite misjudgment.
Speaker 2: Do you think, broadly speaking, we are failing in all
Speaker 2: of those metrics.
Speaker 7: We're not doing well enough. We may not have failed yet.
Speaker 7: The crunch hasn't come. But we must do more. And
Speaker 7: I'm optimistic and hope for the best, don't we all?
Speaker 2: Well? People could do worse than read your book, Silk
Speaker 2: Silver Opium, the trade with China, the change history. It's
Speaker 2: a fantastic read. I recommended Michael Pembroke. Thank you for
Speaker 2: joining us. Thanks Michael, been a pleasure, Michael Pembroke. And
Speaker 2: that book, Silk Silver Opium will be out shortly in
Speaker 2: all the good bookstores. And you know how the rest
Speaker 2: of the drill goes. Silk Silver apiena very good book. Indeed,
Speaker 2: twenty three minutes past one, speaking of resources and whatnot,
Speaker 2: Mitch has just thrown this bit of trivia at me. Look,
Speaker 2: I'm not chaving that time to verify it, but I'll
Speaker 2: take him at his word. He says, Now you speak
Speaker 2: about silver, But he says, here's a trivia question about gold.
Speaker 2: If you were able to take all the gold that
Speaker 2: has been mined found by man since they started using it,
Speaker 2: and made a solid cube out of that, what would
Speaker 2: the dimensions of that cube be? He said? The answer
Speaker 2: is around twenty five meters by twenty five meters, twenty
Speaker 2: five by twenty five by twenty five, So that's a cube.
Speaker 2: He said. No, what I've asked has come close to
Speaker 2: getting that right. That's from Mitch. I wouldn't have had
Speaker 2: a clue to be honest, and I'm not. I assume
Speaker 2: that's right, Mitch. I'll take each word. I mean, some
Speaker 2: people out there might say yes, no. But if you
Speaker 2: imagine a cube twenty five meters in length, twenty five
Speaker 2: meters in width, and twenty five meters in height, and
Speaker 2: you packed all of the gold that's been mined and
Speaker 2: used by man since you know, I don't know, the
Speaker 2: Romans and the Egyptians were knocking out gold out of
Speaker 2: all the minds in the ancient world or whatever that's it.
Speaker 2: That doesn't seem like a lot in the scheme of things,
Speaker 2: doesn't now? Wonder they stop using any coins? One three,
Speaker 2: one eight seven three. You've got any more fun facts
Speaker 2: or trivia? We love all of that on the show
Speaker 2: one three one eight seven three. Now I want you
Speaker 2: to ever listen to a bit of audio in a second.
Speaker 2: This has come from the BBC, so you know, the
Speaker 2: British parent of the ABC out here Artie as they
Speaker 2: call it, and it's without a doubt in ow left
Speaker 2: of center in its general persuasion. But Britain is going
Speaker 2: through a bit of a seismic rumble about how it
Speaker 2: defines women. You know, the High Court over there have
Speaker 2: decided that actually, you know, there is a biological basis
Speaker 2: to a lot of this shock horror, and so the
Speaker 2: ruptures and the rumbles are now playing out in a
Speaker 2: range of different ways. So bring in a BBC News
Speaker 2: presenter by the name of Martin Croxel. I think I've
Speaker 2: seen her on BBC World Service Occasion. Does good job anyway.
Speaker 2: So she's reading the teleprompt as anyone who's ever done
Speaker 2: television as you just you sit there and you look
Speaker 2: down the lens of this thing and you push your
Speaker 2: pedal underneath and the word scroll. You're just reading. Generally,
Speaker 2: if you're news reader, someone else has written the script
Speaker 2: for you. You're just the face and the voice. Now,
Speaker 2: she may not have read this in advance. This might
Speaker 2: have been an updated script. I don't know. But she's
Speaker 2: reading a report about advice for vulnerable people during heat waves.
Speaker 2: You know, that's twenty nine degrees or something outrageous in
Speaker 2: England at the moment, so you know, people are fainting
Speaker 2: at her. So she's reading this news report about advice
Speaker 2: advice for vulnerable people in a heat wave, and then
Speaker 2: she's going blah blah blah, blah blah blah, bah, and
Speaker 2: then on the script she just reads it pregnant people.
Speaker 2: Bah bah bah bah bah. And you can see when
Speaker 2: you watch her, you might have seen this already on
Speaker 2: YouTube or on the internet, something clicks in the back
Speaker 2: of the brain. I mean, she is a biological woman,
Speaker 2: after all. And then she goes no, no, no, no, and
Speaker 2: she says women and then carries on and there's a
Speaker 2: slight roll of the eyes and well, you know, keen
Speaker 2: observers have noted this and it's now gone, as they say, viral.
Speaker 2: Now I assume she's still got a job at the BBC.
Speaker 2: She should, She should, because she's just standing up for
Speaker 2: biological and scientific fact, right and surely if there's no
Speaker 2: place for that in the news, there's no place for
Speaker 2: it anywhere. Anyway. Here's the audio you're not going to
Speaker 2: you can't see the eye roll, but you'll get the
Speaker 2: you'll get the the tone. Have a listen.
Speaker 8: Malcolm Mystery, who is involved in the research, says that
Speaker 8: the aged, pregnant people, women and those with pre existing
Speaker 8: health conditions need to take precautions good honor.
Speaker 2: It takes some guts, you know, it takes some guts
Speaker 2: in the heat of the moment. To make a call
Speaker 2: like that, particularly when you know the zeitgeis your employer
Speaker 2: probably isn't on that wavelength. She's taken a stand, and
Speaker 2: I think JK. Rowling and others have already come out
Speaker 2: and SA good on it. Well, she'll have some powerful
Speaker 2: backers in a corner. But I'm sure she doesn't want
Speaker 2: to be some sort of feminist hero, but she's certainly
Speaker 2: a champion of biology. And the more people that just
Speaker 2: speak sense in this matter sensitively, you know, we're hurt people.
Speaker 2: But there's no say men cannot get pregnant. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is just I know this will be a newsflash
Speaker 2: to some particularly young people who have been brought up
Speaker 2: believing that anything's possible because you think it is. But
Speaker 2: men don't have wombs, So men won't carry babies. They
Speaker 2: don't they don't have the requisite kit to carry babies.
Speaker 2: And even if people are born male but identify as
Speaker 2: female and undergo surgery, they can't deliver babies. Only women
Speaker 2: can do that, biological women. And so when you talk
Speaker 2: about pregnant people, you are only talking about women, right,
Speaker 2: And it shouldn't be controversial to say that. Although in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, in many places around the Western world.
Speaker 2: Elsewhere they've got other problems, they've got real problems. But
Speaker 2: in the Western world it is controversial to say that
Speaker 2: shouldn't be truth to defense one three, one eight seven three.
Speaker 2: Let's go to the news aeron Margaret.
Speaker 9: Afternoon, Good afternoon, Michael. Petrol prices are likely to rise
Speaker 9: as conflict escalates in the Middle East, but muttering bodies
Speaker 9: say there is no need to panic. Cut Our Airways
Speaker 9: is continuing to monitor the situation between Israel and Iran,
Speaker 9: while other airlines between Australia and Europe have changed their roots.
Speaker 9: The Premier says he's willing to listen to concerns from
Speaker 9: nurses at Westmead Hospital that patient care has been compromised
Speaker 9: as neonatal intensive care staff walk off the job. And
Speaker 9: there's a minor flood warning for the Cooks River for
Speaker 9: tonight and tomorrow at the Tempee Bridge at high Tide
Speaker 9: in Sport. The Oklahoma City Thunder our NBA champions after
Speaker 9: winning the series deciding Game seven over the Indiana Paces
Speaker 9: one hundred and three to ninety one. It's the Thunders
Speaker 9: first NBA title and there'll be more news at two
Speaker 9: o'clock on afternoons.
Speaker 3: Oh, weather are update.
Speaker 2: We'll be here to help in unexpected weather.
Speaker 3: Nurmain Insurance a help company.
Speaker 2: Okay, Sydney today sunny and twenty two. It's about the
Speaker 2: best we've had for a couple of weeks. Beautiful day outside,
Speaker 2: pretty much the same everywhere. It'll be up to twenty
Speaker 2: three at Richmond today, Terry Hills just twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: for Liverpool and Bondai and Parramatta twenty two elsewhere Tomorrow showers.
Speaker 2: There could be six mil of rain tomorrow top of
Speaker 2: twenty one in the city before a bit of cloud
Speaker 2: but largely dry I think Wednesday, although cooler top of
Speaker 2: just seventeen. Get your coats ready. Camberra today fifteen, shower
Speaker 2: or two developing. Tugerong's the same. Up to thirty mil
Speaker 2: of rain tomorrow in the capitol, although we'll ease later
Speaker 2: in the day at the top of just fourteen. But
Speaker 2: mind you that'll fill Balmie because come Wednesday Canberra is
Speaker 2: going to be wet and a top of just eight degrees.
Speaker 2: Lithgo today fifteen and partly cloudy thirteen with a drop
Speaker 2: or two of rain for Orange eighteen for Mudgie bit
Speaker 2: wet baths should be dry fifteen fifteen, as I said
Speaker 2: for Lithgo Katoomba fifteen and just to be different spring
Speaker 2: Wood twenty one showers tomorrow, though for Lithgo maybe twenty
Speaker 2: mil of rain thirteen the top and then just seven
Speaker 2: on Wednesday. Now the six mil of rain potentially before
Speaker 2: a morning frost, followed by a sunny Thursday, just to
Speaker 2: dry things out, although again cool top of just nine
Speaker 2: degrees one three one eight seven three. Okay. Now a
Speaker 2: few different people are suggesting it wouldn't have been twenty
Speaker 2: five meters by twenty five meters, but twenty five kilometers
Speaker 2: by twenty five kilometers. I think that's too much. I
Speaker 2: don't think that'd be right. That'd been enormous volume. We
Speaker 2: are googling as we speak. We've got this Gemini thing
Speaker 2: here now, so that'll tell us the answer. I've never
Speaker 2: used it, but apparently it does wonderful things. Sam says,
Speaker 2: are you sure it's not two one hundred and fifty? No?
Speaker 2: Hang on, Sam, say twenty five kilometers cubed? He said,
Speaker 2: I think there would be more than twenty five meters
Speaker 2: cubed in Fort Knox alone. Just seems like well, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: You mentioned Fort Knox. The President, Donald Trump wants to
Speaker 2: get into Fort Knox to check the gold still there.
Speaker 2: That could be interesting. Twenty six minutes to do. We'll
Speaker 2: do motoring after this, okay, So see how much gold
Speaker 2: in the world and what sort of box would it
Speaker 2: fit into. Debate continues on the text line. Gary says
Speaker 2: the old mates about right. All the gold in the world,
Speaker 2: says Gary wouldn't fill an Olympic sized swimming pool. Hard
Speaker 2: to believe, but gold is very rare. That's from Gary.
Speaker 2: Good on you. Gary appreciate that. So I think we're
Speaker 2: getting a bit of a consensus that maybe twenty five
Speaker 2: by twenty five by twenty five is if you had
Speaker 2: to condense it, that'd be about it. All the gold
Speaker 2: that's ever been mined. And when you think about all
Speaker 2: the gold jewelry that's out there, the gold that's still
Speaker 2: in old coins, the gold that's in the form of leaf,
Speaker 2: the gold when you think gold is in all sorts
Speaker 2: of thing, medical equipments, some people's denches. My grandmother had
Speaker 2: little gold fillings. I when you add it all up
Speaker 2: and go twenty five x twenty five x twenty five meters,
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem a lot. Puts it into a perspective,
Speaker 2: I guess, Gary and others thank you. The debate continues.
Speaker 2: It's twenty one to two now one afternoons drive. All right,
Speaker 2: Well let's leave Gold and get into our motor vehicles
Speaker 2: from moment.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 2: You probably got a question about your car, or you're
Speaker 2: thinking of buying one, or maybe you want to know
Speaker 2: what one should I get the kids or something like that.
Speaker 2: Well Sam Purcell is the expert from drive dot com
Speaker 2: dot good with the off road stuff, and he's with
Speaker 2: us on the line.
Speaker 5: Hello Sam, Good, afternoon, Michael.
Speaker 2: Okay, so if people have a question one three one
Speaker 2: eight seven three, I'll send me a text and I'll
Speaker 2: give it to you zero four six zero eight seven
Speaker 2: three eight seven three. Let's start with the Suzuki Jimney.
Speaker 2: That's the four wheel drive, so that's in that's in
Speaker 2: your line of expertise. Three doors, excellent little car. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean the name's been around a while, but we
Speaker 2: haven't seen them. What they're coming back, are they?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 11: Yeah, So they actually ran into some some problems with
Speaker 11: compliance with Australian rules. So that car does have autonomous
Speaker 11: emergency braking, but we had some updates in the rules
Speaker 11: of the bare minimum of what cars had to have,
Speaker 11: and the AEB system in the Jymney wasn't up to scratch,
Speaker 11: so they had to actually stop production of that car
Speaker 11: coming into Australia from Japan. Now there is a five
Speaker 11: door model that comes in from India, but that original
Speaker 11: three door one, which is kind of is the quintessential Chimney.
Speaker 11: I suppose they're not producing it for the Aussie market
Speaker 11: at the moment, so supply supply is whistling right down.
Speaker 11: But we can expect that to come back on board
Speaker 11: as soon as Suzuki can get around to it.
Speaker 5: So I think that just waiting for a production.
Speaker 11: Slot for that car to fly back up. And it's
Speaker 11: been a really popular model for a long time. So
Speaker 11: back in the COVID days, that was one of the
Speaker 11: cars that had a three or four.
Speaker 5: Year waiting time. They've just gone on real so now
Speaker 5: they've got this extra problem back on top of it
Speaker 5: again sort of thing. So it's been a bit of
Speaker 5: a journey for that car.
Speaker 11: But yeah, people who are keen on one, they can
Speaker 11: expect a bit more stock to arrive in Australia and
Speaker 11: maybe not have a bit of a weight or maybe
Speaker 11: increase prices on the secondhand market and that sort of thing,
Speaker 11: which is good news.
Speaker 2: What's the RP on one of these?
Speaker 5: They not as cheap as they used to be.
Speaker 11: They're around forty thousand dollars at the moment they have gone. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 11: they started. I think they might have been sort of
Speaker 11: twenty nine to ninety or something like that when they
Speaker 11: first came out, but they absolutely went gangbusters. It's a
Speaker 11: car that is pretty slow, not very refined, you know,
Speaker 11: isn't very efficient for the size of it, and not
Speaker 11: very good in terms of bootspace, but just a really
Speaker 11: fun car to look at, fun car driving away, good
Speaker 11: off road, just has that sort of fun character about it,
Speaker 11: and it just it sold really well.
Speaker 5: Just based on that.
Speaker 2: A little part of my memory thinks that it used
Speaker 2: to be a car they gave on game shows. I
Speaker 2: don't sail, Yeah, yeah, we fortunately.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it was called the Sierra for a long time
Speaker 11: and they were the soft top ones.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's an iconic car.
Speaker 2: I think we hide one of those as a family
Speaker 2: up in Queensland once and like the real small one
Speaker 2: with a clip on roof, and we were going through
Speaker 2: what was almost like a small tropical cyclone that hit
Speaker 2: somewhere on the Sunshine and anyway, we were driving pouring rain.
Speaker 2: This truck came in the other direction, sucked the whole
Speaker 2: roof off. Room Dad had to run down the Sunshine
Speaker 2: Ghost highwaerever it was. Budrooms picked the roof up. We
Speaker 2: were drenched. I don't recommend that roof.
Speaker 11: So you can get your deposit back as well when
Speaker 11: you yeah, well, yeah, I think they did require the
Speaker 11: roof to return.
Speaker 2: What happened to speaking of cars that were on game
Speaker 2: shows in years, what happened to? Say it that the
Speaker 2: Spanish car.
Speaker 11: Oh say, yeah, so they are still around in other
Speaker 11: parts of the world. So we've currently got Coopra in Australia,
Speaker 11: which is related to say it so that's.
Speaker 5: Part of the Volkswagen Empire. I suppose you could say,
Speaker 5: so that's.
Speaker 11: It comes from the same country and it's it's mostly
Speaker 11: electric cars at the moment, but they do have hybrids
Speaker 11: and petrol as well. Quite an interesting range of vehicles.
Speaker 5: So yes, say it's you don't really see.
Speaker 11: Them on the road anymore, but you might see these
Speaker 11: coopers getting around and that's the that's the closest thing we've.
Speaker 2: Got because the Europeans can still get.
Speaker 5: To say it rand Yes, Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2: All right, one three, one eight seven three, let's get
Speaker 2: to it. Simon's got a question. Hi Simon, Hi guys.
Speaker 12: Sam's just wondering the recently the Sugaru Outback twenty twenty
Speaker 12: six models shown at the New York Motor Show. I'm
Speaker 12: just curious. Would you have to know when it's likely
Speaker 12: to be released in Australia.
Speaker 11: No, I haven't heard that exactly at the moment, but
Speaker 11: it will be definitely coming to Australia.
Speaker 5: So that's It's a very boxy shape that one.
Speaker 11: I'm not sure if you're a big fan of the look,
Speaker 11: but it's definitely more of an suv than it used
Speaker 11: to be. But no, I haven't heard exactly when that
Speaker 11: will be coming to Australia just yet, but we can't
Speaker 11: expect it.
Speaker 5: Probably sometime next year, but it might be right towards
Speaker 5: the end of the year. We're not one hundred percent
Speaker 5: sure yet.
Speaker 2: It will be worth the way, do you think so?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 11: Absolutely, the Outbacks an excellent vehicle. We might even see
Speaker 11: hybrid power in that car for the first time, which
Speaker 11: will be a good thing. So Superus teamed up with
Speaker 11: Toyota to effectively employ Toyota's hybrid side with the Subaru
Speaker 11: Boxer engine, so it'll still be all drive, it'll still
Speaker 11: be a good off roader and that sort of thing,
Speaker 11: which is really cool, but it will reduce fuel consumption
Speaker 11: quite dramatically, so that could be a good mix. We're
Speaker 11: going to get the Forester, which is the smaller version
Speaker 11: of the APT Back that's going to be on the
Speaker 11: roads pretty soon in Australia and that's going to be
Speaker 11: the first example with that hybrid power train. That'll be
Speaker 11: interesting to spend a bit more time with it. We've
Speaker 11: had a brief driver one initially. Initially impressions do look good.
Speaker 11: You can see that review on drive dot com toderu.
Speaker 11: But yeah, looking forward to spending more time with that
Speaker 11: car soon.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, Barry's got a question. Barry over to you.
Speaker 13: Yes, I got j So just a quick question. I'm
Speaker 13: looking at buying and you can and I'm thinking about
Speaker 13: the cross hybrid and you're thinking wondering what your view
Speaker 13: is over to the vehicle.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no worries either. Crawl across is a it's a.
Speaker 11: Good safe, honest option. It's maybe not as stylish as others.
Speaker 11: I would say that's probably more of.
Speaker 5: A personal opinion from my point of view, and typical
Speaker 5: of toyotas. I suppose that it is a little bit.
Speaker 11: More expensive than others out there, just based on brand
Speaker 11: reputation and that sort of thing. If you're thinking about
Speaker 11: another option that you might prefer, I would probably look at.
Speaker 5: The Cayundai Kona because that's also available with hybrid power.
Speaker 5: But the crawl across it's good, it's solid, it's a
Speaker 5: very good vehicle. So if you like the look of it,
Speaker 5: do you like the way it drives, go for it,
Speaker 5: I say, go on your.
Speaker 2: Barry, good question, Thank you mate. This one from Brad
Speaker 2: who says, look at getting a new ut. What's your opinion, Sam?
Speaker 2: On the Chinese made you so they up to the
Speaker 2: standard of the more common brands.
Speaker 11: They're absolutely, They're moving at a rate of knots getting
Speaker 11: catching up to that standard. I suppose you're not going
Speaker 11: to have I say, look, for example, at the GWM
Speaker 11: Cannon that's been updated recently.
Speaker 5: It's probably not as polished overall as a Ford.
Speaker 11: Ranger, for example, But considering the amount of equipment, you
Speaker 11: get the way it drives.
Speaker 5: For a vehicle that.
Speaker 11: Is under fifty thousand dollars on the road, I mean
Speaker 11: a Ford Ranger. They sort of start at fifty and
Speaker 11: then work their way up to about ninety thousand. For
Speaker 11: relevance sake. It is a very good car for the money.
Speaker 11: So no, it's not all the way there yet, but
Speaker 11: it's pretty dawn close. So if you're skeptical, I would say,
Speaker 11: just go and have a test drive and see how
Speaker 11: it looks and feels for yourself. Because everyone's standards are
Speaker 11: a little bit different as well. But I can say
Speaker 11: coming from driving pretty much all of them that they're
Speaker 11: catching up really really quickly, and they're they're right up
Speaker 11: there at the moment, they're sort of breathing down the neck,
Speaker 11: I would say.
Speaker 2: Of the mainstream story of Chinese industry all that. Speaking
Speaker 2: of GWM, Michael's got a question about the tank. Got
Speaker 2: a Michael, you know.
Speaker 13: Yeah, just wonderful.
Speaker 4: I'm looking at the tank five hundred ye your thoughts on.
Speaker 11: Yeah, Okay, it's a it's a it's an interesting card,
Speaker 11: to be honest with you. Just so that's got a
Speaker 11: hybrid powertrain, which is a real rarity. I suppose in
Speaker 11: that part of the world. It's a it's a big vehicle.
Speaker 11: It's about the size of a land Cruise, a Prato
Speaker 11: even slightly bigger, almost as big as a three hundred series.
Speaker 5: You could say the valley for money is excellent. It's
Speaker 5: a big vehicle.
Speaker 11: The hybrid powertrain does take a little bit of getting
Speaker 11: used to. It's so it's turbo charged and petrol. It's
Speaker 11: not necessarily the most efficient option out there, but it
Speaker 11: is quite powerful when you give it a punch. So yeah,
Speaker 11: it's definitely worth considering. And I it does come with
Speaker 11: a pretty good warranty offering these days as well, so
Speaker 11: you've got a bit of assurance there, I Suppo.
Speaker 5: But yeah, it's it's a good interesting car.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you for that. Michael. A question about land
Speaker 2: cruise here from Trent. He says the new land Cruise
Speaker 2: of Prato, if the engine has enough power for every
Speaker 2: day motoring.
Speaker 3: It does. It does.
Speaker 11: It's outgunned by the Ford Everest, so you can get
Speaker 11: a V six in the Ford Everest, which has six
Speaker 11: hundred meters and around one hundred and eighty killer watts.
Speaker 11: The for the Toyota Prado it's got about five hundred
Speaker 11: newton metas and one hundred and fifty kilowatts.
Speaker 5: It's it's enough.
Speaker 11: It's just not as good as the rate at the Everest,
Speaker 11: I suppose, but it is good enough for every read,
Speaker 11: every day driving.
Speaker 2: Definitely a couple of questions about this. Tasman nute I
Speaker 2: tell you what, They've got every sports star in the
Speaker 2: world who was part of the They must be sinking
Speaker 2: some money into that. Yeah, yeah, But Simon says it
Speaker 2: looks like it was designed by Lego. You've not a
Speaker 2: rap on it, he says, how the sales go.
Speaker 11: So we don't know just yet. It hasn't sort of
Speaker 11: fully gone on sale as yet. We wouldn't be seeing
Speaker 11: them on the road very od. If you did see one,
Speaker 11: it would be one driven by a Kia employee, So
Speaker 11: we don't know that yet. They're looking to sell twenty
Speaker 11: thousand per year in Australia, which is a pretty big number.
Speaker 11: That's sort of maybe one third to a half of
Speaker 11: what Toyota or Ford would do of the Highlucks in
Speaker 11: the Ranger, so it's a pretty big chunk of that segment.
Speaker 11: It's a very competitive segment, so we'll see if they
Speaker 11: can do it. But there's a lot of negative commentary
Speaker 11: around the looks as well, and in that segment, people
Speaker 11: do really buy on looks, I think, so.
Speaker 2: Just on that onlook something. Look. I know there's copyrights
Speaker 2: and there's all sorts of things going on, and you
Speaker 2: can only design a certain shape of cars so often,
Speaker 2: but it seems to me like a lot of these
Speaker 2: South Korea and Chinese vehicles in the four wheel drive
Speaker 2: market have gone straight to land Rover or range Rover
Speaker 2: and said, well, let's just basically copy it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can see that.
Speaker 11: You can see the trendsetters definitely, and it's a lot
Speaker 11: of the sort of longest standing European brands quite often
Speaker 11: who do set the trends in this regard.
Speaker 5: And then you'll see.
Speaker 11: Little design elements so they won't copy the whole car overall,
Speaker 11: but you'll have a look at the headlight design like, oh,
Speaker 11: that reminds me of this car. Then you look at
Speaker 11: the back and say, oh, yeah, I can see a
Speaker 11: bit of this here and that there. It's everyone's reading
Speaker 11: each other's homework, I suppose, and they're trying to make
Speaker 11: something work with the with the segment.
Speaker 5: I guess yeah, yeah, so it's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, once upon a time we call that copying,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I don't know how that applies in the
Speaker 2: world of motor design. It's ten to two, by the way,
Speaker 2: more of Sam straight after this, all right, just before
Speaker 2: we get back to Sam and all the motoring questions.
Speaker 2: They're just seeing this on the Channel nine chopper feed
Speaker 2: as we speak. It appears a whale has got its
Speaker 2: tail stuck in a net. Now this is just a
Speaker 2: palm beachway off the baron Joey Lighthouse, you know, with
Speaker 2: Home and Aways filmed and whatnot. So a rest of
Speaker 2: your crew is out, I think, trying to free the
Speaker 2: whale's tail from the net. So that's all happening as
Speaker 2: we speak on the far northern tip of Sydney. Let's
Speaker 2: hope that can all resolve itself. Well one three, one
Speaker 2: eight seven three. Let's go back to calls Dino. What's
Speaker 2: your question for Sam?
Speaker 6: Morning? Sam morning, Michael, Yes, mate, Adam. Yeah, look looking
Speaker 6: at buying a two thousand and six model.
Speaker 13: It's a D forty.
Speaker 6: Is a mission of it's STX diesel. I think of
Speaker 6: test dry I yesterday went really well, is there anything
Speaker 6: I've got to look out for Sam with that model,
Speaker 6: with that model.
Speaker 5: No, just the usual stuff. Really, just have a good
Speaker 5: look at the service history.
Speaker 11: Make sure you can't see any sort of anything dodgy
Speaker 11: under the bonnet and he leaks and that sort of thing.
Speaker 11: And if you're sort of not the most mechanically minded
Speaker 11: person and you want a bit more assurance, I would
Speaker 11: engage the services of someone who can do a pre
Speaker 11: purchase inspection on your behalf and they can look at
Speaker 11: things like, you know, whether the calling systems up to.
Speaker 5: Scratch, how the old is going, and all all those
Speaker 5: little details that might catch you out a little bit
Speaker 5: later down the track that no major issues with that vehicle.
Speaker 5: As long as the service history.
Speaker 3: Is good, it should be all right.
Speaker 2: Good on your DNA. Now here's a definitional one. This
Speaker 2: is from raised in Brazil, when he says, we don't
Speaker 2: have uts in Australia any longer ever since hold on
Speaker 2: Ford stopped making them. They're all pickup trucks now because
Speaker 2: they all sit on a common rail. Chassy repeat, they
Speaker 2: are all pickup trucks Israel.
Speaker 5: Right, It depends on who you ask. I don't get
Speaker 5: too worked up or worried.
Speaker 3: So what do you fix? Oh jeez, I.
Speaker 5: Feel like the truck.
Speaker 11: The truck term is a bit more of an American
Speaker 11: term for me, so Ute is a utility, and that
Speaker 11: sort of refers to the body style more than anything else.
Speaker 11: And a utility is something that has the big open
Speaker 11: space in the back. So I call them forward drive
Speaker 11: uts myself, even though they might have a Yeah, they
Speaker 11: sit on a ladder chazzy. I mean older versions of
Speaker 11: the holden Ford Youth sat on a ladder shazzy as well,
Speaker 11: before they got a bit more advanced than Monocoq. So
Speaker 11: I mean, it's just a name. I don't get too
Speaker 11: worked up about it. But I'll stick to Ute for now.
Speaker 2: Okay, fine, Just in the twenty seconds left evto Vaz.
Speaker 2: It's a Russian company. They're trying to bring the Lader.
Speaker 3: Back, are they. Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So this is an interesting one.
Speaker 11: It's the first new Lader model that's come out for
Speaker 11: ten years, so it's a new design.
Speaker 5: It's a little bit more modern looking. Obviously, Russia's a
Speaker 5: bit preoccupied with.
Speaker 11: A lot of things going on and getting smashed by
Speaker 11: sanctions and you know, a long running war and all
Speaker 11: these sorts of things.
Speaker 5: But one interesting thing about this car. So it's an
Speaker 5: all new.
Speaker 11: Model, but it's actually based on fifteen year old underpinnings,
Speaker 11: so not necessarily an all new thing. And you know,
Speaker 11: I think they're sourcing a fair few components from I
Speaker 11: think they call them friendly partners, so you can assume
Speaker 11: that would be mostly China, yes, helping out with components
Speaker 11: and anything that they can't get from the global market.
Speaker 11: So yeah, it's a new car, but not at the.
Speaker 5: Same time not really.
Speaker 2: Don't think we'll see it anytime soon. Good on your Sam,
Speaker 2: Thanks for your help mate. Thank you, Sam Pasel From Drive.
Speaker 1: Now onto GB and Network stations. Back to Afternoons with
Speaker 1: Michael McLaren.
Speaker 3: Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: The situation in the Middle East continues to evolve. There
Speaker 2: have been no additional strike since we've been on air
Speaker 2: that I'm aware of. There are the usual protests in
Speaker 2: Tehran and images of Donald Trump with fangs and this
Speaker 2: sort of thing, but there's no doubt that the Iranian
Speaker 2: regime are now in a fight for their own survival.
Speaker 2: They'll put the loyalists out there a bit like Chowchescu
Speaker 2: did put them out in the square to try to
Speaker 2: show the sort of everyone else in the nation that
Speaker 2: isn't really backing their own government and would be kind
Speaker 2: of keen for regime change that actually know the majority
Speaker 2: are with us. They still want death to America or
Speaker 2: Israel still the Great Satan, all this sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: So it'll be fascinating, as I said at the top
Speaker 2: of the show, to see where this goes. The Americans
Speaker 2: and the Israelis have softened up the regime to the
Speaker 2: point they've never been this week before. It's probably the
Speaker 2: weakest there've been since they took power over the show
Speaker 2: of nineteen seventy nine. So there is an opportunity here
Speaker 2: for internal regime change if the Iranian people rise up.
Speaker 2: But it has to be insular. It has to be organic.
Speaker 2: This can't be some sort of CIAM six orchestrated coup
Speaker 2: that's not going to work. It has to be real
Speaker 2: and natural. And if that happens, the world will be
Speaker 2: a better place. And you know, militarily, this is the thing.
Speaker 2: A lot of this is why I don't understand why
Speaker 2: it took our government forever to come out like they
Speaker 2: finally did today and say, you know what, actually, now
Speaker 2: Iran can't have nuclear weapons and the bombings Aka, because
Speaker 2: if you eradicate the leverage that Iran has, if you
Speaker 2: can somehow create a change of government over there, you can,
Speaker 2: from a Western point of view, certainly an American point
Speaker 2: of view, start to withdraw some of your strike capacity
Speaker 2: from that part of the world and move it to Asia,
Speaker 2: and that would be in Australia's best interests. Iran is
Speaker 2: an Australia's threat China potentially, as we were discussing earlier
Speaker 2: with Michael Pembroke, understanding the history why it is the
Speaker 2: way it is. But if the Americans can start to
Speaker 2: withdraw some fight and strike capability out of the Middle East,
Speaker 2: out of the Persian Gulf and move it around to Asia,
Speaker 2: well then that's in our best interests. Right, So it's
Speaker 2: in Australia's best interest to try to bring about change
Speaker 2: in Iran. You're not going to do that. If the
Speaker 2: Mullers and the Eye are Toller and the Henchmen and
Speaker 2: the Revolutionary Guard Corps and all of these pollukas, if
Speaker 2: they have strong missile capability and uranium at the point
Speaker 2: of being enriched that it could be put in a warhead.
Speaker 2: That's got to stop. And so that seems to have
Speaker 2: been stopped and let's just see what plays out in
Speaker 2: the coming days. Of course, there are going to be
Speaker 2: impacts on a lot of people, and as you know,
Speaker 2: I'm about to take a bunch of listeners over to
Speaker 2: Europe and many people will be flying via the Middle East,
Speaker 2: so there will be people in that tour group, no doubt,
Speaker 2: keeping an eye on flights and all the rest of it.
Speaker 2: Airlines carrying Australians to Europe have started switching their roots,
Speaker 2: according to The Herald, to avoid the whole Middle East region.
Speaker 2: Hitar Airways, which flies daily from Australia cities to Doha
Speaker 2: in Qatar, says that the ongoing situation will require some
Speaker 2: schedule changes to strengthen the connectivity. Others have already started
Speaker 2: changing their routes. I think I read yesterday that for
Speaker 2: Sunday and Monday, British Airways have decided not to fly
Speaker 2: into even Dubai Singapore Airlines I believe the same and
Speaker 2: KLM Royal Dutch. I'd think they're avoiding the area for
Speaker 2: the time being. Look that might change by Wednesday they
Speaker 2: but Tuesday they might be going back in. I don't know.
Speaker 2: But when you think that Abu Dhabi and Dubai, two
Speaker 2: of the main hubs for the Australian population, and Katar,
Speaker 2: and they're all within spinning distance of each other, right
Speaker 2: up there near the Straits of Hamutz, which the Auranians
Speaker 2: might want to close, which will mean the Americans will
Speaker 2: probably try to pound the Iranian ships with missiles from
Speaker 2: submarines that are based further away. Then you know, it's
Speaker 2: a risky proposition flying commercial airlines into that hub. So
Speaker 2: Australian travelers, and we are great travelers, Our passports are
Speaker 2: some of the most stamped passports in the world. We
Speaker 2: are going to have to just keep a watching brief
Speaker 2: on what's happening in the Middle East because at any
Speaker 2: moment your flight might be diverted change council, who knows.
Speaker 2: So stay across all of that, obviously with your airlines.
Speaker 3: These Winter wheel.
Speaker 2: Now don't call yet, don't call yet, but I'm giving
Speaker 2: you the warning between now and three o'clock where you're
Speaker 2: going to be hearing that roulette wheel kind of sound.
Speaker 2: That is our Winter Wheel. And we've got stacks of prizes,
Speaker 2: forty thousand dollars worth of cash and prizes to be one.
Speaker 2: As you know we've been giving away thousands and thousands
Speaker 2: of dollars. I think Mark gave way seven hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty dollars today ben earlyer five hundred. We want to
Speaker 2: get into the four digits at least, so we've got
Speaker 2: lucky fingers hands and over there he'll spin the wheel. Look,
Speaker 2: I can't guarantee it, but I reckon you get at
Speaker 2: least one thousand. So when you hear that, I want
Speaker 2: you to call later on the prize line and good
Speaker 2: luck one three, one eight. We'll take a break and more. Yes,
Speaker 2: I stay listening. Later this hour we will spend that
Speaker 2: winter wheel and good luck. I hope we can give
Speaker 2: you a great prize. This just threw from the people
Speaker 2: behind IgA. Well that's met cash, of course, and it's
Speaker 2: to do with tobacco revenue. I mean, look, the evidence
Speaker 2: just keeps stacking up here. Government, I'll do nothing about it.
Speaker 2: But tobacco revenue fell a fifth in the year to April,
Speaker 2: at IGA's pair and company met cash. The slump in
Speaker 2: legal tobacco sales accelerating, according to the Guardian, as the
Speaker 2: illicit cigarette trade takes over the market. Tobacco was still
Speaker 2: a major pillar of the grocery sales. So they counted
Speaker 2: for one point eight billion of the company's ten point
Speaker 2: eight billion in food segment revenue. So it's a very
Speaker 2: good chunk, but it's down. They're down four hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty million dollars from last year, and I think the
Speaker 2: better part of a billion from the year before. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the company said that the decline was due to a
Speaker 2: continued sharp rise in illicit tobacco sales at a quote
Speaker 2: largely ineffective end quote. Police response. Well, all that's true,
Speaker 2: but the police can only do so much. This isn't
Speaker 2: really a policing matter. This is a government matter. The
Speaker 2: government have created the market, the federal government with excise,
Speaker 2: and they will do nothing about it. Now. Jim Charmers
Speaker 2: will speak to a legal spender later this hour. Jim
Speaker 2: Charmers wants to have a productivity in a tax roundtable. Good,
Speaker 2: we need it desperately, We needed it ten years ago.
Speaker 2: But I bet the tobacco excise won't be on the
Speaker 2: agenda because it's just an easy earner, right, It's just
Speaker 2: a syntax. Oh well, there's an easy way to avoid it.
Speaker 2: Don't smoke, say the non smokers, which are the vast majority.
Speaker 2: But what that attitude has done is incubate and fertilize
Speaker 2: the ground for the criminal networks to make a motza.
Speaker 2: So people are still smoking, they're just smoking illegal product,
Speaker 2: and so the health system is not getting the tax benefit,
Speaker 2: which was the quid pro quo with keeping cigarettes legal.
Speaker 2: But people are still getting lung cancers and mphysema, everything
Speaker 2: and dying. It's just they're not paying via taxes because
Speaker 2: they're not buying legal cigarettes for their care in hospital.
Speaker 2: When they do. I mean, that's just the crude nub
Speaker 2: of it and look to be blood. I don't blame
Speaker 2: the smokers for going and buying the illicit product when
Speaker 2: the legal product has been raised to extortionary levels because
Speaker 2: of government tax I'm not saying that breaking the law
Speaker 2: is good or is in any way to be encouraged.
Speaker 2: I can't say that, and I don't, but I can
Speaker 2: understand why people do it otherwise law abiding people, I
Speaker 2: can understand why they do it. But of course in
Speaker 2: so doing, you are also part of the problem. You're
Speaker 2: helping your own bottom line. You've got to feed the kids,
Speaker 2: you've got to pay the mortgage. I get it. But equally,
Speaker 2: you are funneling a huge amount of money into biking
Speaker 2: gangs and all sorts of foreign cartels and criminals. That's
Speaker 2: bad because they do other things with that money which
Speaker 2: are really, really bad. So the whole story, the whole nexus,
Speaker 2: has to be broken. But you know, only government can
Speaker 2: do it, and there just doesn't seem to be the
Speaker 2: coordinated appetite to do it. Are they more addicted to
Speaker 2: the revenue than the smokers are to the nicotina? One
Speaker 2: three one eight seven three now one afternoons the Track
Speaker 2: of the Day. Okay, let's get this out of the
Speaker 2: way because we often miss out on this and we
Speaker 2: love doing Track of the Day. I've got one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty dollars. BE Store voucher on the line. They
Speaker 2: do good things. BE Store your shoes. You're gonna love comfort,
Speaker 2: you'll live in. B Store brings your Birkenstock, Blundstone, fit Flop, MBT,
Speaker 2: Franky four and more. You can visit them at Macquarie Center,
Speaker 2: of course, Westfield Miranda as well. Style starts there. B Store.
Speaker 2: If you want one hundred dollars, one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: dollars rather voucher to all of that. One three one
Speaker 2: eight seven three. So who am I questioned today? Who
Speaker 2: am I? Known as the voice of rugby. I've been
Speaker 2: broadcasting Rugby International since nineteen seventy six. I've led commentary
Speaker 2: teams with the BBC Network, ten Fox Sports. I even
Speaker 2: worked with two GB on the twenty twenty four Paris
Speaker 2: Olympics coverage. By the way, I'm a really decent human being.
Speaker 2: Who am I? I'll give you some thinking music, some
Speaker 2: great voices here, Shirley Bassie and Brent terfal All right,
Speaker 2: let's find a winner and he rugby nuts out there?
Speaker 2: How good's out the world in union? I will have
Speaker 2: a bit more of that in a second. Sean, you
Speaker 2: were first? Three? Where's the answer? Who were after?
Speaker 4: Hey, Gordon Brain, it is.
Speaker 2: Made Gordon Bray the birthday boy for listening. Gordon, Happy
Speaker 2: birthday to you. Hey, SEW one hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 2: B Store voucher coming your way. Hang on there, we'll
Speaker 2: grab your details.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: See, the rugby League could take I just think a
Speaker 2: little leaf out of that book, you know with the
Speaker 2: pre match entertainment, just saying, you know, get some really
Speaker 2: good things, you know, one three, one eight seven three.
Speaker 2: But I think a little bit of trivia. I believe
Speaker 2: that was. I think Dame Shirley's contribution was pre recorded.
Speaker 2: I think in Cardiff. I don't think she sung live.
Speaker 2: I think Brin did, I think, but I don't think
Speaker 2: she did. And when you watch the replay it does
Speaker 2: though every now and then she has been out of sink,
Speaker 2: so I think, I don't you know if he's from
Speaker 2: Monica wherever she is, good afternoon to you. Surely you're
Speaker 2: a superstar. But I've got a feeling that she didn't
Speaker 2: do that one live in Wales one three one eight
Speaker 2: seven three. Speaking of sporting matters, by the way, I've
Speaker 2: got a press release today. I'm not sure this is
Speaker 2: going to happen, but it says a competitive card game
Speaker 2: built on collectible monsters might not seem like a traditional
Speaker 2: Olympic sport, but a growing number of Australians are calling
Speaker 2: for it to be taken seriously. This is Pokemon, Pokemon.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's going to get a run at
Speaker 2: the Olympics, even in Brisbane? I don't think, Sam, but
Speaker 2: it says here ahead of collect Fest, which is Australia's
Speaker 2: largest festival of collections, and organizers are preparing to host
Speaker 2: a full format Pokemon trading card game tournament that rivals
Speaker 2: Olympic competition. Screaming hyperbole to me, the event is already
Speaker 2: making waves. I'm told there's a changeot org petition, of course,
Speaker 2: there is launched recently calling on Australian Olympic Committee CEO
Speaker 2: Mark Abibb to consider the game for inclusion in future
Speaker 2: Olympic programming, starting with Brisbane twenty thirty two. Now, Mark's
Speaker 2: a pretty decent bloke. He'll get that and reply politely
Speaker 2: in the negative. I'd imagine, mind you, We've had breakdancing,
Speaker 2: we've had parkour, We've had all sorts of weird and
Speaker 2: wonderful things. So you know what's not to like about
Speaker 2: a bunch of sort of adolescents trading Pikachu cards at
Speaker 2: the highest levels. Maybe the end. Here's an idea, Clinton,
Speaker 2: I'll bring you in here before we hear your official music.
Speaker 2: Of course, why don't we give this to the enhanced
Speaker 2: games first and see how the steroidal types go.
Speaker 14: How do performance enhancing drugs help you when you play Pokemon?
Speaker 2: Well? Quick, you got to be quick. You've got to
Speaker 2: catch them all. You've got to be fast, right, you
Speaker 2: know You've got Sye Duck and Pikachu and who are
Speaker 2: the others.
Speaker 14: See, I'm not a cross this issue.
Speaker 5: Yes you are.
Speaker 2: You're showing your age. It's you know, Pokemon was popular
Speaker 2: twenty years ago as well. Yeah, but see when you're
Speaker 2: in your thirties, you might have.
Speaker 14: Just been prime territory.
Speaker 2: When you were twelve, it was I remember my brother
Speaker 2: bless him, he said he had he was into this.
Speaker 2: I never saw the sense.
Speaker 14: This is where you were chasing them around the suburbs.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, this is the original thing. We
Speaker 2: had the cartoons, you had the cards, just the cards.
Speaker 14: Because after that there was a version where you actually,
Speaker 14: yeah Pokemon go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this where people almost getting hit by cars and
Speaker 2: that's turning up in cemeteries and ridiculous crazy stuff.
Speaker 3: That was before ebikes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So my brother said to me, look, I got
Speaker 2: to hold onto some of these cards. They could be
Speaker 2: worth something one days and made you're kidding, so get
Speaker 2: rid of them. He was right, he's doing a lot
Speaker 2: better than night. Let's have the official music.
Speaker 3: It's that time of the afternoon. Time to find out
Speaker 3: what's coming up on Sydney.
Speaker 15: Now for the Serrato successor, the turbo charged Kia K
Speaker 15: four kias on new small sedan GT line very into available.
Speaker 15: Now we'll find out more about Kia's latest small Okay.
Speaker 2: Officially here he is Clinton Maynard at Squire. He's hosting
Speaker 2: Sydney now straight after three o'clock. What's coming up?
Speaker 14: Especial investigation to Pokemon. Daniel Milkey holds hands down the
Speaker 14: state budget tomorrow. Now most of the detail has been
Speaker 14: leaked out already, but my spies are telling me. My
Speaker 14: spies are telling me. When the journalists are locked up
Speaker 14: for four hours tomorrow there will be a line in
Speaker 14: the budget about expenditure on Pokemon. And this will all
Speaker 14: be in preparation for the Brisbane thirty two Olympics.
Speaker 2: Why are we funding their games? Didn't we already fund
Speaker 2: their COVID response?
Speaker 14: I think all we should fund is a rowing we
Speaker 14: should the rowing should be in Sydney, surely, okay, put
Speaker 14: the Pokemon to one side. Surely with the crocodile infested
Speaker 14: Fitzroy River, the rowing venue should be Penrith.
Speaker 2: Wasn't there a big dam behind waven couldn't they do
Speaker 2: it in there? No crocs in there?
Speaker 14: But they were insisting on the Fitzroy River, and I
Speaker 14: know that the French are coming out to inspect the
Speaker 14: river in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: Because yeah, I meant, let's face it, they've had events
Speaker 2: on really great rivers. The French work, well there really
Speaker 2: good idea. Yeah, so they're the experts. All right, what else?
Speaker 14: But we're going to have a look at some research
Speaker 14: that's been released today from the UK that shows getting
Speaker 14: too much sleep could be deadly. Now, we both have
Speaker 14: a lot of experience in this area as former overnight
Speaker 14: presenters on this radio station of the opposite not getting
Speaker 14: enough sleep, and of course all the research is always
Speaker 14: indicated that if you don't get enough sleep, a good
Speaker 14: seven to eight hours, that you're shortening your life.
Speaker 2: Look at us, we should see who, I don't know management,
Speaker 2: do you reckon a class action? We'll get phill O'Neil
Speaker 2: in and we'll get him Mike Jeffreys Dale. Dale Dale
Speaker 2: would be the lead claimate. Maybe we should go for broke.
Speaker 14: You're listening, there's an idea, but this this research, we
Speaker 14: weren't getting enough sleep. This research indicates that you can
Speaker 14: get too much sleep and it can cause health problems,
Speaker 14: including stroke.
Speaker 2: So I'll speak to a sleep expert the Goldilock syndrome.
Speaker 14: Yes, we'll also be across exactly as you've been reporting
Speaker 14: what's happening off Freshwater this afternoon with the whale, the
Speaker 14: hump back whale that is still tangled up in this
Speaker 14: one hundred and fifty meter long line. And I've been
Speaker 14: watching the Channel nine helicoptuck around the tailors.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it appears so.
Speaker 14: And there's three people, three rescuers in this red dinghy
Speaker 14: who are like they're conducting almost a battle with the whale.
Speaker 14: Now they're not battling the whale. They are trying to
Speaker 14: help the whale at the moment, but it's certainly quite
Speaker 14: a significant operation off the coast. So we'll get the
Speaker 14: latest on that just after three o'clock. And we'll also
Speaker 14: have a look at what's happening at Westmead Hospital. So
Speaker 14: there's been a protest with nurses and midwives railing outside
Speaker 14: the hospital about resources in the maternity area, the suggestions
Speaker 14: today that babies are being treated in storerooms and corridors.
Speaker 14: Now the government, I've spoken to people within government today.
Speaker 14: They insist they're not being treated in corridors, but they
Speaker 14: do concede yes, there's a big problem with resources and
Speaker 14: the health. Mister Ryan Park will actually be at Westmead
Speaker 14: this week to meet with the staff and the management.
Speaker 2: Now, I mean that's terrible, but of course the more
Speaker 2: we just push the population up, and particularly in these
Speaker 2: parts of Sydney without the requisite infrastructure beat schools, hospital beds,
Speaker 2: parking facilities, whatever, we're just going to get more and
Speaker 2: more of these stories aren't.
Speaker 14: And it's not just the infrastructure, it's also the people
Speaker 14: in soilled. I've been to Campbelltown Hospital, the new Campbelltown
Speaker 14: Hospital on neuisccasions for different media events and might not
Speaker 14: be this case of the moment, it has been the
Speaker 14: last few years. There has been wards in Campbelltown Hospital
Speaker 14: that over the last couple of years have not been
Speaker 14: fully operational and they don't have the nurses. So it's
Speaker 14: both resources and it's people. So we'll look at that
Speaker 14: as well. Plus we will be spinning the winter wheel
Speaker 14: because on the Sydney Now program we have wonderful success
Speaker 14: in giving away large amounts of money.
Speaker 2: Yes, you were gloating this morning with Mark, weren't you.
Speaker 14: Two and a half thousand dollars on Friday. I've got
Speaker 14: the magic.
Speaker 2: Touch you do you do know though, that twenty five
Speaker 2: percent comes out of your salary, for that's part of
Speaker 2: the fine print. That's why Ben and Mark are happy
Speaker 2: to give away the low hundreds.
Speaker 14: Well, I'll be very happy to see the National Tiles, Denter,
Speaker 14: Genie and Origin tickets go off today.
Speaker 2: O case right, yes, all three at once? Thank you?
Speaker 2: He very well done at cludon Maynard was Sydney now
Speaker 2: in half an hour from now? All right, error, let's
Speaker 2: go to you. Good afternoon, Good afternoon.
Speaker 9: Michael and Rescue Cruz have been close to that whale
Speaker 9: off the Northern Beaches as they try to free it
Speaker 9: from one hundred and fifty meters of rope and four
Speaker 9: boys that they have had to pull back after it
Speaker 9: started thrashing its tail. The Prime Minister won't say if
Speaker 9: Australia provided any support for the US bombing of Iran
Speaker 9: retailer The Good Guys will pay thirteen and a half
Speaker 9: million dollars for running miss leading store credit promotions and
Speaker 9: researchers have found a link between exposure to a stress
Speaker 9: hormone in the womb and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
Speaker 5: Later in life.
Speaker 9: In sport a double blow for the Eels after their
Speaker 9: big win over the Titans. In the NL Center, Will
Speaker 9: Pennessini will face a four match ban and hooker Riley
Speaker 9: Smith of three match ban, both for dangerous throws. There'll
Speaker 9: be more news at three o'clock.
Speaker 1: On afternoons, a finance update for Pretzel Wealth and finance
Speaker 1: for Trusted Finance Planning Just Google.
Speaker 3: Blake went to Pretzel.
Speaker 2: Twenty eight and a half to three. Tom Story, the
Speaker 2: executive producer of Money News, in with us today. Of
Speaker 2: course he's there with deb each week night doing wonderful
Speaker 2: job with Money News. To talk finest Tom Good afternoon.
Speaker 3: Oh Michael.
Speaker 2: Now, obviously the big stories are run. Oil prices have jumped.
Speaker 2: They were going up last week in anticipation.
Speaker 16: Just how much have the risen, Well, you were talking
Speaker 16: about gold a bit earlier, but it's all about oil.
Speaker 16: The way that market started today, Brent crews rose to
Speaker 16: as much as eighty dollars a barrel at the start
Speaker 16: of today's trade. It has come back slightly since it's
Speaker 16: trading at around seventy eight dollars a barrel right now,
Speaker 16: US dollars a barrel.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 16: At the start of May, we saw it fall as
Speaker 16: low as sixty dollars dollars a barrel, so it has
Speaker 16: been a huge leap over the last two weeks. Obviously,
Speaker 16: there are concerns over whether or not the strait of
Speaker 16: horn Moves is closed, and if that were to happen,
Speaker 16: getting oil over to Australia would be quite a supply challenge. Now,
Speaker 16: if we go back to twenty twenty two, when you
Speaker 16: look at what happened there when we had oil challenges there,
Speaker 16: it rose to about one hundred and twenty dollars US
Speaker 16: of barrel. That saw obviously inflationary impacts right across the
Speaker 16: world and obviously through Australia as well. So we've got
Speaker 16: to watch this oil price because it could have a
Speaker 16: real impact on the inflationary settings. I spoke to a
Speaker 16: Comwealth Bank analyst a couple of weeks ago. He said
Speaker 16: that if we get to eighty dollars a barrel, it
Speaker 16: should be around two dollars a liter at the petrol
Speaker 16: pump as a national average. So people, if they are
Speaker 16: looking at the oil price, I'm worried about what they're
Speaker 16: going to be paying at the petrol pump, expect around
Speaker 16: two dollars a leader in the foreseeable future.
Speaker 2: Because the Australian dollar is still pretty soft. So this
Speaker 2: is all priced against US dollars out of Singapore and
Speaker 2: whatever isn't this that's right, and the.
Speaker 16: Australian dollars actually fallen today. It's come back over the
Speaker 16: weekends around sixty four US since we were up around
Speaker 16: sixty five last week, so down about a cent.
Speaker 2: We can hit both ways. Plus the texts keep going up.
Speaker 16: What about the markets and the dollar broadly top well,
Speaker 16: the share market, obviously on the threat of war, started
Speaker 16: the day weaker market slab certainty and war is no
Speaker 16: certainty for anyone. It has recovered a little bit since
Speaker 16: around midday. Most sectors are trading down. Unsurprisingly, Energy stocks
Speaker 16: are higher, Woodside and See and Toss both higher today.
Speaker 16: The ASX two hundreds down zero point four percent. The
Speaker 16: All Lord's also down point four percent. US futures looking
Speaker 16: at them for tonight, they're starting weaker. Of course, they
Speaker 16: haven't been open since we saw the attacks on Iran
Speaker 16: during the week. So watch what the US does overnight
Speaker 16: and how their markets react and tonight on Money News, I.
Speaker 2: Have to give a plug.
Speaker 16: Scott Hayward's host in the show We're going to talk
Speaker 16: to Van Neck about one of its defense ETFs. It
Speaker 16: gives it investors a chance to look at companies involved
Speaker 16: in military actions.
Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you keep an eye on some
Speaker 2: of those the Rathians of this world.
Speaker 16: That's exactly right, because war does provide some money for
Speaker 16: some people out there. So have a listener Money Years.
Speaker 16: Tonight we'll tell you about what's.
Speaker 3: Going on that will be fascinating.
Speaker 2: I will do as we do. Thank you Tom. Thank
Speaker 2: Tom Story executive producer does a great job too of
Speaker 2: money news. He will keep us up to date this
Speaker 2: week on the markets. It's twenty six minutes to three.
Speaker 2: Will take a break speaking financial matters. After the break,
Speaker 2: Illegal spender will join me. The member for Wentworth. She's
Speaker 2: been advocating now very openly for a while that we
Speaker 2: need significant taxation reform in this country. She's right, but
Speaker 2: I wonder what she has in mind. We'll have a
Speaker 2: chat after this. All right, good to be with you.
Speaker 2: Twenty two to three one three, one eight seven three.
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to talk tax Let's not have
Speaker 2: the eyes glaze over. I know it can be a
Speaker 2: bit much, but if we don't get this right, we're
Speaker 2: all poorer. So something's got to be done. And there's
Speaker 2: some staggering numbers out today when it comes to tax
Speaker 2: in this country. So it turns out business is here,
Speaker 2: or so it's reported, are being hit with more than
Speaker 2: one hundred federal and state government imposed taxes and levies.
Speaker 2: Now that's on top of the rising cost of operating
Speaker 2: a business, and it's it's crazy, right, it's so uncompetitive.
Speaker 2: Who the hell would want to start a business when
Speaker 2: you've got one hundred different lead weights around your ankles.
Speaker 2: And this is the situation now according to the AI Group,
Speaker 2: we're only behind Columbia in this metric. Now, I don't
Speaker 2: think you'd want to be compared to Columbia too often.
Speaker 2: But as we've been pointing out on this show for
Speaker 2: quite a long time, the tax system is becoming ineffective
Speaker 2: as a nation. We're leveraging two heavy off income tax.
Speaker 2: We're punishing businesses with things like payroll tax for doing
Speaker 2: what businesses we would want them to do, and that
Speaker 2: is take people off the unemployment queue and put them
Speaker 2: in private enterprise. And then of course there's old boondoggles
Speaker 2: like stamp duty, which in the original iteration of the
Speaker 2: gst were meant to go, but they stayed and we
Speaker 2: need a solution to that and more. Of course, on
Speaker 2: top of all of that, what do we do about
Speaker 2: stagnant productivity? And as I keep saying, there seems to
Speaker 2: be zero discussion in this space, although I think it
Speaker 2: dovetails in very nicely about one of the big problems,
Speaker 2: and that is not so much how we raise money,
Speaker 2: but how we spend it and the duplication between state
Speaker 2: and Commonwealth agencies which is costing us a fortune. It
Speaker 2: is time for a round table. It is time for
Speaker 2: the talking heads. The Treasurer has said we will have
Speaker 2: a productivity and tax round table. Good, but the importance
Speaker 2: of the veracity that's only going to come from the
Speaker 2: individuals that contribute. Now, someone who's been calling for this
Speaker 2: for a very very long time, Credit is a legal spender.
Speaker 2: She is the MP for Wentworth in the Eastern suburbs
Speaker 2: of Sydney and she's on the line. Good to speak
Speaker 2: Allega again.
Speaker 10: Thank you for your time, Thanks so much for having me. Michael.
Speaker 2: You're a bit of a lone voice. Leading into the
Speaker 2: last election, everyone was talking about two fifths of nothing much.
Speaker 2: You were out there saying, hey, is an opportunity let's
Speaker 2: talk about something important like tax and basically no one
Speaker 2: came along for the ride.
Speaker 10: Well they didn't, but it seems after the election they did.
Speaker 10: And thank you Michael also for being a voice on
Speaker 10: this because it is really important. It does make a difference.
Speaker 10: You know, tax influences all of our lives, whether we
Speaker 10: like it or not, so we do have to really
Speaker 10: talk about it and say, look, is the system working
Speaker 10: as it should and also, as you say, getting the
Speaker 10: spending right.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're going to give this productivity round table.
Speaker 2: Tax will be the central component of that. A lot
Speaker 2: of people say, y okay, we need tax reform, but
Speaker 2: that no one then puts their ideas on the line
Speaker 2: and says, I think we should look here, or I
Speaker 2: think everyone said, oh, let's just put everything on with
Speaker 2: oble and so nothing ever gets done because you know,
Speaker 2: the table's overlaid and then the legs collapse. So where
Speaker 2: do you think we should be looking.
Speaker 10: Let's start with businesses. I think you're right to say that.
Speaker 10: You know, businesses have lots of complex taxes and some
Speaker 10: taxes that just don't make sense, like payroll tax, and
Speaker 10: that is one where I really worry, particularly, you know,
Speaker 10: with AI going to have an impact on jobs. You know,
Speaker 10: we shouldn't be penalizing companies for hiring people and employing people.
Speaker 10: That should be completely the opposite. But it's always got
Speaker 10: to be a viewer's like, well, if you know, try
Speaker 10: and reduce payroll tax, if you try and drive and
Speaker 10: help make Australia an attractive place for businesses to invest, well,
Speaker 10: how are you going to pay for it? And I
Speaker 10: don't think you can just shift that burden onto you know,
Speaker 10: working people either. So I think this is where we
Speaker 10: need to do it. Well, I know that is what
Speaker 10: we're doing, and so I think we have to look
Speaker 10: at in the business environment like how do we make
Speaker 10: taxes simpler, how do we make it more give it
Speaker 10: greater incentive to invest and make it more attractive for
Speaker 10: overseas companies to invest. But then how do we raise
Speaker 10: in areas where we can raise more money from business?
Speaker 10: And I keep on coming back to resources, particularly things
Speaker 10: like the gas taxes, because that's an area where in
Speaker 10: the past we used to raise a lot more money
Speaker 10: than we do now. And I think this is an
Speaker 10: area where potentially we could shift to biz a bit
Speaker 10: of that tax burden.
Speaker 2: Okay, we need, though, don't we to go back to
Speaker 2: first principles in every conversation to work out Okay, how
Speaker 2: do we get to this point? Why are we doing
Speaker 2: what we're doing? And the reason it seems that we
Speaker 2: have so many of these inefficient taxes like stamp duty
Speaker 2: and payroll tax, a lot of them state taxes, is
Speaker 2: because over the years, the federation has gobbled itself up
Speaker 2: and so canber has taken more and more revenue raising
Speaker 2: capacity away from the states, but burden will left the
Speaker 2: states with the burden of delivery of service, and so
Speaker 2: they are tapping harder and harder these very inefficient ways
Speaker 2: of raising capital because they've got nothing left. This is
Speaker 2: why I'm saying we need the constitutional experts at this
Speaker 2: meeting as well to say, right, this is what the
Speaker 2: federal government should be doing, This's what the state should
Speaker 2: be doing. Stop the overlap, stop the waist.
Speaker 10: Look, I really agree with you, Michael, and I think
Speaker 10: this is it's scary because it's hard to try and
Speaker 10: align states and a federal government. But I do think
Speaker 10: if we could get a better alignment, and you know,
Speaker 10: you could, as you say, get the state government to
Speaker 10: be not just raising money in some of the worst
Speaker 10: taxes that we have in the country than we would
Speaker 10: have an overall better tax system. And where there is
Speaker 10: duplication in services, you know, where you know the health
Speaker 10: Department at the federal level is doing a bit of this,
Speaker 10: the state Department's doing a bit of this. It does
Speaker 10: make it complicated. It makes it really hard for people
Speaker 10: to track, you know, who's responsible for this. So I
Speaker 10: think you're right, definitely you need the states at the
Speaker 10: table at this.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know in Canberra and probably in Macquarie Street,
Speaker 2: in Spring Street and everything. You know, anything Donald Trump
Speaker 2: suggests or does as soon as crazy, right, that's their
Speaker 2: default position. But he at least is giving us an
Speaker 2: option to observe something in this space with what he's
Speaker 2: doing with education, right because he said, all right, this
Speaker 2: is a federal matter, this is a state matter. For
Speaker 2: too long the federal government in Washington have been funding it,
Speaker 2: propping it up, skewing the curriculum with their funding, and
Speaker 2: so right, no, we're getting out of that and the
Speaker 2: states can run it.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: We should watch what happens there, shouldn't we and maybe
Speaker 2: just learn if indeed there are some benefits because we've
Speaker 2: got a i think sixteen one thousand staff paid down
Speaker 2: in camber at the Federal Education Department and they don't
Speaker 2: run a school, so you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: money going into secondary delivery, whereas if the states were
Speaker 2: able to raise the capital to fund schooling and education,
Speaker 2: we could have competitive tension.
Speaker 10: Look, I think, like I agree with you that it's
Speaker 10: always worth watching and learning. You know, I think the
Speaker 10: way Donald Trump approaches things is often really quite a
Speaker 10: radic you know, doing this and then that, and you know,
Speaker 10: big sways of cuts. But I think what you've just said,
Speaker 10: you know that you know we should be going, how
Speaker 10: do we hold the states more accountable for that delivery,
Speaker 10: but you know, also not overlap on that delivery, I
Speaker 10: think is really right. So you know, we should watch
Speaker 10: and learn from what the states do, but we don't
Speaker 10: have to go, you know, to the sort of those
Speaker 10: extremes that they do in Trump world. But we can
Speaker 10: make an Australian version of saying, well, where's the sensible
Speaker 10: in this? Where is the sensible in terms of you know,
Speaker 10: giving states really clear responsibility and avoiding duplication at the
Speaker 10: federal level. Yep, I'm all for that.
Speaker 2: Okay, the treasure is calling this meeting, good on it,
Speaker 2: and let's hope sensible people get there and make sensible decisions.
Speaker 2: But the early signs of his vision of tax reform
Speaker 2: aren't flash because the one issue that did finally pop
Speaker 2: its head up in the campaign, and the Liberals, I'm
Speaker 2: sure you would agree with Dopey not campaigning on this
Speaker 2: was the super tax, the three million dollars and unrealized
Speaker 2: capital gain threshold being breached. Now, this, in the government's
Speaker 2: mind is tax reform. Most people simply call it theft.
Speaker 2: I know you're not in favor of it, but it
Speaker 2: doesn't bode well for where this whole process might end up, right, Well,
Speaker 2: I think this.
Speaker 10: Is where we need to do something different to where
Speaker 10: and we need to push the government. And that's what
Speaker 10: I'm trying to do, push the government to what they
Speaker 10: did against what they did last term, because I think
Speaker 10: they did isolated you know, tax increases last term, and
Speaker 10: I think you know, tax reform is about trade offs,
Speaker 10: So it's about saying, Okay, well, you know you're going
Speaker 10: to have to reduce taxes. You know, some taxes we
Speaker 10: need to reduce. You know, we need to reduce taxes
Speaker 10: on income. You know, people who are working hard, who's
Speaker 10: struggling to get ahead. You know, they're getting you know,
Speaker 10: their tax bill goes up every year because of bracket creep.
Speaker 10: You know, we actually need to really address that and therefore,
Speaker 10: how are you going to pay for it? And I
Speaker 10: think that's the that's the balance that we need to do.
Speaker 10: And I think that's what was missing last term. It
Speaker 10: was sort of a bit of a bit here, a
Speaker 10: bit there, but it wasn't that trying to say, okay,
Speaker 10: let's get that balance better. And so that's the piece
Speaker 10: I think we need to hold the government to account
Speaker 10: on this term. And you know, I am encouraged. I'll
Speaker 10: be honest that you know, the Treasurer has said, okay,
Speaker 10: you know, we're open to a broader agenda, but we've
Speaker 10: got to get that agenda right. And I think that
Speaker 10: means people speaking up, writing to their MPs, saying, look,
Speaker 10: this is important to me, but I don't want to
Speaker 10: use this just as an opportunity to increase taxes. I
Speaker 10: want you to make sure that we're getting this sort
Speaker 10: of tax relief in the areas that makes sense to.
Speaker 2: To grow the economy. Of the drive productivity. That's what
Speaker 2: we need. We've got to make taxes effect if not ineffective,
Speaker 2: because we need tax Okay, you're going to have a
Speaker 2: defense force, and you're gonna have motorways, and you're going
Speaker 2: to have the health system. You've got raise capital. So
Speaker 2: people have to appreciate that. Okay, So then so what
Speaker 2: do we do because it seems that as a nation
Speaker 2: we don't have the appetite anymore. The voting public don't.
Speaker 2: I can tell by the open line the voting public
Speaker 2: don't have the appetite to have this conversation. Why. I mean,
Speaker 2: when John Howard was Prime Minister, we're all over it
Speaker 2: like a rash on the GST and tax reform and
Speaker 2: economic reform, saying with keeping same with Hawk. And then
Speaker 2: we got complacent. And now we are starting to see
Speaker 2: the deleterious effects of being complacent. So why isn't the
Speaker 2: public alert to this?
Speaker 10: Look, I don't think people have been really championing it.
Speaker 10: And I know it's interesting when people come up to
Speaker 10: me in the streets around here. Often I won't necessarily
Speaker 10: talk about tax but they talk about the problems they're
Speaker 10: worried about. They're talking about they're worried their kids won't
Speaker 10: be able to buy a house. They're worried that they,
Speaker 10: you know, that the businesses that they're part of, you know,
Speaker 10: are struggling. They're worried that, you know, the energy transition
Speaker 10: is going to cost a lot of money. And we're
Speaker 10: doing this in the best way that we can, and
Speaker 10: I think we need to The job I think of
Speaker 10: my job is and others, is to remind people that
Speaker 10: all those three worries are actually really partly driven by
Speaker 10: the tax system. So I think we've got to move
Speaker 10: away from economists saying we need tax reform because it's
Speaker 10: good for efficiency and effectiveness and everything else, to you know,
Speaker 10: you know, public policies about making a real difference to
Speaker 10: people's lives. And that's what really motivates me. And that's
Speaker 10: why I care about tax because you know, we're not
Speaker 10: going to give young people a better chance of doing well,
Speaker 10: no matter who their parents are, unless we get that
Speaker 10: tex system right. And you know, I want more businesses
Speaker 10: to be the big businesses of tomorrow, to be able
Speaker 10: to invest and grow, but we actually need to make
Speaker 10: sure the tax system is right so that they can
Speaker 10: do that. And I think We've got to come back
Speaker 10: to that why and link it back, and that's our
Speaker 10: best chance I think of getting people who are a
Speaker 10: bit overwhelmed with just getting through the day back to
Speaker 10: really caring about this stuff.
Speaker 2: I agree with all that. Just finally the allegra spending
Speaker 2: here with us, by the way, is it that we
Speaker 2: are inefficiently raising taxes? It's the problem we need more
Speaker 2: or something, or is it that we are spending too
Speaker 2: prolifically the taxes that we raise? And then some I mean,
Speaker 2: we've got a government that want universal childcare that won't
Speaker 2: be free. They're very supportive of the NDS, very few
Speaker 2: guardrails on ron it goes. They are being pressured because
Speaker 2: of the reality is geopolitics to increase defense expended dure
Speaker 2: although they don't really have a plan. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of additional money going to be coming out somewhere here.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've got to look at spending in this
Speaker 2: as well. And I guess this is where it comes
Speaker 2: back to the vote. Maybe some of our expectations of
Speaker 2: what the state can do for us need to be curtailed.
Speaker 10: Yes, look, I think you're right. You can't look at
Speaker 10: only at tax and spending, you know, is the real challenge,
Speaker 10: and it's to be honest, it's grown too fast in
Speaker 10: the last three years under the government. So I think
Speaker 10: you're right that the government does need to look at
Speaker 10: spending as well. And you know, from my point of view,
Speaker 10: I think the way to do this tax reform is,
Speaker 10: you know, it's not about trying to raise more revenue.
Speaker 10: It's about trying to get that revenue raise right so
Speaker 10: that it is it actually encourages you know, businesses and
Speaker 10: people to invest in themselves and keep on trying and aspiring.
Speaker 10: But the spending challenges are real. You know, people are
Speaker 10: getting older. It's you know, there are real challenges, as
Speaker 10: you say, from a defense point of view, So I
Speaker 10: think the government is going to have to work harder,
Speaker 10: and I'm certainly going to be pushing them to work
Speaker 10: harder so that the spending doesn't grow like it has been,
Speaker 10: because if it keeps on growing like that, you know,
Speaker 10: all we're doing is frankly passing the buck to our kids.
Speaker 2: That's right. Intergenerational fifth, great to talk, thanks to Leger.
Speaker 2: It's not the end of the conversation. I appreciate it.
Speaker 10: Thanks so much. Michael.
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Speaker 2: keep the conversation going tomorrow, keep the emails flowing through
Speaker 2: throughout the night to Clinton coming up of course next
Speaker 2: with Sydney. Now, he'll keep you up to date with
Speaker 2: what's happening with this whale up off the coast there
Speaker 2: of Baron Joey Lighthouse with the net around its tail.
Speaker 2: Let's hope they can sort that out this afternoon before
Speaker 2: we go. Congratulations to the Sydney University Rocket Tree team.
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