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Speaker 1: My Heart podcasts here, more Gold one on one point

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Speaker 1: seven podcasts.

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Speaker 2: Playlists and listen live on the Free iHeart app. Jersey

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Speaker 2: and Amanda jam Nation.

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Speaker 1: Annabel Krab is one of Australia's most recognizable journalists and presenters,

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Speaker 1: an award winning political writer, a much love member of

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Speaker 1: our ABC. This is just to name a few of

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Speaker 1: her accomplishments. She's put her aufa hat on once again.

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Speaker 1: It's a new book for kids, but I've just been

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Speaker 1: flicking through it and I think there's a lot for

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Speaker 1: adults too. It's called There's a Prawn in Parliament House. Annabel, Hello, Hello,

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Speaker 1: prawl in Parliament.

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Speaker 2: I know there's lots of crabs a well, I mean yes,

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Speaker 2: I'm drawn to exoscletal creatures. It is true. If you

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Speaker 2: walk into Parliament House through the big doors at the front,

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Speaker 2: there's a big marble hall. It's called the Marble Foyer,

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Speaker 2: and it's got a shiny kind of floor, highly polished,

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Speaker 2: and in one of the blackbits of this sort of

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Speaker 2: Art deco detailed floor, there's a little twenty cent coin

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Speaker 2: sized fossil. Right, he's three hundred and fifty million years old.

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Speaker 2: And now you can go and visit him. He's so cute.

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Speaker 2: He's a bit of a tourist attraction. He's got a

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Speaker 2: fringement magnet in the Parliament House shop and his name's

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Speaker 2: Sean Brawn, that's his nickname. Anyway, I have been thinking

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Speaker 2: about how to write a book for kids that talks

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Speaker 2: to them about the Parliament, how it works, the idea

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Speaker 2: of democracy, how Australian systems work, which is like our

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Speaker 2: system is unique in the world, right, like we are

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Speaker 2: one of a very small number of countries that enforces

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Speaker 2: compulsory voting, with the only country that uses preferential voting,

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Speaker 2: you know, where you fill in.

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Speaker 1: All the boxes just king one.

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Speaker 2: That's right, because like the US, the UK, they just

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Speaker 2: use first past of the post where you just only

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Speaker 2: pick one candidate. We like to fill out all the

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Speaker 2: boxes so that we can say we really hate as

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Speaker 2: well as what we really like and anyway, that is like,

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Speaker 2: that's us. Nobody else does that coast to coast the

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Speaker 2: way we do. We also in the idea of having

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Speaker 2: an independent electoral commission run elections. We did that in

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Speaker 2: the eighteen fifties. We also invented the secret ballot method

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Speaker 2: of voting the first election that happened in Australia was

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Speaker 2: here in Sydney in eighteen forty three and voting was public.

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Speaker 2: This was like the British model at the time. And

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Speaker 2: what would happen is the candidates would turn up and

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Speaker 2: make speeches and buy beers for voters. You could only

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Speaker 2: vote if you were a man who owned property, and

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Speaker 2: everybody got horrendously drunk and you had to say out

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Speaker 2: loud how you were voting for, so that the candidates

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Speaker 2: would know if their bribes had worked. Right, right, that's

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Speaker 2: a lot of people just yelling stuff out. Yeah, and

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Speaker 2: someone was stabbed to death, like there was a riot.

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Speaker 2: There were like it was wild. But then in Australia

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Speaker 2: we went, hey, we're not really cool with my boss

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Speaker 2: or my neighbor looking over my shoulder and knowing how

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Speaker 2: I'm voting. I'd rather do it in private. So we

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Speaker 2: invented the secret ballot, and we invented all the little

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Speaker 2: private booths, you know, the segmented polling booths. Anyway, look, Australia,

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Speaker 2: our political history is full of these stories about amazing people.

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Speaker 2: Some of them were kind of you know, venal, and

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Speaker 2: they made changes for their own like self preservation, like

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Speaker 2: The reason why we have preferential voting, for instance, is

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Speaker 2: because Billy Hughes introduced it in nineteen eighteen because he

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Speaker 2: was really worried he was going to lose because the

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Speaker 2: Conservative vote was being split between the Country Party and

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Speaker 2: his Conservative Nationalist parties, Like, how do I say my bacon?

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Speaker 2: I know, preferential voting. That's why all that way the

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Speaker 2: Conservative vote can kind of stick together. And he did

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Speaker 2: save his own bacon, but not for all that long.

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Speaker 2: And also that's the same system that eventually costs Scott

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Speaker 2: Morrison government one hundred years later. So it kind of

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Speaker 2: a circle of life. It is a circle of life.

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Speaker 2: And the other thing about Billy Hughes, he also invented

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Speaker 2: the Australian Federal Police while he was Prime Minister. And

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Speaker 2: he did that because someone threw an egg at him

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Speaker 2: at a public rally in Warwick in Queensland, and he

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Speaker 2: was so annoyed that he went to draw his pistol

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Speaker 2: that he used to carry in his coat, but then

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Speaker 2: sadly remembered that he had left it on the train.

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Speaker 2: The pistol, so he ordered a local Queensland copper to

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Speaker 2: arrest this egg thrower, and the copper who hated him

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Speaker 2: because he was a labor type. Wouldn't do it. Wouldn't

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Speaker 2: do it. And Hughes said, I instruct you to arrest

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Speaker 2: this guy. I wouldn't do it. So Hughes went home

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Speaker 2: and said, I am inventing a federal police force because

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Speaker 2: the state coppers won't do what I say. Wow, that's

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Speaker 2: why we have the aff.

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Speaker 1: And that was that was egg boy two point zero right.

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Speaker 2: I mean, what is it with throwing food at politicians

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Speaker 2: in Australia. Let's not get carried. It's always great to

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Speaker 2: talk to you.

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Speaker 1: There's a prawn in Parliament House is out available now

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Speaker 1: and all good bookstores.

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Speaker 2: Annabel Crap, thank you for joining us. Thank you,