Speaker 1: Already and this is the Daily. This is the daily,
Speaker 1: This is the Daily.
Speaker 2: Ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Good morning and welcome to the Daily Os. It's Friday,
Speaker 1: the seventh of June. I'm Sam, I'm Lucy. It seems
Speaker 1: like everyone in the world except Australians are voting national
Speaker 1: elections this year. Over the past couple of weeks, South Africa,
Speaker 1: India and Mexico have all gone to the polls and
Speaker 1: shaken things up. TDAS fact checker Lucy Tassel joins me
Speaker 1: on the podcast today to recap the year in elections
Speaker 1: so far, and let's have a look at what's coming
Speaker 1: up before we get there, Lucy, what is making headlines
Speaker 1: this morning?
Speaker 2: An Israeli air strike on a United Nations school in
Speaker 2: central Gaza killed at least twenty seven people. According to
Speaker 2: the Hamas Media Office. The school was being used to
Speaker 2: house displaced people when it was attacked, with dozens injured.
Speaker 2: The Hammas Media office described the st as a horrific massacre.
Speaker 2: The Israeli Defense Forces said the attack targeted a Hummas
Speaker 2: compound inside the school, which hermasterdizes.
Speaker 1: The National Anti Corruption Commission has announced it won't take
Speaker 1: further measures against individuals involved in the illegal Robodet scheme.
Speaker 1: Robodebt was an unlawful automated debt collection system designs to
Speaker 1: recover funds from welfare recipients. A Royal commission into the
Speaker 1: scheme referred six public officials to the anti corruption body.
Speaker 1: In a statement, the NAAC said the conduct of the
Speaker 1: officials had already been quote fully explored in the Royal
Speaker 1: commission and found it unlikely that it would find significant
Speaker 1: new evidence if it launched its own investigation.
Speaker 2: Mexico has recorded the first human case of the H
Speaker 2: five N to avian influenza or bird flu strain in
Speaker 2: a patient who died. The World Health Organization has confirmed
Speaker 2: the death. A fifty nine year old was hospitalized in
Speaker 2: April after several weeks of symptoms. Testing after his death
Speaker 2: indicated he was infected with bird flu. The source of
Speaker 2: the infection is unknown, but the virus has been spreading
Speaker 2: through poultry in the country. The WHO said the man
Speaker 2: had multiple underlying medical conditions.
Speaker 1: And some Friday good news for you, Doctors have made
Speaker 1: a breakthrough discovery in their understanding of inflammatory bowel diseases,
Speaker 1: which includes Crohn's disease. Researchers in the UK found a
Speaker 1: boosted gene containing a type of DNA with increased protein
Speaker 1: that causes inflammation and tissue damage in patients with IBD.
Speaker 1: This discovery means researchers will hopefully be able to develop
Speaker 1: targeted treatment to deactivate the specific gene without negative side
Speaker 1: effects and ease IBD symptoms.
Speaker 2: Over two billion people are going to vote in elections
Speaker 2: this year, making it the biggest year for democracy basically ever. Right,
Speaker 2: just this week on TDA we wrote about India's election,
Speaker 2: Mexico's election, South Africa's election, and I think each of
Speaker 2: these elections points to like an interesting trend that we're
Speaker 2: seeing across all the different votes this year. I think
Speaker 2: there's kind of a sense of the changing of the
Speaker 2: guard in my opinion.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you take that two billion number, that's
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, one in three and a
Speaker 1: half people voting in the elect that is massive. South
Speaker 1: Africa is particularly interesting for that new trend you've identified, right,
Speaker 1: that's right, So what happened there? There was just last
Speaker 1: week or the week before, So what's happened?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So last week South Africans went to the polls
Speaker 2: for new members of their parliament. They hold these elections
Speaker 2: every five years, and just sixty percent of eligible voters
Speaker 2: actually voted. They don't have mandatory votes like we do
Speaker 2: in Australia. And this ended up being a really historic
Speaker 2: election because it's the first time since aparthe'd ended thirty
Speaker 2: years ago that the African National Congress, which we'll call
Speaker 2: the ANC, the party of Nelson Mandela, lost its majority.
Speaker 1: Whenever a party loses power after that many decades, it's
Speaker 1: a big move and it certainly shakes things up in
Speaker 1: the country. For those of us who aren't as familiar
Speaker 1: with apartheid, that term you mentioned before, and why the
Speaker 1: ANC has become so powerful, give me a sense of
Speaker 1: how he got here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, throughout much of the twentieth century, South Africa
Speaker 2: separated people based on race under a.
Speaker 3: Policy, a set of laws called apartheid.
Speaker 2: The government passed laws limiting non white people's movements, education, jobs, pay, marriage,
Speaker 2: you know, all kind of civil very much pretty much everything, yes,
Speaker 2: and I should say limited it or banned outright, all
Speaker 2: of these things. And the ANC were instrumental in bringing
Speaker 2: about the end of apartheid. They opposed it literally from
Speaker 2: day one, initially with nonviolent protests including marches and deliberate
Speaker 2: violations of the rules, so black South Africans going to
Speaker 2: whites only places and spaces and refusing to carry these
Speaker 2: movement passes, and many ANC leaders, including Nelson Mandela famously,
Speaker 2: of course, were arrested and jailed. After many decades of
Speaker 2: protest and upheaval, including the highly publicized release of Nelson
Speaker 2: Mandela from prison after almost thirty years, the ANC won
Speaker 2: the country's first modern elections in nineteen ninety four, that's
Speaker 2: what we consider the end of apartheid, and they secured
Speaker 2: a massive sixty three percent of the votes. That's just
Speaker 2: like an unheard of majority. If a party in Australia
Speaker 2: got sixty three percent of the votes, there would be
Speaker 2: like dancing in the streets like that just never happens.
Speaker 2: And after that year's election, Mandela became the country's president.
Speaker 1: So we go from nineteen ninety four this massive wave
Speaker 1: of support for the ANC inspirational president in Nelson Mandela.
Speaker 1: Thirty years later, the ANC has been falling to much
Speaker 1: lower numbers. What's changed.
Speaker 2: One of the big issues is the ANC's leader and
Speaker 2: the past president hoping to become the president again. Cyril
Speaker 2: Ramafosa he's a moderately controversial figure. I'd say he's faced
Speaker 2: several criminal allegations, including tax evasion, which he's denied all
Speaker 2: wrongdoing for In twenty twenty two, Parliament tried to impeach him,
Speaker 2: so that.
Speaker 1: They've heard that word before.
Speaker 2: Yes, remove him from office, and that failed. Critics of
Speaker 2: Ramafosa have said that he's actually not decisive enough, that
Speaker 2: he hasn't provided solutions to these really big kind of
Speaker 2: society shaking issues that are present in South Africa and
Speaker 2: that have really kind of only worsened over the years.
Speaker 2: At his last campaign rally, reutter Is reported he said
Speaker 2: he would do better. It's not the most compelling campaign's logo,
Speaker 2: like please just give me one more chance, like very
Speaker 2: social media.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, well you've.
Speaker 2: Had thirty years, so you can understand why there's kind of.
Speaker 1: Being a shift and what issues are South Africans facing
Speaker 1: at the moment.
Speaker 2: So the World Bank, which is a global financial body
Speaker 2: aimed at limiting poverty, says South Africa has quote one
Speaker 2: of the highest and most persistent inequality rates in the world.
Speaker 2: Unemployment is at thirty three percent. In Australia it's at
Speaker 2: four percent. Crime rates are really high. The latest police
Speaker 2: data that we have shows there was an average of
Speaker 2: one murder every twenty minutes in the last three months
Speaker 2: of last year. And there's been an energy crisis that's
Speaker 2: seen to planned power adages called load shedding, become more frequent.
Speaker 2: That's impacting businesses, impacting infrastructure, and certainly just impacting people's abilities.
Speaker 3: To just live their lives.
Speaker 2: To boil the kettle after eight pm is something like
Speaker 2: a complaint that I see quite a lot online, the
Speaker 2: way that it's really impacting people's lives. And all of
Speaker 2: these issues really came up in the campaign.
Speaker 1: And so obviously people express their disappointment with the current
Speaker 1: president at the polls. It's now a little bit of
Speaker 1: flux right in terms of who actually is in government.
Speaker 2: What happens now, well, so South African voters elect the
Speaker 2: parliament's MPs and then the MPs decide the president, very
Speaker 2: much like our system, where you're not voting for Anthony Albanizi,
Speaker 2: you're voting for your local member who then continues to
Speaker 2: support the Prime minister and whoever gets a majority of
Speaker 2: the votes of the MP's wins, So that's a the
Speaker 2: whole parliament that's really the difference between Australia and South Africa.
Speaker 2: Since the A ANDC has previously had an outright majority
Speaker 2: more than fifty percent of seats, they've always had the
Speaker 2: power to choose the president. But this year, because they've
Speaker 2: only got about forty percent of the votes, Ramafosa is
Speaker 2: going to have to negotiate with other parties if he
Speaker 2: wants to stay on. And that's really all we know
Speaker 2: for now. It's all really pending.
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting one and I think that that
Speaker 1: idea of these long term leaders perhaps struggling more than
Speaker 1: they thought they would at the polls in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four isn't unique to South Africa. We've also seen the
Speaker 1: similar situation with Narendra Modi in India.
Speaker 3: Right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Modi is heading for a third term in much better
Speaker 2: shape than Ramafosa is, but his party, the BJP, had
Speaker 2: a big swing against them, and that actually went against
Speaker 2: some pretty strong predictions, including I saw on Twitter this
Speaker 2: morning one kind of election pollster actually crying on TV
Speaker 2: because he'd got it wrong, really wrong. The BJP, so
Speaker 2: Mody's party is part of a coalition called the National
Speaker 2: Democratic Alliance Together. That alliance won enough seats to govern.
Speaker 2: They got two ninety that's enough to govern the five
Speaker 2: d and forty three seat lower House. But at the
Speaker 2: last election, the BJP by themselves, not in the alliance,
Speaker 2: got over three hundred seats. So it's a big swing
Speaker 2: against the government in India.
Speaker 1: So it's a win, but not a win that can
Speaker 1: really be kind of stoked with.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, although Mody certainly has been pretty stoked publicly.
Speaker 2: I mean, how could you not. He said, this is
Speaker 2: a victory. He said, this is a feat of democracy.
Speaker 2: Other South Asian leaders have congratulated him. He's still in power,
Speaker 2: but his position is a lot shakier than it was
Speaker 2: the last time Indians.
Speaker 3: Went to the election.
Speaker 1: That turn of frase feet of democracy is interesting because
Speaker 1: they are actually the largest democracy.
Speaker 2: Right yes, the largest country and the largest democracy. Almost
Speaker 2: a billion people voted.
Speaker 1: Over six We think of the paper I do.
Speaker 2: And I think of the they have actually like these
Speaker 2: electronic voting machines. According to Indian law, a polling center
Speaker 2: must be within two kilometers of every home, so if
Speaker 2: you live I mean, when you think about the geographic
Speaker 2: sweep of India, elect from beaches to mountains, like the
Speaker 2: Himalayas at the top. Like it's a huge geographic sweep
Speaker 2: and there's people all throughout. It's not like Australia where
Speaker 2: there's huge parts of the country that are unpopulated. That's
Speaker 2: not true for India. So election officials have done things
Speaker 2: like fly out in helicopters to reach people with these machines.
Speaker 2: They've climbed mountains with these machines. They've like crossed rivers.
Speaker 2: It's like a huge undertaking. So that's partly why the
Speaker 2: voting takes place over six weeks.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty amazing image in your mind right now
Speaker 1: of kind of literally carrying democracy across the country trying
Speaker 1: to make sure that everybody has its say exactly. That's
Speaker 1: really interesting. It's also now likely going to be the
Speaker 1: world's biggest ever democratic election, so so not going to
Speaker 1: forget this. So we've gone through South Africa, then we've
Speaker 1: gone to India, both of which have happened in the
Speaker 1: last couple of weeks, and now we're going to go
Speaker 1: to Central America. And Mexico's also held a history making election,
Speaker 1: right that's.
Speaker 2: Right, Mexico has its first female president, climate scientist and
Speaker 2: former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Shinbaum has become Mexico's first
Speaker 2: female president, and her opponent, Sochi Galvez, is also a woman.
Speaker 3: It's the first.
Speaker 2: Time that a woman has won an election in Mexico,
Speaker 2: the US, or Canada.
Speaker 3: So it's a huge moment for North America.
Speaker 1: And where's Shine bound come from.
Speaker 2: So she's from this leftist party called Marina, which is
Speaker 2: the same as the outgoing president, whose name is Andres
Speaker 2: Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you.
Speaker 3: I've been doing duo lingo Spanish lately.
Speaker 2: He's known by his initials Amlo AMLUL, which is.
Speaker 3: Probably a lot easier.
Speaker 2: Under that constitution in Mexico, presidents only get one six
Speaker 2: year term, so he's out Shinebaum's in. But it's the
Speaker 2: same party carrying over.
Speaker 1: That's pretty interesting. You just get your one shot at it.
Speaker 1: You get a nice long term to do what you
Speaker 1: want to do, and then.
Speaker 3: One I'm done.
Speaker 1: The next Yeah. Something that's come up a lot in
Speaker 1: what I've read about the Mexican election is the violence
Speaker 1: and the street violence. Has that been a big feature
Speaker 1: of the campaign.
Speaker 2: Yes. Over thirty candidates are believed to have been murdered
Speaker 2: ahead of this year's polls.
Speaker 1: That is striking.
Speaker 3: It's striking.
Speaker 2: So that's according to Mexican organization Vote between Bullets, and
Speaker 2: this election has been described as the country's bloodiest ever.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, a woman has become president
Speaker 2: in a woman woman race, at the same time as
Speaker 2: there's really high rates of violence and killings of women
Speaker 2: in Mexico. According to data cited by the United Nations,
Speaker 2: ten women are killed every day by intimate partners and.
Speaker 3: Family members in Mexico.
Speaker 2: So it really kind of remains to be seen what
Speaker 2: Claudia Scheinbaumer can do about this.
Speaker 1: So she's clearly inheriting a complex situation in that vein
Speaker 1: what does she promised to do.
Speaker 2: So she's promised to expand on her predecessor's policies, so
Speaker 2: his social welfare program, expanding them to be a universal
Speaker 2: pension for the elderly and a program that pays young
Speaker 2: people for apprenticeships, and that's one of the things that
Speaker 2: she's trying to do to divert people out of violence
Speaker 2: and out of like cartels. Basically interesting, and she's also
Speaker 2: pledged to invest over two hundred and thirty eight billion pesos,
Speaker 2: So that's Australian twenty billion dollars in renewable energy by
Speaker 2: twenty thirty. Obviously, being a climate scientist, that would be
Speaker 2: her focus, but critics have questioned whether she can kind
Speaker 2: of steer Mexico in that direction, steer her party away
Speaker 2: from its fossil fuel past.
Speaker 1: So we've had three major elections on three different continents
Speaker 1: in two weeks, and that kind of pace doesn't stop
Speaker 1: for the rest of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: What's the rest of the year looking like?
Speaker 2: Well, I can tell you what's happening right now, which
Speaker 2: is that the European Parliament is holding their elections over
Speaker 2: these couple of days.
Speaker 1: As in this weekend. Okay, wow, So that is that
Speaker 1: a consonant wide election. That's right.
Speaker 2: In some ways, it's quite similar to like a national election. Basically,
Speaker 2: people go to the polling booths and they vote for
Speaker 2: who they want to represent them, but this time at
Speaker 2: a continental level. The European Parliament passes laws that affect
Speaker 2: everyone who's in the European Union, and it also chooses
Speaker 2: a president to oversee its activities and to represent the
Speaker 2: EU at things like the G twenty or the G seven.
Speaker 2: And the other thing to know is that EU countries
Speaker 2: elect MPs based on the size of their population, so
Speaker 2: Germans get to elect up to ninety six MPs in
Speaker 2: the European Parliament, Malta gets six.
Speaker 1: And the UK used to be a part of all
Speaker 1: of this, but they brexit it and now they're heading
Speaker 1: for only their second election in the post brexit era.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that, oh, I'm so excited by that.
Speaker 1: Also exciting, and I haven't been able to get buy
Speaker 1: in in the office for my excitement for the UK election.
Speaker 1: But it's going to be interest.
Speaker 2: It's going to be so interesting. It's looking like a landslide.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety seven, the UK Labor Party had a
Speaker 2: massive landslide. They were led by Tony Blair and it
Speaker 2: was kind of thought like, will we ever reach these
Speaker 2: heights again. It's looking like the predictions are that this
Speaker 2: year Labor is going to come back to power after
Speaker 2: fourteen years of Conservative government and win even more seats
Speaker 2: than they did in nineteen ninety seven. One prediction is
Speaker 2: that they are going to win the second biggest majority
Speaker 2: in UK parliament history.
Speaker 1: Wow, so a big reaction against the Tories.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Current Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been campaigning in
Speaker 2: his signature Adidas Sambas. But the polls are suggesting that
Speaker 2: Opposition leader Kirstarma is going to kind of take control
Speaker 2: when they go to the polls in July.
Speaker 1: So we're now, like I think, about two weeks into
Speaker 1: this UK campaign. Give me a sense of the types
Speaker 1: of things being promised by the two major parties.
Speaker 2: The biggest story I would say is that Rishi Sunac
Speaker 2: has promised if the Conservatives the Tories are re elected,
Speaker 2: to institute mandatory national service for young people. So that's
Speaker 2: options to either serve in the military or volunteer in
Speaker 2: the community, but either way you have to do.
Speaker 1: Something really interesting one mm hmm.
Speaker 2: And Kiir Starmer wants to increase the pension and he
Speaker 2: wants to introduce more oversight on government spending, kind of
Speaker 2: put in something like the Parliamentary Budget Office that we
Speaker 2: have in Australia to make sure that UK citizens are
Speaker 2: getting value for tax payer money, is what he said.
Speaker 1: So kind of a government integrity angle there exactly.
Speaker 2: And just one last thing I'd like to say about
Speaker 2: the UK election that is so interesting to me is
Speaker 2: that it's kind of a battle of social class. Social
Speaker 2: class is so important in the UK, it's really embedded
Speaker 2: in the fabric of the country or countries. Conservative leader
Speaker 2: Rishi Sunak grew up middle class with parents who immigrated
Speaker 2: to the UK.
Speaker 3: But then he attended a school that has its own.
Speaker 2: Wikipedi year page with a list of over a thousand
Speaker 2: notable people who attended this school going back to the
Speaker 2: fourteenth century.
Speaker 1: Sure it was very proper, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: And when he became Prime Minister in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: a clip circulated of him filmed for TV as a
Speaker 2: young man saying that he didn't have any working class friends.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, Keirs Starmer grew up working class.
Speaker 2: He won entry to a private school by passing an examine,
Speaker 2: then he got a scholarship, and his deputy leader, Angela Rayner,
Speaker 2: grew up in public housing and had her first child
Speaker 2: at sixteen. You really couldn't see two more different leaders
Speaker 2: on paper, and so which is really interested to see
Speaker 2: how it all plays out.
Speaker 1: I've heard one other interesting thing that struck me about
Speaker 1: the UK election. So there's this guy Nigel Faraj who
Speaker 1: then is a leader of the third biggest party in
Speaker 1: the country, and that's called Reform. We put him on
Speaker 1: Instagram this week because he had a milkshake thrown in
Speaker 1: his face. He's what you'd call the far right. He
Speaker 1: is kind of He left the Tories because he wanted
Speaker 1: more right wing policies than they were offering.
Speaker 2: He was very pro Brexit. He was kind of the
Speaker 2: face of the Leave campaign.
Speaker 1: Interesting and so the suggestion from a couple of experts
Speaker 1: I've read is that this national service policy is kind
Speaker 1: of a way for Rishi Sunak to tap into the
Speaker 1: older generation of conservative voters who want to make sure
Speaker 1: the kids do their hard work and serve their country,
Speaker 1: who might be tempted to vote for Nigel Farage. And
Speaker 1: it goes into this really interesting trend of these kind
Speaker 1: of splintering movements where if they'd stuck together as a party,
Speaker 1: they might win their majority or at least not lose
Speaker 1: by as much. But because they're now splintering out, it
Speaker 1: kind of fragments the vote as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're seeing that in a lot of places and
Speaker 2: it's going to be really interesting to track that kind
Speaker 2: of movement across the rest of this year's elections.
Speaker 1: There's also an Australian link to the reform Nigel Farage's
Speaker 1: reform Party Holly Valance. Holly Valance is the pinup girl
Speaker 1: for the Reform Party, so she's going to have an
Speaker 1: active role in the election. She of course was famous
Speaker 1: in Australia for appearing on Neighbors. So there you go.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're going to talk about the UK election more.
Speaker 1: I hope we've convinced everyone listening that this is actually
Speaker 1: very interesting, so interesting. So we've got a bit of time.
Speaker 1: We'll make sure that you come back on the pod
Speaker 1: to give us more of the insights into what big
Speaker 1: topics are coming out, but also then break down the results.
Speaker 1: So stay tuned everybody. Lucy, thanks for joining us, Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me Sam, And that is all we've got
Speaker 1: time for this week on the Daily Os. We'll be
Speaker 1: back again on Monday morning. Have a fantastic weekend and
Speaker 1: if you're in a part of the country that celebrates
Speaker 1: a long weekend, enjoy that extra day. Will be in
Speaker 1: your ears on Monday morning, though, because the news never sleeps,
Speaker 1: have a great weekend.
Speaker 3: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 3: Bungelung Calcottin woman from Gadigol Country.
Speaker 2: The Daily Os acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on
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Speaker 2: all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay
Speaker 2: our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both
Speaker 2: past and present.