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Episode 374 - So Many Topics - So Little Time
In this episode we discuss:
(00:00) Intro
(01:16) Capping Superannuation
(22:28) Inflation, Wages and Unemployment
(23:22) Wages
(23:35) Share Market
(40:58) Foreign Ownership
(44:27) Promo Stuff
(47:30) USBs
(49:43) Demons
(54:25) Seymour Hersh Follow Up
(01:07:56) Polls
(01:14:40) French Solar Panels
(01:20:25) Lidia Thorpe
(01:35:04) Voice Poll 1
(01:35:42) Voter Strength
(01:37:54) Reasons to Support
(01:38:53) Reasons Against
(01:40:02) Henry Ergas
(01:42:53) Kenan Malik
(01:44:02) Chris Hedges
(01:59:11) Landon says goodnight
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Transcript
We need to talk about ideas, good ones and bad ones.
Speaker:We need to learn stuff about the world.
Speaker:We need an honest, intelligent, thought provoking and entertaining
Speaker:review of what the hell happened on this planet in the last seven days.
Speaker:We need to sit back and listen to the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Sit back and listen to the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove and Joe, the tech
Speaker:guy who was here, but he's disappeared.
Speaker:He's coming back.
Speaker:. This is another episode of the podcast, the Iron Fist and
Speaker:the Velvet Glove episode 374.
Speaker:Scott's been here from half of them, probably Scott, over the years.
Speaker:Maybe I would've thought so.
Speaker:I was very regular back when I lived in Brisbane.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:So you're returning to form.
Speaker:Good to have you back again, Scott.
Speaker:How's your week?
Speaker:He's been very good.
Speaker:Thanks, Trevor.
Speaker:Yeah, it's good.
Speaker:Good.
Speaker:Trevor Goodday.
Speaker:Joe Goodday listeners, how are Yeah, the changes in the in
Speaker:the chat room, he says you are.
Speaker:Yes, we are Landon.
Speaker:Hardbottom is in the chat room.
Speaker:We are late.
Speaker:Scott.
Speaker:You weren't too perturbed by the proposed changes to the putting a
Speaker:cap of 3 million on your super fund.
Speaker:You've decided to No, I wasn't, I wasn't to pay some money
Speaker:outta that to reduce it down.
Speaker:No, I didn't.
Speaker:I didn't, I didn't do that.
Speaker:No, I didn't think, I didn't think that the changes today
Speaker:were all that unreasonable.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, okay.
Speaker:If you really want to talk about it.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, I think Chalmer's flat flatly refusing to index the the superannuation amount
Speaker:when the higher tax cuts in that is setting up the younger generation to
Speaker:pay for this expenditure that has come and benefited our generation.
Speaker:Oh, okay.
Speaker:So in 20 years time now, you know, now look, the, the average superannuation
Speaker:account balance now is only $150,000.
Speaker:So it's very reasonable for them to say that $3 million,
Speaker:you are not gonna get paid.
Speaker:I agree.
Speaker:But in 20 years time, salaries will be much higher, which means the
Speaker:contributions going into salaries, going into the superannuation contributions
Speaker:will be a lot higher, which will end up, meaning that $3 million may become.
Speaker:Possibly not the average, but it'll become a lot closer to the average, which
Speaker:means that it certainly looks and smells like they are plugging expenditure holes
Speaker:with revenue gains out into the future.
Speaker:Which I know is fairly controversial for me to say that, but that's just
Speaker:what it feels and smells like to me.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:But these are gonna be, by the way, Joe, the tech guy is
Speaker:with us, but his video is off.
Speaker:Hopefully his audio's on.
Speaker:Joe, are you actually there?
Speaker:Well, Joe, are you there, Joe?
Speaker:There we go.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:He's with us.
Speaker:His computer's on go slow.
Speaker:So, fair enough.
Speaker:Chime in, Joe whenever you can.
Speaker:And we'll see how we go.
Speaker:Joe's not in his normal place, so he is on a, he's in a secret location.
Speaker:Can't tear any more than that.
Speaker:Alright.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Back to the superannuation, cause that is the story of
Speaker:Australian politics of the week.
Speaker:And yeah, so basically the story is that labor government and Jim Chalmers
Speaker:has said, you know what, if you've got more than 3 million in superannuation,
Speaker:You're really probably using it as, we didn't put in these words, but
Speaker:effectively exactly what he was saying.
Speaker:It's more like a tax dodge.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yes, because I agree with him.
Speaker:It probably is.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And that really it's 30 years a hundred thousand a year, isn't it?
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:You can live quite nicely on that.
Speaker:When the idea of superannuation was to fund a dignified retirement,
Speaker:not necessarily an exorbitant, luxurious retirement, so mm-hmm.
Speaker:, it was to keep people off the age pension and self-funded
Speaker:for a, a retirement indignity.
Speaker:And really because of the tremendous tax breaks in it, of course, very wealthy
Speaker:people look at it and go, gee, well why don't I put my money into superannuation
Speaker:and that way I'll pay less tax.
Speaker:And you can't blame people for doing it.
Speaker:It's just a case that this is what governments are for, is to look at things
Speaker:and go, okay, we need to change that.
Speaker:And superannuation is something that's been changed a lot over the years,
Speaker:so, this is just another change to it.
Speaker:So just some of the stuff that came out.
Speaker:So yeah, you can still have more than 3 million of super in there.
Speaker:You just, just that more tax on, you're just gonna pay more tax.
Speaker:So instead of 15%, you're gonna pay a rate.
Speaker:You pay 30.
Speaker:on the balance in excess of $3 million or $3.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What you earn, what you earn on, what you earn on the balance, up to
Speaker:3 million bucks, you only pay 15% on.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:So it's just going to basically make the taxation of superannuation
Speaker:very progressive, you know?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And it'll still be better than the 45% that these people
Speaker:otherwise most probably beyond.
Speaker:So there's still, you know, this is big saving.
Speaker:What's, what's capital gains?
Speaker:Well, capital gains is, capital gains is calculated based on when you sell
Speaker:the asset , how much you sell it for.
Speaker:You end up getting a 50% discount on the actual profit that you make on something.
Speaker:And then you, then that goes into your amount, goes into your income of
Speaker:that year, your income for that year.
Speaker:But I think you've got an averaging provision.
Speaker:If you're on the top marginal rate and you sold a property made of capital gain,
Speaker:you would pay tax on the capital gain.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:At the top marginal rate.
Speaker:So it gets thrown on top of your other income and taxed at that rate.
Speaker:It does.
Speaker:I it was just, yeah.
Speaker:How would that compare, if you'd invested, rather than putting your money in c p,
Speaker:you would put it into the stock market?
Speaker:Well, this is the, you could still put in the stock market just in the, in the
Speaker:superannuation, you know, framework.
Speaker:Well this is the, I'm just wondering what the tax rates are gonna be.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Whether it's advantageous still to put it into super.
Speaker:Well it is cuz buying shares you could just buy the shares but do it within
Speaker:a super fund and you'll pay tax.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, even if you've got 3 million worth of super, you'll pay tax at 30%
Speaker:rather than if you're in that sort of realm, likely paying tax five.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So it still makes one of those things.
Speaker:I had this conversation with the better half tonight and you know, we were talking
Speaker:about the the failure of charmers to index it and he said if you had a 20 year
Speaker:old kid now, would you be advising them to sock extra money into super or would
Speaker:you get them to invest outside of super?
Speaker:That's a very good question.
Speaker:I don't know what the answer is.
Speaker:Who should put it in Super.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You, you'd only ever, I don't know, Trevor.
Speaker:I think that
Speaker:one of the things that does worry me is that, you know, they're
Speaker:going down the road of saying that superannuation is purely for your
Speaker:retirement, which I agree with.
Speaker:However whatever's left over, I should be able to go to my estate to be, to, for me
Speaker:to divide up amongst my, those people that are gonna inherit it rather than it going
Speaker:to the superannuation industry for them.
Speaker:Use as, as some sort of bonus for themselves.
Speaker:Because I died before I had expended all my super.
Speaker:No, it doesn't get lost.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:I'm just, the balance in super still is distributed.
Speaker:If you are required to roll it over into an, an annuity pension mm-hmm.
Speaker:For life, then they're gonna pay out your balance until you die.
Speaker:And that's what I'm saying is if you die before you run out of
Speaker:your money, then you've, you've forfeited that to the Superfund.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:But that be, if they make the change of forcing people into that style
Speaker:of, and that is, that is the problem that, you know, we were talking about
Speaker:this and and I agree with him, it's possibly the next thing along well.
Speaker:But, but, but a pension, A pension has always been a gamble.
Speaker:The people who live longer are funded by the people who live let long That's true.
Speaker:And, and Scott, there's always a gamble with anything.
Speaker:You could have just your money in the bank or whatever, and the
Speaker:government could change the laws and say, oh, we're now gonna introduce
Speaker:some inheritance tax or some other wealth tax or something like that.
Speaker:Yeah, I know.
Speaker:Which I've got absolutely.
Speaker:No, I've got absolutely no, no problem with inheritance tax.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You know, because I won't pay it.
Speaker:My, my estate will end up paying it, you know, because I'll be dead.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:You know, I'm gonna know what hell's gonna happen.
Speaker:My, there's daughter's just started her first, well, just starting her first job
Speaker:and, and I told her that she's paying super because she's part-time and not.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And she was going, you, you mean they're already taking money from me, right.
Speaker:And I'm saying, yeah, this is to fund your retirement in a long time.
Speaker:And she goes, but I want my money now to be available for me to spend on my
Speaker:uni fees, which I'm gonna pay Yeah.
Speaker:Interest on.
Speaker:And to pay for all of the things she says.
Speaker:The money I, I, I, she understands saving early, but she's saying at
Speaker:the moment, why is she taking out a loan to go to uni to pay for a
Speaker:superannuation, when in theory she's gonna qualify, she's gonna get a good job.
Speaker:She'll be able to better fund her superannuation further down the track.
Speaker:And she thinks she shouldn't be starting paying her super this early.
Speaker:She should be able to use it for her expenses.
Speaker:As a young person.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:If you view super as something that you are not getting that money in
Speaker:your wage and it's being taken out of that, but is it extra to your wage
Speaker:It's putting put in there, you know?
Speaker:Well, that's the whole point.
Speaker:Well, you know, it's one of those things I, I'm very glad I work
Speaker:for a company that doesn't quote superannuation as part of your salary.
Speaker:They just, they pay it over and above what they've gotta pay you.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It always annoys me.
Speaker:You, you quote a figure when the, you're going for a job, you quote a
Speaker:figure and they say, oh, it's so, is that totally, is that including spr?
Speaker:And I'm going, no, that's after tax.
Speaker:You know, after tax.
Speaker:Well, if they quote a stupid figure, right?
Speaker:If they, if we're agreeing a salary, then superannuation is on top.
Speaker:This is not the total bundle.
Speaker:Agree.
Speaker:You know, my office expenses, you know, the, the lighting, the air
Speaker:conditioning, why not take all of that outta my wages as well?
Speaker:Alright, well, you know, I guess, I mean it's all came apart around
Speaker:with Hawke and Keating, wasn't it?
Speaker:It was the Accord.
Speaker:It was, it was cutting deals.
Speaker:It was all part of the Accord . They, they cut a deal with the union movement
Speaker:and they said, look, in order to get you guys on board, what are we gonna do here?
Speaker:And they said, well, we want compulsory superannuation.
Speaker:And they actually did it then.
Speaker:So that was where most of it, that's where it all started from.
Speaker:Now if you listen to Paul Keating, he thinks that, he thinks that the way he
Speaker:invented it was perfect, but he, I don't think he foresaw, you know, there was one
Speaker:or two superannuation accounts that were 400 million, you know, that sort of money.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Now that, that is, that is clearly someone who has saved up that amount
Speaker:of money in a tax effective way.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Now, I honestly believe that had, had Paul Keating been the.
Speaker:Great man that he was, then he would've been able to foresee that and he
Speaker:should have actually done something about it when he designed the system.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:But now we've had to come along, we've had to change it now, you know, a lot of
Speaker:it has a lot of it has already changed.
Speaker:You know, the Tories did actually pull apart a hell of a lot of the
Speaker:superannuation savings they did.
Speaker:He said, oh, hello, there's Shay.
Speaker:He recently came out and said the Accord is no longer serving us.
Speaker:Okay, fair enough.
Speaker:You know, they did actually reduce some of the superannuation tax concessions
Speaker:that were involved in that sort of thing, so that, that has already been
Speaker:largely pulled apart, but they didn't actually take it that step further
Speaker:and actually tax the very well to do.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There's been various changes over the years.
Speaker:I can remember there were these post 83 or post 86 contributions treated differently
Speaker:pre 83 and it's been a bunch of them 83.
Speaker:It's interesting that they didn't sit down at the beginning and think, how
Speaker:will the rich exploit this new rule?
Speaker:And, you know, really it's like, solar panels when they were so
Speaker:generous with solar at 53 cents.
Speaker:Really nobody, nobody sat down and did the sums and went, you know what,
Speaker:there'll be a bunch of smart people out there with a fair bit of spare
Speaker:money who are gonna just load up their roofs and their carport with solar
Speaker:panels and this is what's gonna happen.
Speaker:What's on that?
Speaker:Well, initially no caps no.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So it was an overly generous scheme where people in government
Speaker:didn't sit down and just think, if somebody's got a lot of money, how
Speaker:can they use this to their advantage?
Speaker:Lawfully and Super was one of those where they've been tinkering with it
Speaker:for a while and this is yet another sort of tinkering that's clean,
Speaker:necessary Game of Mates argues that it's actually 10 to the union movement.
Speaker:The cheaper was brought in.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Well, I think so as well.
Speaker:I think it, it did neuter, I think actually Hawke and Keating actually did
Speaker:a lot of neoliberal type of stuff there.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:No, they did, they did bug the power.
Speaker:I think unions, I don't, they sort of, there's no things getting down about that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And we're gonna show a chart later on, on terms of strike action
Speaker:and industrial disruption and how it's disappeared from our economy.
Speaker:Kind of in line with when wages stopped growing.
Speaker:, the argument is that the unions now own shares.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And therefore they're unwilling to take the strike action that puts the
Speaker:shares they are managing and therefore the fees they're earning at risk.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Well, I think that's probably an argument more for the industry.
Speaker:Super funds that are now the union movement doesn't benefit
Speaker:from those industry super funds.
Speaker:They are actually designed to benefit only the members of the, of the fund, but
Speaker:the unions are behind them . So I think you've got a reasonable argument there.
Speaker:Sorry.
Speaker:And the unions take management fees.
Speaker:I dunno that the unions take management fee, I think, or or at least the super
Speaker:funds have input into the unions.
Speaker:Well I think the unions actually have to, I think the unions provide
Speaker:50% of the directors, don't they?
Speaker:But yeah, they might provide members of the board Yeah.
Speaker:Under an obligation to manage the fund for the welfare of members.
Speaker:Sorry.
Speaker:But it, it's, it's more that the unions are less likely to take strike action
Speaker:if they believe that their members superannuation is gonna be at risk.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Look.
Speaker:By the way, this is not a podcast for financial advice, although
Speaker:Joel no, didn't listen to us.
Speaker:Joel in the chat room has said, I've put all my money in my space shares,
Speaker:so , hopefully Joel's not running any super funds out there for anyone else.
Speaker:good luck with that one.
Speaker:Good on you, Joel.
Speaker:There's lots of people in the chat room having a good chat.
Speaker:Make your comments.
Speaker:We'll try and introduce them.
Speaker:Eric's there, Tom, the warehouse guy was there.
Speaker:Tom's saying they invested nine to 12% of your income and they lose it.
Speaker:Just depends.
Speaker:You can shop around and yeah.
Speaker:Okay, so let's just get some facts and figures out there as well.
Speaker:So less than 1% of people have got more than 3 million in super.
Speaker:The average amount, as you said, Scott oh, for people who've got, for people
Speaker:who've got at least 3 million, the average for those people is actually 5.8.
Speaker:So the people who are caught by this new change on average have 5.8 million
Speaker:in, and we all know what averages are.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So, Peter Dutton is against it.
Speaker:He said that it's about introducing new laws.
Speaker:It's, it's basically just another tax, so he's against it.
Speaker:So he would be, because he's not or anything, he's just against everything.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Well, as described, I think by the writer in The Guardian I think
Speaker:it was Murphy who said that Peter Dutton is a Tony Abbott tribute band.
Speaker:I thought that was a good line to know all over again.
Speaker:J Greg Jericho wrote that the Australia Institute estimates that
Speaker:the cost of the tax concessions for superannuation is on par with
Speaker:the cost of the entire age pension.
Speaker:So I mean, one of the ideas ofs was so that the government wouldn't have
Speaker:to pay the age pension and it's the tax concessions have reached now
Speaker:the cost of the entire age pension.
Speaker:So that's an interesting statistic.
Speaker:And a couple more statistics for you.
Speaker:Those people with an income above 150,000 would be 7% of all individuals,
Speaker:yet they make up 32% of all personal superannuation contributions.
Speaker:So obviously rich people pour in a lot more money into super than poor people do.
Speaker:That'll make sense.
Speaker:And the share of people with a super fund above 2 million was
Speaker:just 0.5 of a percent, just 80,000.
Speaker:and 384 of those were people under age 30 they're doing well.
Speaker:See, that's a big money coming from Mum and dad, isn't it?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And and those 0.5% of people account for 12% of all superannuation funds held.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:The top 0.5% account for 12% of all of the Superfund Superfund money held.
Speaker:And the conclusion in this was much like negative gearing is a tax
Speaker:dodge disguised as a housing policy.
Speaker:Too much of superannuation has become a tax dodge disguised
Speaker:as a retirement income policy.
Speaker:I think that sums up pretty well.
Speaker:How much is self-managed super as compared to industry or fund?
Speaker:Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Speaker:Doesn't, I mean, the thing you are, the more likely you have a self-managed.
Speaker:Yeah, well, they're saying is that the bigger, the bigger balances
Speaker:are in the self-managed funds.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So it's, it's clearly a tax dodge that they've set up for themselves
Speaker:. So, Yeah, it's one of those things
Speaker:with what the government has said.
Speaker:Now, before you go into ATIC spins my good friend Pat's out there, I'm sure you'll
Speaker:know exactly who I'm talking about, but I've used your nickname rather than your
Speaker:real name to protect your innocence.
Speaker:You are never gonna have 3 million in a superannuation account, so
Speaker:there's nothing for you to complain about, and I'm sure that we can
Speaker:expect you to vote labor next time.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Is he like these Americans who are just temporarily disadvantaged millionaires?
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, , very poor Americans who continue to vote for policies that enhance
Speaker:the lifestyles of the rich.
Speaker:Cause they figure one day they will be rich.
Speaker:He's not like that.
Speaker:He's, he's very realistic about where he is gonna get to or anything like that.
Speaker:But you know, he has said to me before that he wants to die on the
Speaker:pension , and he was gonna pour all his money into his, into his extravagant
Speaker:home in a beachfront place that he can still collect the pension.
Speaker:I thought to myself, okay, more disclosures.
Speaker:Alison, she's in the chat room.
Speaker:She declares, she's not the one person who has over 500 million.
Speaker:Super.
Speaker:So she's no good for a loan then?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:So one reactions around the place, Z Ste said people make many decisions
Speaker:and saving choices during their working life, like salary phrasing.
Speaker:And this should not now be punished with a knee-jerk policy
Speaker:by the Albanese government.
Speaker:But those of you who are wondering whether the Steggles of the world were
Speaker:really just liberals, old-fashioned liberals with . You don't wanna get,
Speaker:you have no interest in your bedroom and have a climate friendly agenda.
Speaker:But otherwise, economically and tax wise, triple liberals really?
Speaker:So that's Steggles.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So , lean Hardbottom, he's disclosed that it is him.
Speaker:In fact, that's got the $500 million balance here.
Speaker:Oh, got on your Landon.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And another one here relevant to this, let me just see if there's one more.
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:And I like this person.
Speaker:This, this Twitter handle.
Speaker:The handle of this person is participation trophy wife . That's a good one.
Speaker:rights.
Speaker:If you're worried about 3 million not being enough retirement, spend
Speaker:less on coffee and smashed avocado.
Speaker:Oh, it's it's good theory, right?
Speaker:I like what ge, Jeff Greg Jericho said, he said, oh, bless Ali STL suggesting
Speaker:a 3 million cap could hurt those who have done the salary sacrificing.
Speaker:Next, next will be told this cap could hit nurses and teachers.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Isn't the salary sacrifice only if you are earning under a certain.
Speaker:No, I, I'm, I'd do it.
Speaker:You know, it's just, no.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I don't think, I don't earn more than $150,000, but it's
Speaker:just one of those things.
Speaker:If you, you used to get, you used to get a much bigger contribution
Speaker:. If you earned less than, oh, I
Speaker:would match your contribution.
Speaker:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker:But that has now gone by the wayside.
Speaker:You know, salary sacrificing, there's no, there's nothing magical about it.
Speaker:You just gotta say to them that you want extra super money put aside, sir.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Let's talk about inflation, unemployment and the reserve bank
Speaker:policy and wages and, and tie all this in together in a coherent fashion.
Speaker:And first of all, before we get on to some of the commentary that I've got from some
Speaker:articles, let's just look at some figures.
Speaker:And the first one there is a chart showing what the real, the largest real wage
Speaker:drop in Australian history looks like.
Speaker:By the way, dear listener, if you are listening to the audio of
Speaker:this podcast, then these charts will be like chapter images.
Speaker:So if you are listening on the iTunes app or most other good apps, I'll show
Speaker:the chapter images, say, look at your.
Speaker:And there's a half a chance that these charts and images that we're gonna be
Speaker:talking about will just appear on your phone, which will be pretty handy.
Speaker:So there you go.
Speaker:That's chapters.
Speaker:Now, so you can see that the real wages in Australia have plummeted
Speaker:since may of 2020 especially.
Speaker:So there's a chart there that shows that quite an amazing jump.
Speaker:Meanwhile, I've got a chart showing the ASX 200 and Scott since early 2020, the
Speaker:sheer market increase till today is 60%.
Speaker:Yeah, I've read that in an article.
Speaker:I thought that can't be right.
Speaker:And then I looked it up and I it is.
Speaker:But, but hang on.
Speaker:That's disingenuous because there was a full beginning of 2020.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Massive drop.
Speaker:So it's regained.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So at the beginning of lockdown, it, it plummeted.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And it's regained what it lost.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:But it's quite an extraordinary thing to get a 60% increase
Speaker:in essentially three years.
Speaker:Amazing increase.
Speaker:So here is that, you're right.
Speaker:What's the other chart I've got here that might be relevant before we go on?
Speaker:Now that is just, that is just the prices of shares more so Yes.
Speaker:Than what their profits have been that are under the shares.
Speaker:True.
Speaker:But it's usually a reflection of, yeah, it's usually a reflection unless you're.
Speaker:Commonwealth Bank and you announce a record profit , and the next
Speaker:day every bastard sells them down.
Speaker:So you go down below a hundred bucks a share.
Speaker:But anyway, yeah.
Speaker:so, so disgruntled Commonwealth Bank shareholder,
Speaker:So what we've got, dear listener, is our reserve bank and central banks
Speaker:around the world worrying about inflation, which has definitely been
Speaker:the case that there's been inflation that we haven't seen for a while.
Speaker:And the response by our reserve bank and other central banks has
Speaker:been to increase interest rates.
Speaker:And the first question is, well, why do they do that?
Speaker:Why do you increase interest rates to somehow combat inflation?
Speaker:And the answer is that the theory is that by increasing interest rates,
Speaker:you will dampen the economy such that well backing up just a bit.
Speaker:Reserve Bank and central banks have been talking about this wage price
Speaker:spiral, essentially that wages go are going up as a consequence,
Speaker:prices have to be increased to take account of the increased wage cost.
Speaker:Because of the increased prices, people demand higher wages, which leads to
Speaker:increased prices, which leads to higher wages and increased prices spiraling
Speaker:upwards is, is the theory that central banks have basically been working on.
Speaker:And so to counteract that wages, price spiral, the theory is that if you increase
Speaker:interest rates, you will dampen the economy to the point where businesses will
Speaker:start putting people off, start laying them off, and jobs will be harder to get.
Speaker:People will be worried about losing their job and that they will therefore
Speaker:not ask for price for wage increases.
Speaker:And that then is a circuit breaker to stop the wages price spiral.
Speaker:And this is all part of a a theory called the Phillips Curve.
Speaker:And the problem with that is that around the world, they are looking
Speaker:at unemployment figures and finding that there is record low unemployment.
Speaker:So there's still not enough workers out there, despite the fact that interest
Speaker:rates have been going higher and higher.
Speaker:So the people who subscribe to this theory, we need to dampen the economy.
Speaker:To increase unemployment, to make people scared so that they
Speaker:won't ask for wage increases.
Speaker:Looking at the situation and going, gee we just need to increase the interest
Speaker:rates even higher, then really crush the economy so that people will be
Speaker:fired or worried about their job and hence not was for a wage increase.
Speaker:And so that's the risk we face, dear listener, is that that central
Speaker:banks are, are relying on this theory, which could be complete bs.
Speaker:And if you look at the world and we've discussed before about
Speaker:unemployment figures, how it's kind of meaningless as a figure.
Speaker:There's a danger that these guys just dunno what they're talking about.
Speaker:That they're locked into this old style of economic theory and if
Speaker:they keep going with what they wanna do and increased interest rates,
Speaker:they're going sub to subject us to a recession that we didn't have to have.
Speaker:Scott or Joe, what do you think of right above it?
Speaker:Well, Robert Reich argues that we don't have a labor shortage.
Speaker:Yes, we have a shortage of jobs paying a decent wage.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:People actually want.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And so people aren't taking the shit jobs anymore.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's like during lockdown when, or sorry, just after lockdown when
Speaker:we had, didn't have backpackers in to work, you know, slave labor.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:. And, and locals were begged to come and do it.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And the locals went and did it and went, hang on.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:I'm earning this great amount of money, but they're taking
Speaker:half of it off me in rent.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:My actual money at the end of the week in my pocket is less
Speaker:than if I was on the doll.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, why would I travel to Outback Queensland to go down less than I get on the dock?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Scott, Scott theories, the Reserve Banks Reserve Bank and Central
Speaker:Banks going to ruin us theories.
Speaker:I agree with what you are saying there because it is based on that
Speaker:economist from the 1950s in New Zealand, something rather Phillips, you know,
Speaker:he was the one that first said that you've got this wages price spiral.
Speaker:Now.
Speaker:It's one of those things that I would've thought they would've moved
Speaker:on from by now, but apparently not now.
Speaker:You know, I really agreed with Sally McManus the other, the other day.
Speaker:She sent an email to us , and she said that we are living in a cost of
Speaker:cri the cost of living crisis, but it's got nothing to do with wages.
Speaker:It's got everything to do with the gouging that big that companies are doing.
Speaker:In the chat room.
Speaker:Shalene says, doesn't account for supply chain problem or company profits.
Speaker:Sha comment, you should be on a podcast Sha.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Maybe.
Speaker:Anyway, keep going.
Speaker:Scott.
Speaker:Talking about company profits.
Speaker:Didn't Qantas just post a, a slight profit?
Speaker:Yes, they did.
Speaker:Qantas made an enormous profit and now, you know, it's one of those things like,
Speaker:you know, their subsidiary Jetstar is, well it hasn't fallen out of the sky yet,
Speaker:but it's threatening to, you know mm-hmm.
Speaker:It appears that the service and maintenance has been Let's slide.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Qantas made a profit of 1.43 billion for the half year.
Speaker:So just remembering that they benefited by 2.3 billion in handouts
Speaker:from the Morrison government.
Speaker:And at the time the Transport Workers Union said Maybe we should
Speaker:be taking that as equity rather than just giving it to Qantas.
Speaker:Of course, Morrison was never going to do that.
Speaker:Apparently, other governments around the world did.
Speaker:We could be, yes, at least half owners, the Australian public
Speaker:of Qantas, but aas we are not.
Speaker:So we gave away 2.3 billion and they are now rotting us with hefty plane
Speaker:fares and earning 1.43 billion, which would be okay if we were the
Speaker:shareholders of that, but we're not.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, another missed opportunity.
Speaker:The other ones who are making big money at the moment are the banks.
Speaker:And so, let me see.
Speaker:Commonwealth Bank reported a record profit 5.15 billion for
Speaker:the six months to December.
Speaker:Now, Scott and Joe, was it because the Commonwealth Bank suddenly found ways
Speaker:of being more efficient of growing their business and exploring new markets of,
Speaker:of amazing initiatives and new ideas that have, have created this new wealth?
Speaker:No, it was good.
Speaker:Over their employees and their customers.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:What they did was they, they have increased the margin on what
Speaker:they're making on their money.
Speaker:So, you know, they're borrowing money at the, essentially the same
Speaker:rate, which is lower than what they charge people, which is fine.
Speaker:But with the Reserve Bank jacking interest rates up, the amount
Speaker:they've had to pay out to their depositors hasn't gone up as quickly.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:But you know, as soon as, as soon as the interest rates go up, as soon as the
Speaker:interest rates go up by the Reserve Bank, then mortgage rates go up immediately.
Speaker:But the deposit rates , they take a lot longer to catch up.
Speaker:And the gap, the gap between what they pay for deposits and what they charge
Speaker:for lines has got wider and wider.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So that's why the Commonwealth Bank is making all that sort of money and all
Speaker:the banks do, it's easy to make money.
Speaker:As a bank in a, in a period where you've gone from record, low interest to sort
Speaker:of, you didn't need to qualify that.
Speaker:It's easy as a bank to make money.
Speaker:. Yes.
Speaker:Cuz you've essentially given a license to do precisely that.
Speaker:Make money via a simple ledger transaction.
Speaker:That's exactly right.
Speaker:Just in this article it says Australia's biggest bank made no pretense of
Speaker:claiming its performance was all a result of better serving its customers.
Speaker:Rather it implicitly acknowledged it was screwing them, saying that its inflated.
Speaker:Bottom line was in large measure, quote, driven by a recovery in net interest
Speaker:margins in the rising rate environment.
Speaker:Put another way as Central bank lifted official rates, the Commonwealth
Speaker:Bank took advantage by jacking up the amount it charged its
Speaker:borrowers more than what it paid.
Speaker:Its depositors.
Speaker:So you're quite correct there, Scott.
Speaker:Very good.
Speaker:Other also big announcements of profits coals up 17% on the previous year.
Speaker:Woolworths no up 14%.
Speaker:Don't know about over here, but certainly in the uk the big supermarkets got in
Speaker:trouble cuz they were playing their suppliers up to two years in arrears.
Speaker:So effectively they've been sitting on the profits for two years before
Speaker:they go on and pay their suppliers.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:How do supplies, how do they survive?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Let me just see what else I've got here.
Speaker:So yeah, so when the Reserve Bank raises interest rates, there's a section of the
Speaker:economy that finds that a stimulus in fact rather than a depressing effect,
Speaker:which the bank is in theory trying to do in order to cancel people's jobs.
Speaker:So, it's a really blunt instrument that the Reserve Bank has remembering that
Speaker:the unelected officials, and in my view, the functions of a reserve bank should be
Speaker:revert back to the government of the day.
Speaker:Who should?
Speaker:No, I don't agree with that.
Speaker:I think you've gotta maintain an independent board.
Speaker:Oh.
Speaker:Because they're doing such a good job, Scott.
Speaker:No, not because they're doing such a good job, because you've just gotta
Speaker:keep 'em independent of government.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Because if you've got them, if you've got them in the gov, if, if you've got the
Speaker:government making the decision, they're going to be more inclined to do exactly
Speaker:what the public wants, which right now would be to keep interest rates low.
Speaker:Sounds like democracy.
Speaker:Yeah, I know it's democracy.
Speaker:But then we could in that, with the whole thing going outta control again,
Speaker:but, but the, but see, we've got a reserve bank who says our priority
Speaker:is inflation and we don't give a shit about people being employed.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And maybe the public says, well, actually we'd.
Speaker:Policies focus.
Speaker:That's employment.
Speaker:That's why I think we've gotta have, well, that's why I think we've
Speaker:got to have a board made up with a larger group of people, well, not
Speaker:a larger group of people, but a different cross section of people.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Because you, you know, you used to have, you used to went, you used to
Speaker:have union rep representation on the board that's now gone by the wayside.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, you know, I think that if you had unions, if you had a union representative
Speaker:on the board, if you had an employer representative on the board and you had
Speaker:a, if you had an academic economist and then you had a market economist, and
Speaker:then they elected a, then they, then they elected the head of the board.
Speaker:I think that would be better, rather than the board, the head of the board being
Speaker:appointed by the federal government.
Speaker:So we just let the oligarchs choose the board members.
Speaker:No, you wouldn't.
Speaker:You wouldn't, you, the board members would still be appointed by the government.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. But I think that if the government had that sort of idea and they,
Speaker:and then, you know, I don't know how many members are on the board.
Speaker:Say you've got seven members on the board, so they'd appoint all seven
Speaker:and then they had to, then they had to appoint a head of the board from that.
Speaker:Then that would be preferable then what it is currently.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:We did a story on a guy who was a member of the Reserve Bank of
Speaker:Australia and how difficult he found it to get information and.
Speaker:To sort of work against the prevailing side geist.
Speaker:That was sort of 18 months, two years ago.
Speaker:I might try and find that one.
Speaker:So just a couple more comments on this before we move on.
Speaker:Rod Sims, former hair former Chair of Australian Competition and Consumer
Speaker:Commission points out Australia's got a lot of monopolies and oligopolies
Speaker:compared to a lot of other countries.
Speaker:So two main supermarkets, three main energy retailers, three
Speaker:telecommunications players, four banks.
Speaker:They all act in unison.
Speaker:There's only one a ACCC are in west competition there.
Speaker:Yeah, , it's, it's monopoly.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yes, ex indeed.
Speaker:Good one Joe.
Speaker:And then here's another one.
Speaker:This is from a guy Warrick McKibben, professor of
Speaker:economics, a n u Crawford School.
Speaker:And he says Reserve bank spends far too much time worrying about workers' pay,
Speaker:even if wages were to increase faster.
Speaker:He says it would have a much smaller impact on inflation than the R B A.
Speaker:Thanks.
Speaker:This is because the share of labor in Australia's gross output of goods and
Speaker:services has been widely overestimated.
Speaker:The r b assumption is that when Australia produces something, labor
Speaker:accounts for 65% of the inputs and capital accounts for the remaining 35.
Speaker:Yeah, so he's saying the RBA assumes labor is 65% of the input cost of stuff.
Speaker:In fact, the globalized world where so much of inputs into what we produce
Speaker:comes from elsewhere, domestic labor only accounts for about 18% of inputs.
Speaker:So McKibbin ads, you can get 82% of inflation coming from
Speaker:things outside the labor market or the Australian labor market.
Speaker:So, that's the bigger picture of what's driving inflation.
Speaker:It's not local labor in a sense.
Speaker:That's an interesting idea, Scott.
Speaker:Worrying too much about wage, we should move our production to an
Speaker:even cheaper source of slave labor.
Speaker:No, but we should not worry about wages, increasing prices because ultimately
Speaker:it's a very small component of stuff.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:They probably had an argument for it when Australia used to
Speaker:make virtually everything, but you know, those days are gone.
Speaker:You know, you, you can't you know, I had to move heaven and earth to find an
Speaker:Australian made toothpaste the other day.
Speaker:You know, it's one of those things you just don't.
Speaker:Sorry, you were looking for Australian made toothpaste.
Speaker:Made toothpaste, like a Dick Smith type quest for Aussie.
Speaker:No, I did.
Speaker:Yes I did.
Speaker:Just sat in your head, you wanted a Aussie made toothpaste.
Speaker:Well, I did.
Speaker:So I went through, you know, I have dear listener, I have gone through and
Speaker:I have upgraded my, I have upgraded, have upgraded everything in my bathroom
Speaker:. So it's Australian made.
Speaker:So it's just one of those things I found it bloody difficult to find stuff
Speaker:that was actually made in Australia.
Speaker:Can you get a page on the website of Australian products that Scott recommends?
Speaker:Can you get I don't, my toothbrush, I haven't, haven't looked for
Speaker:an Australian made toothbrush.
Speaker:You know, I've still got a hell of a lot of toothbrushes over
Speaker:here, so Yeah, couldn't tell you.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And anyway, now of course the one thing that would cut
Speaker:inflation is a Super profits tax.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:If they had a super profits tax, then that would actually, that would actually
Speaker:go a long way to keeping the baskets in check with their price increases.
Speaker:You know what, maybe it wouldn't, maybe they would just charge the higher prices.
Speaker:It's just the profit from it would end up in the hands of the Australian government.
Speaker:But the prices would still be high, wouldn't they?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But then surely if the Australian government has more money to spend, yes.
Speaker:That feeds back into.
Speaker:Spending subsidizing something else, which goes back into the
Speaker:pockets of ordinary workers.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:But my point is, technically the prices should still be high.
Speaker:It's just that the profit from it would come to us rather than
Speaker:rather to the corporations.
Speaker:And bear in mind, dear listener, so much of Australian so many much of
Speaker:Australian corporations are foreign owned.
Speaker:So when we are talking about these profits, there is a chart
Speaker:there which shows the green, how much is going offshore.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:On these various companies.
Speaker:The sort of teal colored bar is US investors.
Speaker:And the orange yellowish is Australian investors.
Speaker:And this is the top 20 companies in Australia.
Speaker:And essentially so much of our big companies is actually
Speaker:owned by US investors.
Speaker:And so the first two were Australian government that got spun off.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Commonwealth Government and CSL was mm-hmm.
Speaker:. Yeah.
Speaker:Telstra was got sold off, although that's mostly Australian owned.
Speaker:Yeah, probably because of the way it was sold off maybe.
Speaker:But a huge percentage of Australian, I dunno what happened to my, I didn't
Speaker:actually have the numbers on it.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:ResMed.
Speaker:So, ResMed makes C happen.
Speaker:, other devices, they're down the bottom.
Speaker:Another mostly Australian owned.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, if you've got sleep apnea, they make devices for that.
Speaker:Oh.
Speaker:So I presume that they're Australian market and overseas
Speaker:investors just aren't interested.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Australia's 20 biggest companies 15 are majority owned by US based investors,
Speaker:and three more are at least 25% US owned.
Speaker:So all four of our big banks are majority owned by American investors.
Speaker:So the story we're telling earlier of how easy it was for banks to make money
Speaker:in a market where the interest rates are going up, all four of our big banks are
Speaker:majority owned by American investors.
Speaker:The Commonwealth Bank, it's more than 60% owned by American investors.
Speaker:Ah, it's depressing.
Speaker:. And the biggest ownership is bhp.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's 70 something percent is US owned.
Speaker:Yeah, indeed.
Speaker:Alright we'll move on to any other topics you guys done with that one.
Speaker:You okay with that?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's rather depressing actually to see how much of the
Speaker:country's owned by the yins.
Speaker:Yeah, it is.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And, and we'll have to do one at some stage on these companies, BlackRock and
Speaker:others that you don't hear about often.
Speaker:So, Let's see, Alison says, Grant's toothpaste is Australian owned.
Speaker:Now, I dunno, I bought Cele.
Speaker:Is that owned by Grants?
Speaker:Dunno, I couldn't tell you.
Speaker:Anyway, so Alison, if you wouldn't mind answering that
Speaker:question then it'd be great.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Tom, the warehouse guy, says Woolworth are the only store and they have stock of it
Speaker:in five stores only in New South Wales.
Speaker:Who would've thought that our chat room was such experts
Speaker:on Australian low toothpaste?
Speaker:Good on you guys.
Speaker:It's one of those things I just mentioned it and I didn't realize
Speaker:I start a conversation like that.
Speaker:Anyway.
Speaker:Very good.
Speaker:So, okay.
Speaker:Oh, and John says afford it online and get it shipped.
Speaker:Yeah, no, I, I'm managing to buy it in Wooleys, but I couldn't buy
Speaker:it in, I couldn't buy it in Kohl's, but I could buy it in Wooleys.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, just getting back to John says Scott's transport went under on Monday.
Speaker:They were a huge supplier to Kohl's and Woolworth's I think is one of Cosworth.
Speaker:I think you're saying Coles in Woolworth.
Speaker:So Scott's Transport went under maybe?
Speaker:Yep, they did.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Supplier struggling.
Speaker:Okay, so keep up the comments in the chat room, we'll try and get to those.
Speaker:I mentioned there's chapters that we use in this podcast, so if you like a
Speaker:topic, you can look at the chapters.
Speaker:Head back to it and listen to it again.
Speaker:Or if you don't like a topic, you can skip over it.
Speaker:And there is a newsletter if going onto the website, i fife club.com au.
Speaker:You can subscribe to the newsletter, which is basically during the week
Speaker:as I find articles and sort of, in them a little start to look at later.
Speaker:That will, those articles will appear in the newsletter.
Speaker:So if you're looking for a, a newsfeed, that's a good one.
Speaker:Donations, you can do that.
Speaker:Joe.
Speaker:Here's your chance for your funny QR code Patreon or PayPal.
Speaker:You can do that.
Speaker:Descript editing.
Speaker:I run the audio for this that appears on the podcast through
Speaker:an editor called Descript, which gets rid of the ums and rs.
Speaker:It's pretty good.
Speaker:It's a little bit choppy at times, but generally takes out five or six
Speaker:minutes of stuff from a podcast.
Speaker:If you don't like that, then you can listen to the YouTube version
Speaker:cuz that doesn't happen on that one.
Speaker:And if you're a PayPal donor, the show notes are available in a Dropbox, let
Speaker:me know and I can give you the link.
Speaker:Otherwise, people with Patreon, they they get the show notes and
Speaker:the episode today is gonna be a big one in terms of show notes.
Speaker:So, so yeah, that's all sort of admin type.
Speaker:and right time for a bit of humor.
Speaker:Now, I, dear listener, last week, so I was in Sydney and I had a laptop.
Speaker:We are all sorted, had all the necessary cords.
Speaker:We're talking like this beforehand.
Speaker:Everything's going swimmingly.
Speaker:I'm in an, a hotel with an amazing internet, like 500 down
Speaker:and 300 up, like crazily fast.
Speaker:And but then when we started the podcast because I was scrolling through
Speaker:a Word document that was enough for my computer to have a heart attack.
Speaker:No, no, no.
Speaker:You're scrolling through a 3000 page Word document.
Speaker:Let's do that.
Speaker:. So I've since changed now where I, I just, I don't have the all previous
Speaker:390 odd 370 odd episodes on the Word document that I use during the podcast.
Speaker:It's a shorter one now.
Speaker:So I won't putting, gonna publish it or something, crunch
Speaker:my computer like that again.
Speaker:So we did our best, but there was some stuff there and I decided,
Speaker:look, I was gonna try and edit it and try and produce it, but in
Speaker:the end it just didn't work out.
Speaker:So we're gonna play, we're gonna deal with a few things that were discussed
Speaker:in that episode that ended up.
Speaker:just not being published.
Speaker:So if you are in the chat room during that, you're gonna hear
Speaker:a few repeats of a few things.
Speaker:Sorry about that.
Speaker:But hey, it's gonna be an extra long episode to keep Shay out of the Shark
Speaker:Tank because both Shay and Landon are in the chat room at the moment.
Speaker:So gotta keep keep them happy.
Speaker:So, okay.
Speaker:Let me just see here.
Speaker:So one of these videos which was oh yeah, we'll start with this one.
Speaker:So, and Scott, I asked you whether you had an electric car
Speaker:yet and you don't have one yet.
Speaker:I don't have electric get one, maybe or not.
Speaker:Well, not something, not that king.
Speaker:It's probably something that I end up down when I end up living closer to home.
Speaker:I wouldn't mind.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So this is Kamala Harris talking about electric buses and I'll just
Speaker:play a bit of what she has to sing.
Speaker:No exhaust, no diesel smell, the bus has wifi and even u s
Speaker:b outlets next to every seat.
Speaker:I mean, come on, imagine you can charge your phone on your way home from work.
Speaker:That's good stuff.
Speaker:Yeah, just a heartbeat away from the biggest job on the planet, Scott.
Speaker:Yeah, I know.
Speaker:It's a little bit of a concern, isn't it?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You know, she was getting really very excited over something like that.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I'm the USB charging port.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I've got a hybrid rental and it doesn't have the USB charging
Speaker:port, and I was very disappointed.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:It's disappointing because I went to plug my phone in on the drive up here.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And sure.
Speaker:12 volts socket.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Because I pulled the instruction manual out and it said it's an
Speaker:option and it's in the center box.
Speaker:Center console.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And I checked in there and no, the option wasn't fitted.
Speaker:So you had to get the cigarette lighter adapter type thing if
Speaker:you wanted to charge your phone.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:There we go.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I was just surprised in this day and age.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That is surprising.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:, what else have I got here?
Speaker:Sharon.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Sharon says, I wonder how excited she was to learn China has spider balloons,
Speaker:you know, because let's face it, Kamala, the bus you're getting so
Speaker:excited about would've made, been made in China, I would've thought.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:You know, forgive me dear listener, if I happen to have a predisposition
Speaker:to, to an interest in all things satanic and demonic, but you
Speaker:know, you gotta watch it out.
Speaker:There's gonna be demons in Congress apparently.
Speaker:So, here's what a, an American preacher had to say about this.
Speaker:Well, I'm gonna tell you something.
Speaker:Here comes the glory.
Speaker:Here comes the glory.
Speaker:It's coming on in, and the glory will invade the halls of Congress.
Speaker:And the glory is gonna come in like a mist right there in the middle of it.
Speaker:And de demonn possess.
Speaker:Congressmen are going to manifest right there in front of everybody.
Speaker:You're going to see some of them react.
Speaker:And don't be surprised if suddenly there's a joint, there's a session
Speaker:of Congress on television, and it's the same old boring sound with the
Speaker:gavel and all this stuff going on.
Speaker:And all of a sudden in the back you hear somebody say, and all because the
Speaker:anointings gonna come on the floor and it's going to draw these demons out
Speaker:into the public for everybody to see.
Speaker:Don't be, don't be surprised when that happened is when he goes surprised.
Speaker:He goes,
Speaker:some reason I find that incredibly funny.
Speaker:That's the, isn't it?
Speaker:It's a sad thing to see mental lumin illness affect someone though, isn't it?
Speaker:Ah.
Speaker:Are these guys mentally ill or are they just selling stuff and
Speaker:they it's, or are they an asset?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Are they just selling stuff?
Speaker:It's, you know, how much of this is conniving?
Speaker:Snake oil salesman?
Speaker:The seeking donations from gullible people and is, it's hard.
Speaker:Surprise me.
Speaker:So, here's another one.
Speaker:This was sent by yet another pink affair over there in Western Australia.
Speaker:You recognize him?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I don't even wanna give you his name.
Speaker:Talking about his private jet.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Kenneth Copeland.
Speaker:Kenneth Copeland.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Here all.
Speaker:So look, do you listener, it's either this or the Governor General's wife singing.
Speaker:So probably no, we did not wanna hear again anything but that.
Speaker:Anything that will go with this one.
Speaker:Alright.
Speaker:This is a good one.
Speaker:If you are watching, just the face of this guy is quite incredible and
Speaker:I prayed about it and I thought, I'm not missing that dedication in
Speaker:Jerusalem without the airplane that we have, that I bought from Tyler Perry.
Speaker:And I didn't pay anywhere.
Speaker:Tyler's one of the greatest guy.
Speaker:He made it, he made that airplane so cheap for me.
Speaker:I couldn't help but buy it.
Speaker:Well, my question then, well, well, okay.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:But I wanna get to the demons cuz people are very concerned about that comment.
Speaker:Give me a chance here.
Speaker:Inside edition.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I love your.
Speaker:Do you ever use your private jets to go visit your vacation homes, for example?
Speaker:Yes, I do.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Again, getting back to the comment, you said that you don't like to fly
Speaker:commercial because you don't wanna get into a tube with a bunch of demons.
Speaker:Do you really believe that human beings are demons?
Speaker:No, I do not.
Speaker:And don't you ever say, I did . We wrestle, not with flesh and blood,
Speaker:but principalities and powers.
Speaker:I think that's the theme for this podcast.
Speaker:We wrestle not with, was it flesh and blood, but principality of power?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:That's, I think that's gonna be byline line, his reaction.
Speaker:There you go.
Speaker:Is that guy San what he's, I had serious doubts at that point.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:I think that she was, she was quizzing him the purchase of his third private jet.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Well, and whether he really needed it.
Speaker:Well, the guy he bought it off made it so cheap he couldn't help but buy it.
Speaker:Jack.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:I mean, who amongst us has not been in that position where the price on
Speaker:the plane is so cheap, price plane just so cheap, just had to buy it.
Speaker:I, I think it was Lou who went out.
Speaker:Somebody went out to try to interview him and they drive up to the ranch
Speaker:and get turned away, and then the local police turn up and basically
Speaker:try to arrest them for trespass.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. It's impressive.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:He, because he lives in small town America.
Speaker:He's basically loved by the local sheriff's department and he just
Speaker:has to pick up the phone and I, if you cross him, you're in trouble.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Wouldn't doubt it at all.
Speaker:So, alright, so that was a bit of comedic relief in between foreigners
Speaker:owning our banks and screwing us all over as we've described.
Speaker:Now we mentioned, again, this is, we spoke about this one last week,
Speaker:but it ended up on the cutting room floor, so I can't help myself.
Speaker:I have to revisit this topic to do it some justice.
Speaker:And that was that oh, let me just see, is to do with Seymour Hirsch and
Speaker:the revelation about America having blown up the Nord Stream pipeline.
Speaker:And so the thing about this is there was an article from Mint Press News
Speaker:and basically talking about the lack of coverage in American media.
Speaker:Like this is a huge story respected journalist giving a coherent
Speaker:explanation of what happened.
Speaker:Even if you thought it was bs it would be something that you
Speaker:would cover in mainstream media.
Speaker:And what they found was that they analyzed 20 of the most influential
Speaker:publications in the United States.
Speaker:They are ABC News, Bloomberg News, business Insider, Buzzfeed, c bs News, C N
Speaker:B C N N, Forbes, Fox News, the Huffington Post, msn, BBC, N B NBC News, the New
Speaker:York Post, the New York Times, NPR People Magazine, politicos USA Today, the Wall
Speaker:Street Journal and the Washington Post.
Speaker:All of those collectively in a one week period after the
Speaker:revelation came out, all of them collectively could only produce five.
Speaker:Sorry.
Speaker:Four mentions of the report.
Speaker:There was 166 word mini report in Bloomberg, a five minute segment
Speaker:on Tucker Carlson, 600 word roundup in the New York Post, and a shrill
Speaker:business insider attack article.
Speaker:And that was it for one of the largest stories.
Speaker:And it's even more incomprehensible.
Speaker:It's not incomprehensible, it's just an indictment on the media because
Speaker:they all get a feed from Reuters.
Speaker:And Reuters was pummeling them with stories, had given them
Speaker:14 separate reports that they could just take copy and paste.
Speaker:And all of those organizations actively rejected each and every
Speaker:one of those 14 Reuters reports to do basically no reporting at all.
Speaker:So, look, Scott, you were a bit on the fence as to whether
Speaker:Seymour Hirsch's argument was a good one or not, or trustworthy
Speaker:or whether to believe it or not.
Speaker:But the fact is you don't have to believe it.
Speaker:It's just, it's clearly a big story and for American public
Speaker:to not be exposed to the story.
Speaker:And I you on that, I agree with you on that.
Speaker:The whole thing was, I was on the fence as to whether or not
Speaker:the Yanks did actually do it.
Speaker:I concluded that, you know, the, the, the only real beneficiary was Ukraine, who's
Speaker:the only one that can actually pull the trigger and get something like this done.
Speaker:The Yanks.
Speaker:Now I believe that Joe pointed out that the Norwegians
Speaker:probably had a hand in it too.
Speaker:So, you know, but the Norwegians wouldn't do anything without the Yanks approval.
Speaker:So, you know, I agreed that the cover of the cover of NATO exercises
Speaker:and all that sort of stuff would've given them the perfect opportunity
Speaker:to lay their device that they'd then just detonated to lay a date.
Speaker:So I concluded that it was probably the Yanks that did it as to
Speaker:whether or not the Russians did it.
Speaker:I also concluded that the Russians wouldn't bother, or they'd do as
Speaker:just turn the tap off and the middle finger to Germany if they wanted.
Speaker:Good on you Scott.
Speaker:The other thing to add to that is the main beneficiary wasn't the
Speaker:Ukrainians, was the Americans.
Speaker:Because guess who's selling the energy now to the Germans?
Speaker:Well, they're selling the Americans Norway Natural gas to the Germans.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, you know, I also agree that they're getting a hell of a lot
Speaker:more from Norway, aren't they?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:They're getting increased supply from Norway as well.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:So, so it's just one of those things.
Speaker:It's anyway, so that was just interesting in that the lack
Speaker:of coverage in the US media.
Speaker:So just on the Russian Ukraine war this is how Lindsey Graham
Speaker:US Senator, maybe Congressman, no, what, what's Lindsey Graham?
Speaker:I can't remember.
Speaker:But this is what he had to say about he likes the way that that
Speaker:things are set up at the moment.
Speaker:I like the structural path we're on here.
Speaker:As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need
Speaker:and the economic support, they will fight to the last person.
Speaker:There we go.
Speaker:He, he likes the way it's set up cuz it's, it's a fight to the last
Speaker:Ukrainian, what, from an American point of view, what could possibly, yeah.
Speaker:So he was honest there.
Speaker:I think likes the way that's set up and look, it's not a coincidence
Speaker:because he was also asked about Taiwan and what's happening.
Speaker:And we're gonna strangle the Russian economy as long as they're the
Speaker:largest state sponsor of terrorism.
Speaker:So if you wanna receive what Putin did, try to go into Taiwan, they're
Speaker:gonna fight to the last man in Taiwan.
Speaker:They're going to fight to the last man in Taiwan.
Speaker:It's a clear strategy.
Speaker:conduct these proxy wars and, and get your bales to fight to the last man.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I don't think that the Yanks would be able to sit there and actually
Speaker:do the same thing in Taiwan as to what they've done in Ukraine.
Speaker:They're gonna try to, well, they might try, but I think they can
Speaker:get themselves dragged into it.
Speaker:I, I suspect that China is probably better prepared than Russia was.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:And that is the whole point.
Speaker:That's, that's why I think that China is China is gonna be a, a far tougher
Speaker:adversary than, than Russia is.
Speaker:I, I had a wonderful quote, Russia, if I didn't invested in a large, modern
Speaker:army, the problem was the bits that were large weren't modern, and the
Speaker:bits that were modern weren't large
Speaker:Russians are going, okay, they're not going Okay.
Speaker:Trevor.
Speaker:They've had their ass.
Speaker:They're not, you know, we, we all expected by the end of March last
Speaker:year of the Russian Army, army, they have done incredibly poorly.
Speaker:They have done incredibly poorly.
Speaker:Oh.
Speaker:Premier, they'll keep the Don bass.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But you know, that might be okay if you got them to a negotiation table and
Speaker:you actually got them to sign over.
Speaker:You know, if you could do that sort of thing, then that would be fine.
Speaker:But I don't think anyone could trust Vladimir Putin again.
Speaker:Well, you know, it's just one of those things.
Speaker:He has proven to be a megalomaniac thug.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:He, he promised to respect the sovereign, the sovereign borders of Ukraine.
Speaker:And he didn't, when the Ukrainians handed over, let, let play devil's
Speaker:advocate when the Ukrainians, the Ukraine to abide the agreement.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, you know, they were bombing people in the Don, they, they
Speaker:handed over the nuclear weapons.
Speaker:They did hand over the nuclear weapons.
Speaker:The, the mince agreement.
Speaker:They, they did not agree to, they were bombing people in the Donbass
Speaker:region and they were clearly saying we were just on a go slow cuz we've
Speaker:got no intention of complying with it.
Speaker:See, you know, you can look at it from both ways.
Speaker:There's fault on both sides here.
Speaker:I think there's more fault on the Russian side than there is on the Ukrainian side.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Nice fault.
Speaker:All round.
Speaker:Anyway, there's, there's more than enough.
Speaker:There's more than enough blame for both sides.
Speaker:But I just think to myself that, you know, you'd have to, I think the lion's
Speaker:share of falters on the Russian side, more so than on the Ukrainian side.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, you know.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:And you know, I agree with Shea there.
Speaker:She says, I highly recommend Russia if you're listening,
Speaker:listening on the ABC Listen app.
Speaker:Which verifies what Joe just said.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Listen to Usher if you're listening.
Speaker:Yeah, it's, it's very good.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:There it is.
Speaker:Jaylene said, Shaa just said then it was supposed to be a
Speaker:three day, three day capture.
Speaker:It failed, you know, they, they had a plan to take it.
Speaker:They had a plan to take out Vladimir Vladimir as a long skin in the
Speaker:first three days that failed.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:You know, they were gonna try and decapitate the Ukrainian
Speaker:leadership that failed.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And, you know, and like, like, you know, when he, when he is on the phone to Joe
Speaker:Biden, the day it happened , he, you know, and Joe Biden said, look, we can
Speaker:have a plane there in a couple of hours.
Speaker:And he said, I don't need a ride.
Speaker:I need ammunition.
Speaker:So that was a very brave man that stood up to him.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, if, if people think that the Ukrainians are gonna prize the Russians
Speaker:out of their current positions no.
Speaker:Not now, but, you know, not now, but you know, they're gonna hold that territory.
Speaker:They're gonna hold that territory now.
Speaker:Well, the, the big, the big question will be how the Russians perform
Speaker:with their impending offensive.
Speaker:, if they perform just as poorly as what they have after the first 12 months,
Speaker:then after that you might actually get the bastard to a negotiation table.
Speaker:But you know, it's one of those very big butts as to how
Speaker:well they're gonna perform.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Terrible images of I think it was probably Finland all over again.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. Yeah.
Speaker:When they said, oh, we, we just need this tiny sliver of land.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:When the, the, the intention was, you know, invading the full country
Speaker:and they got the nose bloodied.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, it's looking very much like trench warfare from World War I.
Speaker:Some of the images that you see.
Speaker:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker:Dug in and just carnage for, you know, really zelensky should just surrender
Speaker:those strips and be done with it.
Speaker:Like the lives carving up more of his own country.
Speaker:It's one of those things you can't continue to a dictator, you know,
Speaker:we've learned lesson in the language.
Speaker:To Sevastopol, which is where, you know, a fair amount of the attack
Speaker:on Ukraine came from this time.
Speaker:All it would mean is that he can build up his forces in Ukraine, in, in Crimea.
Speaker:They were reliant on that bridge that the Ukrainians blew up and
Speaker:they had big problems getting infrastructure, getting Army.
Speaker:You're getting logistics into that place.
Speaker:If you give them that land bridge through the Doba, then they can build
Speaker:up a huge army from the South, attack, from the North attack, from pra.
Speaker:It just gives them the, the launching post for next time to wipe out Ukraine.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:And Zelensky is never going to accept that because he knows that all you're
Speaker:doing is buying time for the Russians to build up for the next defensive, which
Speaker:is precisely the point that was made this morning on a podcast I was listening to.
Speaker:I think it was abc Daley, something like that.
Speaker:I was listening to that and Sam, whatever her name was, interviewing an expert, and
Speaker:he said exactly that point that Joe just said, you know, you've just gotta wait.
Speaker:And if they, if he, if he, if you give him enough time, he will use the time
Speaker:to build up his army to go in again.
Speaker:Well, Zelensky could use the time to, to, rather than try and reclaim
Speaker:lost territory, to build up defense, to stop the the further invasion
Speaker:beyond the, the current skirmish line.
Speaker:But this, but then what if you allow them, if you allow them that landbridge,
Speaker:then you get attacked on multiple fronts and it becomes a lot harder to defend.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Well he's just burning human lives at the moment.
Speaker:So he's running out, Zelensky is running out of Ukrainians faster than
Speaker:Russians are running out Russians.
Speaker:Yeah, I know.
Speaker:And the Russians are, the Russians are just grabbing people off the street
Speaker:and saying, you're in the Army now.
Speaker:So where the Ukrainians Yeah, I know the Ukrainians were so they both
Speaker:are, but they were, yeah, exactly.
Speaker:What's that?
Speaker:They were attacked, but they they were attacked.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Their, they, their country was under threat.
Speaker:The Russians weren't Well, were they under threat or not?
Speaker:And, and yeah, I, I think realistically the only way this is
Speaker:gonna end is by Putin being toppled.
Speaker:I think it's gonna end.
Speaker:Doesn't star mate where they are right now.
Speaker:So I think that's where it's gonna end.
Speaker:And the Americans will just keep pouring weapons and money in there
Speaker:and and I think it'll just be stuck right where they are now.
Speaker:And or maybe Russia will proceed even further.
Speaker:But I just can't see the UK Ukraine surprising them out.
Speaker:Trump will become president in 2024 and will go in and negotiate peace ment.
Speaker:That's the only man who could do it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, but Chinese tried to negotiate a or made suggestions for a
Speaker:settlement and yeah, and that was told him very balanced settlement.
Speaker:That I thought that, I thought reasonable was kind of Russian should get out and
Speaker:Ukraine should not join NATO and Exactly.
Speaker:And America said, don't be ridiculous.
Speaker:Yeah, I know.
Speaker:Which I think was entirely reasonable because Ukraine has already said,
Speaker:look, you can forget us joining nato.
Speaker:They're never gonna have us.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Alright.
Speaker:That's Ukraine and Russia for the moment.
Speaker:Locally, we've got some polls.
Speaker:Now this might be a little bit old.
Speaker:There might have been another essential poll since this one.
Speaker:But leaders favorability ratings, and we've got Anthony Albanese
Speaker:amongst labor voters is enjoying 75% approval positive rating.
Speaker:So, I'm impressed by the 25% coalition who approve of Albanese.
Speaker:Yes, indeed.
Speaker:So I'm worried by the 16% of labor voters who approve of Peter Dutton.
Speaker:But there you go.
Speaker:So there's a big worry That is a concern.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And 53% of coalition voters approve of Peter Dutton who's going to challenge
Speaker:Peter Dutton if there's a challenge.
Speaker:Scott, who's the library?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Now.
Speaker:You know, that was, they were talking about the, the deputy leader, I can't
Speaker:remember her name apparently, that she's already got herself in a position that
Speaker:she could challenge if, if need be.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:But I didn't even know what her name is.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Susan Lee.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So, such And Lee, sorry, you're saying Susan Lee is a, is a potential leader?
Speaker:Is that what you're saying?
Speaker:I, yeah.
Speaker:Susan Lee.
Speaker:That's what Shade has said now, surely it's one of those No, no, no.
Speaker:It, it's Sass, right?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Cuz she added an extra s to a name because of numerology.
Speaker:Yes, exactly.
Speaker:And, and anybody who changes the name because of a numerologist deserves the
Speaker:best taken outta them Well, fair enough.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's just a caliber of people on the on the coalitions side.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Is, is pretty poor.
Speaker:So, anyway, she was, she was touted as a potential leader.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:Is it any worse than go saying he was put there because God wanted him there?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Who said that?
Speaker:Schmo.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Just, there's nobody who looks like a likely candidate that I can think of.
Speaker:They're all hopeless.
Speaker:Meanwhile, just back to labor there was an Australian law reform report came
Speaker:out talking about recommendations with, to do with the religious discrimination
Speaker:legislation that's currently in limbo.
Speaker:And it made, it made the recommendation that religious schools should not be
Speaker:allowed to preference teachers of a particular faith and, you know, not
Speaker:discriminate against a, should not be allowed to discriminate against atheists.
Speaker:And of course, there was a big uproar from the religious groups about that.
Speaker:And yeah, didn't they lose their mind?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And in response to a question about the controversy on Tuesday, the Prime
Speaker:Minister told Labor's caucus that quote, we made our position clear a
Speaker:long time ago that faith-based schools can employ people of their own faith.
Speaker:Now, before the election, labor was committed to protecting students from
Speaker:discrimination on any grounds and to protect teachers from discrimination
Speaker:at work while maintaining the right of religious schools to preference.
Speaker:of their faith in the selection of staff.
Speaker:It's hard to tell exactly what Labor's position is at the moment, but it
Speaker:looks suspiciously like they kind of want to allow religious schools
Speaker:to be able to discriminate when it comes to teachers, but not students.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Not good enough labor, if that's the case.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. No, it's one of those things I, you know, I hope Alison's still
Speaker:in the chat room if you are.
Speaker:Alison, congratulations on that.
Speaker:Latest courier mail.
Speaker:Yeah, I just read it today.
Speaker:I'm not sure if it was only just produced today or what have you,
Speaker:but that was really good news.
Speaker:So, Alison Cortez has been waging a, well, two or three woman war against
Speaker:the Queensland Education Department over religious instruction, and she seems
Speaker:to been kicking a few goals lately.
Speaker:She's been eating a bit of press in the Korean mail up here,
Speaker:which is no, no small feat.
Speaker:So, congratulations, Alison, doing a great job and a little bit of luck in that.
Speaker:There just seems to be a reporter at the Courier Mail.
Speaker:He seems to have it in for him.
Speaker:Yeah, he's, he's interested in the topic.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And seems to be on the side of the secular side.
Speaker:So, yeah, that's yeah, a, a reporter who.
Speaker:He's interested in the topic.
Speaker:Alison, you're always welcome to come on the podcast and describe
Speaker:the current situation if you think that it's a good idea.
Speaker:But I can understand if you think that being associated with such a disreputable
Speaker:person as myself, rules it out.
Speaker:I totally get that.
Speaker:That might be the case.
Speaker:So, an article tomorrow, hopefully another article tomorrow.
Speaker:So that's good.
Speaker:So, well, yeah.
Speaker:Alison, you wonder whether the courier mail is just bashing a labor government?
Speaker:Yeah, I dunno.
Speaker:No, I think it's a journalist with just a genuine interest and he's got the, the
Speaker:capacity and ability to write article.
Speaker:Article that interest him the editorial direction.
Speaker:Yeah, I thought, I just get the impression it's just a, a journalist
Speaker:with an an interest who's prepared to write the stories in there,
Speaker:letting him write 'em for the moment.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. So, yeah.
Speaker:So, so there we go.
Speaker:Alright John says, how do we follow your advocacy, Alison?
Speaker:And the answer would be there's the Facebook page for the Queensland
Speaker:parents for secular state schools.
Speaker:I reckon you would get most of it there.
Speaker:I think Alison, and if you're not in Queensland, theorists in New South Wales.
Speaker:South Australia, not sure about Victoria.
Speaker:Well, Victoria doesn't have anything to worry about anymore because Andrews
Speaker:has actually moved him outta school time said you have to, if you're
Speaker:gonna away something to worry about.
Speaker:Yeah, I know.
Speaker:But you know, it's just one of those things he has done exactly what we've
Speaker:been asking for and what's happened.
Speaker:Membership, you know, enrollments in these RA classes has plummeted, so, you know,
Speaker:that just proves that the only way these bastards have got any chance of getting
Speaker:it on board is to keep it compulsory.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. Well, and so while it was before or after school, guess what?
Speaker:Kids didn't wanna do it, so Exactly.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:and parents didn't want to go to the effort of changing their lifestyles
Speaker:to make sure they went, so, yeah.
Speaker:Oh, John says, I don't do Facebook.
Speaker:Sorry.
Speaker:Anywhere else?
Speaker:Okay, Alison in the chat room, you'll have to tell I'm a bit with John.
Speaker:I have not been on Facebook much in recent times less frequently, so I miss
Speaker:a lot of things on Facebook these days.
Speaker:Can't be bothered with it.
Speaker:So, right.
Speaker:Quick little diversion into French parking lots.
Speaker:Dear listener.
Speaker:So the French government has passed legislation which is going
Speaker:to legislate so that parking lots have to install solar panels.
Speaker:So these will be ones which obviously the cars can park underneath.
Speaker:So they get shade from the hot sun and the solar panel above collects
Speaker:energy, puts it into the grid.
Speaker:And so just briefly on that, car parks that hold at least 50 cards roughly
Speaker:are gonna be subject to this law of having solar paneled canopies installed.
Speaker:And look, it's a good place to do it because maybe while your car is
Speaker:parked at the shopping center, you can charge it up, charge it up.
Speaker:That makes perfect sense.
Speaker:And it's a bit more costly to raise them high enough above the ground
Speaker:so you park a car underneath.
Speaker:But it still makes economic sense.
Speaker:And what they're saying is that the capacity they've estimated if
Speaker:half of France's parking lots are covered is to generate between
Speaker:roughly six and 11 gigawatts at a cost maximum of about 14 billion.
Speaker:And they've currently got 56 nuclear power plants in, they do months averaging
Speaker:about a gigawatt per nuclear power plant.
Speaker:So we said before these car parks would generate between six and 11 gigawatts.
Speaker:So sort of the.
Speaker:Of six or 11 nuclear power plants.
Speaker:Total cost would be, as we said, maximum around 14 billion.
Speaker:And in this article it says that one of the nuclear power plants under
Speaker:construction in Flamanville has ballooned to co Do you know Flamanville?
Speaker:Do you Joe?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I used to live opposite it.
Speaker:So there's already a nuclear power station there.
Speaker:They must be building a nuclear new reactor.
Speaker:So we lived opposite capital hog, which was the nuclear reprocessing plant and
Speaker:Flamanville, which was the power station, and the reprocessing plant used to take
Speaker:nuclear waste from all around the world.
Speaker:So the ships were past Jersey with all the attendant risks to go there
Speaker:to be reprocessed and send the renewed fuel back out to be reused.
Speaker:And you were in, living in the middle of a radioactive hub
Speaker:during your formative years.
Speaker:Joe basically explains a lot.
Speaker:That's, that's, that is explaining.
Speaker:Oh,
Speaker:Anyway, it was good when we got the power cable to France.
Speaker:Cause when we got cheap electricity from the French.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And you could see each other at nighttime without lights on.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:It's good.
Speaker:Anyway, that power plant Joe that one power plant is gonna
Speaker:cost of balloon to 14 billion.
Speaker:So one nuclear power plant costing 14 billion.
Speaker:And we've got car parking.
Speaker:Solar system generating between six and 11 nuclear power plants worth
Speaker:of energy for the cost of one.
Speaker:So all around, according to the math in this article, it makes
Speaker:it a hell of a lot cheaper.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I like the idea of obviously France as a country which doesn't have the wide open
Speaker:spaces that we have here in Australia.
Speaker:So rather than covering up agricultural land or something
Speaker:like that, let's face it.
Speaker:I mean people talk about the ugliness of, of wind farms for example, but
Speaker:just a bitman car park on its own is a fairly ugly piece of infrastructure
Speaker:and covering it with a solar panel actually makes it more attractive
Speaker:cuz you've got somewhere cool to park your car underneath the shade.
Speaker:So if all that is correct, I wonder it's a good story heat Thailand effect
Speaker:because all the hot tar el tarmac heats up in summer and raises the
Speaker:average temperature of paved areas.
Speaker:And I wonder if a solar panel that's generating electricity is
Speaker:gonna reduce some of that heat.
Speaker:Maybe.
Speaker:So whether you'd, whether you'd actually get less heat gaine in the cities in
Speaker:summer because you've got less paved area.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:I know friend of mine does gliding and he does it up at . And so when you're
Speaker:gliding you are looking for thermals.
Speaker:And as they're flying around looking for a thermal, if they see a patch of
Speaker:farmland that's been recently tilled so the soil's turned over and if,
Speaker:if it's a particularly black soil, then that's the place for a thermal.
Speaker:You head over there with your glider and on a hot day yeah, obviously
Speaker:the heat coming up off the black soil creates thermals for gliders.
Speaker:So un fact for you, right?
Speaker:What happened to the chat room?
Speaker:Did Alison suggest anything other than Facebook?
Speaker:Twitter.
Speaker:What's that?
Speaker:Twitter.
Speaker:Twitter.
Speaker:Ah, and handle.
Speaker:Did we get that?
Speaker:At psss?
Speaker:That's the WordPress website.
Speaker:Alison, what's your Twitter handle for Queensland.
Speaker:There we go.
Speaker:At s s s, QL D, it's the Twitter.
Speaker:There we go.
Speaker:That's your do, John.
Speaker:Alright, let's get on Gerda loins and talk about some more controversial topics,
Speaker:which we often leave towards the end.
Speaker:Did you see Senator Thorpe protesting during the game?
Speaker:Mardi GRA parade?
Speaker:Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker:I just think she's actually, she appears to be a prote, a professional
Speaker:protestor, and she found something that she could interrupt that
Speaker:would gain her some notoriety.
Speaker:So she decided to protest there.
Speaker:And she said that she was doing it because it was in memory of the blacks
Speaker:who had been persecuted by the police.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Like she was still being persecuted by the police.
Speaker:Now, anyway, I just think she was beating a drum over something that has been
Speaker:well and truly beaten to death by now.
Speaker:So that ought to be enough of it Anyway, I, I'm not, she's not
Speaker:my favorite person right now.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, according to her Twitter post, black and brown trans women
Speaker:started the first pride march as a protest against police violence.
Speaker:Today we still face violence from police.
Speaker:Proud to have joined the hashtag pride in protest in Sydney to say hashtag no
Speaker:pride in genocide, hashtag no pride in prisons, and hashtag no cops in pride.
Speaker:So basically saying Police have not been great for black and brown trans women.
Speaker:What the hell are they doing with a police float at a gay Mardi Gras?
Speaker:It's kind of what was saying.
Speaker:Maybe they're gay police people who wanna represent themselves.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:That is exactly the porno is gonna make Joe, they, they do actually have
Speaker:left footers on the police force.
Speaker:People left footers . Yeah.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:I've never heard that Ex am I living in a cave?
Speaker:I hadn't heard that expression.
Speaker:Left footers.
Speaker:Oh, it's a very old expression.
Speaker:But anyway, have you been to the gay Mardi Gra No, I've never been to the
Speaker:Mardi Gras or anything like that.
Speaker:It's one of those things I used to think to myself, ah, I should probably
Speaker:go, but I've never got round to it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:I heard an argument that, yeah.
Speaker:For a significant proportion of the gay community, they resent the depiction
Speaker:of the oiled up hairless, sort of over the top version of gayness that
Speaker:is exhibited at the gay Mardi Gras.
Speaker:And they think this is a false representation of, of what gay people is.
Speaker:It's, it's, they've overtaken what it means to be a gay man, for example.
Speaker:And I mean, Scott, you are not the sort of oiled up vision negative
Speaker:see, to Mardi Gra for example.
Speaker:You are much, you, you, it's not obvious with you until you actually tell somebody.
Speaker:You know what I mean?
Speaker:So do Yeah.
Speaker:I suppose so.
Speaker:You don't, you don't feel, feel that.
Speaker:This is a version of, of, of expression of male gayness that you think, eh, that's
Speaker:just, it's actually misrepresentation.
Speaker:We all like this.
Speaker:I don't like the way that you don't have any resentment about how gays are depicted
Speaker:in almost a caricature by the Mardi Gras.
Speaker:I don't have that sort of feeling.
Speaker:The only, the only feeling that I get from it is I think to myself, oh,
Speaker:that's playing to a very young crowd.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. So I feel like I'd be a little bit old if I went down there.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Anyway, it's just one of those things I, I, it's the, that's the only
Speaker:real, it's not even really objection.
Speaker:It's just one of those things that I just think to myself.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I've never been a big fan of the sort of hairless oiled up look,
Speaker:if that makes you feel any better.
Speaker:, . It's just, it's just one of those things I just think to myself, nah,
Speaker:they're not really doing it for me.
Speaker:And the, you know, just the whole wearing angel wings and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Nah, that's not me.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:You know, were you saying but to each their own.
Speaker:To each their own, you know, it's just one of those things.
Speaker:I just think to myself, if that's what people get, get off on,
Speaker:then they should be able to do.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's really not my cup of tea.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Alison has an uncontained glitter phobia, which prevents her from ever
Speaker:going to the Mardi Gras as a supporter.
Speaker:I, I think of the next pub meetup.
Speaker:We should smuggle in a little packet of glitter.
Speaker:No, we won't went to Alison.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So yeah, what you thought, what do I think?
Speaker:I dunno.
Speaker:I mean, why not protest at a Mardi Gras?
Speaker:Why not sort of say, what the hell is there a police float here?
Speaker:There's still really, do you wanna make a point that she feels that the police
Speaker:are not helping out the gay community?
Speaker:I, you know, I'll read an article.
Speaker:I found this one from Guy Ru in Crikey.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:I don't think I, you guys got this in the original notes.
Speaker:I sort of tacked it on later on.
Speaker:So, God ru sometimes has a good turn of phrase, so he writes well at times,
Speaker:even if it is a bit confusing and all over the shop at other times.
Speaker:So here's a good paragraph.
Speaker:I thought that someone was boo because she was booed as well and
Speaker:the crowd would sort of get stuck into her for lying down in front of
Speaker:the float and disrupting the march.
Speaker:So he writes that someone was booed by the Mardi Gras crowd for protesting that
Speaker:had occurred in the first Mardi Gras to have a serving Prime Minister marching.
Speaker:That the people who then condemned Thorpe for her protests included
Speaker:nationals leader David Little.
Speaker:It just shows you, shows you well, what event has so many angles that had it
Speaker:not occurred, political tutors would've had to invent it as a teaching aid.
Speaker:That's a good sentence.
Speaker:Good sentence of writing event had so many angles that had it not occurred,
Speaker:poli poli politics, tutors would've had to have invented it as a teaching aid.
Speaker:So, he writes, the point was absolutely spot on.
Speaker:Mardi Gras organizers have given float space to private corporations,
Speaker:including American Express, but denied groups such as the New
Speaker:South Wales Teachers Federation.
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:Mardi Gras had to change that went from illegality to inner city popularity to
Speaker:global nation branding phenomenon, but the embrace of platform and finance capital
Speaker:and the exclusion of actual community groups is a pretty sad place to get to.
Speaker:The event was long ago, taken over by fairly apolitical types and they haven't
Speaker:had much resistance in recent years.
Speaker:Claims by the LGBTQI plus left that queer is inevitably radical.
Speaker:Utterly bogus.
Speaker:Queer is now the house ideology of middle brown knowledge, class culture
Speaker:as tediously wrote and moralistic as was once the Christianity, it went up against.
Speaker:Queer is now the house ideology of middle brow knowledge class culture.
Speaker:You're part of the mainstream now, Scott, of just high brow, middle class culture.
Speaker:Do you feel that?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I've never really don't feel excluded from it though.
Speaker:No, I don't.
Speaker:I, I, you know, it's I suppose I do actually watch what
Speaker:I say in front of people
Speaker:. There's like, I'm not out at
Speaker:If someone asks me, I'll tell them, but I never actually make a, I never
Speaker:make a song and dance about it, you know, I might actually tell them, I
Speaker:don't know, I'll keep going with this.
Speaker:He says guy Rundel crok even.
Speaker:So the inclusion of the AFP is next level.
Speaker:The AFP is a sinister, politicized, self-serving force, casual about doing
Speaker:damage in the pursuit of its goals.
Speaker:Often self-serving Marty GRA may have become a semi-public owned
Speaker:event, but it's got to be something of a bit more than Homo Mumba.
Speaker:Otherwise its meaning dissolves altogether.
Speaker:No police force should have a role in it.
Speaker:I'd say exclude the fire service as well, but I suspect that would not fly.
Speaker:I think that's because of the desire to see oiled up firemen on a flight.
Speaker:Exactly, yes.
Speaker:The co-option of the.
Speaker:Who's saying Y M C A?
Speaker:Yeah, the village people.
Speaker:Village cop, village people, isn't there?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think there was Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:A motorcycle cop, wasn't he?
Speaker:Was he a motorcycle cop?
Speaker:Possibly.
Speaker:Think the helmet.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think Google will tell me.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I'll keep going.
Speaker:The co-option of Mardi Gras to the point where it is indistinguishable from state
Speaker:tourism and national branding is the same as the soft totalitarian process
Speaker:governing the politics of the voice, where we're heading the latest episode of this.
Speaker:So he's talking about the voice.
Speaker:The latest episode of this was Professor Megan Davis telling a
Speaker:university's Australia conference that the organization representing the
Speaker:places whose core role is unrestrained and un and unguided free inquiry
Speaker:and thought should adopt a pro Yes.
Speaker:Position on the voice.
Speaker:So Professor Megan Davis telling university's Australia
Speaker:they should be pro Yes.
Speaker:On the voice.
Speaker:And she says, universities say they don't wanna be political, but the decision
Speaker:not to take a dance for the voice to parliament is a political decision.
Speaker:And Davis in saying this at the University's Australia conference,
Speaker:Was doing it in response to the Vice Chancellor's Association calling
Speaker:or saying that it would have no official position on the voice.
Speaker:And at that conference, Davis's speech was a hundred thousand strong people there.
Speaker:They gave it a standing ovation.
Speaker:So we've got a professor Megan Davis at Universities Australia
Speaker:saying universities should come out saying vote yes in the Voice.
Speaker:And we had the Vice Chancellor's Association saying that we
Speaker:shouldn't be making any official position at all in the voice.
Speaker:And the Megan Davis one got a standing ovation.
Speaker:Any thoughts, gentlemen, on whether universities and groups representing
Speaker:multiple universities should be providing a position statement on the voice?
Speaker:Universities know lecturers individually.
Speaker:Sure, exactly.
Speaker:I agree with Joe.
Speaker:Or just can if they want to.
Speaker:Oh, I think can, if they want to.
Speaker:I don't think they should be restricted from mm-hmm.
Speaker:. Yeah, I agree with Joe, but I think this is the same as Brexit.
Speaker:I think there will be a very shallow, ignore any real criticism.
Speaker:And accuse anybody who says no of being a racist.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And then we'll be very surprised when they lose the vote and we'll
Speaker:go, oh my God, I didn't realize we had so many racists out there.
Speaker:So rather than enga engaging the real concerns that people
Speaker:have, just ignore it all.
Speaker:, racism and plow on regardless, and wouldn't be surprised
Speaker:when you lose the vote.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:So there's a podcaster and by a guy called Eddie Yakovich, which I
Speaker:occasionally listen to, sort news and politics podcast a bit like
Speaker:this one where they review the week.
Speaker:They're kind of Canberra insider type guys, EM'S mate, and obviously
Speaker:on the left wing bent that was super critical of the Morrison government.
Speaker:And anyway actually I think I've got it here as a on the
Speaker:PowerPoint slide to show you.
Speaker:I now, I've gone one back to Tiff.
Speaker:I'll go back to this.
Speaker:So this is a tweet that he put out, which was looking at a poll wow.
Speaker:42% say no to the voice as Faith Bandler said in 2001.
Speaker:Racism is well organized in Australia.
Speaker:No beating around the bush.
Speaker:Vote no equals racist.
Speaker:That's the sort of thing you're talking about, Joe.
Speaker:Just if you Yep.
Speaker:If you are gonna argue a vote no in this one, you're gonna be
Speaker:immediately pre a racist and look just because it's so well put.
Speaker:You get another rendition edited down of what this guy said on tonight, Lee.
Speaker:I mean, first of all, Brexit said, what the fuck happened there?
Speaker:Well, the left employed a cunning two prong strategy by one calling
Speaker:every lead voter a racist.
Speaker:And two failing to put forward a positive case forma.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:Weird how not engaging 17 million Brits and slacking them off instead.
Speaker:Didn't win them over, but at least yelling racist online, made us
Speaker:feel good about ourselves and had no bad long-lasting side effects.
Speaker:The UK has voted to leave the European Union.
Speaker:Ah, shit.
Speaker:Well, don't worry.
Speaker:After Brexit, we learned our lesson, and then the US election came along.
Speaker:We thought, Nahash, let's just do that again.
Speaker:You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call
Speaker:the basket of deplorables.
Speaker:Not surprisingly, the left campaign of vote for us, your pieces of
Speaker:shit didn't pan out so well.
Speaker:Brexit, basket of deplorables.
Speaker:And the voice is shaping up in the same way.
Speaker:It's gonna get ugly.
Speaker:It's gonna get very ugly.
Speaker:And I, I, I think that the proponents of the voice have to actually take a long,
Speaker:hard look at themselves and they should actually look at that as a warning.
Speaker:And that if they rely on racism to get them over the line, it's not gonna work.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Just telling people they're racist.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Just, it's just gonna backfire on them.
Speaker:Mm.
Speaker:Let's give some opinion.
Speaker:I might think, I, I think the average person is just gonna go,
Speaker:but I'm not racist, so fuck you.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Which is what happened in those other situations as well, so.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:, there's a chart support for the voice parliament and it's a
Speaker:little bit what's it's about you find it here so I can read it.
Speaker:65% in favor of the voice department, 35% against on that particular one.
Speaker:Now if it's, if it's a referendum to change the constitution mm-hmm.
Speaker:Does it not require two-thirds majority?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:It requires a, it requires a majority of, yes.
Speaker:In a majority of states, you've gotta get an overall majority, and that has
Speaker:to come from a majority of states.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. So, no, there's no two thirds involved.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Maybe that's a US thing.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:Maybe.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:In terms of voter strength on you know, in terms of the
Speaker:voice department, a hard Yes.
Speaker:38%.
Speaker:A soft Yes.
Speaker:26%.
Speaker:A soft no.
Speaker:14% and a hard no, 21%.
Speaker:So that's how that locked up.
Speaker:Well, if they wanna, if they wanna see the soft Yes.
Speaker:Move to the, to the soft, no.
Speaker:Then all they've gotta do is just go out there calling people racist.
Speaker:Indeed.
Speaker:You know, because all that's gonna do is get their backs up
Speaker:and then it's gonna think, well fuck you, I'll vote against it.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. So there's a chart with how it breaks down in terms of political allegiance.
Speaker:No surprise that labor voters 50% hard.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:27% soft.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So total of 77%.
Speaker:Whereas the coalition, a hard no is 40% and a soft no is 49%.
Speaker:So 59% against, and the greens are a hard Yes.
Speaker:62% soft.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:28%.
Speaker:So a total yes vote of 90%.
Speaker:It's a 3% hard No.
Speaker:In the greens voters.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:So sounds like some of us.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:That's where I am.
Speaker:Dear listener.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:voted greens in pretty Now.
Speaker:Am I a hard No, I'm a soft No.
Speaker:Probably at the end of the world if it happens.
Speaker:It's not the end of the world if it happens, but, but I'm, I'm
Speaker:quite firm about the answer, but there, I'm not rabid about it.
Speaker:Like the world isn't gonna collapse, but I, I think you could be changed
Speaker:to a yes, given certain caveats.
Speaker:Yeah, no, no.
Speaker:The caveats would completely change the nature of the voice department.
Speaker:So it's no longer voice.
Speaker:I think so.
Speaker:In my case.
Speaker:So then you're a hard No, probably am.
Speaker:Yeah, probably am.
Speaker:But, but yeah.
Speaker:Without being crazy . No, exactly.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So it wouldn't be that good.
Speaker:I reasons why are people thinking this?
Speaker:Why are people supporting the most parliament and the most popular
Speaker:reason was it would give indigenous Australians the ability to help inform
Speaker:decisions that impact their lives.
Speaker:Next was it will help governments make more informed policy decisions
Speaker:regarding indigenous Australians.
Speaker:Next was, it is what indigenous leaders are asking for.
Speaker:And then the fourth one in terms of popularity was it would unify Australia
Speaker:allowing us to reconcile with our history anchoring our democracy in
Speaker:65,000 years of culture and law.
Speaker:See, that's probably the weakest argument.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I think it's gonna end up dividing us years of culture and law.
Speaker:That's what they reckon.
Speaker:But you know, it's just, ugh.
Speaker:Anyway, we won't go down there.
Speaker:That's the reasons and the reasons against the most popular was it would
Speaker:not make a practical difference.
Speaker:Second was it would give indigenous Australians the
Speaker:ability to influence policy, which other Australians do not have.
Speaker:Third was, it does not have the support of all indigenous Australians.
Speaker:Fourth was indigenous Australians already have representation in parliament.
Speaker:So I have to say all of those seem far more appealing reasons, common
Speaker:sense to me than the other ones do.
Speaker:So that's those right.
Speaker:Let me get back to my notes then.
Speaker:Get rid of that.
Speaker:We don't need the chart anymore.
Speaker:And so Joe, we had cuz we didn't expand it, that's why the comments still appear.
Speaker:That's good.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Let me scroll through to, there's a book out at the moment, which was essay.
Speaker:about various people's reasons why they would say no.
Speaker:And unfortunately this wasn't a book, I think promoted by people on the
Speaker:National Party or something like that.
Speaker:Some people, some characters who I normally would not engage with.
Speaker:But anyway, one of the writers is an economist, Henry RGUs, and he
Speaker:cites the principle that all citizens should have the same weight in the
Speaker:process of political decision making.
Speaker:He believes that a voice would give a named national minority that
Speaker:is indigenous Australians special access to the legislative process.
Speaker:You're right, it should be reserved only for major corporations.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Through, through lobbying via yes.
Speaker:Large donations.
Speaker:Indeed.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:He writes What's wrong with that in ER's view to institutionalize Group.
Speaker:Representation of that kind suppresses differences of opinion within the
Speaker:group and exaggerates the group's loyalty to values and identities
Speaker:that they think define them.
Speaker:This scenario disturbs RGUs, but others would welcome it as
Speaker:confirming indigenous Peoplehood.
Speaker:I think this is an interesting argument that the people who are on the voice, it's
Speaker:going to , encourage them to exaggerate the group's loyalty to values and
Speaker:identities that they think define them.
Speaker:I think that is inherent in creating a group like that.
Speaker:It's been an argument in the UK with Islamic groups that are in, you know,
Speaker:brought in to consult on various things.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And, and gay Muslims and apostates have said that they feel excluded
Speaker:by this process because they are a target of brown people hating, I,
Speaker:I'm not gonna call it Islamophobia.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:And, and these people who do not represent them are speaking up to
Speaker:put input into government decisions.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, and they say they feel excluded from, from the whole process.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, and this argument that people would be, if, if for example, you were part
Speaker:of the voice and you were going to say, oh look, that law, we're all the same on
Speaker:that, you know, indigenous whites, Asians we're, it's, it's no special thing for us.
Speaker:That's, that's not what's a likely scenario when you set up a group
Speaker:designed to try and find special mm-hmm.
Speaker:interest for special groups, their, their role is to try.
Speaker:Find difference rather than find commonality.
Speaker:That's what you're there for.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And you're going to be looking for it rather than the opposite
Speaker:about some special exemption.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I think that is an interesting sort of point that he made and he says by
Speaker:perpetuating the idea that indigenous Australians are essentially different
Speaker:from other Australians, he argues it would fuel demands for a formal
Speaker:treaty, which would make Australia a sort of a binational state.
Speaker:So that was that book.
Speaker:Hennon Malik actually has written a very interesting book that I am working
Speaker:my way through called not So Black and White, which is a history of race from
Speaker:white supremacy to identity politics.
Speaker:And I have from the very first page is absolutely loving it.
Speaker:I'm up to page 65 and I can tell I'm gonna love the rest of the book.
Speaker:Cannon Malik, really good writer.
Speaker:Just to give you a bit of a taste of what he says, a quote here from
Speaker:Kenan Malik, we live in an age in which most societies there is a moral
Speaker:abhorrent of racism, albeit that in most bigotry and discrimination
Speaker:still disfigures the lives of many.
Speaker:We also live in an age saturated with identitarian thinking and obsessed
Speaker:with placing people into racial boxes.
Speaker:The more we despise racial thinking, The more we seem to cling to it.
Speaker:So, interesting guy can maleek Pakistani growing up in England, bashed and
Speaker:subjected to racism, but totally against I'd sort of arian thinking.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, but still very left wing.
Speaker:It is possible dear listener, to be left-wing totally against Identitarian
Speaker:thinking and and wanna app approach these issues, dear listener, as an issue of
Speaker:class, which is where Chris Hedges gets to in the next article I'm gonna read from.
Speaker:So I have quoted Chris Hedges before and American guy, famous journalist, did lots
Speaker:of stuff reporting in the Middle East.
Speaker:He's a Presbyterian minister, does lots of community work
Speaker:in jails and stuff like that.
Speaker:The only Presbyterian minister that I would want to have dinner with and
Speaker:would look forward to it and think, wow, this is gonna be a great night.
Speaker:Very, very interesting guy.
Speaker:Chris Hedges definitely on the left.
Speaker:And he was talking about, remember guys about the murder of Tire Nichols, who
Speaker:was bashed by those five black Memphis.
Speaker:Policeman, did you ever see that, Scott?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I didn't see, I didn't see the footage.
Speaker:It's just I did, I did hear about it though.
Speaker:And I thought to myself, well, yeah, that's, that's clearly a case that the
Speaker:cops didn't matter, whether they were white or black, felt that they had the
Speaker:ability to beat the snot outta someone and they beat it snot outta someone.
Speaker:It did indeed.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, he, in this article, listened to this and then, but thinking of the voice
Speaker:and thinking of Australia and indigenous issues as you are listening to this.
Speaker:So, and thinking of, of icing representation of minorities
Speaker:in institutions without an ideology to address the problem
Speaker:that affects the minority.
Speaker:Just putting people insti into institutions doesn't solve the problem,
Speaker:and therefore just creating an institution doesn't solve the problem anyway.
Speaker:The brutal murder of Thai Nichols by five Black Memphis, Tennessee
Speaker:police officers should be enough to implode the fantasy that identity,
Speaker:politics and diversity will solve the social, economic and political decay.
Speaker:The besets of the United States, not only are the former officers
Speaker:black, the city's police department is headed by Sara Davis, a black.
Speaker:None of this helped nickels, another victim of modern day
Speaker:police lynching, the militarists, corporatists, oligarchs, politicians,
Speaker:academics, and media conglomerates.
Speaker:Champion identity, politics and diversity because it does nothing
Speaker:to address the system, the systemic injustice or the scourge of
Speaker:permanent war that plagues the us.
Speaker:It's an advertising gimmick, a brand used to mask, mounting, social
Speaker:inequality, and imperial folly.
Speaker:It busy liberals and the educated with a boutique activism, which is not
Speaker:only ineffectual, but exacerbates the divide between the privileged and a
Speaker:working class in deep economic distress.
Speaker:The haves, scold, the have-nots for their bad manners, racism, linguistic
Speaker:insensitivity, and garishness.
Speaker:While ignoring the root causes of their economic distress, the
Speaker:oligarchs could not be happier.
Speaker:So he goes on here, he's gonna quote a number of people who are
Speaker:minorities in institutions, but who are not helping the minority group
Speaker:that presumably they represent.
Speaker:So he says here, Obama yes, gets a indeed.
Speaker:Good picture.
Speaker:Did the lives of Native Americans improve as a result of the legislation
Speaker:mandating, assimilation and the revoking of tribal land titles pushed
Speaker:through by Charles Curtis, first Native American Vice President.
Speaker:Are we better off with Clarence Thomas, who opposes affirmative
Speaker:action on the Supreme Court?
Speaker:Clarence Thomas, obviously Black Man or Victoria?
Speaker:Victoria Newland, a war hawk in the State Department is our perpetuation
Speaker:of permanent war more palatable because Lloyd Austin and African
Speaker:American is the Secretary of Defense.
Speaker:Is the military more humane because it accepts transgender soldiers?
Speaker:Is social inequality in this surveillance state that controls it?
Speaker:Ameliorated because Sunk who was born in India is the CEO of Google and
Speaker:Alphabet has the weapons industry improved because Kathy j Warden, a
Speaker:woman, is the CEO of North Opp Groman and another woman, EB Nova Kovich
Speaker:is the CEO of General Dynamics.
Speaker:Interesting points there, and I'll pause briefly to talk about, I've
Speaker:been watching bits and pieces from the Royal Commission into Robodi.
Speaker:Have you seen any of it?
Speaker:Yeah, it's a bloody disgrace.
Speaker:So there's some people on Twitter who are doing great stuff in
Speaker:extracting little snippets of the testimony and it's disgust.
Speaker:How these people are now trying to blame everybody else except themselves.
Speaker:It wasn't me.
Speaker:It was either my boss or my underling or my associate who's died since.
Speaker:Like, they, they're pathetic in the way they are doing everything to
Speaker:say, I can't recall except to say I I recall that it wasn't me that's, and
Speaker:I think the the people running that Royal Commission are doing, it seems at
Speaker:the moment a really, really good job.
Speaker:The council assisting and the lady who is running that Royal Commission
Speaker:is not swallowing any BS at all.
Speaker:You can tell they are completely on top of the detail and they know what's
Speaker:going on and they're going to be quite scathing of the actions of a number
Speaker:of people when the Oh, I think so.
Speaker:Comes out, yeah.
Speaker:When the final report comes out, I might even read the whole bloody thing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And one of the things that just strikes me is that the players in this drama are
Speaker:quite a combination of male and female.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's quite a number of senior female public servants and male public servants.
Speaker:Guilty as hell of, of turning a blind eye to what was obviously an illegal
Speaker:practice and was harmful to people.
Speaker:It's sort of like, oh, we need to get women in positions of power cuz women will
Speaker:bring a different perspective to things.
Speaker:And that is true to an extent, but it doesn't necessarily solve
Speaker:the problem because No it doesn't.
Speaker:They have come at, some of these women have been as hard asked as some of the
Speaker:worst men in terms of their approach to dealing with unfortunate people.
Speaker:And and, and you know, that's the whole bloody point.
Speaker:I, I cannot believe that.
Speaker:I, I didn't know whether or not it was illegal, but I thought at the
Speaker:time that it was crazy that they were taking an average of what you, that
Speaker:they were averaging your income for last year and then working that out.
Speaker:And they were saying, well, you've obviously underreported your income.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:You know, can they not see that, you know, you might have been earning
Speaker:90 grand for nine months of the year and then you had three months that
Speaker:you got your sack . So you had three months you had to be on the doll.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You know, a really cruel disinterest in the position of people who were
Speaker:really threatened by this stuff and, and a ratcheting up of the threats.
Speaker:It's terrible what happened to these people.
Speaker:And just the disregard in these groups and, and now they're
Speaker:scrambling as they, as they're try and deflect their own culpability
Speaker:is really quite disgusting to watch.
Speaker:So, but yeah, it just struck me that.
Speaker:Certainly a quite a generous level of female involvement in the whole
Speaker:rotten scheme of, of course, as well as men and having soft female
Speaker:touched if there is such a thing.
Speaker:Didn't, not either so.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:But anyway, I digress.
Speaker:Just back to Chris Hedges article just getting some of the highlights here.
Speaker:Colonial regimes find compliant indigenous leaders willing to do
Speaker:their dirty work while they exploit and loot the country they control.
Speaker:We live under a species of corporate colonialism.
Speaker:The engines of white supremacy, which constructed the forms of institutional
Speaker:and economic racism that keep the poor poor, are obscured behind attractive
Speaker:political personalities such as Barack Obama, whom Cornell West
Speaker:called a black mascot for Wall Street.
Speaker:These faces of diversity are vetted and selected by the ruling class.
Speaker:When Ford, the late editor of the Black Agenda Report told me in 2018,
Speaker:these institutions write a script.
Speaker:It is their drama.
Speaker:They choose the actors Ford called those who promote identity politics.
Speaker:Representationalism, who quote, want to see some black people
Speaker:represented in all sectors of leader.
Speaker:In all sectors of society.
Speaker:They want black scientists.
Speaker:They want black movie stars.
Speaker:They want black scholars at Harvard.
Speaker:They want blacks on Wall Street.
Speaker:But it's just representation.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:It goes on.
Speaker:Identity, politics and diversity allow liberals to wallow.
Speaker:I clawing moral superiority.
Speaker:They do not confront the institutions that orchestrate social and economic justice.
Speaker:They seek to make the ruling class more palatable.
Speaker:They are the useful idiots, the billionaire class moral crusaders who
Speaker:widen the divisions within society.
Speaker:The ruling oligarchs foster to maintain control.
Speaker:Not much to go near there . Diversity is important.
Speaker:But diversity when devoid of a political agenda that fights the oppressor on behalf
Speaker:of the oppressed is window dressing.
Speaker:It's about incorporating a tiny segment of those marginalized by society into
Speaker:unjust structures to perpetuate them.
Speaker:He says here, a class I taught in a maximum security prison in New Jersey
Speaker:wrote caged a play about their lives.
Speaker:The 28 students in the class insisted that the corrections
Speaker:officer in the story not be white.
Speaker:That was too easy.
Speaker:They said that was a feign that allows people to simply to
Speaker:simplify and mask the oppressive apparatus of banks, corporations,
Speaker:police courts, and the prison.
Speaker:, all of which make diversity hires diversity when it serves the
Speaker:oppressed is an asset, but a con when it serves the oppressors.
Speaker:So just thinking about that, I was thinking that getting minorities
Speaker:institutions is useless if they are not there to change the institutions.
Speaker:And putting right wing, neoliberal black people into power isn't going
Speaker:to help black people impoverished by right wing neoliberal philosophy.
Speaker:It will provide a cover for the harmful activities of the institution.
Speaker:So Lydia Thorpe is saying that Sydney Mardi Gras, no doubt,
Speaker:full of gay people running the show is a captured institution.
Speaker:And the voice runs the risk of achieving representation, but
Speaker:without a philosophy to deal with the problems of indigenous people.
Speaker:Add that to all of the ideas surrounding the voice.
Speaker:We'll get to when we eventually do the Ultimate Indigenous
Speaker:Voice episode somewhere down the track, you know, south Park?
Speaker:Well, I know the, I've never watched much of it.
Speaker:I've just seen snippets of it.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:The black kid in South Park, his name is Token.
Speaker:Mm-hmm.
Speaker:. Ah, there we go.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Shalene in the chat room says, I have written and deleted so many comments.
Speaker:Angry face.
Speaker:I know you would've shy.
Speaker:Ah, let's see.
Speaker:Oh Alison, I went for the last day to the hearings of the Royal Commission.
Speaker:Surreal experience.
Speaker:Actually, Alison wrote a nice little piece about that.
Speaker:Is that, is there a link on your Twitter about that, Alison?
Speaker:Cuz that was good.
Speaker:And Allison discusses her glitter phobia.
Speaker:People can read that in the chat room.
Speaker:Alright, well we've kind of reached the end of that episode.
Speaker:Makes up for, yeah, it's quite a long one.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:But anyway, ideas to think about in all that full fight.
Speaker:Good idea to delete Shalene.
Speaker:Just stop for a moment and just sort of think about the concept of
Speaker:she's asking, still have recording.
Speaker:Yes, I do have Speak Pipe.
Speaker:And we've got a message from Landon Hardbottom tonight, don't we?
Speaker:Yes, and we got, we will finish.
Speaker:Thank you Scott, for reminding me.
Speaker:No worries.
Speaker:That we will we, we all need to sign off and then Landon Hardbottom
Speaker:has left a sign off for us.
Speaker:Thanks for the reminder players, Scott.
Speaker:So, yes.
Speaker:Let me just find Landon Hardbottom there he is.
Speaker:So, alright, you're around next week, both guys.
Speaker:You're not going anywhere.
Speaker:You're back in Brisbane, Joe.
Speaker:I am, yes.
Speaker:All right, Scott, you.
Speaker:I'll be around.
Speaker:We'll be back.
Speaker:Oh actually next week Scott, you've got one week to read the Carbon Club cuz
Speaker:we're doing the book review next week.
Speaker:Oh, do I need to finish it off by then?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Damn.
Speaker:Oh I haven't even got it.
Speaker:So I'll sit next week out then.
Speaker:Alright, well we're gonna do the Carbon Club.
Speaker:So Paul from Canberra is gonna come on and we're gonna talk about the Carbon Club.
Speaker:So Scott, if you've read it in the next week, come and join us.
Speaker:Otherwise I'll try Joe and I and Paul from Canberra and anyone else who's read
Speaker:it and who wants to participate and be a voice on this little book club that
Speaker:will do next week, the Carbon Club.
Speaker:Let me know, send me a message, go onto the website, there's an
Speaker:email address there and let me know if you'd like to participate.
Speaker:Otherwise just joining the chat room.
Speaker:But yeah, the Carbon Club next week, so, there we go.
Speaker:Alright, is that the, the bits of it that I've read have been very good?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So I haven't finished it either.
Speaker:I've gotta put down Ken Mallek, not so black and white and
Speaker:finish off the Carbon Club.
Speaker:And a reminder for those in Brisbane it's available on Brisbane City
Speaker:Council's website as an audiobook.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Very good.
Speaker:So, alright, that's next week.
Speaker:Thanks everybody.
Speaker:We'll talk to you then about the Carbon Club.
Speaker:Bye for now.
Speaker:See you later, Trevor.
Speaker:Have a good night.
Speaker:And it's a good night from.
Speaker:Vengeance retribution.
Speaker:That's the end of the podcast.
Speaker:It's time for bed.
Speaker:Oh, boys, pick up your Jewish space lasers and put them away.
Speaker:Now, have you brushed the shark's teeth?
Speaker:Good.
Speaker:What?
Speaker:What's this?
Speaker:Oh, stop tying up the rather large chaps.
Speaker:Yes, yes.
Speaker:I know that you are practicing for when we get Shay in our clutches, but we
Speaker:have bigger fish to fry now that Glove fellows made a reappearance, so we're
Speaker:going to have to take him out again.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:It's time for bed.
Speaker:Goodnight.
Speaker:And you?
Speaker:Yes, you lurking in the corner there.
Speaker:The podcast's finished.
Speaker:Go home roll.
