full
Episode 449 - Qld Election: Fake Crime Wave
Topics:
Fake Crime Wave.
In episode 449 of the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove podcast, the hosts—Trevor (the Iron Fist), Scott (the Velvet Glove), and Joe—discuss the recent Queensland election results, examining the implications for both state and federal politics. They delve into factors affecting the election, such as youth crime and abortion debates, and scrutinize the performances of key political figures. The episode also features a critical analysis of external threats posed by authoritarian regimes as presented in an article by Greg Sheridan. The conversation touches on various aspects of political bias, cultural dynamics, and institutional efficacy, providing a nuanced perspective on contemporary political challenges and the media’s role in shaping public perception.
00:00 Introduction to the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove
00:39 Panel Introductions and Election Overview
01:53 Queensland Election Results and Analysis
04:29 Youth Crime Debate and Abortion Issues
13:01 Media Influence and Public Perception
19:49 Labor's Response and Political Strategy
30:17 Abortion Debate on the National Stage
46:03 International Politics and Social Interactions
53:18 Debating Government Intentions
53:48 The October 7th Incident
54:22 Questioning Propaganda
59:43 Lydia Thorpe's Protest
01:01:14 Albanese and Qantas Controversy
01:05:45 Newspaper Endorsements and Bias
01:11:47 Greg Sheridan's Article Critique
01:46:44 Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up
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Transcript
Suburban Eastern Australia, an environment that has, over
Sir david:time, evolved some extraordinarily unique groups of homosapiens.
Sir david:But today, we observe a small tribe, akin to a group of meerkats, that
Sir david:gather together atop a small mound to watch, question, and discuss the
Sir david:current events of their city, their country, and their world at large.
Sir david:Let's listen keenly and observe this group fondly known as the
Sir david:Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.
Trevor:Hello, we're back, dear listener.
Trevor:Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove podcast, episode 449.
Trevor:And this one is just your regular panel.
Trevor:Myself, Trevor, the Iron Fist, coming in all the way from a
Trevor:new LNP electorate in Mackay.
Trevor:Scott the Velvet Glove, Scott.
Trevor:How are you?
Scott:I'm not too bad, thank you, and yourself?
Trevor:Um, I'm okay.
Trevor:The electorate of Cooper, marginal swing to Labor, funnily enough.
Trevor:And Joe, in the Pine Rivers electorate, which, what's the story there?
Trevor:Just hanging on?
Joe:TBD.
Joe:I think, uh, currently Labor are 400 or 200 ahead.
Joe:Uh, at one stage they were predicting that it was going to change.
Joe:Uh, currently ABC are predicting that it's not.
Joe:I couldn't see how they, they Given the ECQ numbers, I couldn't see
Joe:how the ABC were predicting it, but
Trevor:Yeah, I, I saw they had, were predicting Nicky Boyd
Trevor:leads by an estimated 210 votes.
Trevor:Mm hmm.
Trevor:Based on the preferences that they think will come through, so Yeah.
Trevor:That's pretty skinny.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So, um, so yes, dear, dear listener, we're going to talk about the Queensland
Trevor:election result and sort of, uh, think about how it came about, what
Trevor:it might mean, and are there any wider implications in the federal
Trevor:sphere, and, ah, all the usual things about what it means for our society.
Trevor:In particular, we're going to talk about, dear listener, The youth crime debate,
Trevor:how that affected people's thinking.
Trevor:And also the abortion debate and how that affected people's thinking and what
Trevor:might happen with that down the track.
Trevor:And um, yes, and see where we end up.
Trevor:So, um, yeah.
Trevor:So, uh, What else have we got to say at the moment?
Trevor:Well, overall, at the last overall count that I looked at, 7.
Trevor:2 percent swing to the LNP and, uh, the LNP have got a comfortable winning
Trevor:margin, Scott, and pretty much what it was looking like, although perhaps
Trevor:it was looking a bit worse for Labor.
Trevor:And in the end, it's an okay ish result from which they can win.
Trevor:Potentially get back in next time.
Scott:It's one of those things.
Scott:I
Scott:had Stephen Miles one and that sort of stuff.
Scott:You'd want to be singing his praises.
Scott:However, I'm not convinced he's the right man to lead the party back into victory.
Scott:Um, I personally feel that Anastasia Palaszczuk stayed in office too long.
Scott:And she should have probably, she probably should have got the factions together six
Scott:months, probably 12 months ahead of when she did and actually got them together and
Scott:say, right, nut it out amongst yourselves.
Scott:I want a bloodless coup that's going to replace me.
Scott:And
Trevor:she
Scott:was, she should have given them a timeline when she was prepared
Scott:to stand down and everything else.
Scott:They could have found someone else that they would have then had two
Scott:years to get acquainted with the electorate rather than 10 months.
Scott:And then it probably would have.
Scott:Gone a little better for them.
Trevor:It did seem that the longer it went the better.
Trevor:He was going so
Scott:exactly.
Scott:Yes It's one of those things and I just think that
Scott:Also, there was a bit of good luck for Labor in that, um, Robbie
Scott:Catter made that an absolute balls up over the abortion issue.
Trevor:Yes.
Scott:You know, because that was something that wasn't even going to
Scott:fall into the laps of either side.
Scott:But
Trevor:Yes, for those who don't know, from down south, the Catter party,
Trevor:Catter's Australia party, basically said that When the new government is
Trevor:formed, which he hoped to be a sort of hoping for a minority government that he
Trevor:would be in coalition with That he would be calling on a new vote on abortion
Trevor:laws seeking to have them overturned And that caused enormous problems for
Trevor:Christopher Foley, who avoided the question 172 times as to Yeah, I was gonna
Joe:say the, the background on that was Christopher Foley and a lot of the
Joe:candidates are very much anti-abortion.
Trevor:Mm-Hmm.
Joe:And, and he merely said, oh, we have no plans.
Joe:Mm-Hmm.
Joe:Um, but given that last time round, they were given a conscience vote.
Joe:And generally the LMP do give conscience votes on this sort of thing.
Joe:Mm-Hmm.
Joe:, the vast majority of the LMP members will vote against.
Joe:Abortion given half a chance, and Robbie Carter was basically saying he
Joe:was going to give them the half chance.
Trevor:Yes, and when Christopher Lee was saying he has no plans The
Trevor:problem was, Catter had a plan, and if he put a bill before Parliament,
Trevor:and there was a conscience vote, that would have changed the law without
Trevor:Christopher Lee having a plan.
Trevor:So that's what, um, had people scared a little bit.
Trevor:And, um, rightfully so.
Trevor:They don't blame them for being scared,
Scott:you know, it's just one of those things, like, you know, we saw
Scott:how Roe vs Wade was overturned in the United States fairly quickly, you know.
Scott:Settled law.
Scott:Settled law.
Scott:It was settled law right up until the three of them had
Scott:the opportunity to vote for it.
Joe:Exactly.
Scott:You know, anyway,
Scott:it's just, I just don't understand how the hell anyone could actually
Scott:look at that and think that that was a bloody good idea.
Trevor:Which part?
Trevor:The
Scott:abortion laws and that sort of stuff, you know, it was,
Scott:it was a strange I guess people
Trevor:felt at the end, surely they wouldn't be doing that,
Scott:I reckon.
Scott:I don't know.
Scott:Yeah, I suppose so, and you know, it's like, um, if you actually believe
Scott:what Christopher Woolley had to say in his acceptance speech, then I think
Scott:we've got nothing to worry about.
Scott:But there is an old saying that says, how do you tell, how can
Scott:you tell if a politician's lying?
Scott:His lips are moving, you know, and his lips were moving a hell of a
Scott:lot of, were moving a hell of a lot in that, uh, acceptance speech.
Scott:So, I don't know, you know, am I actually, am I shit scared of this government?
Scott:Not really, but I also remember just how bad they were.
Scott:When they last had their control of the office, and their Christian
Scott:Nutter ratio has gone up, not down.
Scott:Yes.
Scott:There are more of them now than what there once were.
Trevor:Yeah, guys like Blayze and that.
Trevor:Oh,
Scott:Blayze is the Deputy Premier now, isn't he?
Trevor:Yes, yeah, and he's very much a Christian Nutter.
Scott:I know he's a Christian Nutter.
Scott:He was the same fuckwit that, um, Overturned the, um, overturned the,
Scott:the civil unions for same sex couples.
Scott:And he said, Oh, by the way, we're also, we're also going to move against
Scott:adoption for same sex couples too.
Scott:And I just thought to myself, that was never part of the election campaign.
Scott:He
Trevor:wasn't happy with our satanic activity either, I remember, so.
Trevor:No, he
Scott:wasn't!
Trevor:But um, we were talking about pre poll before we went to air, Joe and
Trevor:I were, and Joe, you were saying that pre polls favoured the LNP by about 5
Trevor:percent more than the regular voting.
Joe:It was mentioned on the ABC coverage, I've pulled the initial
Joe:stats from eCQ for my electorate.
Joe:So if you go onto the eCQ website and then, uh, by electorate, you can
Joe:then do, uh, sort by polling booth.
Joe:And you can download that as an Excel or as a CSV file.
Joe:Uh, and pulled some interesting stats out of that, and it did look like, so,
Joe:it's a bit difficult to tell because really I could only find, um, Samford
Joe:and, uh, Strathpine, I think, had early polling, but it did seem to be
Joe:about 5 percent more conservative.
Joe:Yeah, see,
Trevor:I thought that was unusual, that you associate the conservative
Trevor:vote with older people, and I would have thought they're more likely to
Trevor:vote on the day, and it would be younger people who would be Doing the pre poll.
Trevor:So that sort of just seems strange to me.
Trevor:And you thought maybe The pre polls hadn't been scared off by the abortion debate
Trevor:because it was kind of late in that day.
Joe:It was last minute.
Joe:And yeah, there was there was a lot of heavy Labor advertising last minute and
Joe:whether that made the difference because certainly Labor seemed to pick up a few
Joe:points Towards the end of the campaign.
Joe:They
Scott:did, absolutely.
Scott:And that was that was all because of you know, Robbie Canna.
Scott:Mm hmm You know, had he not actually put his foot in his mouth the way
Scott:he did, then I think Labor would have been, the LNP would have walked
Scott:the floor with the Labor Party.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:You know, there are a
Scott:number of things that Labor did wrong.
Scott:You know, that QSAC proposal is a ridiculous idea, that they want
Scott:to actually spend money out there.
Scott:You know, they've got two people Which one was that?
Scott:That was the QSAC out there at, um,
Scott:out there next to Griffith University.
Scott:That was the, um, where, the QE2 stadium where they had the the
Trevor:Olympics?
Scott:Yeah.
Trevor:Oh, okay.
Scott:Where they had the, where they had the 1982 Commonwealth Games.
Trevor:So you think that cost Labor?
Trevor:I don't know.
Scott:I think it did cost Labor a hell of a lot of votes.
Trevor:But Chris Ofuli didn't say what he was going to do, did he?
Trevor:No, Chris
Scott:Ofuli said that he's still going to look into it and that sort of stuff.
Scott:Now, one would hope that Chris Ofuli has a, um, a long, hard think
Scott:about it and that sort of stuff.
Scott:He might actually decide that the best thing to do is to choose a new site
Scott:and that sort of stuff to build the, um, to build the stadium, which then
Scott:leaves, um, Two pieces of prime real estate that are available to sell.
Scott:You know, you could sell, uh, you could sell both CUSAC and, uh, the Gabba.
Scott:You could sell them both.
Scott:That would make a very pretty penny for the government.
Scott:And then you could even get the, um, you could even get the whole lot built
Scott:by, um, Private Enterprise in exchange for 30 years worth of naming rights
Scott:and control and that sort of thing.
Joe:It's no problem at all.
Joe:Giving government money to Private Enterprise again.
Joe:I was looking at government money
Scott:to Private Enterprise.
Scott:Yeah, it is.
Scott:No, you, you were just, you were, uh, you, you get them to build it for you.
Scott:They, they incur all the costs.
Trevor:Oh, Scott, hang on.
Trevor:We can't hear you, Scott.
Trevor:Oh, maybe it's me.
Trevor:No, no.
Trevor:Now I can.
Trevor:I can hear you now, Scott.
Trevor:It's working now.
Trevor:you now.
Trevor:We can hear you now.
Trevor:Okay.
Trevor:You disappeared for some reason.
Trevor:Anyway,
Scott:um, you get them to build it and they pay for the building
Scott:and all that sort of stuff.
Scott:And then after that you've got to hand over naming rights and
Scott:control the stadium for 30 years.
Scott:And you've got a free stadium that is available.
Scott:Now, if you did it, if you did that But Benningham, they own
Trevor:it for 30 years, right?
Scott:No, they don't own it.
Scott:The government still owns it.
Trevor:Right.
Trevor:But they just own the naming
Scott:rights.
Trevor:Is naming rights worth the cost of building a stadium?
Scott:I don't know, but apparently it worked very well in Sydney.
Trevor:Because that doesn't, that doesn't seem to stack up, Scott.
Trevor:That is how they, no, not through naming
Scott:rights, it is also the, um, control of it.
Scott:And the profits for the stadium.
Scott:Exactly.
Scott:The profits of the stadium and everything go back to the people that built it.
Scott:And then at the end of 30 years, yeah.
Trevor:Yeah, okay.
Trevor:But at the end of 30 years, you've got a stadium that you need to
Trevor:knock down on, because these things only last 30 30 years,
Joe:you sell it to the Catholic Church for 1.
Joe:Because,
Scott:yeah.
Scott:Yeah, but anyway, it's just one of those things that they could have actually done.
Scott:And they could have actually sold off those two pieces
Scott:of real estate and moved on.
Trevor:See what Christopher Lee does.
Trevor:I reckon it's going to happen at Victoria Park.
Trevor:But here's what I reckon.
Trevor:It goes to Victoria Park.
Trevor:Here's my explanation.
Trevor:I reckon it's going to happen at Victoria Park.
Trevor:Here's my explanation.
Trevor:As I travel this wide brown land and speak to people from all walks of life,
Trevor:and in particular boomers, about the election, both before the election and
Trevor:afterwards, the thing that is always mentioned is increasing violence
Trevor:and in particular youth offenders.
Trevor:and how it was just out of control and time for a change of government because
Trevor:this miles government, um, Labor doesn't know how to, how to fix the crime problem.
Trevor:And you know, when these kids do adult crime, they should do adult time.
Trevor:And so basically what they're saying
Joe:is we should lock up the black kids.
Joe:Well, it basically, Because that's the
Trevor:underlying.
Trevor:Basically that there has been a crime wave that Labor has been unable to control.
Trevor:And that's why they need to be booted out.
Trevor:That, to me, is the overwhelming response I've had when talking to people.
Trevor:Do either of you disagree with that?
Trevor:Do you think anything else is bigger than that?
Trevor:That's the biggest Driving decision for people swapping.
Scott:Yeah, I think it probably was, but I don't believe that there is actually
Scott:a massive crime wave going on right now.
Joe:Correct.
Joe:So, so certainly I think the northern cities, yes, that's, that's the narrative.
Joe:Yeah, Cairns
Scott:and Townsville for sure.
Joe:Down here, uh, I think it's more cost of living.
Joe:Uh, I did see a lot of commentary around, oh, you know, um, the fuel,
Joe:uh, the electric prices are too high.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:Because the Miles government hadn't rebuilt, um, the power station
Joe:that blew up, the coal fired one.
Joe:Right, yeah.
Joe:That's shutting down in 2027 anyway.
Joe:Right, yeah.
Joe:So, why hadn't we spent 15 billion dollars redoing it for three years?
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Okay, that might have been one as well, but I still maintain that a key,
Trevor:sort of, policy Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Trevor:Was the youth crime and, of course, there is no crime wave.
Trevor:No.
Trevor:The statistics, when you look at them, show that, um, That, uh,
Trevor:is, if anything, a decrease in crime, in juvenile crime, and No,
Joe:no, I did see, apparently he'd put out a statistic that
Joe:showed the line going up,
Trevor:and
Joe:if you look at the ten year statistic, it's plummeted, plummeted,
Joe:plummeted, and there's been a tiny little uptick at the end.
Joe:And they basically cut out the uptick at the end and go, Look
Joe:at that, crime rate's increasing.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Well, I was at, um, I'm down the coast at the moment and just met
Trevor:up, met a couple of, um, uh, fellow beamers in the swimming pool.
Trevor:And said to them, you know, obviously got around to politics
Trevor:and the distant results.
Trevor:And one of them started about the crime wave.
Trevor:And I said, you realise that if anything, the statistics show
Trevor:that crime's on the decrease.
Trevor:Including juvenile crime, juvenile offenders, number of offenders,
Trevor:and they were both flabbergasted.
Trevor:I said, what are you talking about?
Trevor:I said, yeah, it's, it's actually a downward trend.
Trevor:That can't be right.
Trevor:I said, well, that's because you've been reading the Courier Mail and
Trevor:you've been watching Sky News.
Trevor:End.
Trevor:And one of the guys said, look, I don't read the courier mail.
Trevor:And I said, that's fine.
Trevor:But you have a friend or somebody that you have coffee with.
Trevor:And they've said to you that there's a crime problem.
Trevor:And I said, you know, I've walked down to the swimming pool now and you've both
Trevor:basically said, There's a crime problem in Queensland, and, and it gets passed
Trevor:around, this sort of, narrative, even if you don't read the fucking courier mail.
Trevor:And this is, you know, at the end of the last federal election, I
Trevor:was thinking, oh, maybe this is a sign that Murdoch's lost its power.
Trevor:But, you know, despite the falling, sort of, readership of the Courier
Trevor:Mail, and the lack of people, um, watching Sky News, it's still the case
Trevor:that it sets the narrative, and these things just get multiplied through
Trevor:our community, these narratives.
Trevor:It's quite depressing to me that these furfies just move this way, so
Joe:Well, I reckon most of them are on Facebook and they're probably in
Joe:groups that are sharing the memes.
Joe:Yes!
Joe:And, um, it'll possibly come as a surprise to some people, no surprise to others.
Joe:That, um, Russia and China are very interested in seeing liberal democracies
Joe:fail and are pumping huge amounts of money into just sowing dissent.
Joe:They don't care which side of the argument, they just want to
Joe:sow mistrust in the whole system.
Joe:They create and boost posts that spread bullshit, basically.
Joe:Yeah.
Trevor:So, um, There's one, uh, on the screen for the people who are
Trevor:watching is the graph from Queensland Police, um, where they say the latest
Trevor:crime statistics from the Queensland Police Service compare the financial
Trevor:year 23 24 to the financial year 22 23.
Trevor:A reduction in the rate of youth offences of 6.
Trevor:7%, the number of unique youth offenders reduced by 2%.
Trevor:And by 18 percent since 2012.
Trevor:And, um, a whole bunch of statistics there showing that, that there's no crime wave.
Trevor:And there was an article in, uh, an ABC, uh, piece, um, on the screen again.
Trevor:Youth crime is the graph.
Trevor:Queensland is right in the middle.
Trevor:And you can see all states basically have falling youth crime.
Trevor:And that's, uh, previous one was the number of offences.
Trevor:Uh, number of offenders is also falling, and, um, youth crime is actually
Trevor:shrinking faster than adult crime, and, um, you know, various other statistics
Trevor:were in there, so no matter how you want to sort of, um, jiggle your
Trevor:statistics, it's a pretty compelling argument that there's no crime wave
Joe:worthy
Trevor:of note.
Joe:A conversation piece that was saying, um, this 7 percent drop in
Joe:the last year is because basically they swarmed the areas where
Joe:there were problems with police.
Joe:But this is not a sustainable thing, and that this will rebound.
Joe:No matter who's in government, this will rebound.
Trevor:Yeah, well, swarming was part of an increase as well, because they were
Trevor:so keen on catching people that they caught more than they normally would.
Trevor:So, um, so I The thing about it is that, um, Miles and Labor did not
Trevor:try and fight that narrative at all.
Trevor:They basically accepted Oh yeah, there's a crime problem and we're
Trevor:going to be harsh on people and
Joe:Well, and they were On the ABC election coverage, they did argue back,
Joe:saying, oh yeah, the, the, whatever it was, police statistics show it's
Joe:down by 6%, and the LNP were going, oh no, because, um, ABS or so and so
Joe:have got it up by however many percent.
Trevor:I didn't see enough fight back, and there was one particular politician
Trevor:who tried to argue it and was told by the party not to and to sort of take
Trevor:it off his Facebook page because they felt that they didn't want people.
Trevor:belittling the idea that they should have fought the idea on the facts.
Joe:As someone else said, I don't care whether the crime rates are
Joe:falling or not, if I'm having to replace my lock every two weeks.
Joe:And this is the point, you know, you can always find the outlier, the, the anomaly.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:And this is the, you know, what the courier file would do is cherry pick.
Trevor:And whenever there was any sort of, um, Car Stolen or whatever.
Trevor:You know, throw it on the front page or page three and talk about it forever.
Trevor:And people will get the impression that there's a crime wave.
Joe:They're only going to execute youths for major crimes like murder,
Joe:or breaking into somebody's house and stealing things, or breaking into
Joe:somebody's business and stealing things.
Joe:Because they were going, oh, it's only serious offences, and then breaking and
Joe:entering is a serious offence, apparently.
Scott:It's one of those things.
Scott:I just Don't understand why that, um, you know, that, uh, guy that lost
Scott:his, uh, son in law and daughter, you know, they were killed by a,
Scott:a juvenile driver and that sort of stuff that cleaned him up on the road.
Scott:Yeah, an absolutely tragic thing that happened.
Scott:There's no doubt about that.
Scott:But they were saying that, um, I don't even know what the eventual
Scott:outcome was of that, of that original criminal case, whether or not they
Scott:did get let off or anything else.
Scott:It's just, um, I just don't understand why they got the, the, why they got
Scott:the lead billing of any of the news items that were going on at the time.
Trevor:Well, it's because it's in the interest of the Murdoch press
Trevor:to get rid of a Labor government.
Trevor:Plain and simple.
Trevor:The other thing was, of course, they are locking people up more,
Trevor:and youths, and they're locking them up, um, prior to conviction, so when
Trevor:they're not granting bail as well.
Trevor:And, um, And just locking kids up is not actually the solution anyway.
Scott:No, it's one of those things.
Scott:I actually said to Nigel Dalton the time that I met him, you know,
Scott:I said, I'm very disappointed that you're standing in front of a sign
Scott:saying adult, adult crime, adult time.
Scott:I said, you and I both know that it is a hell of a lot more nuanced than that.
Scott:We've actually got to find a very, Complicated solution to
Scott:a very complicated problem.
Scott:And he sort of agreed, he didn't really, he sort of agreed with me
Scott:without actually agreeing with me.
Scott:You know, and he was a very impressive candidate, but I actually told him,
Scott:I said, I can't vote for you because you know, I'm not convinced that
Scott:Christopher Lee's got his dickhead frontbench on a short enough leash.
Trevor:I've got in this article from the ABC, uh, Griffith University criminologist
Trevor:Ross Hommel said both parties were perpetrating the big lie that tougher
Trevor:penalties would reduce youth crime rates.
Trevor:He said the opposite has been repeatedly demonstrated through twin studies,
Trevor:randomised control trials, natural experiments and longitudinal studies.
Trevor:And he says that criminal justice processing of juveniles is itself
Trevor:a cause of future offending.
Trevor:It doesn't make the community safer.
Joe:It sends them into a training camp.
Trevor:And he says, um, it fails to address the underlying causes of youth
Trevor:crime, which is driven by factors such as fetal alcohol syndrome, neurodevelopmental
Trevor:disability, sexual and physical violence, poverty and low education.
Trevor:That all makes complete sense.
Trevor:But it's such an easy thing for the Courier Mail and Sky News to say.
Trevor:Lock these kids up, they need harsher penalties, the judges are too soft.
Joe:And the fact that it has a racist outcome is just a nice side effect.
Joe:Yes.
Joe:It's not actually the aim of it.
Joe:Yes.
Trevor:And do you think that the fucking Labor Party could just run an argument?
Trevor:Like, this is the, this, a lot more hate him.
Trevor:Dan Andrews.
Scott:Yeah, could run an argument.
Scott:In Victoria.
Trevor:Would go to these press conferences and he would stare down the
Trevor:Murdoch press and answer all of their questions and just dare them, yeah,
Joe:and
Trevor:he would dare them to basically repeat these answers.
Trevor:I mean, Miles should have taken these characters on and said, you're
Trevor:just not a legitimate newspaper, you are a propaganda rag for the LNP.
Trevor:I dare you to show these charts on your page 3 or page 5.
Trevor:You won't do it.
Trevor:And he should have taken them on, but he's, it's Labor.
Trevor:Too gutless.
Trevor:Too gutless.
Trevor:They deserve to be in power.
Trevor:What are they going to do anyway?
Scott:It's one of those things, I just honestly believe that they
Scott:should actually, they should actually have a policy of taking them on.
Scott:Actually fighting them.
Trevor:And discrediting them.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:People need to understand.
Trevor:On any number of issues, you just can't listen to the nonsense that
Trevor:comes out of this mainstream media.
Trevor:If they'd said,
Joe:you've just cherry picked that statistic, you know, long term
Joe:rates are showing it's gone down.
Trevor:Yes.
Joe:With a minor uptick at the end, you know, what would they
Trevor:have said?
Trevor:Yes, exactly.
Trevor:But they're too afraid to argue something.
Trevor:It's Incredible.
Trevor:But, um, uh, Scott, um, Greens, um, basically maintained their same sort of
Trevor:level of voting, around the 10%, But, um, didn't get the votes in the right places.
Trevor:So, well,
Scott:I just think that it's probably also didn't help them
Scott:that the LNP decided to preference the Labor Party in South Brisbane.
Joe:Yeah, they wanted rid of Trad, which is why they preference the Greens.
Joe:And that's why the Greens won that seat last time.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:So, um, so dear listener in South Brisbane, where there was
Trevor:a Greens candidate last time
Trevor:The Greens candidate l and p this referenced, uh, sorry, last time
Trevor:L and p referenced the Greens candidate and this time they haven't.
Trevor:However, there is still an outside chance that, um, that the two leading candidates
Trevor:will be the l and p candidate and the Greens candidate, in which case the
Trevor:labor preferences will get the Greens candidate ahead as an outside chance.
Trevor:Gotcha.
Trevor:So, um.
Trevor:Yes, but that's how our wonderful democracy works.
Trevor:I still
Scott:think a preferential system is, is preferable to first past the post.
Trevor:Well, a proportional system would be even better.
Scott:I know, proportional would be even better, but then you've got to
Scott:work out, you've got to work out where you, you've got to work out where
Scott:you're going to put your members though.
Scott:Because if, if you've got all your members and everything like
Scott:that down in the southeast corner.
Scott:that don't want to move, then where did the, where did the, where did the rest of
Scott:the state get their representatives from?
Trevor:I'm sure we could find them.
Trevor:They must be done somewhere, in some places, they figure out a way
Scott:of those things.
Scott:They've got to have to work out how to do it, and they've got to work
Scott:out how to do it, and they've got to actually tell us how they're
Scott:going to do it in the first place.
Joe:You know, maybe Federal Upper House, you know, fill in 75
Joe:candidates in order of preference.
Trevor:Maybe if politicians didn't have to attend every local FATE and PNC
Trevor:meeting, we might get better candidates, because they'd go, I'm not going to
Trevor:do the job if I've got to turn up to all that sort of shite all the time.
Trevor:Maybe.
Scott:Is that really the misuse
Trevor:of our leaders?
Scott:No, possibly not, but however, you know, I was just talking to Deepthroat on
Scott:Sunday morning because I rang him up to commiserate over the loss of the election.
Scott:And I just said to him, I said, he was talking about his
Scott:member that just got reelected.
Trevor:Don T.
Trevor:Bush?
Trevor:Is he in Cooper as well?
Trevor:Yeah, yeah.
Scott:He said that she, she basically would attend the opening of an envelope.
Trevor:Yes.
Scott:You know, so she was there being seen and that sort of stuff.
Scott:So people just got the impression that she was out there doing something.
Scott:Yes.
Scott:Yeah, she was probably just turning up something and pressing the
Scott:flash and that sort of stuff and pissing off after half an hour.
Scott:You never know.
Scott:You know, it's just, I agree with you.
Scott:You've got to have, you've got to have a better use of time, but
Scott:it's par for the course though.
Scott:You know, you've got to be seen to be out there doing something rather
Scott:than actually doing something.
Trevor:Mmm.
Trevor:City versus rural as well.
Trevor:When you look at a map.
Trevor:The Labor electorates are all clustered around, you know, Brisbane suburbs.
Trevor:Well, so they did have
Joe:the cities up north, but they lost them.
Joe:And I think that's the, that was the big swing, wasn't it?
Trevor:Yes.
Scott:Well, they lost Townsville
Trevor:and Mackay and
Scott:Mackay.
Scott:Yeah.
Scott:And I think
Trevor:they've lost Rocky too, haven't
Scott:they?
Joe:Not
Scott:sure.
Joe:Oh, but it wasn't that, um, uh, Gotham.
Joe:The mayor who's been there for ages is now, um, Strollo.
Joe:She was Mayor for years, and is now standing as a candidate, and
Joe:I think, because she's just so well known in the community, I
Joe:think that's why she got the vote.
Trevor:Okay.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So anyway, um Is she from the LNP or the Labor Party?
Trevor:I
Scott:think she's LNP.
Trevor:So the other, just, um, circling back to the other issue of
Trevor:abortion, and whether that will now get on the national agenda, um National?
Trevor:Yeah, well,
Scott:that's fucking idiot Jacinta Price.
Trevor:That's where we're getting to.
Trevor:So, Coalition Senator Jacinta Nepijimpa Price wants abortion
Trevor:on the national agenda.
Trevor:So, um, it's this importation of American cultures.
Joe:Well, because it works for Americans and they think possibly
Joe:they can capture some of the, uh,
Trevor:These are the very same people who will be bitching about
Trevor:Halloween, saying, Oh, we don't need this American Halloween culture.
Trevor:You know, we call them biscuits, not cookies.
Trevor:And, you know, they'd be the first ones to rail against the importation of That sort
Trevor:of American culture, but they were quite willing to, to bring in this American
Trevor:culture war, um, and play it out here.
Joe:Well, I just had an email from Binary, who are the anti trans mob,
Joe:um, and they were going on about how there's only one candidate that they
Joe:see that's going to support women's rights in America, and that was Trump.
Trevor:Yeah,
Joe:because he's going to protect them from the nasty trans people.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:What a load of shit.
Trevor:I know.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So, um, just back on abortion, Joe, you came up with, um, you sent something
Trevor:in Messenger about a case in America and it was to do with abortion.
Joe:So, uh, four US states are suing the FDA over Mifepristil,
Joe:I think, which is the, um, abortion drug.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:So it's used in medication abortions.
Trevor:People are accessing it via the post,
Joe:is it?
Joe:And as part of their arguments why they say that the FDA shouldn't have been
Joe:allowed to, um, legalise Mifepristil or allow it, Um, is that, uh, there has
Joe:been a drop in the number of teenage pregnancies, and they rely on these
Joe:teenage pregnancies to increase their state population, allowing them federal
Joe:representation in the future, because for every 10, 000 people or whatever it
Joe:is, they get another seat in Congress.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:This is part of their official pleading in the court document.
Joe:What was that they should be allowed to force women to give
Joe:birth so that they can have better representation in the future?
Joe:Jesus
Trevor:Christ.
Trevor:I think it was paragraph 752 where they wrote, A loss of potential population
Trevor:causes further injuries as well.
Trevor:The state's subsequent diminishment of political representation and loss
Trevor:of federal funds, such as potentially losing a seat in Congress, or
Trevor:qualifying for less federal funding if their populations are reduced.
Trevor:Or their population increase diminished.
Trevor:So yes, if we don't get enough babies, it will be a financial problem.
Scott:Fucking kidding.
Scott:Nope.
Joe:We need to force teenagers to have babies.
Joe:I think one of the other ones was we need to force teenagers to have babies
Joe:because there are a lot of childless couples out there that need babies to
Joe:be able to adopt, which Handmaid's Tale.
Scott:Yeah, I know.
Scott:It's one of those things I just don't understand.
Scott:That anyone could actually, how anyone could vote for the Republicans in good
Scott:conscience right now is beyond me.
Joe:Well, especially with Hitler, uh, sorry, with Trump, um, espousing
Joe:Hitler, having, you know, now being quoted as saying, why can't
Joe:I have the kind of generals that Hitler had that are loyal to me?
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:To which he was told, they weren't loyal to Hitler, a
Joe:number of them tried to kill him.
Joe:Yeah.
Trevor:Still on abortion.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Australian Catholic University had a graduation speech.
Trevor:Oh, yes.
Trevor:Yeah, that was hilarious, wasn't it?
Trevor:Yes, and um
Joe:I'm sorry, but what the fuck do you expect if you go to an
Joe:Australian Catholic University?
Trevor:Well, that's what, indeed, that's what Greg Sheridan said.
Trevor:Um, so yeah, at the Australian Catholic University, um, De Bruijn,
Trevor:Joe De Bruijn, um, union leader.
Trevor:of the Shoppies Union.
Trevor:So dear listener, just bear in mind as we rail against the Christian conservatism of
Trevor:the, you know, Liberal National Parties, the Labor Party has its own problem with
Trevor:Christian nutters and that is lurking deep in some of the unions, in particular the
Trevor:Shoppies Union, which is a powerful union.
Trevor:Grace Grace was a, um, was
Joe:Yeah, how great R.
Joe:I.
Joe:was, wasn't she?
Trevor:Yes, indeed.
Trevor:Um, so, De Bruyn was offered an honorary doctorate at ACU
Trevor:and invited to give a speech.
Trevor:And apparently, he, they got a copy of the speech beforehand and they
Trevor:said to him, uh, Do you think it'd be good if you could change a few things?
Trevor:But they didn't tell him what to change, and so he just ran with the speech anyway.
Trevor:And in it, um, uh, he was putting forward some pretty hardcore,
Trevor:uh, anti abortion statements.
Trevor:And I've just got from this article here, um, so during the, um, graduation
Trevor:ceremony, Students have staged a mass walkout during a speech by
Trevor:former union boss Joe DeBruin, during which he espoused anti abortion
Trevor:and anti same sex marriage views.
Trevor:DeBruin was being presented with an honorary degree.
Trevor:The university said it was deeply disappointed that the speech was not
Trevor:more befitting a graduation ceremony and has refunded ticket fees for graduates.
Trevor:One of the students told ABC Radio that DeBruin's speech took a hard right turn.
Trevor:He started talking about how abortion was wrong and he had a list of things he
Trevor:wanted to talk about and it was shocking.
Trevor:Uh, in the speech, Deb Bruin claimed abortion was the single biggest killer
Trevor:of human beings in the world and referred to it as a tragedy that must be ended.
Trevor:And he told the audience they may be faced with issues that are at odds with
Trevor:the teachings of the Catholic church.
Trevor:And he said, my experience is many Catholics cave into peer pressure.
Trevor:They think their professional lives will be harmed if they promote
Trevor:the teachings of the church.
Trevor:The student reckons about 95 percent of people left the auditorium.
Trevor:I think the remaining 5 percent were there just to sort of film the empty auditorium.
Trevor:And, um, yeah, um, of course, uh, DeBroom is an officer of the Order of Australia
Trevor:in the Queen's Birthday Honours List 2022.
Trevor:So
Trevor:Australian Catholic University invites this guy to speak.
Trevor:And he, he speaks about solid Catholic ideology.
Trevor:And they have to say, you can't say the quiet bit out loud.
Trevor:Not, not here.
Trevor:Well, my
Joe:daughter was saying it was a beat up because she'd seen a video
Joe:on TikTok that showed that they were all leaving normally at the end.
Joe:And I'm going, well, if that's the case, why were they refunding
Joe:people who left their money?
Joe:Yes, and what did she say to that?
Joe:Oh, she then went and looked for this video that she'd seen and
Joe:found that actually people were leaving in the middle of his talk.
Trevor:There we go.
Joe:But, so, it's interesting, there was originally a counter narrative.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So, you know, on the one hand, at least he's consistent.
Trevor:Well, yeah, absolutely.
Trevor:And not hypocritical, like the authorities running the university.
Scott:He was actually, he was actually espousing Catholic views.
Scott:He was actually saying what the Catholic Church actually teaches.
Trevor:Yes, and don't be afraid to hold on to your faith.
Trevor:No,
Scott:exactly.
Trevor:So, you know,
Scott:it's just a, you know, I cannot believe that, um, he was the head of the
Scott:shoppies union and all that sort of stuff.
Scott:And when was the last time you ever got into a conversation with any one of the,
Scott:with any of the checkout chicks at Coles?
Scott:Oh, you can't use them anymore because they're all self serve.
Scott:But when was the last time you got involved, got involved in
Scott:a conversation with anyone who works there about abortion rights?
Scott:You know, never, you know, but he wants to make out it's some big thing.
Scott:It's not.
Joe:Well, and didn't the, um, shoppies sell out their members anyway?
Scott:Oh, absolutely they did.
Joe:So,
Scott:you know, it's, it's,
Scott:I had to agree with the, uh, one of the whole, might've been The Shovel or
Scott:something like that, that said that, um, at the time that their members were, their
Scott:members were saying that their members of the, uh, unions, uh, Union representing,
Scott:um, hotel workers and that sort of stuff.
Scott:They'd said they would, they'd be, their members would be quite in favour of the
Scott:same sort of, um, rhetoric and that sort of stuff that the CFMEU was pulling, if
Scott:they could afford to buy their own house.
Trevor:Right, yes.
Scott:And I actually agree with that.
Scott:You know,
Trevor:the
Scott:militant, the militant, the militant behavior of the
Scott:CFMEU is quite justified, really.
Scott:Yeah,
Trevor:they managed to get for their members, extract value for
Trevor:them that other unions haven't.
Joe:CFMU members can buy houses.
Trevor:Exactly, they can.
Scott:Yes.
Scott:You know,
Trevor:no other
Scott:union members can.
Trevor:Speaking of the shovel, just a final word on the Queensland election.
Trevor:In the shovel, they reported that Queenslanders will turn their
Trevor:clocks back to 1954 this morning.
Trevor:After electing David Chrisafulli as Premier, Chrisafulli, who has campaigned
Trevor:on putting children in prison and has failed to rule out reintroducing abortion
Trevor:laws, thanked Queenslanders for their support, saying he wanted to lead the
Trevor:state until well into the last century.
Trevor:Quote, It's an exciting time to be a Queenslander.
Trevor:Thank you to all the men and their lady wives.
Trevor:Who have sent telegrams expressing their congratulations.
Trevor:As we emerge from the post war years and look ahead to the 1960s, there's
Trevor:nothing this state cannot achieve.
Trevor:A government spokesperson reminded Queenslanders to adjust
Trevor:their wind up watches before leaving for work this morning.
Trevor:Remember now, instead of getting Dark at 7pm, it will be dark most of the time.
Trevor:Critics say the change could cause curtains and women's
Trevor:reproductive rights to fade.
Trevor:Ah, well done, shovel.
Trevor:Good report.
Trevor:Um, yeah.
Trevor:Okay, um, so, uh, just that, um, that event at the
Trevor:Australian Catholic University.
Trevor:I was with some other friends, did a party type situation, and one of them said that,
Trevor:Oh, I read this great article, it really just encapsulated how China is a threat,
Trevor:and how our culture is, is not up to the task of, um, of battling this new threat.
Trevor:And it was a really well written piece.
Trevor:And I just said to him, mate, I think I'm going to disagree with.
Trevor:Everything in that article, and asked him to eventually send me the link,
Trevor:and he did, and it was in the Weekend Australian, an article by Greg Sheridan,
Trevor:and I was like, oh for fuck's sake, like, an idiot like Greg Sheridan.
Trevor:has this platform, and even though he's been proved wrong on countless
Trevor:occasions, and just plain stupid on thousands, he's just got a platform
Trevor:that continues to cause mischief, and people of a certain era still trust
Trevor:opinion pieces in newspapers, and don't recognise that the propaganda that it is.
Trevor:It's very depressing, um, really depressing.
Trevor:Anyway, I, dear listener, at the end of this podcast, when we've finished,
Trevor:wrapped up, you'll hear me read the Greg Sheridan piece, and then I
Trevor:went back to that, um, notebook LM.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:And I instructed it to, um, do a short podcast criticising Greg Sheridan.
Trevor:And I said, with particular emphasis on how China, I use words like how
Trevor:China is, well actually what did I say?
Trevor:Um, I'll tell you.
Trevor:I specifically asked Notebook LM to criticise the article emphasising
Trevor:Sheridan's cultural bias against a relatively benign China.
Trevor:That's how I instructed it.
Trevor:So if you're watching this live, grab hold of the audio in the podcast app and
Trevor:fast forward to the end and I'll read it and then you'll see their response.
Trevor:Actually, it was pretty good.
Trevor:In particular, they talked about how he's so stuck in an old culture,
Trevor:both, you know, Sheridan is obsessed with, Like John Anderson, former
Trevor:Deputy, um, Prime Minister, who loves Jordan Peterson, with this whole
Trevor:idea of Western culture is in demise.
Trevor:just because it's changing and it's different to what it was and it's as if
Trevor:a culture is supposed to be just static and any change to it is seen as a demise
Trevor:and so, you know, these kids at the Australian Catholic University walking out
Trevor:is really because the culture is changing to be more inclusive of trans people
Trevor:and of women's rights to their own body and, um, so it was sort of that argument
Trevor:come through and also then just in this piece, when I read it you'll hear, um,
Trevor:basically a Sheridan rails against China and Iran and Russia and all the rest
Trevor:of it, like, again it's about culture.
Trevor:He's stuck in his culture and doesn't recognise other cultures.
Trevor:Might be different, but perfectly legitimate, so, um,
Trevor:so yeah, that'll be at the end.
Trevor:But, um, ah, what else happened in social interaction circles?
Trevor:Um, talking to my brother, who plays pickleball in Sydney, again, with
Trevor:a lot of other boomers, they're all retired, eastern suburbs, and a fairly
Trevor:high contingent of Jewish people.
Trevor:And he said, it's great.
Trevor:You know, we play pickleball three times a week and blah, blah, blah, go
Trevor:for coffees and whatnot afterwards.
Trevor:And I said, so at the coffee afterwards, does anybody ever
Trevor:mention Gaza and Palestine?
Trevor:He says, Oh God, no.
Trevor:It's totally off.
Trevor:You just can't talk about it.
Trevor:Totally off, off limits.
Trevor:Do you guys get to talk about it with other people at all?
Trevor:Like, with acquaintances?
Trevor:Or, is it a no go zone?
Scott:Yeah, I do.
Scott:And, um, I always preface it by saying that Israel was right to respond,
Scott:but I think they have overreacted.
Scott:Right.
Scott:You know, um,
Trevor:just, just think.
Trevor:Like, absolutely.
Trevor:Convinced that they've gone way over the top and it's a genocide.
Trevor:They have gone way over the top.
Scott:They have gone way over the top and it certainly looks
Scott:and smells like a genocide.
Joe:What gets me is the people who are saying, Oh, well, you know, the
Joe:upcoming US election, there's no difference between the candidates.
Joe:So, because they're both the same on Palestine.
Joe:And it's like, hang on a second.
Joe:Have you heard of Trump Heights?
Joe:Go and have a look at Wikipedia.
Joe:There is an area of the occupied territory that is called Trump Heights
Joe:by the Jewish settlers, because of how great President Trump has been to them.
Trevor:Right, so he'll be even more keen to support Israel.
Trevor:Yeah, absolutely.
Trevor:So we think he will,
Scott:you know, because he loves all that sort of shit that's done for him.
Joe:Yeah, okay, the genocide in Israel is bad, but do we
Joe:really want a Nazi in America?
Scott:No.
Joe:Stop the fucking equivocation.
Joe:Stop the, the, the failing of The US democracy as, yeah,
Joe:what little democracy there is.
Joe:Hmm.
Joe:Um, just because, you know, you think they're equally as bad on Palestine.
Trevor:Well, if one rates as 100 out of 100 and the other rates as 98 out
Trevor:of 100 in terms of badness Vote for
Joe:the 98 still.
Trevor:Okay.
Joe:And also stop the overthrow of democracy at the same time.
Trevor:Okay.
Trevor:Exactly.
Trevor:So please don't celebrate when Kamala gets in because she'll
Trevor:just be as big a worm Bumpy.
Trevor:Warmonger is
Joe:probably Biden has
Trevor:been, yes.
Joe:But celebrate that, you know, theocratic fascism
Joe:hasn't taken over the US.
Joe:Yeah.
Scott:Exactly.
Scott:Which is one of those things, I just don't understand how anyone could
Scott:actually contemplate voting for Trump.
Joe:So,
Scott:so,
Joe:I did read various people saying, the point is, they want people to be hurt.
Joe:These people who vote for Trump want the others to be hurt.
Joe:They just don't expect it that they will be the ones being hurt.
Joe:And in fact, there have been people who said, But he was supposed to
Joe:hurt the other people, not me.
Joe:When they've been hit by whatever social security funding cut came
Joe:about from Trump's policies.
Trevor:Anyway, I've reached the point in social interactions now
Trevor:that when when Gaza and Palestine come up, if if somebody is equivocal
Trevor:on this, I'm just going for them.
Trevor:I can't help myself.
Trevor:I've seen too many Kids bodies dragged out of rubble.
Trevor:I've seen too much statistics.
Trevor:These, you know, the Israeli government is bloody targeting journalists,
Trevor:doctors, schools, hospitals.
Trevor:Kids are being hit by snipers in the heart and in the head like
Trevor:they're just UN peacekeepers.
Trevor:These aren't just casual, um, collateral.
Trevor:Damage accidents, actually targeting these groups.
Trevor:So Now if somebody says like again, I was at something and somebody
Trevor:said oh, it's terrible, isn't it?
Trevor:Well, at least Israel's targeting.
Trevor:It's uh, it's missiles and I just went off and said What do
Trevor:you mean they're targeting them?
Trevor:They're targeting them, but they're innocent people.
Trevor:That's what they're doing or I can't hold back anymore and just let it go.
Trevor:On the
Joe:flip side, you can be pro Palestine, an independent
Joe:Palestine, without being pro Hamas.
Joe:Exactly.
Joe:Because I have seen people who go, oh yeah, I now support
Joe:Hamas because Israel's bad.
Joe:And you're going, do you honestly think that Hamas are better?
Joe:Well
Scott:Yes.
Scott:I don't think they are any better, I think they're, you know, it's like I
Scott:have said dozens of times before, if the PLO were as well armed as the IDF,
Scott:do we honestly believe that they would actually negotiate with the Israelis
Scott:or would they drive them into the sea?
Joe:And would they slaughter the innocent?
Trevor:Exactly.
Trevor:Uh,
Trevor:it, the problem is it just doesn't start.
Trevor:Historically, it all goes back, doesn't it?
Trevor:It goes right back,
Scott:right back to 1948 when a terrible, terrible mistake was made.
Scott:Well, but also,
Joe:um, the Imam of, uh, Jerusalem.
Joe:But, but, think of it this way.
Trevor:Nazis.
Trevor:If today you were a Palestinian living in Gaza and, and your mother, your father.
Trevor:So I'm lucky enough to still be alive?
Trevor:Yes.
Trevor:It's your mother and your father, your grandparents.
Trevor:are all just killed in front of you, your wife also, your three or four kids
Trevor:you've had to pluck out of the rubble, your nieces and nephews have been shot.
Scott:Yeah, then you're going to sign up to Hamas.
Trevor:If you went through that experience.
Trevor:Do you think you could come out of it and not be seeking revenge?
Trevor:Revenge?
Scott:That's half played.
Scott:And it's not like Revenge, I
Joe:understand.
Joe:It's the idea that you want a totalitarian state.
Joe:Well,
Trevor:you know, this sort of carnage, though, has been
Trevor:going on before October 7th.
Trevor:So there would be other people who that has happened to where their homes have
Trevor:been bulldozed and all sorts of similar atrocities have happened to them.
Trevor:And it's like, what do we expect them to do?
Trevor:What would you do in that situation?
Joe:I don't disagree that they're morally justified.
Joe:What I'm saying I don't think they're morally justified for is
Joe:imposing Sharia or an Islamic state.
Joe:So if there was a non Islamist resistance group,
Trevor:then yes, absolutely.
Trevor:And how do we know how Islamist they are?
Trevor:I don't know.
Trevor:Because they say so.
Trevor:Who says they say so?
Joe:They, they themselves have said it.
Trevor:It's hard to know, I think, what sort of government they'd want to run.
Trevor:Anyway, it's a case of put yourself in the shoes.
Scott:They've said it actually, where they said that, you know, from the river
Scott:to the sea, Palestine will be free, which means there's leaving no room
Scott:for the Jews to actually live there.
Trevor:Well, that doesn't necessarily mean that.
Trevor:We don't know.
Scott:I think we've heard enough from them to say that
Scott:they would actually do that.
Trevor:I
Scott:don't know.
Scott:1200 people were murdered on the September, on the October 7th, and
Scott:however many hundreds were taken hostage.
Scott:It's a A horrible thing that started this whole conflict.
Scott:Now, Israel has clearly overreacted, and they have bombed the place into a
Scott:pile of rubble, and they are continuing to bomb it, which is God knows why,
Scott:because there's nothing left standing.
Scott:Except, I just think to myself, they must be targeting the civilian population.
Scott:They must be trying to kill them all off.
Trevor:But when it comes to, um, statements attributed to Hamas or the
Trevor:Palestinian people, I've reached the point where I'm questioning everything because
Trevor:of the misinformation and disinformation that the Israelis have shown in this
Trevor:whole Gaza war and that's been sort of propagated by mainstream press.
Trevor:I've just, I just, it's almost like religion.
Trevor:You know, when you sort of.
Trevor:You're a believer, and then you, and then at some point you go, hang on a minute,
Trevor:this can't, this doesn't all add up, and you suddenly realise that you've had a
Trevor:whole heap of bullshit indoctrinated into you, and that priest that you trusted,
Trevor:you can't priest, and those teachers that you trusted, you can't, you can't trust.
Trevor:Sorry, um, I just have reached the point where I don't know what to
Trevor:believe, um, anymore when it comes to statements attributed that may
Trevor:have been influenced by Israel.
Trevor:Because I can, it seems to me they're the ultimate propagandists.
Scott:I don't think there's any doubt about that they're
Scott:propagandizing everything.
Scott:It's one of those things like, you know, that bastard Netanyahu is prolonging
Scott:the war so he can stay in office.
Trevor:Yeah, he's not interested in the hostages.
Scott:I know that.
Scott:It's one of those things.
Scott:That's why he turned up at a, giving a speech on the September,
Scott:on the October 7th anniversary.
Scott:And he was jeered by the, by the members of the public that had
Scott:family members who were hostages.
Trevor:See, like, the initial thing when that, um, incident occurred,
Trevor:October 7th, was allegations that, um, women were raped and babies beheaded.
Trevor:And it's since turned out there's no evidence of any of that.
Trevor:No evidence at all.
Trevor:But it still gets repeated by presidents and presidential candidates,
Trevor:and it's just accepted as a fact.
Trevor:But there is absolutely no evidence.
Trevor:So, um, so I just, yeah, when it comes to, uh, how bad would Hamas be, I just wonder
Trevor:how much is part of that propaganda.
Trevor:I don't know.
Trevor:So.
Trevor:It's a pretty good question.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:It's like the Uyghurs.
Trevor:Like, at one point it was accepted that You know, China had done all
Trevor:sorts of terrible things to hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and had them
Trevor:in, you know, in camps and things.
Trevor:And I think when we eventually get to an episode on that,
Trevor:what's actually proven is going to be quite different to the narrative where
Trevor:people want to say, Oh, bloody China and its human rights against the Uyghurs
Trevor:is going to be quite a different story.
Trevor:So I'm just super conscious now.
Trevor:Because of Gaza, of the, of the blatant propaganda and lying that's going on.
Trevor:So that's where I'm at in this world at the moment.
Scott:Well, fair enough.
Scott:I just don't want to see you ever putting a tinfoil on your head and
Scott:that sort of stuff to be scared of the 5G towers or anything.
Scott:No, I'm
Trevor:nowhere near on, on that sort of stuff.
Trevor:Well, that's good.
Trevor:Because I can, um, Because I can just look at the science of that and
Trevor:read credible sources, obviously.
Trevor:The Earth's not flat.
Trevor:That's good.
Trevor:Chemtrails are not released to, you know, to do crazy things to us.
Trevor:Of course, renewables and solar is the way to go, and nuclear's a stupid idea,
Trevor:and of course climate change is real.
Trevor:Because there's science you can back up with that.
Trevor:Incidentally, um Ah, there's been sort of Senate hearings or something
Trevor:about that and I've been getting I don't want to digress on that, hang
Trevor:on a second, what else have I got on this, um Um Yeah That was that, that
Trevor:Yeah, it just, finally I'm almost You know, I talked about, I've been running
Trevor:against the Murdoch and And the whole sort of, even though not many people
Trevor:buy that rag, it still has an influence.
Trevor:I think I'm at the point where if a coffee shop has these things for
Trevor:free for people to read when they're drinking their coffee, we need a protest
Trevor:movement to say to coffee shops, you realise this is a poisonous piece of
Trevor:shite that you've got sitting here?
Trevor:It's not good for your customers.
Trevor:Or people should put stickers on courier mail, newspapers and cafes,
Trevor:you know, with a health hazard warning or something like that.
Trevor:There's got to be a campaign to make people just stop and question the
Trevor:rubbish that is coming out of the courier mail, the Australian and Sky News.
Trevor:So, alright, different topic.
Trevor:Lydia Thorpe wasn't happy with the King.
Trevor:What do you think of that, Scott?
Trevor:Ah.
Scott:Yeah, she got her point across because the world's media were talking
Scott:about it and all that type of thing, but, um, I would have thought that
Scott:the preferable protest would have been for her not to show up, you know,
Scott:just like the Greens didn't show up.
Trevor:Nobody would have noticed that protest.
Scott:Exactly.
Scott:It's one of those things, like, you know, she's demanding sovereignty and all that
Scott:sort of stuff, but she won't actually explain what the hell sovereignty means.
Trevor:I personally think she's a bit like Jay DeBruin.
Trevor:In what respect?
Trevor:She's at least consistent.
Trevor:Consistent.
Trevor:She's not a hypocrite.
Trevor:Yeah, I suppose.
Trevor:Everyone else there is a hypocrite.
Trevor:When they, when they want to have ceremonies acknowledging the traditional
Trevor:owners of the land, and then they want to welcome the monarch as the monarch
Trevor:of the land, and she is at least being consistent and saying, no, hang on, we're
Trevor:the traditional owners and he's not.
Trevor:He can piss off.
Trevor:Like, at least that is a consistent line, even if I don't agree with it.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Okay.
Trevor:Joe, you don't care about Lydia Thorpe, or, you don't see anything?
Trevor:Oh,
Joe:I think, possibly, as people have said, she's a hypocrite being part of
Joe:the system, and then railing against it.
Trevor:Mm.
Trevor:Scott, Albanese's in trouble because of Qantas, um,
Scott:freebies.
Scott:I was talking to the better half about this, and I just, and he and
Scott:I both come to the conclusion that he's as thick as two short planks.
Scott:You know, he's not very bright and he's just,
Scott:it's as though he wants to hand government over to someone else
Scott:because he's just a dickhead.
Scott:But you know, I cannot believe he bought a four point, was it 4.
Scott:3
Trevor:or 4.
Trevor:1 million dollar
Scott:home, you know, at the heart of the whole housing crisis and everything else.
Scott:And, You know, that was the first stupid thing he did.
Scott:The second stupid thing he did was, he was clearly too close to, um, Alan Joyce.
Scott:And now it's all blowing up in his face.
Scott:Now, do I actually believe that he rang Alan Joyce to demand, to ask
Scott:for upgrades and everything else?
Scott:Nothing would surprise me.
Trevor:I'm sure he did.
Scott:You know, it's one of those things, like, the only other thing is that I
Scott:heard on a podcast the other morning.
Scott:He was on, uh, Fear and Greed, and they said that the response from the
Scott:opposition has been fairly muted.
Scott:And the reason is that all sides get upgrades and all that type of thing.
Trevor:So they leave it up to the right wing journalists to do it.
Scott:Yeah, exactly.
Trevor:Yeah.
Scott:But, you know, the thing
Trevor:about Albanese is He thinks that because he declared it on his
Trevor:register of interests, every upgrade he got, he thinks that's okay.
Trevor:But he was the goddamn transport minister, when decisions were being
Trevor:made about whether to allow Qatar.
Trevor:Into Australia, and he knocked Qatar back, which was clearly an advantage for Qantas
Trevor:and getting freebies from Qantas and special stuff, like, so he thinks that's
Trevor:all perfectly fine because he declared it.
Scott:But it's not.
Scott:It's not.
Scott:I agree wholeheartedly with you.
Scott:He's a dickhead.
Trevor:And of course, it's a beat up by the right wing press.
Trevor:They're going to town on it.
Trevor:When the, when the, when the Morrison government was committing all
Trevor:sorts of corrupt, openly corrupt
Joe:practices.
Joe:Do you honestly think that the Morrison ministers didn't
Joe:take free Qantas prisoners?
Joe:Of course they took.
Joe:Exactly.
Joe:They took that.
Trevor:But of course.
Trevor:You know, no mention was made then, um, so, but it's all people can talk
Trevor:about now, again, if you're reading this goddamn fucking Murdoch Press.
Trevor:So, um, uh, so yeah.
Trevor:Albanese, uh, stupid, and also out of touch, and just plain wrong
Trevor:to be taking freebies when you are the transport minister making
Trevor:decisions that affect that group.
Trevor:Just don't do it.
Scott:Exactly.
Trevor:Suck it up and pay your own upgrade.
Trevor:Um,
Scott:I mean, I suppose it would have been a different story had he logged
Scott:up to the airport and everything else.
Scott:They said, Oh, Mr.
Scott:Albanese, we were upgrading you.
Scott:That would have been okay.
Scott:If he did actually ring up Alan Joyce, which I don't know whether
Scott:or not he did, but it really wouldn't surprise me that he did.
Scott:If he did actually ring it up and say, I've got this travel coming up.
Scott:Can you upgrade me, please?
Scott:Then that would've been an exercise in complete stupidity.
Trevor:You, you know what?
Trevor:It's still not okay.
Trevor:When, when somebody offers you stuff then, and you say, oh, I didn't ask for it,
Trevor:but they offered it to me, so therefore I'm not, I'm not gonna be influenced.
Trevor:Of course, you're still gonna be influenced.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:So it's not, it's not good enough.
Trevor:Like, if you think that you deserve business class travel all the time, well,
Trevor:pass a law that says politicians get business class travel or get, I mean,
Trevor:they get enough expense stuff anyway.
Trevor:Dip into your expense money or whatever.
Trevor:Um, but it's, it's, it's just not okay.
Joe:Well, no, cause then he'll be questioned about that.
Joe:Yeah.
Joe:Why he's travelling business class.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:Um, just.
Trevor:While we're still on this whole propaganda newspaper stuff, the Washington Post
Joe:has
Trevor:said that it's not going to endorse any presidential candidate.
Joe:Apparently they have lost quite a large number of subscribers over this.
Trevor:Yes, they lost like 10 percent of their subscribers or possibly even more.
Trevor:Because, well, dear listener, newspapers are in the habit, about a week before an
Trevor:election happens, In the editorial, to say, Well, we've considered everything
Trevor:going on in the world, and we reckon you lot should vote for candidate X or Y.
Trevor:And they're outraged that Jeff Bezos told his editorial team, Well, we're
Trevor:just not going to do that anymore.
Trevor:Now, Jeff Bezos may well have underlying reasons why.
Trevor:Yeah, he does.
Trevor:He's going to get some kickback from Donald Trump and he doesn't
Trevor:want to offend Donald Trump.
Trevor:But, and I understand that, but his actual reason that he gave, which is
Trevor:probably not his real reason, but the reason he gave makes sense because
Trevor:he said, Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election.
Trevor:No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, I'm going
Trevor:with newspaper A's endorsement.
Trevor:None.
Trevor:What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias,
Trevor:a perception of non independence.
Trevor:Ending them is a principled decision, and it's the right one.
Trevor:I think he's right.
Trevor:That reason is, I don't think it's his real reason,
Joe:but I think it's a good reason.
Joe:But this particular election is the one election he chooses to stand up.
Joe:Did he own it four years ago?
Joe:How long has he
Trevor:owned it?
Trevor:I don't know.
Trevor:I don't know either.
Trevor:I agree, Joe, like it's all suspicious.
Joe:There's um, some immigrant, billionaire, Indian guy, um, he's a
Joe:doctor, owns patents on various things, owns one of the other newspapers.
Joe:And he forbade the editorial team from writing an editorial.
Joe:Right.
Joe:Yep.
Trevor:Yep.
Joe:And they were going
Joe:The fucking immigrant.
Joe:We've
Trevor:sworn a lot on this episode, but we can't help it.
Trevor:It's just the way it is.
Joe:But you know, this immigrant is happy to, uh, for us not to
Joe:go against the president who wants to kick out all immigrants.
Trevor:Yeah.
Trevor:We're going to wind it up soon.
Trevor:Um, so, so yeah, I think as a matter of practice, it's a good idea for newspapers
Trevor:to just not give their opinion because who cares anyway and it just demonstrates
Trevor:bias when they should be talking about this pretending to be unbiased yes
Joe:in in the various i think this was the leopards eating my face again um
Joe:somebody saying that there was a church that had a big poster up going on about
Joe:how the people needed to vote this election and had a picture of Trump.
Joe:And this guy had reported it to the IRS.
Joe:So in America, for them to be tax free, they are not allowed to
Joe:campaign for any particular candidate.
Joe:They can campaign on issues.
Joe:They can say, this is a very important thing to us, but they can't say,
Joe:we think you should vote this way.
Joe:And, um, there is no longer a picture of Trump on that poster.
Joe:There you go.
Joe:So they have been forced by the IRS to take that down.
Trevor:And
Joe:there have been complaints in the past about how toothless the IRA,
Joe:uh, IRS was against electioneering, and it sounds like suddenly
Joe:they're starting to grow a pair.
Trevor:Right.
Trevor:Right.
Trevor:Next week.
Trevor:We're going to talk about Guy Rundle got sacked from Crikey.
Trevor:Does it show?
Trevor:Oh yes.
Trevor:Did he?
Trevor:Yes.
Joe:I saw the headline, clicked on it, and it said, oh no, this is a pay for
Joe:article, you've got to sign up to read it.
Trevor:Right.
Joe:So I didn't read it.
Trevor:Okay.
Trevor:We're going to talk about that.
Trevor:We're going to talk about the National Anti Corruption Commission.
Trevor:Sounds like they're cracking down on somebody there.
Trevor:Jeez.
Scott:It's said that they are going to re examine their decisions.
Trevor:Yes, and somebody's starting to feel some heat there.
Trevor:Which is
Scott:probably
Trevor:a bloody good thing
Scott:because the bastard should have absented himself.
Trevor:Yeah, we're going to talk about, um, the recent BRICS meeting.
Trevor:Our Prime Minister went off to Chogham.
Trevor:Meanwhile, um, uh, the most important meeting of BRICS was being held.
Trevor:Um, and we'll talk about other things.
Trevor:Still a lot of stuff on the list.
Trevor:So.
Trevor:Um, in the chat room, good on you James and Alison and Ann
Trevor:and Don for your comments.
Trevor:Um, listen to the audio version because I will read that Greg Sheridan piece and
Trevor:if you want to hear the fake Notebook LM podcast critique of that, it'll be there.
Joe:I'm surprised it allows you to say nice things about China.
Trevor:So, yeah, I directed it to do that.
Trevor:So, um, there we go.
Trevor:All right.
Trevor:Um, very good.
Trevor:We'll be, are you with us next week, Scott?
Trevor:You'll be busy.
Trevor:I take it you're not podcasting next week, are you?
Trevor:You're away.
Scott:No, I'll be back.
Trevor:Oh, you'll be back?
Scott:Yeah, I'll be, are we meeting on Monday night or Wednesday night?
Scott:Cause I'm not free Wednesday night.
Trevor:It'll be back to Monday night.
Scott:Yep.
Scott:I'll be free Monday night.
Trevor:Okay.
Trevor:All right.
Trevor:We'll be back next week.
Trevor:Talk to you then everyone, bye for now.
Trevor:And it's a good night from me.
Joe:And it's a good night from him.
Trevor:Good night.
Trevor:Okay dear listener, this is the article by Craig Sheridan with the title, Axis
Trevor:of Ill Will Made Bold by Our Weakness.
Trevor:And he says, Australia is facing external threat plus internal polarisation and
Trevor:demoralisation On a scale unlike anything since the end of the Cold War, perhaps
Trevor:since World War II, and we're not coping.
Trevor:Renowned British historian Niall Ferguson told the first Australian Alliance for
Trevor:Responsible Citizenship conference in Sydney that the access of authoritarian
Trevor:powers, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, are now acting in close concert,
Trevor:which makes them much more dangerous.
Trevor:Events this week demonstrate the case.
Trevor:The US has confirmed North Korea has at least 3, 000 troops in Russia.
Trevor:They appear to be training with drones, presumably to fight
Trevor:for the Russians in Ukraine.
Trevor:Their presence marks a clear stage in the evolution to full alliance
Trevor:among the authoritarian Axis.
Trevor:Australia's Foreign Minister Penny Wong commented, This is
Trevor:deeply concerning development.
Trevor:To see not only Russia continue its illegal and immoral war, but
Trevor:to see a state such as North Korea be invited by President Putin to
Trevor:join or support this illegal war.
Trevor:Similarly, US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell last month for
Trevor:the first time reported that China is supplying Russia with direct components
Trevor:of its military effort in Ukraine.
Trevor:These are not dual use capabilities.
Trevor:These are component pieces of a very substantial effort on the part of China to
Trevor:help sustain, build and diversify various elements of the Russian war machine.
Trevor:The support goes across the axis.
Trevor:North Korea sends missiles to Russia.
Trevor:Iran sells Russia drones.
Trevor:Moscow assists Beijing with high tech weapons technology, including submarine
Trevor:missile and aeronautic systems.
Joe:All
Trevor:four connive to frustrate Western sanctions.
Trevor:ARC, this is the group he's talking about, this conference, has been driven
Trevor:by former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, working closely with Canadian
Trevor:author Jordan Peterson and British think tank leader Baroness Philippa Stroud.
Trevor:I'm sorry to listen, it's hard not to laugh.
Trevor:John Anderson, Jordan Peterson, and Baroness of Phillipa
Trevor:Stroud, for God's sake.
Trevor:Anyway, Anderson and Stroud in a joint newspaper article
Trevor:asserted, the West is weak.
Trevor:Culturally, we are witnessing the deconstruction of the value
Trevor:system that laid the foundations of our freedom, prosperity, and
Trevor:in Australia, our egalitarianism.
Trevor:British Christian author Osk Guinness, a leading ARC light, argues the West
Trevor:is now in a civilisational moment where it's in danger from external enemies,
Trevor:but also in danger of fatally losing touch with the basis of its own culture,
Trevor:inheritance and social operating system.
Trevor:ARC is perhaps unique in trying to deal with both the external
Trevor:and internal challenges.
Trevor:Trying to integrate an analysis and synthesise a cultural response, while
Trevor:acknowledging the gravity of the threats.
Trevor:It also taps the reservoir of strength and resilience in the Western
Trevor:tradition, seeking to chart a way forward across big policy questions.
Trevor:Ferguson, uh, sorry, um, Ferguson was the, that would be Niall Ferguson,
Trevor:was the international star among the 700 attendees at Sydney ARC.
Trevor:His analysis of the crisis links the external and internal threats.
Trevor:Externally, our foes are stronger than they've ever
Trevor:been, more united and dangerous.
Trevor:They're also, at the leadership level at least, full of passionate
Trevor:self belief and conviction.
Trevor:They've all moved to wartime economies.
Trevor:We, by contrast, have seldom been more divided internally.
Trevor:Many of our institutions have lost faith in their mission
Trevor:and the society they serve.
Trevor:And we're not doing anything significant to meet the external challenge.
Trevor:Consider, this week the Albanese government announced it would
Trevor:spend 7 billion buying new, powerful air defence missiles.
Trevor:The SM 2 and SM 6.
Trevor:These are the most advanced missiles we will operate.
Trevor:They are air defence missiles, but the SM 6 can also strike ships.
Trevor:Pretty impressive, huh?
Trevor:Well, not so much.
Trevor:When you look at the fine print, it turns out the 7 billion is over 10 years.
Trevor:Whenever the Albanese government announces seemingly big defence
Trevor:expenditure, The number has bulked up by being spread over 10 years.
Trevor:Typically, the expenditure increase doesn't kick in seriously until the first
Trevor:year of a national third Labor government.
Trevor:Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy, who made the announcement,
Trevor:typically didn't announce a quantity, schedule of delivery, or even a
Trevor:timetable for dispersing the money.
Trevor:Within our pitifully small, antique, undergunned and generally
Trevor:impotent Navy, The only ships that can use the new missiles are
Trevor:our three air warfare destroyers.
Trevor:The Air Warfare destroyers ad's are quite good ships, but they're second,
Trevor:perhaps even third tier combat ships with only half the fire power of
Trevor:an American Ali Burke destroyer, or of our modern Chinese destroyers,
Trevor:or those of many other nations.
Trevor:And there's only three of them.
Trevor:Three exclamation mark.
Trevor:That's it.
Trevor:At any one time we can.
Trevor:Put precisely one to sea.
Trevor:The new missiles will also go on the Hunter class frigates.
Trevor:We're going to build six of these.
Trevor:But the first doesn't come into service, if we're lucky, until 2032 or 2033.
Trevor:The Albanese government has implemented no serious increase in defence spending
Trevor:in a relevant time frame, and no serious increase in defence capabilities.
Trevor:It's singing jingles in la la land and calling it defence.
Trevor:Ferguson warned of this lazy performance across the anglophone world.
Trevor:Quote, We confront a really serious external threat.
Trevor:I don't think there's sufficient recognition of how dangerous
Trevor:the access of ill will is.
Trevor:That access is wreaking havoc in Ukraine.
Trevor:It's wreaking havoc in Israel, and it may well wreak havoc in Taiwan.
Trevor:We face one of the biggest external threats since World War II.
Trevor:AUKUS exists, but neither the US, the UK, nor Australia is yet making sufficient
Trevor:effort to deter the access of ill will.
Trevor:Ferguson makes a critical analytical point, which the Albanese
Trevor:government refuses to confront.
Trevor:Much of the discussion about AUKUS is on the wrong time frame.
Trevor:In other words, the Albanese government, like other Western governments,
Trevor:talks big, but delivers very little.
Trevor:Ferguson continued.
Trevor:It's no accident that CIA Director Bill Burns, twice last year, said that China's
Trevor:Xi Jinping had told his military to be ready for war over Taiwan by 2027.
Trevor:Ferguson thinks the next US presidential term will likely face
Trevor:military engagement over Taiwan.
Trevor:Quote.
Trevor:We need urgently to improve our deterrence in the Taiwan Strait and
Trevor:in the South China Sea, and we need to recognise the extent to which the
Trevor:hostile powers are acting together.
Trevor:We're no longer dealing with separate regional conflicts,
Trevor:we face a global challenge.
Trevor:Sheridan continues, One of the almost psychotic paradoxes of the present
Trevor:moment globally is that the four authoritarian allies are each enslaved
Trevor:to to monstrous and grotesque ideologies.
Trevor:Yet the leadership of each nation believes in them passionately and mobilises great
Trevor:national power beyond these ideologies.
Trevor:In Western societies like Australia, we inherit the most humane,
Trevor:decent and generous political cultures the world has known.
Trevor:Yet tear each other apart with internal conflict.
Trevor:And many regard our history and legacy as Uniquely evil.
Trevor:In reality, every national story contains good and bad, but in
Trevor:the West the arc of time has bent towards human rights, provision
Trevor:for the poor, opportunity for all.
Trevor:It's in the irrational demonisation of this heritage
Trevor:that we now enfeeble ourselves.
Trevor:Each of the four authoritarian nations follows a system that
Trevor:subjugates human beings to the ideological purposes of the state.
Trevor:And that sees itself inherently of its essence in conflict with the West.
Trevor:Kevin Rudd's brilliant new book on Xi Jinping, How Xi's Marxist Nationalism
Trevor:is Shaping China and the World, makes clear that for both Xi and the Chinese
Trevor:Communist Party, Marxist Leninist ideology comes before everything else.
Trevor:Rudd 2018 speech in which Xi praised Karl Marx as the greatest
Trevor:thinker in human history.
Trevor:Xi also argued that Marxist theory remained universally
Trevor:applicable, not just to China.
Trevor:Rudd writes that Xi has a Manchurian worldview, China good, the West bad.
Trevor:Rudd quotes the CCP's 2021 historical resolution.
Trevor:Marxism has brought to light the laws governing the
Trevor:development of human society.
Trevor:It is a scientific truth for understanding and shaping the world.
Trevor:The resolution is confident China's development has significantly shifted
Trevor:the worldwide historical evolution of, and contest between, the two
Trevor:different ideologies and social systems of socialism and capitalism
Trevor:in a way that favours socialism.
Trevor:Xi's renewed emphasis on ideology and Marxist Leninist practice has
Trevor:significantly stalled the Chinese economy.
Trevor:Gotta stop, this is such shit.
Trevor:But Beijing has invested massively in military capabilities and backup
Trevor:reserves of critical supplies.
Trevor:The North Korean ideology of Juche J U C H E, or self reliance, has impoverished and
Trevor:half starved the beleaguered population.
Trevor:But the Kim dynasty, into its third generation of rulers, has already
Trevor:lasted an impressive 75 years.
Trevor:It's a formidable historical dynasty, with its nuclear weapons developments
Trevor:and intimate role in the authoritarian axis, it has never been more secure.
Trevor:The Ayatollahs who rule Iran believe fervently in their
Trevor:extreme Islamist ideology.
Trevor:From the earliest days of the 1979 revolution, they denounced
Trevor:the USA as the Great Satan and Israel as the Little Satan.
Trevor:They've never lost conviction.
Trevor:Even Russia's Vladimir Putin has his ideology.
Trevor:Extreme paranoid Russian nationalism, given its fullest expression, in the
Trevor:mad, Eurasianist books of Alexander Dugan Putin has outlined much of this belief
Trevor:his own lengthy essays and soliloquies on why Ukraine is really Russia none of this
Trevor:ever Exercises our symbol wielding class, but their hostility to everything about
Trevor:our own history tradition politics and nation is pathological Ferguson, this is
Trevor:Niall Ferguson, elucidated one connection between the domestic and the external
Trevor:when he remarked how the US now resembles the late Soviet Union with pervasive
Trevor:cynicism and loss of belief, zero budget discipline and rising depths of despair.
Trevor:It's suggestive rather than a clear parallel.
Trevor:All this would be manageable if our internal morale was strong.
Trevor:The collapse of will, purpose, strength and clarify, clarity is evident in a
Trevor:thousand seemingly disconnected episodes.
Trevor:Take one extraordinary depressing case from last week.
Trevor:Joe De Bruin, 40 years head of the Shop Assistance Union and many years a
Trevor:member of the ALP's National Executive.
Trevor:is a Catholic with orthodox Catholic views that follow church teaching.
Trevor:He was awarded an honorary PhD from the Australian Catholic University and
Trevor:in his address recounted in modest, unemotional language his opposition to
Trevor:abortion, in line with Catholic teaching, and his opposition to same sex marriage,
Trevor:also in line with Catholic teaching.
Trevor:Here was a distinguished, decent Catholic layman expressing
Trevor:support for Catholic teaching.
Trevor:As espoused by Pope Francis and Australian bishops.
Trevor:At the first mention of abortion, the majority of
Trevor:students and faculty walked out.
Trevor:Next day, the university offered counselling to any student or staff
Trevor:distressed by what it described as De Bruyn's controversial speech.
Trevor:It also offered students a refund of the graduation fee.
Trevor:The Vice Chancellor, Professor Slatko Skrbiz.
Trevor:wrote to staff saying the university leadership had asked a Bruin to
Trevor:reconsider delivering such a speech and bizarrely that it, quote, did not meet
Trevor:the standards we strive for, end quote.
Trevor:This may seem a trivial punctuation point in the larger grammar of madness but in
Trevor:its way it's a telling sign of cultural exhaustion and institutional disarray.
Trevor:An institution claiming to be a Catholic university.
Trevor:Is embarrassed by Catholic doctrine, apologises for its public expression,
Trevor:and offers counselling for the trauma of students having to hear it.
Trevor:Has the world gone completely insane?
Trevor:Tony Abbott, a Catholic former Prime Minister, told me, If a Catholic
Trevor:university can't even listen respectfully to orthodox Catholic teaching, it's
Trevor:completely lost its sense of purpose.
Trevor:A Catholic university which seeks to censure orthodox Catholic
Trevor:teaching Thank you, Wanda.
Trevor:What is the point of the institution?
Trevor:You have to ask what the Vice Chancellor is doing in his job.
Trevor:I asked George Weagle, famed biographer of Pope John Paul II.
Trevor:And perhaps today's leading Catholic intellectual for his reaction.
Trevor:He said, The Catholic Church invented what we know as the university
Trevor:during the high middle ages and invented it as a place of robust
Trevor:debate within the bounds of civility.
Trevor:If the Australian Catholic University is to be that kind of place, its leaders
Trevor:will have to regain their nerve and stop treating petulant, misbehaving
Trevor:students like delicate snowflakes.
Trevor:And the cancer cultural faculty who walked out of Mr De Bruyn's
Trevor:talk will have to grub up.
Trevor:He goes on, Sheridan.
Trevor:Melbourne's Catholic Archbishop, Peter Collins Sully, issued a statement
Trevor:in which he said, Inter alia, which means in effect, the unborn, all
Trevor:those on the margins who have no voice are owed the upholding of
Trevor:their lives and dignity, end quote.
Trevor:That seems to agree with de Bruin in substance.
Trevor:He also called for civil engagement, which seems to agree with de
Trevor:Bruin in style, for de Bruin was certainly not the uncivil party.
Trevor:The stupidity of ill mannered students is not the big issue.
Trevor:Rather, it's that the leadership of a Catholic university put no importance on
Trevor:proclaiming or even hearing the teachings of their church, instead showing every
Trevor:sign of being cowed by a run of the mill display of secular zeitgeist intolerance.
Trevor:If that's the courage displayed by an organisation charged
Trevor:with upholding transcendent.
Trevor:transcendent values, it can be read as a shocking sign of a wider cultural malaise.
Trevor:The University Administration has failed badly, but the University is in some
Trevor:measure answerable to Catholic bishops.
Trevor:The bishops need to address this.
Trevor:If even Catholic institutions are ashamed of Catholic doctrine, that's
Trevor:an appalling sign of the struts of civilisation simply falling apart.
Trevor:John Anderson told me that a RC is a one minute to midnight attempt
Trevor:to restore the primacy of rational and evidence-based thinking as Oz
Trevor:Guinness put it, it is playing.
Trevor:The west has lost faith and confidence in itself, but we've reached a
Trevor:turning point, not a conclusion.
Trevor:Renewal is as possible as decline.
Trevor:A RC comp, comprehends the crisis, strives for renewal.
Trevor:It has a lot of work ahead.
Trevor:So that was Greg Sheridan.
Trevor:I asked Notebook LM to critique.
Trevor:I specifically asked her to criticize the article emphasizing Sheridan's
Trevor:cultural bias against a relatively benign China, and I will play that in a moment.
Trevor:But first I could probably speak for an hour and a half dissecting this shit from.
Trevor:Greg Sheridan, if anyone wants me to do that, um, send me a message.
Trevor:Trevor at ironfistvelvetglove.
Trevor:com.
Trevor:au or a message via the Facebook page or something, and I'll do it.
Trevor:But if I don't get enough calls for it, I won't.
Trevor:In any event, here is what the, uh, fake podcast has to say when asked to critique
Trevor:Greg Sheridan, or asked to criticise.
Trevor:That piece with, uh, the emphasis that I mentioned before.
AI male:All right, so, um, you know, this deep dive is gonna be a fun one.
AI male:You sent over Greg Sheridan's opinion piece, Axis of Ill Will Made Bold by
AI male:Our Weakness and specifically asked us for like a critical take on it.
Trevor:Mm
AI male:hmm.
AI male:Especially when it comes to like his views on China.
AI male:Yeah, it's a pretty intense article, but that's kind of why we're here, right?
AI male:To like break it all down.
AI male:So like basically Sheridan's hating this picture of you know, all
AI male:these authoritarian powers like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea,
AI male:and You know, the usual suspects.
AI male:And he's saying they're all teaming up
AI female:and
AI male:that the West is, you know, like falling apart.
AI female:Yeah, you've definitely picked up on something important there.
AI female:Sheridan's tone is, I think it's safe to say, pretty alarmist.
AI female:And you're spot on about focusing on China.
AI female:It's interesting how much of his argument Like, hinges on China
AI female:being this, like, huge, looming, almost, you know, monolithic threat.
AI male:Exactly.
AI male:And he brings up stuff like North Korean troops training in Russia, China,
AI male:supplying all these military components.
AI male:Yeah.
AI male:It all sounds pretty crazy.
AI male:And he's saying it's all because the West is weak, culturally exhausted.
AI male:Like, we've totally lost our way.
AI male:I don't know about you, but it all feels a bit exaggerated to me.
AI male:Like, is he maybe Looking at China through like a specific lens that, you
AI male:know, might be distorting things a bit.
AI female:Yeah, that's the question, isn't it?
AI female:Opinion pieces, especially in geopolitics, they often say more about
AI female:the author's worldview than they do about like what's actually happening.
AI female:You know what I mean?
Trevor:Yeah.
AI female:We'll definitely get into the specifics of what Sheridan's
AI female:claiming, but it's super important to remember that lens he's looking through.
AI male:Okay, so like the first thing that jumps out is this whole idea of this
AI male:Powerful axis of authoritarian powers.
AI male:China, Russia, Iran, North Korea.
AI male:He even throws the Taliban in there for good measure.
AI male:It's like he's saying they're all best buds working together
AI male:to, you know, destroy the West.
AI female:He brings up things like, you know, the North Korean troops
AI female:training in Russia, and there's talk of Chinese companies potentially
AI female:giving Russia military parts.
AI female:And on the surface, it does seem like there's some coordination going on, but
AI female:the truth is often a bit more complicated.
AI male:So you're saying this axis isn't as Tight knit, as Sheridan makes it sound.
AI female:Well, let's think about it for a second.
AI female:Do these countries actually have the same goals?
AI female:Like Russia's driven by, you know, that whole imperial ambition thing
AI female:they've got going on in Ukraine.
AI female:Then you've got China with their economic goals, which often
AI female:And then there's Iran.
AI female:They're all about regional power in the Middle East and North Korea.
AI female:Well, they're kind of doing their own thing.
AI male:Yeah, that's true.
AI male:It's not like they're all part of some big evil group chat planning world domination.
AI male:They've each got their own thing going on.
AI male:And sometimes those things overlap, but it's not this, you
AI male:know, grand unified conspiracy.
AI female:Exactly.
AI female:And even when their interests do line up, it's more about like
AI female:taking advantage of an opportunity.
AI female:You know, rather than some deep ideological connection.
AI male:OK, so let's talk about China specifically, because
AI male:Sheridan really goes in on this.
AI male:He keeps saying that they're like the main threat, that they're helping
AI male:Russia out in Ukraine and that they're actively trying to undermine the West.
AI male:It's pretty intense.
AI female:It's interesting how he frames everything China does
AI female:as, like, inherently hostile.
AI female:He talks about China giving military components to Russia, but
AI female:he doesn't really go into detail.
AI female:Like, what kind of components are we talking about?
AI female:Are they directly tied to what's happening in Ukraine?
AI female:Or are they things that could be used for civilian stuff, too?
AI female:And how does that even compare to all the military and financial help
AI female:that the West is giving to Ukraine?
AI female:It's a very different story.
AI male:I see what you mean.
AI male:It's like he's cherry picking certain things China does to fit
AI male:this narrative, while downplaying or straight up ignoring other stuff.
AI female:Right.
AI female:And this goes back to that cultural bias we were talking about.
AI female:Sheridan's view seems to be stuck in this Cold War mindset, you know,
AI female:that whole us versus them mentality.
AI female:But it's way more nuanced than that China has its own interests and goals.
AI female:And while some of them might clash with the West's, there's also a ton of
AI female:room for, you know, working together.
AI male:So is Sheridan's focus on China as the big bad actually distracting
AI male:us from other important stuff?
AI female:It's definitely possible.
AI female:I mean, he barely even mentions Russia's whole thing in Ukraine, which you could
AI female:argue is the most pressing threat to, you know, global stability right now.
AI female:It's like, by focusing so much on China, he's missing the bigger picture.
AI male:Alright, let's shift gears a bit and talk about this whole Western
AI male:weakness and cultural exhaustion thing.
AI male:Sheridan paints a really bleak picture of the West, like we're
AI male:divided, we've lost our purpose, and our institutions are crumbling
AI male:because of all this woke ideology.
AI male:It's pretty heavy.
AI female:And here's where his cultural bias really comes through.
AI female:He uses this story about the Australian Catholic University and how they
AI female:reacted to a speech by Joe DeBruyne.
AI female:He's a former union leader and he was expressing like traditional
AI female:Catholic views on things like abortion and same sex marriage and
AI female:Some students and faculty walked out.
AI female:Sheridan uses this as an example of the West's decline.
AI female:But is that really what it is?
AI female:Or could you see it as the university trying to be more inclusive?
AI male:Right.
AI male:And is this cultural exhaustion thing even as widespread as he says?
AI male:Or is it more about Sheridan's own worldview?
AI male:You know, like his own anxieties about how society is changing?
AI female:That's a really good question.
AI female:It's easy to look at the world and only see things that confirm
AI female:what you already believe.
AI female:But we've got to challenge those assumptions, look for different
AI female:explanations, and be careful about accepting these simple narratives.
AI male:Okay, so we've covered how Sheridan portrays this unified
AI male:authoritarian axis, his focus on China as the main threat, and his
AI male:view that the West's declining.
AI female:Let's dive into some more of his specific claims, keeping in
AI female:mind what we've talked about so far.
AI female:We'll look at his take on things like defense spending, AUCAS, and
AI female:this idea of ideological conviction versus the West's self doubt.
AI male:Looks like we've got a lot more to unpack.
AI male:This deep dive is already getting interesting.
AI female:So, let's pick up where we left off with this idea of the West's position.
AI female:And all of these people are just being weak.
AI female:Sheridan keeps coming back to this, you know?
AI female:And it seems like he's saying democracies are just inherently weaker than
AI female:authoritarian regimes because of all the debates and different viewpoints.
AI female:Like, it's holding us back.
AI male:Yeah.
AI male:He contrasts that with what he calls the, you know, passionate self
AI male:belief of authoritarian leaders.
AI male:Like, they're all united and driven.
AI male:He even quotes Kevin Rudd's book on Xi Jinping.
AI male:And he points to how Xi's focus on Marxist Leninist ideology
AI male:is what makes him so strong.
AI female:It's a compelling story, right?
AI female:The idea that these strongman leaders don't have to deal with all the messy
AI female:democratic processes, so they can just act decisively and get things done.
AI female:But is it really that straightforward?
AI female:History's full of examples of authoritarian regimes making terrible
AI female:decisions because of, you know, ideology.
AI female:Just because the leader felt like it.
AI male:Yeah, I mean, look at what happened with Putin
AI male:deciding to invade Ukraine.
AI male:That didn't exactly work out how he planned right.
AI male:And even if we look at China, Their economic success
AI male:hasn't come without a cost.
AI male:Like, human rights and political freedom aren't exactly high
AI male:on their list of priorities.
AI male:Is that really something we should be aspiring to?
AI female:That's my point.
AI female:Sheridan seems to be forgetting about how resilient democratic
AI female:societies actually are.
AI female:Sure, they can be a bit chaotic and messy, but that's also what makes them strong.
AI female:All the debate and negotiation means they can change course when they
AI female:need to adapt to new situations and include different perspectives.
AI male:So you're saying that while Sheridan sees these internal
AI male:debates as a weakness, they could actually be a strength.
AI female:Absolutely.
AI female:Democracies are constantly evolving, challenging themselves and trying
AI female:to live up to their ideals.
AI female:It's a messy process for sure, but it's also essential.
AI male:Okay, let's move on to another one of Sheridan's
AI male:critiques, defense spending.
AI male:He really goes after Australia's recent investment in air defense missiles.
AI male:They spent seven billion dollars and he calls it a drop in the
AI male:bucket compared to the threat.
AI male:Like it's nothing.
AI female:He's definitely not holding back, but again, context is key.
AI female:Australia is not a global superpower like the U.
AI female:S.
AI female:or China.
AI female:Their goals are different and they have a different role to play in their region.
AI male:So is it unfair to compare Australia's spending
AI male:to these bigger countries?
AI female:It's misleading for sure.
AI female:Australia's a middle power.
AI female:They don't have a huge population or economy.
AI female:So their defense spending needs to be looked at in terms of what they're
AI female:trying to achieve and who the potential threats are in their part of the world.
AI female:It's not just about how much money they're throwing around.
AI male:And it's not just about spending alone, right?
AI male:Australia's part of alliances like Amelius and Academy to Gracie,
AI male:which Sheridan isn't a fan of.
AI male:But those alliances must provide some security benefits, right?
AI female:Oh, absolutely.
AI female:Alliances mean countries can work together, pool resources, share intel,
AI female:and coordinate their strategies.
AI female:It's way more effective than going it alone.
AI male:But Sheridan seems to think AUKUS isn't doing enough to deter this
AI male:axis of ill will he keeps talking about.
AI female:His criticism of Iokia's comes down to his belief that the West needs
AI female:to be way more aggressive towards China.
AI female:He thinks Aukus is too focused on diplomacy and talking things out,
AI female:like they're afraid to take a stand.
AI male:But isn't that a good thing?
AI male:Shouldn't we always try to solve things peacefully if we can?
AI female:You'd think so, wouldn't you?
AI female:But Sheridan thinks China only responds to shows of force.
AI female:And that trying to talk to them just makes us look weak.
AI female:Again, it all goes back to his cultural bias.
AI female:He's basically saying China thinks the same way he does.
AI female:You know, like it's all about power and winning.
AI male:It's like he's trapped in this Cold War time warp.
AI male:He just doesn't get how complex the world is now.
AI female:Exactly.
AI female:China's not some cartoon villain who wants to take over the world.
AI female:They're a complex player with all sorts of different interests and motivations.
AI female:And engaging with them diplomatically while also having a strong defense?
AI female:Okay,
AI male:so we've talked about Sheridan's view on the West's weakness,
AI male:his criticism of defense spending, and his dislike of Ayatollahs.
AI male:Anything else we need to cover?
AI female:Let's go back to China for a minute.
AI female:Sheridan spends a lot of time making them out to be this aggressive power.
AI female:Like, they're set on changing the world order and they don't
AI female:care who they step on to do it.
AI male:Yeah, he mentions things like, They're military getting bigger,
AI male:their economic power, and how assertive they're being in the South China Sea.
AI female:Right, and those are things we need to pay attention to for sure.
AI female:But we have to be careful not to fall into this trap of seeing China
AI female:as some kind of existential threat.
AI female:Just because they're becoming more powerful doesn't
AI female:automatically make them the enemy.
AI male:So are you saying Sheridan's overblowing the China threat?
AI female:It's possible.
AI female:His analysis seems to be coming from a place of fear.
AI female:Like, he's scared of China's rise and that fear is clouding his judgment.
AI female:It all goes back to his cultural biases and that Cold War mentality.
AI female:He sees everything as a competition.
AI male:But what about all the evidence he talks about?
AI male:The military buildup, their economy growing, their foreign
AI male:policy getting more assertive?
AI female:Those are real things happening, but we need to understand
AI female:why China's military is getting bigger, partly because they want
AI female:to protect their own interests, especially in the South China Sea.
AI female:Their economy is growing because they're developing rapidly.
AI female:And yeah, their foreign policy is getting more assertive, but it's
AI female:also getting more aggressive.
AI female:More sophisticated and nuanced.
AI female:They're playing the long game.
AI male:So it's not as black and white as Sheridan makes it seem.
AI female:Not at all.
AI female:China's not some villain in a comic book.
AI female:They're a complicated player with a lot of different things driving them.
AI female:And if we want to navigate the challenges of this century,
AI female:we have to understand that.
AI male:This is really interesting.
AI male:It's like Sheridan's argument.
AI male:Peace by peace and seeing how his biases shape his whole analysis.
AI female:That's what deep dives are all about.
AI female:It's about looking past the headlines, questioning assumptions,
AI female:and really understanding the complex world we live in.
AI male:Okay, so we've unpacked Sheridan's arguments about China,
AI male:Western weakness, and this idea that we need to be tougher.
AI male:Mm
AI female:hmm.
AI male:What's the main takeaway?
AI female:The biggest lesson here is don't believe everything you read,
AI female:especially when it comes to geopolitics.
AI female:We need to be critical thinkers and look at things from different angles.
AI female:Don't just accept one person's narrative.
AI male:So it's not just about what's being said, but who's saying
AI male:it and what their agenda might be.
AI female:Exactly.
AI female:We need to be asking ourselves, What's motivating the author?
AI female:What are they assuming?
AI female:What's their worldview?
AI male:Like we need our own built in BS detector to filter out all the spin.
AI female:That's a great way to put it.
AI female:And that's what we've been doing with this deep dive.
AI female:We've examined Sheridan's argument, looked at the evidence, and
AI female:explored his potential biases.
AI male:And I think we've done a good job.
AI male:We've challenged his ideas, offered different perspectives, and
AI male:hopefully encouraged our listeners.
AI female:That's the goal.
AI female:We want our listeners to be informed and engaged and able to deal with
AI female:all the complexity in the world.
AI male:So what's your final thought for our listeners as they
AI male:keep learning about these topics?
AI female:Don't be afraid to question, challenge, and dig deeper.
AI female:There are all sorts of viewpoints out there.
AI female:It's up to each of us to figure out what we believe.
AI male:Great advice.
AI male:This has been a really thought provoking deep dive and I hope
AI male:our listeners have enjoyed it.
AI male:Okay, so we've spent a good chunk of time unpacking Sheridan's arguments
AI male:and how like his worldview kind of shapes his whole analysis.
AI male:But before we wrap things up, I want to go back to one last point he makes.
AI male:This idea of Like Cultural Exhaustion in the West.
AI male:He uses this story about the Australian Catholic University and what happened
AI male:when Joe DeBruyne gave a speech there.
AI male:He's a former union leader and he was talking about traditional
AI male:Catholic views on stuff like abortion and same sex marriage.
AI male:And some of the students and faculty walked out.
AI female:Yeah, it's interesting how Sheridan uses that as proof that
AI female:the West is, like, going downhill.
AI female:He's basically saying that any pushback against traditional values or any kind
AI female:of disagreement is a sign of weakness.
AI female:But maybe there's another way to look at it.
AI male:I'm listening.
AI male:How else could we interpret that?
AI female:Well, instead of seeing it as cultural exhaustion, what if it's
AI female:actually about social norms changing?
AI female:Maybe it shows that people are more aware of diversity and inclusion now
AI female:and they want to create environments where everyone feels safe and respected.
AI male:That's a good point.
AI male:It's like Sheridan seeing this through a very specific lens.
AI male:One that says traditional values equal strength and anything
AI male:different is a sign of decline, but cultures change all the time, right?
AI male:What looks like exhaustion to one person might be progress
AI male:or adaptation to someone else.
AI female:Exactly.
AI female:And we got to remember that the West isn't one big homogenous blob.
AI female:There are tons of different perspectives and values within Western societies
AI female:and those are constantly shifting.
AI female:What Sheridan calls Cultural exhaustion might just be part
AI female:of that natural evolution.
AI male:Okay, so we've done a deep dive into Sheridan's arguments.
AI male:We looked at his claims about the authoritarian axis, the threat from
AI male:China, the West being weak, and this whole cultural exhaustion thing.
AI male:What's the big takeaway here?
AI female:I think the most important thing is to be careful about what we
AI female:read and hear, especially with these complicated geopolitical issues.
AI female:We can't just accept one person's story as the whole truth.
AI female:We have to think critically and consider the source, the evidence,
AI female:and any biases that might be at play.
AI male:So it's not just about what's being said, but also who's saying
AI male:it and why they might be saying it.
AI female:Exactly.
AI female:We should always ask ourselves, what's the author's motivation?
AI female:What are they assuming?
AI female:What's their worldview?
AI male:Like, we need to have our own internal BS detector
AI male:going off all the time.
AI female:Exactly.
AI female:And that's what we've tried to do today.
AI female:We've peeled back the layers of Sheridan's argument, looked at the evidence,
AI female:and explored his potential biases.
AI male:And I think we've done a pretty good job.
AI male:We challenged some of his assumptions, offered alternative viewpoints,
AI male:and hopefully encouraged our listeners to think for themselves.
AI female:That's what we're here for.
AI female:We want our listeners to be informed, engaged, and able to handle all
AI female:the complexities of the world.
AI male:So any final thoughts for our listeners as they
AI male:continue to explore these topics?
AI female:Don't be afraid to ask questions, to challenge
AI female:things, and to really dig deeper.
AI female:There are so many different perspectives out there.
AI female:It's up to each of us to figure out what we believe.
AI male:Well said.
AI male:This has been a really interesting deep dive, and I hope our
AI male:listeners have enjoyed it.
AI male:Thanks for joining us.
Trevor:So there you go.
Trevor:That's the end of the podcast.
Trevor:If you want me to give my own criticism of Greg Sheridan's piece in detail,
Trevor:then let me know and I'll, I'll do it.
Trevor:But if I don't hear enough, I won't bother.
Trevor:So, we'll be back next week with the usual panel.
Trevor:Bye for now.
Sir david:Marty quit drinking.
Sir david:Found religion for a while.
Sir david:I didn't love that.
Sir david:To be honest, I preferred him before.
Sir david:He had a sense of humor then.