In this episode we discuss:

• Crikey Defamation Threat
• Morrison Ministries Follow Up
• Porter – Cash
• John Howard
• Barnaby Joyce
• Will anything save the Governor General?
• Meanwhile Everyone Loves Albo
• Solar briefly overtakes coal in Australia as number one source of power nationally
• Want to watch the National Energy Market?
• Nuclear Update – It’s not reliable
• Anglican Schism
• Japanese Day Care Nappies
• Property Investors

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We need to talk about ideas, good ones and bad ones.

We need to learn stuff about the world.

We need an honest, intelligent thought provoking and in obtaining review of

what the hell happened on this planet in the last seven days, we need to sit

back and listen to the iron fist and the

velvet glove.

Yes, dear listener.

This is a podcast iron fist velvet glove episode 3 52.

I'm Trevor over there on the screen beside me is Paul from Canberra.

How are you going Paul

greetings from N of all

country.

Yes.

Thank you.

And Paul has joined at the last minute because Joe is

our last minute cancellation.

He's got a client who needed stuff done.

And so he's working and I thought.

Well, he wouldn't be busy tonight

and could provide what place, you know, and

could provide great input for us.

So thanks Paul, for, for joining.

So be gentle with Paul dear listener, because he hasn't

had a chance to read the notes.

And I sent him only three hours ago, probably about 35 pages of notes.

So

I did, did skim them

so you got a rough idea of where we're rough idea of where we're heading.

So, so I'm not even sure where we're heading half the time, this

podcast, we get sent down little rabbit holes and things like that.

So if you're in the chat room, say hello, and hello to Ross, who's already in the

chat room and make plenty of comments.

We'll try and get to him.

I think it'll be a little bit better in recent times about reading the chat

and trying to get you guys involved.

So, I'll try and do it and I can, it's not always easy, but yeah.

So what are we gonna talk about tonight?

Well, at the end, I'm really hoping that we'll get to talking about this,

this phenomena of cultural Marxism.

So I've heard it, Bandi about a lot in different discussions and Hey, this

is a podcast where we study society.

And if we don't really have a grip on what cultural Marxism is, probably

can't really call ourselves amateur students of society, really Paul.

So I figured it's time to look at it and try and nut out just the basics

of what it is, where it came from and what we should think when we hear it.

So are you a chance, some sort of expert on cultural Marxism that will be hopeful

Wouldn't that be nice?

No, but I feel like it's gonna be a really interesting, like, I, I

did sort of catch that discussion.

Like in the email very quickly.

And I, one thing I suppose I extracted from that was that Marxism

actually encompasses a lot of things and a lot of parts, and it's been

sort of really criticized for the bits that capitalism really hates.

And there's a lot more to it than just, you know, tearing down the

factories or kind that sort of stuff.

Yeah.

I think it's being used by figures on the right as just a general slander of

a leftish idea that they don't like, and people are conditioned in our society

to be very fearful of anything to do with marks, because that means Stalin.

And that means Google a and so of course it must be

bad.

Yeah.

I had a guy I'd proposed at one of the events for the Woodcraft Guild down

a part of that, you know, because we occasionally sell stuff and it's nice

for the Guild to have stuff to sell.

And why don't we have like a day where we work together and make things

individually that, that we can then give to the Guild to sell mm-hmm the

guy in the charge of the sales seek says, oh, that sounds like communism.

do you want us to raise money for the Guild or not?

Man.

And did you say, yeah.

Alright, well, we'll get onto that at some point.

Yeah.

So anyway before in the chat room, Ross says, yes, Jordan Peterson's

favorite reference for reasons and what Lee the wizard says,

bye Trevor, enjoy the podcast.

What's going on?

What Lee you're sort of you're in and you're out.

Aren't you saying.

I don't understand that comment.

Yeah.

Just Harray another Paul, so, yeah.

And it seems, I hope you're staying what way?

Staying with us ly stay with us.

Yeah.

All right.

But before we get to that, because, you know, we wanna fill up a good

two hours here, so let's do a little bit of a preamble on a few things

that are happening in Australia, a bit of current affair type stuff.

So rattle through a few things.

First of all, happy birthday, Shay.

If you're out there listening Shay's birthday.

Yeah.

Happy birthday.

Secondly, as you know, dear listener, I'm a big fan of the John UE blog hall.

Do you read the John UE blog?

No,

not as often as I would like you're relying

on me to curator it for you.

Are you?

I do.

occasionally I check in, but I've got so many other, like, you know,

everything from independent Australia and crikey and guardian, you know?

Sure.

Yeah.

That's fine.

You can remind, I'm glad that's keeping up, keeping me up to date.

Yeah.

So I think it's great block now.

There's I just stumbled across an interview on, on YouTube where

friendly Jordy interviewed him.

And I think it's an old interview from a couple years ago, but

anyway, I hadn't seen it before and it was very interesting.

And he spoke about his time when he was basically Goff's right hand man sort of

head of the prime ministers department.

He sort of worked with Goff when he was in opposition and then

worked when he was in government.

And then he was also a an editor and higher editor of the

Australian or an extremely high up in a number of Murdoch papers.

And he also had an overseas posting.

I think it was Japan might have been China, but as an ambassador,

like his experience is amazing.

And so he just had interesting things to say.

So if you're interested in those topics and what Rubik Murdoch was

like, and the control that he, that he had over his staff and how people.

Eventually figured out they didn't have to be told they just knew what

Rupert wanted and they just did it the way Rupert would want it.

So Google that on YouTube, John men and friendly Jordy's, there'll be a link in

the show notes, highly recommended that.

And the other thing that I read a lot is crikey.

And if you are a reader of it as well, Paul, you would know that

they are being threatened with defamation by Lockland Murdoch.

Mm

yes.

Yes.

I really wanted to point bring that to everyone's attention because I think

it really shows firstly like you as a lawyer or an next lawyer, Trevor would

have some feeling for how legal arguments that are advanced and people put forward,

you know, legal letters saying we will, you know, we will serve if these

conditions aren't met kind of thing.

Mm-hmm and you read the lawyers' letters from Murdoch and they're almost,

it's hard to believe that they exist in the same reality as the rest of us.

Right.

They're just setting things up for potential actions.

So no doubt the relevant law requires you to go through a process and

to state what you want and state in quite specific detail, your

allegation and the remedy you want.

And then if they don't do it, you're off to court.

So they just sort of, if it sounded that way, it's probably because it's

being framed to match a legislative requirement in terms of detail.

But.

Any event it's to do with the, what was your

sense of it then?

Well, I didn't read those in detail.

I just skim them because crikey has basically published the legal

letters that have been toing and F throwing between their lawyers and,

and Lockland Murdoch lawyers and it's to do with the capital ride January

6th and crikey wrote something which more or less said something along

the lines that the Murdochs were like co-conspirators with Donald Trump

and it Murdoch is his unnamed co-conspirator I think was

the last line in the article.

Yes.

And, and somehow Mer Lockland Murdoch assumed that that was him

as part of the Murdoch.

Family's saying he's defined and it's all gotta be read in context cetera.

But the main thing I think I read from Ronnie's salt in Twitter made the

point that if this goes to court, then crikey would be able to say, show us

all documents and all communication you have relating to the January 6th Rio in

particular, what communication you had with Donald Trump as part of discovery.

And there's no way the Murdoch family is going to want to

produce any of that communication.

So she was suggesting that there's crikey is kind of aware that there's

no way Lockland Murdoch will pursue this because there's no way he would

risk being forced under discovery, you know, legal case of having to

produce all of those documents, cuz it could obviously be quite embarrassing

depending what various members of the Fox and Murdoch empire said.

So I think she might be right.

I think.

I think he'd probably shy away from it because he wouldn't, you know, we've seen

a few cases, Paul, where people have sued for defamation and it's backfired on them,

hopefully Christian Porter and Robert Smith and a few others where they kicked

things off and probably wish they didn't

well also that cause I, I happen to be listening to a really fantastic big

ideas podcast an interview with Anita, if I remember rightly an Aboriginal

author and she was one of the people that took Andrew bolt to court and

won mm-hmm over his defamation.

And the, the, so the thing that sort of like, I get this real sort of resonance

there in that both bolt and I feel in Locklin Murdoch's lawyers letter

make these incredibly like incredibly exaggerated claims and basically kind

of know that you there it's on the other side to then prove them wrong by

being reasonable mm-hmm and it really can't remember who said it, but it's

like, it's just the bullshit factor of, you know, it's, it's an order of

magnitude, harder to disprove bullshit than it is to say it mm-hmm and so.

Yeah,

when it, there is a bit of haggling in this, it's okay.

We're gonna be, we're threatening you.

So we'll, we will reach for every possible thing we can find and

exaggerate it and put it out there and then wait for your response.

So, you know, that is, yeah.

Part of, part of the thing is, well, you may as well reach for the stars and

then , and then settle for something less.

So it looks like you're

settling well.

Yeah.

And, but vice versa, I think, you know, like if I, I think you're probably

right, that it is going to be very difficult for it's gonna be very

difficult for Murdoch to prove that his specific, those specific claims that

his lawyer made all 10 of them were

true, but you know what, there's no penalty for having

three of them struck out.

So for example, if you think that if,

as long as they get like it's a shotgun kind of

approach, correct?

There's no, there's no.

Okay.

No penalty for listing 10 things of which three of them are a little bit dubious.

It's like, I might as well throw 'em in.

If I get struck down the other seven, still stand, it's not like you you

lose anything by having those three.

So you might as well throw it in there.

That's the stage that they're at.

So that's quite normal, I think.

Yeah.

I have to admit, I feel like it's even, it it's even hard for them to prove one

of those conclusively in that, you know, because there was that recent law case

finally west Australian court decided in the defamation suit between premier

of wa oh, yes.

Is goon and.

Yeah, mark MC and CLS Palmer parer

and where he awarded mark MCOW $20,000 in Clive power of Palmer $5,000.

And basically said that their, yes, technically what they, what both of them

said could be deemed defamatory, but the award was minimal because basically Clive

Palmer had already trashed his reputation.

Right.

And mark McGowan's, hadn't actually suffered mm-hmm as a result because

he won an increased majority.

So, very hard to see either of those people making the claim that

they couldn't show a lot of damage cuz they're already yeah, yeah.

That

like it, it's hard to believe that Locklin Murdoch has been so trashed in

reputation by the article on crikey, by that one sentence, as opposed to

any of the other coverage that he's done, that, that, that he's suffered.

And he still seems to be perfectly happy in, you know, the top job is not

being hounded out of that or anything is not hasn't lost anything by it.

It will be very hard to show that in fact, Locklin Murdoch has suffered

any material loss by that coverage.

And that seems to me to be the, the point, not that the things that they said were,

In theory not nice to their reputation, but the practical

effect was water off Duck's back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I agree.

Yeah.

I have to say actually do anything

and therefore it didn't, it wasn't actually defamatory probably.

And

if you, well, it was defamatory, but it was worth, it was just so negligible.

So, look, it might be one of those cases where we have to say, maybe America's

actually got better laws because they tend to have laws where I think if you

are a public identity, then it's almost anything's possible for public identities.

So public figures, I think that's a sort of a difference in the us law, but

certainly ours is due for a bit of an overhaul because rich and powerful people

are using it as a means of, of controlling media that might be against them.

So, yeah, I think it's, yeah, something we can look at the, the

landscape of media and personality and defamation in the, and damages in

the us is I feel like it's a, it's a very different, it's almost an alien

landscape compared to what we sort of see

there, but they don't have nearly the sort of defamation cases we have.

This doesn't happen.

No, but there are and I haven't done any legal reading up on legal cases,

but there are still plenty of like the, the free speech argument gets used in

a very one sided direction in the us from the powerful to the less powerful.

Yeah.

But I think in defamation law, it might be a case where it's the

free speech aspect is working to.

Downplay the ability of the rich to silence the poor.

So I think it might be a case where it's actually working to

some extent, so better than now.

It's one of the rare occasions

we've certainly had as, as you know, we've seen with you know, Dutton winning

the lawsuit against the guy, I think Queensland who defamed him on Twitter and,

you know, a bunch of things like that, you know, people just suing for defamation in

Australia because it means that I'm going to drag you through the court and shake

you out for lo you know, for lawyers fees.

Mm.

So

fortunately we haven't had a defamation action on this podcast

so far our fingers crossed well, I'll try to keep it that way.

Good.

All right.

So, just following up from the Morrison fiasco with his ministries, and I

think since we last talked, he, yeah, he had his press conference and, you

know, the overwhelming thought I had at the end of that was, thank God.

We don't have to listen to this guy anymore.

It's it's so good.

Not to have to listen to him the way we used to have to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But a few characters came out and provided comments and one of them was John Howard.

So I'm gonna play a John Howard clip for everybody.

Now see how we go.

I break my off.

Yeah.

I think most people and allow me an expression of this opinion.

Most people are going to say, well, that deepest thing, but let's get

on with the present and the future.

I think there's a number of people in your own party who are calling on Scott

Morrison to resign from parliament.

Should you at least do that?

No, I don't think you should do that apart from anything else.

It's not in the interest of the liberal party to have a byelection at the moment

in a very safe seat, particularly.

As in the state of new south Wales, we will face a state election

in the early part of next year.

So if anybody cares about my party, the liberal party, then the last thing I'll

do is be requesting unwanted by elections.

That sounds like an Anan answer based in expediency.

When this is a matter of principle, you say it's a matter of principle.

And so you don't think it is no, I don't think it's something that is so

wreaking with principle as to

require an unwanted expensive unnecessary byelection.

So he's first and best reason why Morrison shouldn't resign was because it wouldn't

be in the interest of the liberal party.

What happened to the interest of Australia, Paul?

Well, no, no.

What's puzzling me here is if it's a safe, liberal seat, why is it a bad

thing to have a byelection when you could just get another liberal candidate?

If it's

safe, I guess it's saying it's not,

that's true.

And it's not safe.

Good point.

He knows it's not safe.

There's no way that with, with this on top of everything that Morrison,

like, all it's gonna take is a teal candidate to get up in, in cook and

votes will flood in, I would say.

Mm.

Yeah.

So, but I just it's the shamelessness that you could say, well, of course

he shouldn't resign that wouldn't be in the interest of the liberal party.

It just, it just boggles my mind, the shamelessness of these things.

So yeah.

I'm just gonna grab another one here when we are talking about shamelessness

and this one's Barnaby Joyce, and, and again, see if bucket, see if you can see a

theme happening here in the reasons here.

I initially assumed and to be

quite Frank, if I gone into bat,

I had negotiated an extra minister and I thought, well,

I've asked myself three questions.

Is it legal?

Yeah.

It is legal under section 64.

He can do that.

Is there anything I can do to change back?

No.

Has he got the capacity to renegotiate my extra minister that I just dealt that I

just dealt into the national party hand?

Yeah.

You could just say, yeah, I'll fix

your problem, mate.

I'll just take the ministry back off you.

It's gone now.

Problem fixed for you.

Problem fixed for me bad

outcome for the national party.

So he starts off well, it's legal.

And then as to whether he should do anything about it.

Well, no, because it's not in the interest of the national party.

Don't worry about the interest of Australia, the parliament.

Yeah.

Just good form again, I'm just flabbergasted by the

shamelessness of these guys.

Continue.

I dunno.

I shouldn't be, I shouldn't be so surprised.

Yeah.

I'm not surprised.

They think that way.

I'm just surprised that they can say it.

So open, openly.

I wonder here, if, what their, that if, if they have got used to the, you know,

the right wing media, cheer squad and the you know, the sort of left bashing

and all that sort of stuff, they're so used to that, that they, they can now say

the inside thoughts, you know, that they used to have to find a nice way to wrap.

They, you know, they just don't actually feel like, being

accountable because, you know,

He's listening anyway.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I don't matter.

Accountable.

All I have to do is get some, you know, have some beat up about, you

know, boats arriving in, you know, Australia on the day of the election

and the people will flock to us.

Mm yeah.

You, yeah.

And, and I would say the hard, the hard lesson they're unfortunately

not learning is that they, they are now really struggling.

Like there are so many people, I it's just the whole thing.

This whole topic has been a continued amusement over several

days at work from people I would've expected to be liberal voters.

Yep.

But they're pissed off.

Yep.

Because they can see that if you've got a minister, who's actually, you know,

especially in the case of something like home affairs whose powers to deport and

allow and authorize and not authorize and keep secret a vast, you know, they,

they know very well how, how much, you know, of the, the rest of the workings

of that government department rely on knowing what the minister wants to do

and, you know, taking action on it.

And if you then got, oh, wait, someone else is minister, you know?

Yeah.

They they've been, they've been wild about it.

Yeah.

And I think also, you know, the Murdoch and Castello press has

not been supportive of Morrison.

They've pretty much Being negative about it, you know, they're throwing in

bits like common, Albanese stop talking about it and get on with the job.

But to a large extent, they're, they're also negative about it because

Morrison can't give them any favors.

They're not needing the, the scoop to be handed to them.

He can't offer them anything anymore, so they don't need to yeah.

Be nice to him anymore.

Do him any favors?

So I think he's quite friendless now as he should be.

you know?

Yeah, yeah.

In terms of the press, in terms of his own party, possibly his own family who knows,

but he's quite friendless as he should be.

It seems so.

Yeah, but I, I was disappointed as well.

On Monday I found out that Scott Morrison had been sworn in to do my job.

Right.

that, that like the worst part about it was that he didn't actually do anything.

He just like, you know, spa himself in.

And, but like, he didn't actually contradict any of the things that

I was, you know, that the decisions I made or the code that I wrote.

So, you know, like he must have approved about that.

Yeah.

yeah.

It's, it's a crazy situation.

So, so we'll see how that pans out.

It's we'll see how that pans out, but meanwhile, elbow is he's going.

Okay.

I think.

And did you see the scene with him at the Enmore theater in Sydney?

No.

Oh, Hmm.

Well, you're about to see it.

So he's in the theater people spotting there and, and this is almost a bit of a

Bob Hawk type of moment happening here.

He basically skulls a beer for the crowd type of thing.

Right.

Because the crowd was hanging him on and then they giving him a big cheer.

Like it was a pretty big positive response.

Yeah.

Big Hawk vibe there.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a theater, it's a lefty crowd for sure.

But and of course, you know, had Morrison in his heyday showed up there.

There was no way he would get that sort of sport, but it was still quite

an impressive just show of genuine support from a theater crowd, I think.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I don't know if I think that theater goers are all sort of lefties otherwise,

other than just, you know, if they're not,

they should be

like, we all think they all should be well, well,

given, given the way that the coalition abandoned the arts sure, sure.

For nine years completely abandoned them.

And, and that's not like just a new policy, the arts funding for all

of, you know, from the coalition has always been dropped, has, you

know, is been considered unnecessary.

So, and you know why.

Yeah.

I see it as, I don't have any, like, I don't know, but I guess I see it

as the arts also criticizes and.

The one thing I think that characterizes conservative conservatives is that they

do not like to be criticized mm-hmm

my theory is it's like universities, they don't think

there's any votes for them there.

So why waste money on that sector?

Keep it for the people you'll vote for you.

I think that's yeah.

Yeah.

I also agree with that.

Mm-hmm

so, yeah,

I, I, I also, I suppose I also think that there, you know, there's an element

of a sort of culture wars in there are, you know, the, those elites, you know,

going to their opera and their, their dance performances and, you know, yes.

Like we should be concerned about the ordinary Australians who have

a beer and, you know, consider watching Katherine Kim to be the

height of entertainment, you know?

Yes.

This is the problem.

They almost thought of the ordinary Australian as, as a trady, as a blue

collar, it was never a, a nurse or a school teacher or a a sound person

at a stage in the Enmore theater or a, an actor or somebody like that.

I never considered working Australians.

So they very different view of that.

Mm.

The other little thing that I, the vibe that I kind of pick up out of that is

that it really reminds me of I think one of the things thatI said when he opened

parliament was, which was that, you know, he want, he wants to have a parliament

that the Australian people respect.

And when.

We see the Australian parliament being respectable, getting stuff, done,

solving these problems, working together.

We can go.

Yeah.

Okay.

I can respect that guy.

He's he's he's doing the right

thing.

It's a symbiotic relationship between the people on the parliament.

Yeah.

So, mm mm.

Yeah.

Now contrast this, so everybody's, well, you hadn't seen it, but the general

response to that is well good on your for being at the theater and having a beer and

enjoying yourself and contrast that Paul, did you see the funeral over the finish

prime minister, a female prime minister,

all reports of it, but I didn't pick up what she'd actually done wrong.

Well, had she a drug test

or something like that?

She had the toity to dance in front of a camera with some friends

at a private party and was just gyrating around as people do to

the camera and having a good time.

And, and this just shocked too many people that a prime minister could be.

She's quite youthful and it shocked

too many fins fin fi I, I, I think did it from, well, I think from talking to a

finished friend of mine and following the general line of finished jokes the thing

that they might have been most outraged about was that they're actually more than

one person in the same room there, right?

Fins are not communicative and they're not like the trophies

that they, they are grumpy.

Herberts you, you, you are, you are 30 meters away and that's close enough.

Thank you very much.

but it's the happiest country in the world, Paul.

It is, it is

every time that survey came out just a week or two ago, again, they're

always at the top by other happiest.

And I don't think there's a lot of general, like, I think it's a, you

know, it's playing up a stereotype yeah.

In the way that all Australians drink too much beer kind of thing.

But yeah.

It's

anyway, I think there was, there was a bit of a thing where they said they

could vaguely hear in the background, a reference to flower, and there was

an allegation that flower was code for some sort of powdery illegal drug.

And she then went and had a drug test to prove that she

had not taken an illegal drug.

Just to say to people here you go done a blood test, but that's what it reached.

That's the stage.

It got to that.

So just a contrasting situation where just relatively young woman, just having

a good time as you're allowed to, you're not expected to work all the time as a PM.

And

in a different response prime minister, like the finished people are very

progressive and they have neglected a young, progressive prime minister.

So

yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, so anyway, dance on, I say, yeah.

So contrast that I can remember AOC was criticized for a, a a video.

She did dancing on a rooftop at some point, and she just got these

hard line conservatives going.

She's just not a serious person cuz she's dancing.

And but so

how much of that do you think is just the regular outrage machine?

You know of?

It's just like it it's the attack that I see on.

Anyone that they don't like, just find anything that we can even

make up that will be objection about objectionable, about them.

They're they're not serious.

They're too serious.

They're they're not well educated.

They're too well educated, anything just as long as we can criticize

it and, and, you know, cross our arms and look all upright.

Yeah.

And

you can't, please, some people, people have a stick up their bum,

but you know, there's definitely some people you just can't please.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting contrast between interesting contrast.

Yeah.

Australian PM and the finished PM.

So it can swap notes when they're at some sort of conference in the future.

Mm-hmm

mm-hmm maybe we could get her and Jain Arden, and there

may to have like a dance off.

Yeah.

There may.

So

she didn't, she do that stage.

So like she was walking under the stage and yeah.

A little, they had some sort of number and she was dancing around a bit.

It's like, yeah.

So, anyway.

Yep.

Okay.

Now next topic moving away from politicians is so governor generals I

was gonna skip the governor general.

We'll go back to the governor general.

Yeah, yeah.

Look, it's tricky.

One, the governor general, I haven't quite got my head around.

It sort of gave my view the other day.

It seems like with the early appointments, the governor general wasn't involved

at all, and it seemed that with when Christian Porter was there, that they

did it as an administrative thing without even the governor general and the later

appointments involve the governor general.

And he's saying, well, it's not his job to monitor the Gazette and make

sure things are printed and he's just there to do what he's told.

So.

He obviously knew though that it was being kept secret because any governor general

just should be watching the general news and should have been aware of that.

This was not being talked about.

I mean, it just it doesn't really fly with me that the governor general

had hadn't even thought about it not being publicized, so, Hmm.

You've got any thoughts.

It is also very hard because like the governor general doesn't write his diary.

This is the job for secretaries and you know, people and yes, it

becomes part of the, the record.

The fact that it didn't make it onto the record really makes me feel that there's

actually some like, so a, you know, just to pick an arbitrary example, Scott

Morrison has deliberately gone to them saying, you cannot tell anyone about this.

You can't publish it on the Gazette, keep it quiet.

Looks like, yeah, given that all sorts of things, like, you know, he hands out first

prize to a dog at a dog show or something.

And that appears in the Gazette.

Like there's a lot of detailed stuff in there.

That's quite in a, and the fact that a major thing like appointing

a minister doesn't make it.

It all seems like something intentional has happened, but we won't know

until further things come out, which they probably will at some stage.

It also makes me, I think it, it makes a good argument then to say, well, if

the governor General's sole function.

Is just to go out and have, you know, give medals to dogs and, you know, have open

public buildings and things like that.

It is not actually to question the mess, the mechanisms and the

processes of government when they happen, then we don't actually need

a governor general with that power.

You know, we could just elect the, you know, the building opener in chief

and, you know, that's their function.

Right?

Yeah.

You know, I think I heard an argument that governments have been

keen to a point X military people.

And one of the reasons is that military people are, yes, men essentially.

Like they just do what they're told.

That's a culture that when somebody advance this argument is superior

to you in rank or whatever, you just do what you're told and that's it.

Whereas if you were appointing, you know, X, high court judges or

people like that, they would be more likely to say, hang on a minute.

What's going on here?

What?

Yeah.

so, it's a, it's a good argument as to why the military should not

be involved in these appointments.

I, I'm not a good cultural fit mixed

on that in that I actually don't.

I don't see.

I don't actually, I feel any, if anyone's selecting the.

Governor general because we better choose one that make, you know, that takes

orders so that when we have to appoint myself as a secret minister, it for

everything they'll do what they say is a pretty long draw to bow a bow to draw.

No, it's not because it would be let's point a yes man.

In case we need a yes man, for someone unforeseen event where we're like,

they may not have had specifically in mind this thing, but it would

be, are you gonna be compliant?

Are you gonna go and do the things I say?

And are you gonna shut up if I tell you to shut up, you know, in

the back of maybe not overt, just

maybe like, I wonder how much the liberal party feels, the fear of

the governor general in the same way that the labor party remembers occur.

I think they all remember it and they all think, I don't want

one of those, a contrarian Gigi.

Yeah, but I, my hypothesis here is that the liberal party were well

served by a governor general that, that I don't know who chose Kerr.

But they were well suited by a governor general who was part of the establishment.

And I, I wonder if the liberal party feels the same fear that a rogue

governor general could, you know, dissolve parliament If, you know, a

couple of liberal party mates went over and have a, had a beer with

him in the Saturday afternoon, they,

they would have that fear if they appointed one from academia.

So that's why they appoint one from the military, you know, so, and you

know, if there was a leftover labor appointee as governor general, who

was of that ilk, then they would be worried if they took power.

So I think both sides of politics would, would look at the governor general

and think what sort of we got here.

Yeah.

Okay.

Anyway, in the chat room jungle juice, jingle jungle says being

ex-military I can attest your statement being somewhat correct.

That's good to know.

Jungle juice.

Yeah.

Jungle juice jungle.

Give me some more of that jungle juice.

Yeah.

And just previously in the chat room, some of the people had mentioned about

friendly Jordy's and just questioning whether they like the guy or not.

I mean, he is, he is not to everyone's taste, I get it, but he's at least

appealing to a younger demographic and, you know, it's, you've gotta

have all different types appealing to all different demographics.

And I think he does what he's doing quite well, even though I

wouldn't necessarily sit down and watch him all the time myself.

So

yeah, I, I have found, I, I like the points that he's trying to

make most of the time, but I've I'm, I can't really get, you know,

I can't agree on his delivery.

But I do really like there's YouTube channel called swollen pickles and

another one called Knight in shining Lama.

And both of those are very good.

Pickles is more kind of making funny.

Funny videos of mashups of I think he did a mashup of

ex premiere of new south Wales.

GLADiS Barlin Gladys saying all the times that she said

we're not going into lockdown.

Oh, we're going into lockdown.

Oh, we're not going into lockdown.

There's no such thing as a lockdown in new south Wales.

Yeah.

I've seen that lockdown.

Yeah.

So yeah, I think you've just gotta have all different types.

So it's a bit like in the secular community, I think we've got various

different types running around, so yeah, just, you don't need all to be the same.

Now I just wanna move on to energy pool.

And so this is from ABC for about half an hour on Friday now.

I'm not sure if that was last Friday or the Friday before the national

energy market caught a glimpse of what a renewables powered future might look

like and solar energy eclipsed, coal as the lead source of power across

the energy market, which includes all states except wa and territory.

It's not the first time it happened, but it's the first time it's happened

under relatively normal conditions.

So there was no shortage of coal-fired power and it wasn't

the sont time of the year.

So it was a significant sort of business as usual kind of

day and solar de throne coal.

So that was good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like a lot of things, it, you know, these, you know, gradual, these gradual

incremental changes, help people get used to the idea that actually, you know,

Solar thing isn't that bad after all.

So when your electric bike is finished yeah.

Is it gonna be powered from a solar rooftop system you have?

Is that what?

So I

do have solar panels on the roof.

Mm-hmm

do they get sunny in Canberra?

Sufficient.

Occasionally, not this, not this winter.

I can tell you.

Right.

But so this is where I don't want to have people hate me too much, but so

Canberra in 2007, introduce in order to sort of bootstrap, the solar industry

here introduced a gross feed in tariff.

And so, I, and we were lucky enough for a variety of complicated reasons,

cuz I was out of work for six months.

We were lucky enough to be able to afford to afford and to fit into the program.

And we get 52 50.

Yeah.

52 cents a kilowatt.

Yep.

Kilowatt hour for every kilowatt hour we generate.

Wow.

Whether or not the house is using any power, any of that power or not

whether you are using it or not.

Yes.

Hang on a minute.

So you could be generating it and using it and you'll be paid.

Yes.

What that I, I

told you you'd hate me.

you're kidding.

How long's that

gonna go for 25 years.

Wow.

That's amazing.

And believe me, it's it bootstrapped the the, the solar industry in camber.

Wow.

There's, there's a friend of mine very famous or famous in the open source world.

guy called Andrew Riall.

He, he happened to have a house which was alar very, a very

large area of north facing roof.

And he worked out that he could install 30 kilowatts of solar panels on his house.

He drew down for his superannuation because being the guy, he is he'd

done the math worked out that it would pay a better rate of return

than his superannuation was.

Yep.

So that is part of his superannuation.

And if you know where to look in Canberra, you can see the bright splash

on the satellite picture, where his house has reflected the sun back to

the satellite and is completely wipes out that section of the, the street,

my, my mate Noel, he was the same.

He figured it out and loaded up his house in Brisbane and very, very early

adopter, one of the very earliest.

And he was driving in his car and he got a phone call from from the electricity

company that he was dealing with.

And they said look just calling to talk to you about your bill.

You owe us 5,000, $200 and just wanna know what arrangements

you're gonna make to pay it.

And he said, right, are you looking at the screen right now?

And the guy said, yeah.

And he said, you see where it's got 5,000, $200.

Is there a kind of like a minus sign in front of the dollar sign?

And the guy goes, yeah, yeah, there is, that's weird.

And I'll said, yeah, that's because you own me.

$5,600.

and I'd like to know what arrangements you are gonna make to pay me.

They'd never written a check before they had no, like this

was foreign territory for him

probably didn't even have the mechanism to do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So he had figured out he could buy old cottages in rural areas

in Northern new south Wales and he wouldn't have to rent them out.

He could just wax solar on them and that would pay for these

properties and pay them off.

And he was actually getting contracts organized when the

new south Wales scheme changed.

And so he didn't proceed with it, but he had done that same

math and had figured out.

Yeah.

So there we go.

That's that's my two solar stories.

So yeah.

So, okay, so you are gonna be feeding electricity into your electric motorbike

and you're actually gonna be paid for the electricity that goes into it

for the, for the, for the privilege.

Wow.

I mean, you know, the disadvantage is that we still, we still pay, you know,

I think what, what's our top, right?

20 something, 21, 20 2 cents a kilowatt at peak times.

Right.

So, when I had the, the mark one I would have it, have that on a timer.

So it would charge up on the sort of off peak cycle.

Not that we actually, yeah, not that it was actually like, paid like that.

But just sort of just shift the power.

Mm.

But yeah, the, the, the solar thing I also think is a, also a statement of.

A lot.

It shows that a lot of the bigger solar projects are now starting to come,

come in and get traction where before, especially with the previous government,

it was previous federal government.

It was very difficult for those companies to get sort of basically to be allowed

to generate mm-hmm because the, you know, if, if a new project came in,

they would be curtailed in favor of the existing generator, which was always cold.

So, and you know, that's just like, that's the opposite of what

should, what we should be doing.

We should be turning off coaled power stations and keeping

solar power, but, you know,

actually I've got one other electricity, sand of power killing birds, Chris, I've

got one other what you're talking about.

Yeah.

I've got one of the electricity anecdote for you.

So my son worked for a company that was involved in supplying electricity

into the market, and they had entered into some forward contracts to supply

at a certain price over the next year, two years and three years.

Uh mm-hmm , which would satisfy their finances, that their finances

knew they had this money coming in.

So, so it wasn't their entire production that they were committing,

but just to sort of hedge, I guess.

And so they had put it in at a certain price.

Now I can't remember the exact figures, but let's just assume it was say

$80 a what or whatever it's called.

Yeah.

And so that was their commitment to supply that to the energy

market over the next three years.

Now, when the price goes up for electricity There's two things.

First of all, you think to yourself, damn wish I hadn't agreed to sell it at 80

because now I could sell it at 200, if I wasn't committed to this cheap price.

Mm.

But the other thing is say the price has moved to 200.

Then the, the national energy market regulator says, you know what?

There's a risk that you might go bust.

And we've got this great deal with you where you are

committed to supplying it at 80.

Whereas a moment we have to buy it at 200 from everyone else.

So you have to pay us a bond of 120 so that we know that we are not going to

miss out on a deal with you going bust.

And that's part of the deal that's done when people hedge with the national

electricity market, that if you agree at a price and the price increases, they say to

you cough up some money, because in case you go bust and we have to buy it from

somebody else, we're not gonna be happy.

Oh,

I think I heard something about that.

Yeah.

And so it's this extraordinary situation where the price is going up

and these people have to scramble and find money to give to the national

energy market to cover the difference.

They'll eventually get it back.

But but yeah, they have to come up with this, in this, in

the, as a cash flow problem.

And it also makes me think of all of there are so many companies, I mean,

not only the aluminum melters and but you know, big shopping centers

and even the state of the, a C T has done a power purchasing agreement.

So they basically say, okay, You know, external company, we agree to par purchase

power at say, say $80 a megawatt hour.

Mm.

And when, if the, if the pay price goes up, then you profit off that.

Sorry.

If the price goes down, then you profit because we could have bought it at

60, but you we're, we are paying 80.

And if the price goes up, then we win.

And I think the I think the a C T last I heard was around $65 a mega

hour, but basically all of the large power consumers are doing these deals

because they want to lock in that, you know, if, if there's a generator

that can supply them for 80 then yeah.

Okay.

We'll, we'll, we'll take our chance on how yeah.

How the market looks.

Yeah.

And, and the irony in a way for the, a C T, which is, you know, very you

know, very committed to going green producing greenhouse gas emissions

and things like that is that if they had all solar, solar would be free.

Right.

And therefore they would be loo they would be paying money to, to use that

free power mm-hmm . But so far it hasn't

happened yet.

Now there's a website called renew economy dot comu, and it had an interesting

article about nuclear power, which I'm gonna talk about in a minute.

But in the meantime, while I was there, it had this interesting

Little link that you can go to.

And at any point in time, during the day or night, you can look at the national

energy market and see which states are using how much electricity and what

type of electricity that they're using.

So, so yeah, if you're into electricity markets and wondering what's going on,

then renew economy.com AU interesting link that you can just see what's going

on with electricity during the day.

I thought that was an interesting one.

And

yeah, I just wanted to pick Chris in the chat has said,

hypothetically, can I store power?

And when they need it, I can then choose to sell it.

And the answer is unfortunately for retail customers, not yet.

Right, but there's two parts to this, firstly, I mean, that is what, say a

hi a pumped storage hydro project does or like, you know, the the horns style,

big battery that south Australia put in.

They do exactly that.

So if you're a big company, Chris, you can for us regular people

you can't get like a, a power

at the, in the mid part of the day and then put it back, you

know, sorry, the late at night, put it back in the middle of the

day or the, the it'll detect peak period.

It'll detect that.

That's what you're doing.

It'll it'll well, somehow it's gotta come from the direct from the solar panel,

not via a battery is what you're saying.

Well, the

problem is that you don't actually so firstly, as far as I know.

I don't think there are any batteries out there that allow you to do that.

And you are probably not allow allowed to jigger around with the firmware on

the batteries to make them do that.

Right.

But even then, you're probably only going to get whatever you

are feeding tariff is anyway.

So, you know, you might buy like, you know, for most of us we're buying power at

20 cents, you know, 21 cents a kilowatt.

And even at off peak we might be paying 12 cents a kilowatt and our feed in

rate is more like 7 cents a kilowatt.

Right.

Gotcha.

But

the other thing

that's coming is, hang on.

The feeding rate is seven, but you said you were selling it back to the, okay.

So if you are really, really lucky and you happen to be on it.

Oh,

that's you, right?

Yeah.

okay.

That's you

for the rest of, for the rest of the people?

You're pretty much, you know.

Yeah.

But the thing that is coming for Chris is vehicle to grid.

So what that allows you to do, and we, we've sort of seen some of that

coming with things like the Ford F-150 lightning and other vehicles we're

basically, you can power an ordinary two 40 volt device off your car.

Vehicle grid says vehicle to grid allows you to not only power

your house using the same plug.

So you plug it in, in the same way that you normally do to charge it.

And then the vehicle system and the house system say, oh, I need some power now.

So I'll supply the house instead, but they are allowing They're they're

looking, there's a trial project at the moment, looking at how this works.

It's run by the Australian, Australian national university.

And it's looking at how this had actually been implemented in practice.

Does, do you get to do power arbitrage on a day to day basis or do, is

that, you know, is that pointless?

What, what would the, you know, what, what should the software look like?

What controls should we have all that sort of stuff.

So I

gotta do something it's a work models on how that will affect the market.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

E even just sort of to the, the point of the, because the other part of

that process is the ability basically to, for the grid to say it's peak

period time, and I really don't want you sucking 22 kilowatt hours

out of the grid right now, please,

right?

Yep.

Yep.

Okay.

There's lots of clever things are gonna be worked out and

even the car technology will go.

I know your diary and I know you're not driving anywhere tomorrow, so I

know I can use the battery in a certain way with that information, or I know

you aren't gonna need the battery full tomorrow and therefore yeah.

There's lots of interesting things will happen that way.

Mm-hmm you,

do you know, Saul Griffith?

Have you heard of the name Saul Griffith?

I think I have heard of the name, but I don't know.

Yeah.

He he wrote a book called electrify everything.

Right.

And so he talks about all that sort of last, like the

last 10% of all of the uses.

But he also has, I think, three.

Car conversion projects on the go and he's he's selling

them to his wife as good news.

We get a, a big battery for our house and I also get to drive it around,

right?

Yes.

Yeah, no, it's gonna be a significant player.

These, these car batteries in 20 or 30 years when there's more of 'em around.

So now some people think nuclear is the answer to perceived electricity shortages.

And I know in the past John listen to John is keen on it.

And my brother was also into these sort of small modular reactors for nuclear.

And there's an article from this renew economy website, which I stumbled across.

And I'll read a bit about it.

Before Peter Dutton's coalition charge off into yet another inquiry into the merits

of nuclear power, of course, coalition is spooking nuclear power as is sky news.

Funny how they didn't do anything about it in the nine years

that they were in power indeed.

And suddenly now it's yes, they really should just shut up for 12 months cuz

that's just the standard response.

You just can't come up with broad ideas now just, just go away for 12 months

and read and we'll hear from you later.

Anyway, this article says they might wanna take a class.

Look at what's happening in Europe, where the failure of France's huge

nuclear power plant fleet is causing bigger problems for EU power supplies.

Then rushes, withheld gas supply France has been delivering just a fraction

of its energy production potential in recent months and overnight the

situation got worse when French power producer EDF announced another three

power plants would curtail output because of rising temperatures.

Rivers have become too hot in the latest heat wave to be used to cool the reactors.

So the majority of France's 56 nuclear reactors are currently throttled down

or taken offline due to a combination of scheduled maintenance, erosion damage.

That's a worry yes, and cooling water shortages due to recurring heat waves.

And this problem has caused wholesale electricity prices to soar and

costing the French government a Mo because they subsidize power bills.

So the cost of making up the difference is now gonna be 24 billion.

Oh, Australian 40 billion this year alone.

And so yeah, so one of the arguments for coal has been it's for a reliable and

consistent, and we've had problem with coal fired generators, actually having

maintenance issues and fires and whatever.

And we could have the same with nuclear.

It's not like you just switch these things on and they're good for the next 30 years.

They've got issues as well.

So this base load power that people talk about, you know, if we for start

there, aren't small nuclear stations that are actually modular ones

that are working they're twice the cost of a bigger nuclear situation.

Anyway, You've still got no guarantees.

You still have issues with them.

So you're still going to need backups.

And you know, we're looking at Ukraine where there's these attacks

on the nuclear power plants.

Who's to say that, you know, down the track, we're not

involved in some armed conflict.

And if you were trying to, you know, cause a problem for a

country, it's definitely a target.

It would make sense that with at least solar and these other renewables,

it's a spreading of the risk.

There's multiple generators in multiple areas.

And just like Scott Morrison wanting multiple backups of ministries.

This is a case though, where you are actually spreading the risk

and you know, that is a factor that people need to take into account.

And I dunno if you've said it before, but I think you've probably said you, like,

you've kind of touched on that issue.

I've certainly heard it heard it said elsewhere.

That the problem with small modular reactors is on the one hand, if you

are going to install them, like, you know, they're small, they're modular.

They can go anywhere.

Well, let's just install them in every country town.

Oh, well now we have a thousand sites that we need to defend rather than a dozen

and, and they're twice as expensive as normal.

Yeah.

Yep.

And if you then want to secure those sites, well, obviously what you do

is you build large sites, right?

Exactly.

Like a coal fired power station, which concentrates all of the

generation in one place, which means you need distribution transmission.

So, you know, it's, it's also incredibly bad for security and I can't help, but

notice that none of these reactors have.

You know, we don't even have the infrastructure to generate the, like, to

make the reactor, let alone make its fuel.

Where are we gonna get that from?

Oh, from overseas jolly good.

Then like where, where, where we buy our oil from right.

We can't use the fuel that we mine here.

Like it's gotta be processed in a way we gotta refine it, which

we don't the technology for.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

And,

and you can absolutely bet that a you know, the com the countries that do

do this Britain France, and the us are not going to let that kind of stuff

walk out to places like Australia.

Yeah.

So, you know, I think there's a bit where this whole change in the

electricity market is, is a threat to big players, and it allows so many

smaller entrants and for the coalition who like to support big players,

big multinationals, big companies.

Yeah.

This democratization of energy is not in the interest of the large capitalists.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's ironic to me that by democratization there, what we're

talking about is companies with only 20 million, rather than 2 billion

mm-hmm , and they're still against it.

Like, it's not, you know, they've kind of lost the battle on rooftop solar, but, you

know, they're still essentially saying, well, you know, we want, we don't, we want

to shut the large solar generators and the large wind farms and companies like that

out of the electricity market as well.

In the chat room, Chris says, Chris, you'd been chatting

away very well there, come on.

Someone else, some other people need to join.

Chris.

Chris says, when I was a medical student at uni, I visited the south Sydney

nuclear reactor, and they said they could keep it cool with a garden hose.

I guess the other question Chris was how many houses could they

power from that experimental nuclear reactor that they had there?

What what's that

I dunno, maybe, maybe, maybe as much as a

toaster.

Yeah, because there is a small reactor down there in Sydney

for sort of research purposes.

And yeah, I guess the question maybe Chris will come in with a comment,

but you know, just how much power was generated from that is the next question.

Mm, briefly.

Yeah, because Paul, we've gotta rattle through some topics to

get to some by nine o'clock.

So I can then get into cultural Marxism and knock that over in half an hour.

Like let's, just quickly Anglican church in new south Wales they've split.

And so they've got basically conservative evangelical types who just can't get

their head around, same sex marriage and OB just object to the change

in the the teaching of the church.

So they've broken away and created their own little subgroup.

And the ones in favor of same sex marriage are still part of

the, the major Anglican church.

But rebel group that's broken away are the sort of crazy evangelicals

who don't like same sex marriage.

And that will be interesting to see how the property is split

up for the stuff that they own.

So I was just

wondering what they'd call themselves.

And of course it's called the diocese of the Southern cross.

Right.

Because there's nothing like drawing nationalism into a church isn't there.

Yeah.

Good point it's it's yeah, yeah.

Yep.

Like it.

The, the newer, an, the newer GLI Anglican church or the, you know, the

brothers of west Sydney or whatever.

No, it's the Southern cross.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

I, at some point, I know you wanna rattle through things,

so I'll, I'll just flag this.

And at some point, Trevor, Trevor, I'd like to talk to

you about positive nationalism,

positive nationalism.

Hmm.

Where you can be proud of your country.

Yes.

And not also have to be a, and

a fascist

a yes.

You know, defended at all costs kind of person.

But anyway, let's table that let's move on.

Cause no

positive nationalist.

You're saying it's not possible to be, or you think it's no,

what I'm, what I'm saying is that we, there is this stigma against people

who are proud of the flag who sing the national Anthem and things like that as

either being too patriotic or a bit ish.

And what it does is leaves the actual nationalism for the people that think

that going, you know, go heading off, down with a couple of Australian flags

and bashing some Lebanese people at Koji

is a good sport.

Oh.

So they've left a gap for people who want to be nationalist in a nice way.

Because there isn't a, a soft nationalism, people are forced to choose

the hard nationalism if they wanna exhibit a bit of nationalism, is that

yeah.

You know, you, if you, if you holding up an Australian flag, then

you must be one of those people.

And so the people who aren't.

Hide the flag and don't want show it, I show it.

But,

you know, do you have a feeling you'd like to show the flag more,

but you are being held back?

Is

that

what you're saying?

As it, as it happens?

I've got one right here.

No, it just occurs to me that that the, you know, a lot of the outpourings of

sympathy for you know, for the billow Wheeler family for, you know, the,

the sort of indigenous voice to, or the, at least the sort of recognition

the acknowledgement of refugees and asylum seekers tends to be pushed back

on by a group of people who called themselves Patriots and the people who

protested anti-vax that sort of anti mask mandates and anti vaccinations were

going around waving Australian flags and saying how it was unas UN Australian

to, you know, where masks or things

like that.

Yeah.

So sort of national flag waving though, is, is kind of one of the

first boxes to tick for fascism.

Isn't it like?

That's, that's the prob that's the problem with it?

To some extent

sorry, Don.

Two of his comment just completely distracted me there.

Don, what you do with your underwear in your own time is your own problem.

Mm-hmm I, what, I, I agree that if we are all told to line up on, you know,

At the side of the street and wave the flag for the prime minister as he

drives by or something like that then.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's an odd approach to nationalism, but I think on the other hand that

say flying an Australian flag in, you know, in one's front yard is not a

you, but what's it saying, is it saying we're such a good country and I'm

proud of us is, is that I think it can

acknowledge the flaws of a Australia and still be proud of it at successes S

but, you know, it's like, well, every country can be

what, what country couldn't be.

It's, it's kind of, there's a little bit of you know, part of our international

relations is that we tend to not treat an, when we are a country treating another

country, it's a different dynamic to we, as people treating other people,

we there's a sort of a selfishness and that we can exhibit as the country of

Australia, against other countries that we would never do as individuals with

other individuals, like as individuals with our neighbors, we treat our

individual neighbors far better, and with a different view than we do as

a country, to our, to our neighbors.

I just, it's kind of like, big deal.

We, we, we, we happen to, through, she luck be plopped on this particular

patch of dirt on this particular planet with this particular ideology

running around in this particular time.

And there's a bunch of really good people.

On other clumps of dirt scattered around and to sort of go, Hey, we're

here and this is our color, you know, look at, I just don't get it myself.

I not because of bad feelings about Australia, but just, yeah,

I, I think I like, I absolutely celebrate your cosmopolitan approach there to say,

we can, we can look at other countries and say they do good things too.

You know that a and, and certainly that jingoistic kind of God's own country,

you know, nowhere could be possibly as good as any, you know, as Australia.

Yeah.

That's, that's a, a, a trivial, a boring form of jingoism that tries

to dress itself up as nationalism.

But I think you can, but I think you are, you know, like you are celebrating

the, the country that you live in and you admire our, you know, our, the sports

people and our intellectuals and our playwrights and our, you know, politicians

that go out and do good in the world.

Is it, is it any different to having the Brisbane Broncos flag in your front yard?

It's just saying I'm a member of this team.

I love my team.

Yeah.

I just, it's,

it's harder to do when when you are overseas to hold up, you know, an

Australian flag and say, you know, I'm at the you Australia versus west

Indies match in Jamaica and Kingston, and I'm gonna hold up the, the

Australian flag, but like, you can.

You can still be, what, what I wanna differentiate between is you can be proud.

We can be proud of our successes without putting down anyone else.

Mm.

So you wanna RA make, make some room for some positive nationalism.

Yeah.

Where it should be viewed as, as that and nothing sinister.

And the problem is people are shying away from it because it's

starting to have some potential.

Well, if connotations,

because if we don't actively step in and say, no, this is,

this is inviting refugees here.

Nationalism is reaching out to our, you know, like I'm proud as an Australian

that we are reaching out to our first nations people and, you know, going

for reconciliation things like the, if we don't, if we don't say that

is what our form of nationalism or patriotism mm-hmm is about, then it

being gets taken over by the proud boys.

Yes.

And by the, the fascists and by

yes, it all.

Okay.

I get it.

I think it's yes.

Unless good people start flying the flag.

Then when you see a flag flying, you're gonna assume it's a bad person.

Cuz the only people overtly flying the flag at the moment

are some, some, some nutts.

Yeah.

Like if you saw a car driving down the freeway with some Australian

flags all over it, you wouldn't be thinking how strong all over you'd be.

You'd be thinking crazy Nutter.

Sure.

Sure.

I get ya.

We've

we're allowing an Australian flag in one corner of the rear view mirror.

Yeah.

Then, you know?

Yeah.

Okay.

That's okay.

That doesn't

automatically label them.

There's more flags out there then will be less likely to

think a negative connotation.

All right.

Yep.

I get that.

That's that's sort of thing.

Positive nationalism.

Thank you, Paul.

Right quickly.

We've done the church schism.

We've done the church.

There's a schism and they're going to have a, a problem.

Well, they're just gonna split and argue with each other over the next.

Cing probably over church assets and there's been similar splits in

Canada, us Brazil, New Zealand, often involving protracted legal disputes

over property rights, Crimea river, Paul

. Yeah.

I'm absolutely with you on that.

In that it's really hard for me to have any sympathy sympathy with you know,

how there, you know, I don't know.

No, that's, that's too strong.

I, I really sympathize with, with the moderates who are, who have been trying

to say, no, we want you to actually be nice to be people for a change and

have the evangelicals say, no, no, no.

We want to go out there and tell everyone that this is our message.

And you must believe it, whether you like it or not.

You know?

I have I'm sympathy.

I'm sympathetic to the moderates in that, but if it's just a schism in the

church, then we've had lots of those.

We could probably get lots more.

Mm.

Just quickly, those crazy Japanese, apparently Paul in Japan, it's quite

common that when you pick up your kid from daycare, they give you the kid.

Plus the dirty nappies that the kids generated during the day,

I was kind of vaguely worried when I read this that they'd kind of

individually like labeled them and kept them separate so that like

we know that your child generated

these a survey has shown a light on the common, but rarely discussed

practice with about 40% of towns and cities in Japan saying they demand

the guardians of the infant clientele, take their used nappies with them.

And this woman who was interviewed says why should I take them home?

and they're kind of scratching their heads as to why this practice has continued.

And there seems to be maybe about 49% of them do it.

And they think the reason is it gives the parents the opportunity to check

their child's health by examining their stools while a, a smaller numbers said

they don't have facilities or budget to dispose of the nappies themselves.

So there you go.

Dear list note, if you've got a baby in childcare and you're picking that baby

up at some stage in the future if you were Japanese, you, you might well be

picking up a bag of dirty nappies that you'd be half expected to examine before.

Disposing

off.

Alright, Paul's coming back in a minute.

While he's away, this will let me actually rattle through some topics.

Mum and dad, housing investors.

If you'd like to know the occupation of the.

The top 10 occupations for people, mums and dads who are housing investors.

Number one, surgeon, number two, anesthetist three internal

medicine specialist, four psychiatrists, five dentist, six

school principal, seven other Medi.

So there you go.

Six of the top seven are in some sort of medical thing.

Eight is an engineering manager.

Nine is a mining engineer and 10 you'll be pleased to know Chris and jungle juice.

Jungle is an ADF officer as number 10 in terms of property, investment,

mums, and dads in Australia.

Paul's got his headphones on.

I just rattled through the top 10 of people likely to have property

investors, huge overrepresentation of medical people there.

And, but

technically they could be both, you know, either a mother or a father.

And therefore, technically they, you know, would count as mom and dad, but no, it's

absolutely not what we, it's not what the liberal party tell us or the little

Aussie Aussie battlers, you know, with their three, you know, income properties.

Yes.

Yep.

All right.

No problem.

Another time.

I wasn't even planning to do it in this time, but gonna talk about baby boomers

briefly at some stage as a generation.

That is a good argument against democracy.

I've read this book, Paul, right?

Have always intrigued by that.

Your approaches to argument, these kinds of arguments.

This book is titled a generation of sociopaths.

How the baby boomers betrayed America.

Good title.

Here's the thesis.

Yeah.

Is that.

Because baby boomers was such a large bump in the population and politicians

wanted their votes, essentially, as the boomers moved through their

life cycle, the laws were changed.

So as to suit boomers at the expense of other generations, so yeah, right

down to changing the voting age and and then taxation changes that were

made when boomers were basically accumulating and earning high money,

the tax breaks were on earning.

And and now that they're cashing in, in terms of retirement and stuff,

the tax rules are benefiting them.

And it's quite an expose and essentially kind of a compelling argument that

politicians with an eye on votes, crafting legislation to suit the most number

of people, which is democracy, but it ended up favoring a particular cohort

the baby boomers the expense of others.

So that will be for another time, but on the face of it sounds reasonable

as a theory, as a hypothesis,

I'm glad you put it as the politicians decided to favor them, because I don't

feel like the baby boomer boomers as a generation just up and decided that we

are going to enact these policies because the policy politicians that, that did that

true.

But if you were to look at, mm, you know, a generation that say let's nationalize

let's, let's sell off the national assets of the, you know, The railway,

the the things that have been built up by previous generations, I will sell them.

We'll get a, a sweetener into our economy for the next two or three years,

but long term for future generations.

It's, it's a bad move, essentially.

It's a, it's a selfish move by the current generation, if you decide

to sell off the commons and, sure.

And not restrict it.

So,

so yeah, but I feel like that's applied at all times that the

commons have been sold off.

Yes.

But when the commons was the real commons, going back more into the 17, 18 hundreds,

it was more a case of, we need to protect the commons and we need to recognize

it's there for everybody and protect it and stop people encroaching on it.

Whereas in more recent times, we've lost the recognition of the commons

and going, oh, what you mean?

I can buy some cheap Telstra shares that John Howard and

Julia Gillard are selling great.

Don't worry that down the track, we won't have a telecommunications

network owned by the commons.

It'll be owned by some private enterprise.

So that's the sort of thing where you can accuse a generation of

being selfish by cashing in stuff that isn't there to cash in.

I agree.

But again, I would push back on the idea that it was just solely for the

baby boomers in that, you know, the, I would, I guess I would argue here that

you know, Reaganomics and Thatcherism privatize, everything philosophy are.

Came at a time where both the unions in the us and the, and the UK were very

strong and that was the right wing, right wing was right wing of politics,

method of, you know, killing that dragon sell those off, privatize them, make

them into, to, you know, take away that the power of those, those unions.

Yeah.

Build up a, a bunch of myths about, you know, doll, bludgers and whatever.

But like, you know, we, we saw you know, whether it's big mining leases in the

fifties and sixties up to, you know, privatized companies in the eighties

and nineties and even the two thousands.

And I guess I would argue that the, the latest one is the, the creation

of things like a carbon market where carbon certificates can be traded as if

they aren't just purely for the purpose of deferring a unit of CO2 emission.

Mm-hmm, no, there something that could, you know, increase and decrease in value.

And you know, who knows what speculators, you know, money

speculators could get out of it.

You know, all of these things are taking and you know, which are

basically, which basically start in the commons and privatizing them.

And they've been, that's suited capital very well.

Mm-hmm

I mean, who's, who seems to be.

At least wanting to do something about climate change, which

generation the older, or the younger generation, the boomers, or the

millennials.

Sure.

The, the boomers at the current, you know, sort of holder of that stick.

Yeah.

But even then, you know, I mean, my, my mom and dad grew up in that generation

and both of them are, you know, dad was mummies passionate environmentalists.

So I don't, I don't

feel like, ah, your lived experience.

Isn't an argument for,

it's just no sure.

But what I'm all I'm saying is that it is not, the boomers

are not here universally of

one mind.

No, I'm not saying they are, but you know, there are trends

that are pretty clear, so sure.

And,

and I would add that, you know, my two people that I know who I have, let's say

cease to associate with told me at one point I think when they, it was about

2013 that they were quite proud that they would had voted for Tony Abbott

because they were just about to retire.

And that would mean that the the liberal party was going to be a

better government to, to manage the economy and keep their superannuation.

Yeah.

yeah.

Like you, what you voted labor for 40 years and now you've just changed

your vote because you're hoping that the other side, do you a better deal.

It doesn't sound like you are.

It sounds like you're putting like exactly what John Howard did

right at the start of the episode.

Yes.

You know, putting political expedience, you like personal interest as at.

The forefront for Howard

and Barnaby.

It was, what's not, what's in the best interest of my party.

Not what's in the best interest of my country.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Now, moving on to column cultural Marxism, Paul.

Yes.

And why am I gonna talk about this?

Because I see it cropping up in different articles and different

news items from time to time.

So I'm gonna set the scene with some commentary about it.

So Holly Hughes to start with, it turns out Marxist, don't like being called

Marxist apparently, but we do know that in the education department, there is a

very strong, left wing Ben and anyone that denies that either doesn't have kids at

school, or aren't saying what's happening, even with the curriculum, the curriculum

is moving so far to the left these days.

We know that it's all John Kanes, if not Marxism, rather

than Adam Smith, there we go.

So Marxism John Kanes, Adam Smith, I'm

absolutely prepared to bet that she could not define Marxism at all, or

the theories of Adam Smith in and, and how they've been bastardized.

And what was the other one that she mentioned there?

Anyway I think she's a liberal Senator in Victoria, so yeah.

That's Holly Hughes.

Now another place where this has come up, let me just grab this clip is this is

the new one, NA United Australia party.

Oh, the, the single Senator.

Yes.

Senator bait, Baba mm-hmm bait.

Another Victorian let's go with Mor what are you doing in Victoria?

So, so this I'm not sure I get a feeling, this was his maiden speech, so.

Let's have a listen to this one as well.

We are witnessing the steady decline of our traditional institutions, such as

family, marriage, religion, the sanctity of life, patriotism,

borders, and education

to name a few.

This is not an accident, but rather by design radical Marxist ideology has been

marching through our institutions for some time terms like white privilege

and gender fluidity have now become commonplace.

Marxist se world as being inherently unequal, they seek to address this

apparent inequality by tearing down the very fabric of our civilization,

Sanna that somebody may be rebuilt

in their forks, utopian vision, oh vision, which would seek

to destroy the very systems that have made us one of the greatest countries

in the world and turn us into a shadow

of our former selves,