Leighton Smith Podcast #283 - May 7th 2025 - Nick Cater - The Leighton Smith Podcast

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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news Talks it be
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Speaker 2 (00:27):
It be Welcome to podcasts two eighty three, May seven,
twenty twenty five. Whichever way you look at it, Australia
is in political turmoil after the election last Saturday May third.
There are numerous and plenty of theories as to why.
There's plenty of propaganda lots of it. One thing is
certain and lies. One thing is certain, it's a man

(00:49):
made problem. Question is where does it lead. Nick Cator
returns in two eighty three to help analyze how a
government with such a poor record in the first term
could nuke its opposition so decisively and what it means
to important issues, starting with free speech, taxation, defense, climate issues,
energy supply, and of course the cost of living. And

(01:13):
let's use a little common sense. The cost of living
is attached to directly to much of the aforementioned, such
as energy supply, and there is plenty to be said
about that, but just as a teaser. Here is a
letter that I received yesterday from Brian Leyland, who is
a man of vast experience in power supply. He said,

(01:35):
I've sent this letter to the editor of a newspaper.
I will be very surprised if it gets published, and
so far there is no sign of it. New Zealand
could save billions of dollars simply by following the example
of many other countries and quietly backpedal on the rash
promises that we made when we signed the Paris Agreement.
This will have no effect on the climate because anything

(01:56):
New Zealand does to reduce emissions will be swamped by
the emissions from China, India and the United States. The
carbon market costs about five hundred million dollars a year,
and axes increase the cost of transport by billions. That's
with a b of dollars. The previous government's ban on
gas exploration has left us short of gas and forced

(02:19):
us to import even more coal. This has cost electricity
consumers billions of dollars. Likewise electric vehicles and their charging points.
Then there is the multi billion dollar capital costs of
unreliable wind and solar farms. Fundamentally uneconomic industries that only
exist thanks to subsidies and mandates in many other countries.

(02:42):
The rational alternative is to use our substantial resources of
gas and coal in existing stations, build more hydro and geothermal,
and then transition to safe and reliable nuclear power. This
would provide a reliable and economic supply for the foreseeable future.
And with his experience and having read lots of background

(03:06):
on such matters, I endorse exactly what he said. We
have politicians in power at the moment who are not
delivering a staying close to home. There is another matter
that I want to make mention of. This comes from
a column by Graham Adams. Graham Adams is a freelancer
who published this through ENZCPR dot com Murial Newman's website.

(03:30):
So it's worthy of finding and reading in its entirety,
because I'm not going to read it all. Auckland University
students react to Treaty indoctrination. This year the University of
Auckland launched this is something we knew, but this is
a follow up that is a good one. This year,
the University of Auckland launched a mandatory courses focused on
a particular view of New Zealand History, a tyrrity and

(03:54):
indigenous quote knowledge systems unquote, which is to say matteunger Mary.
For all first year students, it doesn't matter whether you're
studying engineering, accounting, science or arts. You'll have to enroll
in one of the WTR papers, even if you can
see no value in the topic and object to having

(04:17):
to pay for it. Domestic students are obliged to pay
fees of more than one thousand, three hundred for the
single paper, but international students are ones being really screwed
with five thousand, seven hundred and thirty dollars well up
to Apparently it should come as no surprise, he writes
to the university's Vice Chancellor, Dawn Freshwater and her management

(04:40):
team that the courses are not universally popular. A petition
titled stop the WTR one hundred series Courses ASAP has
gained one four hundred and sixty seven signatures across multiple
faculties since it was launched in early April. The organizers
of the petition were very careful to make it clear

(05:01):
that their objection isn't to students being taught about the
treaty and the true significance of Marie history in modern
at Rower per se, but rather the execution of the
course material. Their rejection centered on student's assessments that the
content is vague, poorly structured, and disconnected to the degrees

(05:24):
from which they are enrolled in. It is oversimplified, politically
one sided, and lacking academic depths. In other words, it's nonsense. However,
students who gave their reasons for signing the petition were
more forthright. One said, the course and here have to
be a little careful. One said, the course has a
very small amount of valuable content compared to the amount

(05:47):
of BS content presented. I haven't learned, and then you
get the second half of the BS. I haven't learned
so far, and we've done almost six weeks of it.
Waste of time, waste of money, waste of resources. Never
should have been created in the first place. Others described
it as racist, brainwashing, propaganda and the growing of our

(06:09):
use and woke nonsense, with the content controlled by apartheid enthusiasts.
One female student wrote, it's just pure, unnecessarily forced indoctrination
of Marie mythicism and totally inaccurate New Zealand history, as
well as the extortion of money. Ninety nine percent of

(06:31):
students would elect to spend their course fees on a
subject they're passionate about, rather than these Marxist courses designed
to turn them into angry radicals. It is not yet
clear how many of the signatories are first year students
currently enrolled in the courses, which are tailored for different faculties,
but the university estimates around seven thousand students in total

(06:52):
will complete them this year. Descent is not limited to
the petition. Criticism is common on social media. Our one
Facebook friend contacted me to say, I wonder how long
the WT papers will continue. My son is at Auckland
Journey and he said the students are pushing back in class.
The lecturers are very defensive. I don't know how the

(07:14):
lecturers feel about it. Probably, knowing universities these days, the
majority of them would be very much in favor of it.
But I'll cut to the last paragraph. How long taxpayers
will agree to support universities which dedicate themselves to decolonization
and the overthrow of Western knowledge and boast about it

(07:34):
as Auckland University's newsletter has done is open to question.
I don't think it's going to survive. They might try
and make it so, but I don't think it will.
It isn't warranted, it's outrageously stupidly expensive, and the whole
thing is purely propaganda. Now just a reminder there is

(07:54):
some good commentary at the end of the podcast, after
the mail room, but in a moment after a short
break nick Cator. Buccolan is a natural oral vaccine in
a tablet form called bacterial licate. It'll boost your natural

(08:17):
protection against bacterial infections in your chest and throat. A
three day course of seven Bucklan tablets will help your
body build up to three months of immunity against bugs
which cause bacterial cold symptoms. So who can take buccolan well,
the whole family From two years of age and upwards.
A course of Buckelan tablets offers cost effective and safe

(08:38):
protection from colds and chills. Protection becomes effective a few
days after you take buccolan and lasts for up to
three months following the three day course. Buccolan can be
taken throughout the cold season, over winter, or all year round.
And remember, Buckolan is not intended as an alternative to
influenza vaccination, but may be used along with the flu

(08:58):
vaccination for added protection. And keep in mind that millions
of doses have been taken by Kiwis for over fifty years.
Only available from your pharmacist all ways, read the label
and users directed, and see your doctor if systems persist.
Farmer Broker Auckland Leighton Smith. So, at the point of

(09:26):
recording this conversation, the ALP in Australia has won eighty
seven seats in the Liberal National Party coalition has one
thirty nine. Damning as hell, you might say, and it is,
but things are changing a little bit, a little bit.
They're lifting Couyong is a very interesting seat. But the
real question for Nick Cata is what went wrong?

Speaker 3 (09:51):
You want to want a quick two sentence answer to that, Yeah,
and then we shall explain that. Well, I'll try and
give you one. Then what went wrong was that the
Liberals forgot how to do politics and that Labor didn't
know how to do politics. I think that's a simple thing.

(10:11):
This was not about an honest debate about policy or
anything like that. This was the most political election I've
ever seen. It was just played ruthlessly by Labor and
the Liberals just couldn't match it well.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Watching Sky News last night, and it wasn't the only time,
but the sound waves were filled with lies, lies, lies
that were told by Labor. By ALBERANIZI, you agree with
that very definitely.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
But that I think Labor and its friends would say
it's just politics. I'd say it's a distinct erosion about
civic debate and everything we hold dear. I mean, you've
got to be able to think that when a prime
minister opens his mouth, that he's actually speaking the truth
as he knows it, or some approximation of that. You know,

(11:01):
we know that they're going to cherry pick the figures
that work for them, or they might just exaggerate just
a touch in their rhetoric, well more than a touch.
But when the prime minister actually says figures, puts a
figure forward like the opposition's nuclear policy is going to
cost six hundred billion dollars, and says it not just

(11:22):
once but repeatedly, and has picked up many times being
told well, that's not actual the figure, that's not even
the figure that your own csiro are telling you. He
doesn't relent, He just does not back away from that figure.
So I'm troubled by it. Maybe I'm just being old fashioned.
And I think that we should expect politics or politicians,

(11:43):
but certainly the leader of the government to speak the
truth and if he makes a mistake or he misssteps
and he should correct himself.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
That hasn't happened. That hasn't happened. Now. He still didn't
fall off the stage.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
No, well he did once. Some of your listeners may
have seen that memorable shop where he tripped off the
back of the stage and then afterwards said no, no,
I didn't fall. I was fine, I didn't fall, And
we have the video showing he fell, but he never
admitted he even fell off the stage. But because the
irony was on election night, the entire Liberal party fell

(12:18):
off the stage and it's going to take them a
long time to get back up again.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
Well, I agree with the commentary that says they won't
be ready for retaking the reins of government by the
next election. It'll be at the earliest opportunity the one
after that. But then again, before you comment on that,
then again, you never know what's going to happen on
the planet at the moment that could change things. Is

(12:43):
that a fair comment? Yeah, you just answered your own
point for me. I mean it's just all we know
now is that, well, the only thing we can predict
with some certainty is that the next three years are
going to be less predictable than we could even imagine.
So that's just the way it goes, both in world
affairs and in politics. I mean, all the old rules.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
People used to say, well, it's a second term government,
so a government that's seeking a second term always suffers
a swing against it. And that's true going back to
World War Two, certainly probably before, but it wasn't true
this time. So there's one rule that's broken. And there
was always said, look, if you didn't get at least

(13:25):
forty percent of the primary vote, you didn't have a
hope of coming anywhere near to government.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
But that's out of the window now.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
So and it was said in going back a little
bit further, when John Howard lost the election in two
thousand and seven, lost his seat Landslide to Kevin Rudd. Oh,
the Liberals won't get him back in power for at
least two elections, nearly three, probably three or four. They
almost got back the next election. They were very close

(13:53):
that label was in a minority government, and then they
came back the one after that, so the comeback last
time was much quicker than people were predicting on election night.
I mean a lot of people have been saying I
think I heard Peter Credin say this last night. Politics
is never as bad as you think, and it's never
as good as you think. So any given moment in time,

(14:14):
you know, things are always better than what you're imagining
and not as good as you imagine in the good times.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
Was she do you think genuine with that comment or
was she just trying to paste over it? Yes?

Speaker 3 (14:33):
I think she was genuine because she's lived through enough campaigns,
many of them on the inside. Working as you know,
was a very close advice to Tony Abbott and lived
all through that campaign, both campaigns twenty ten, twenty thirteen.
Her husband is a campaign director. First election was two

(14:53):
thousand and four with John how You know, when you've
been around in this game for a while, you know,
you learn not to write anybody off or to think
anything's a dead certainty. And that's that's probably the story
of this campaign.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
I have to throw in, seeing you just mentioned John Howard.
I was literally shocked this morning at a picture I
saw in The Australian of John Howard. He's looking very old.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
Yeah, yeah he is. He is old. Are you going
to ask me his age? I never like to even
think about it.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
Ask him.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
He's one of those people you would dearly love to
be around forever because he's just got such experienced, such wisdom.
He's very well loved in the country. But he's you know,
he's like all of us. He's getting older, but his
mind is still as sharp as anything. I mean, he
still speaks brilliantly and perceptively. And you know, I had

(15:53):
a text exchange with him yesterday about an issue. He's
very much engaged and has an office here in the
center of the city center of Sydney and welcomes good
people to go around and sit in the armchair and
chat with him about this and that. He always wants
the latest political gossip. Who doesn't. So he's so much involved.
But so then the question is, well, who's the next

(16:14):
person to step up as the next a kind of
eminence careeze, you know that the sort of great wise
head behind the scenes. Probably that's Tony Abbott. He's adapting
to that role of elder statesman very well, although he's
kind of kicking against it. I think he wants to
be back in the thick of it.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Is there any reason why he shouldn't be back in
the thick of it?

Speaker 3 (16:37):
None at all, None at all, and particularly now. I
mean the only reason is that it's the logistics of it.
He'd have to find a seat that he could win.
But I think, you know, we've a lot of He've
been talking for some time, sometimes jokingly, sometimes half serious
that if he found the right seat in Western Sydney,
where you know, the area where he's very popular, he

(16:58):
could win it. It wouldn't be a certainty, of course,
but he could be back in the Parliament. And right now,
I don't think there's anybody who would stand in his
way of becoming leader again. And be a very unusual thing,
certainly post war. But before that it wasn't you know,
people came and got we came and went from politics,
didn't they, including you know, people like Winston Churchill for instance.

(17:20):
So it's not an impossible thing to imagine. He's certainly
full of vigor and energy and very very sharp.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yeah, I want to set this next question up because
I don't want to leave it, because I'm keen to
hear what you have to say, I'm talking about Couyong.
You drew our attention to Cou Young yourself a couple
of weeks back. But Monique Ryan, who is a doctor
of something to do with brains or things, what is it?

Speaker 3 (17:52):
I don't really know. I just know that her staff
tell all the volunteers you must refer to as Dr Ryan.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
It's quite pompous. You know, that's her very much so.
Having seen her behaving in an unsatisfactory way, I put
it on someone's interviewing it. On Saturday night, she assumed
that she'd won the seat again and partied. Now she's
had to back off that and admit that it's too

(18:19):
close to coll Well, we should we should locate this
in time. So we're recording this on Tuesday, I think,
and three three days after the election. Now, the processing
of postal votes is the main thing that's going on now,
and postal votes are moving very heavily in favor of

(18:40):
the liberal candidate there, Amelia Hamer, by more than two
to one. I've just looked at them just before we
cooked up, so on that trajectory, Amelia Hamer is now
in the in the front seat. Even though there's I
think about nine hundred votes separating them. She can she
can clear that up on postals, so it could be
a narrow Liberal victory, which would be a big thing,

(19:03):
you know, because you've got these independence came in a
one term ago so called community independence. But we know
that they're heavily backed by the renewable energy industry and
quite sophisticated, well organized American style operation behind them. So
but people have clonly seen through that in that seat,

(19:24):
they may even have seen through in the Seed of
gold Steam, which is another Melbourne seat where the former
member Liberal member Tim Wilson is is only ninety one
seats behind, now ninety one boats behind and postals, I
think about a lot of them to count. Yet he
would win if those postals continue to go his way.
So that's two Teals they've knocked off. On the other

(19:46):
side of it, well, there is another Teal candidate as
we call them, looks like they're going to win the
Seed of Bradfield and the north Shore of Sydney, and
one teal Ish sort of e candiac. You know, they
all have loose relationship with one another, but they're certainly
organized and funded by the same sources. There's one in

(20:07):
camera will fall to a Teal independent or a till
style independent, and the seed of fremantle in Western Australia
looks like it might go from Labor to Teal. So
they may increase their numbers in the chamber up to seven.
But the way that Parliament is with a thumping Labor majority,
they'll just be irrelevant, you know, they'll just be sort
of sitting there, biding their time and looking all perse

(20:30):
lipped and angry and behaving the way they do. What
is it about those tials that makes me think of
them in very negative terms?

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Well, I think it's more about you, your good judgment there. Look,
there's the best way I can describe it is it's
like a cult like phenomena, and they actually operate with
sort of cult like principles. So they'll get a band
of supporters together. They'll often start by saying, you know,

(21:07):
you would you like to seependent representing your community, then
come to this meeting, and then they'll build that up
and they'll say bring more followers, and they've got sort
of like ritual chants where they have to say all
these things and everybody gets worked up and excited. It's
very much like you know, a cult of some sort
of weird I don't know, Pentecostal style cult. And I

(21:27):
think that that analogy holds true because you can see
how people remain wedded to these candidates even when their
flaws are exposed, even if they've done a turning government
and it's quite apparent that they haven't done anything helpful,
and they voted seventy percent or more of the time
on the same side as the Greens. You sort to

(21:47):
go where they claim to be just a nicer shade
of liberal kind of falls away very quickly, but they're there.
And the other thing I think I'd say about them
is that it's a little bit of a misjudgment to
say that they are liberal voters on strike, as some
try and say, I mean, some try and compare them
with the DLP, which, you know, the breakaway movement from

(22:07):
the Labor Party in the fifties, which damage but most
of the DLP members were former Labor members in this case,
probably about twenty twenty five percent of them, the former
liberal members. The rest are labor people voting tactically and
Green's voters who are voting tactically, so they are to
all intents and purposes are just another shade of green.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
So moniy Ryan, would she be a standout for what
you've just described, Yeah, she's They're all that way.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
Really, they're you know, for so called independence, representing separate communities.
They are remarkably similar in their voting pattern and views
on things like say, nuclear power, to which they're staunchly opposed.
They all want more action on climate change. Well, they're
in the lucky position of never having to say what
that more is because you know, as we're seeing in

(22:59):
places like Splain in Portugal, you know, you get to
a point where you go more, we can't do more.
You know, there's no more we can do when it
comes to the energy system. So yeah, they're in that
privileged position. I think we might have said this last
time about them, but they sort of conformed to that
theory of luxury beliefs. You know, the more the more

(23:20):
wealthy you've got, then the more you've got time to
worry about things that don't worry most people, like climate
change being the big one, or transgender rights. And I
actually saw some polling in the Seed of Wentworth, which
is held held by a TiAl candidate, that showed that
if on the top three issues. Cost of living was

(23:45):
number three. Now, anywhere else in the country apart from
those wealthiest inner city seats, I guarantee you it would
be number one, two, three, four, five. You know, it
goes on and on. They weren't concerned about energy prices,
petrol prices, anything like that, you know, the sort of
things that affect people on lower incomes in other parts

(24:05):
of the country.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Well, for those who don't know, went Eth in Sydney
it's along the along the harves side, specifically, it is
it would equate to Remuera in Auckland without the well
Remure has a southern side to it, down along the motorway.

(24:28):
But take that away and you've got You've got Wentworth
and Remuera being pretty much the same, the same level
of wealth and housing. So that that that sort of
frames frames the picture. Now, somebody said to me yesterday

(24:49):
when I was having a discussion in the street, now
you've got it wrong. You've got it wrong. This this
result is really good. Can you guess why? It's sort
of fairly obvious in the end, But look, I know
it's really good.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
If you want to look at why it's it's not
the worst that could have happened. You say, well, at
least Labor was in the majority, so that means they
won't have to form a coalition with the Greens.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
That's exactly That was exactly the point.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
Yeah, I wouldn't say it's really good. Quite far from that.
They didn't get a little carried away with it, no doubt.
Meant you know, some of your listeners are welcome to
disagrutin me, but I don't think it's really good, and
I don't think it's as good of results as Labor
seems to be making out because of that primary vote.
You know that they hold twice as many seats as

(25:43):
or they will hold at least twice as many seats
as the Liberal and National Coalition, so they look like
they're in a commanding position. But wait for it. I mean,
they only got what three hundred thousand more votes out
of you know, the probably eight million votes shared between them,
So the difference in the popular vote is not matched

(26:06):
by the difference in the parliament I mean, never is completely.
But it used to be much closer than that, when
their primary vote used to match the number receipts in
Parliament's come more closely and of course, exactly the same
is happening in the UK. Maybe we should all adopt
the hair Clark system. Probably not. You know, that's the

(26:28):
problem I think for Labor because they think they've got
a commanding majority in the Parliament. But when only thirty
four percent of people vote for you, you've got to
be really appealing to people who didn't vote for you
if you want to keep in power, because they can
easily flip their votes next time. It wouldn't take much

(26:49):
for people to flip their votes and for that huge
majority to disappear. But you know the dangers You get
a bit hubristic and go too far, and that's what
Labor I think they're in danger of doing, particularly if
they get hold of the Senate, which is still a possibility.
We won't know that for a while, but they may
have control of both houses.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Just explain for us the importance of the Senate or otherwise.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
Yeah, well, I'm more and more kind of like Paul
Keating's definite explanation of it unrepresentative swill, but there's probably
a little unkind. I mean, the idea of the Senate
was like the House of Lords. It was a house
of review, it was supposed to check over, you know,
everything that came to the Lower House and just point

(27:38):
out any flaws and throw it back to them. But
eventually it would you know, the idea was it would
act like the House of Lords and would just give
way to the House of Commons.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
But would be very useful.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
I mean, I think it is a useful process to
have that legislation checked and maybe amended a bit by
the more eyes that get across it, the better. And
it was also state based, right, so every state has
has the same number of representatives, and so even Tasmania,
which has got five hundred thousand odd people, has got
as many as New South Wales we've got six or

(28:10):
seven million. So you know, it's not a one vote,
one value place in that respect. But that's because it's
supposed to respect states, but because become something else. It's
become an alternative center of power in the minds of
people there. So the acts completely without reference to the
majority in the lower House, and well, you know, it

(28:32):
doesn't sort of respect the fact that because you've got
a majority in the lower House, you know, we should
look at your legislation kindly and even though we don't
completely like it, we recognize that you have a mandate
for it. They don't do that. And now it's it's
a long time really since, I think since two thousand
and four was the last time one party had the
majority in both houses. So it's full of a bunch

(28:54):
of rap bags, independence and small parties, particularly the Greens,
who just act negatively. I mean, if you're if you're
say the Jackie Lambee party, she's from Tasmania and I
think she had two Upper House members at one stage.
She won't do now, but she got with Jackie Lambee.
You know, how are you going to make attention? How

(29:16):
are you going to how are you going to people
voted for you because they didn't want to vote for
the two major parties. You your motivation is to keep
needling the major parties. You don't want to say yes
to anything from either of them. And that's basically what
they do. They are basically the grumps and the grumblers
who who you know, pops on both your houses and

(29:41):
because that's what their voters put them in there for,
they haven't got any incentive whatsoever to be cooperative and
so they're not. And that's that's the problem. We've got
an Upper House, which is which thwarts the democratic mandate
of the Lower House constantly and waters down good legislation

(30:01):
just for silly ends. And you get people like former
rugby league players in there who have I end up
having the casting vote on say, university funding, and you
sort of think, well, you were damn good at rugby league,
but I'm not sure that that's what we want to
take your You're going to be the deciding voice on
that in the whole country.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
It seems a bit nuts. You know, Well, there are
two states that I have worked in. I've worked in more.
I've worked in four states on radio I'm talking. But
Tasmania was the first and South Australia was the second
that I want to refer to. I lasted six months

(30:43):
in both states before I got out. Are you thrown
out late?

Speaker 4 (30:49):
No?

Speaker 2 (30:50):
No, I certainly wasn't thrown out. I was. In fact,
they went overboard in Adelaide to keep me. That's another story,
but the point being that it doesn't surprise me about
Tasmania being tode Lee labor after this election. Uh. And

(31:12):
they're very big on green stuff down there too, uh.
And and South Australia isn't isn't maybe that far behind
m you.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
Say, the entire Yeah, well, the entire metropolitan region of
South Australia is now read.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
You know, we lost.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
There was some hope we win the seed of Boothby
in the in the Eastern suburbs or southeastern suburbs, and
and but we we didn't. We didn't win that having
a very good candidate and lost the seed to Sturt.
It used to be Christopher Pine's old seat if you remember,
So that's that's the last seat that they hold in

(31:53):
in in metropolitan Adelaide Mayo up in the Hills borders
with the Edge of Edgepolitan Adelaide and Adelaide Hills. That
that went to a independent some time back. So yeah,
that's the brutal truth that there are two coalition MPs
in South Australia, but they're basically the country MPs. They're

(32:14):
basically two country MPs in the South and North, the
states divided pretty neatly so that they're out of the
city and will struggle to get a toe hold back.
I suspect, but I don't know.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
I mean.

Speaker 3 (32:29):
And of course they've got a labor state government and
they have had pretty much for twenty years that they
had one term of liberal government. Wasn't very successful in between,
but they've been in power and quite a good premier
incidentally down there at Peter melanowskis So it's a labor
state top to bottom. One thing you could say about Adelaide.

(32:52):
If you look at the economy, it's very low on
private enterprise. It struggles, so you know, it's almost a
civil service town in many respects. You know, everybody, large
percentage of people either work for the government or they
get their paycheck thanks to the government if they work
in a hospital or doctor or something. So it's and

(33:15):
if you're in that position, or if you're on the
other end of the extreme, you're you know, sort of
welfare dependent person, you've no motivation to vote for the
Liberals because you know, you want the party that is
a big government party and they're the ones that keep
paying a paycheck. So you get to that threshold which

(33:35):
I think South Australia passed some time back, where it's
very hard for an enterprise orientated, free market party to
break through.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Just Center Price was on television last night and Carolyn said, well,
she commented how impressive she was and wouldn't she make
a good leader of the Liberals? And I wanted to
agree with it, but I couldn't quite what's your thought, Well,

(34:06):
it's a nice thought. For a lot of number of reasons,
it might not happen. But she's she's just tough, street
smart and common sense and well spoken. And if you
read an autobiography which came out I think just for Christmas,

(34:28):
she tells the story of her own life being brought
up in a a in a in an Aboriginal town
in the middle of the Tamini Desert, and she, you know,
a brutal place to grow up in and she suffered violence,
family violence, a lot, you know, but she remarkably managed
to pull herself out of it, thanks I think largely

(34:49):
to her mother, who was a terrific woman. So she's
lived a tough life, right, So she's the sort of
stuff they throw at you in politics. She just you know,
it's nothing for her, you know, because she's so That's
where she's really strong. Plus she's very well liked across
the country. And she was the leading voice that encouraged

(35:11):
Australians to reject the Voice to Parliament. She was dead
against it. So she's a terrific woman and.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
She's you've been interested, you should mention her because I
think one for me, one of the the turning points
of the campaign when I sort of said oh, was
when she stood up. She was there with Peter Dutton
and she said we want to make Australia great again.
And then of course all the all the all the
Trump haters and Dunton haters got in and said, oh,
you sound like Donald Trump. You're mimicking Donald Trump, and Dute,

(35:42):
who was so worried about being compared to Donald Trump's
at that point, of course, he'd become quite unpopular for
his trade measures and his and his foreign affairs. You know,
he's treated Laodamiller's Zelenski. So he backed away and everybody
backed away, and I think just Enterprise was forced to
make some sort of apology and say, well, of course

(36:03):
I didn't want to reflect Donald Trump. And I thought,
we've lost your nerve now, because if you took that
to a referendum, you know, do you want to make
Australia create again? If you could theoretically take that to
a referendum, is there any chance that would be lost?
It would be a thumping majority, so they didn't play
into that, backed away from that, would not play into

(36:26):
that nationalist rhetoric for fear of sand like Donald Trump,
that's just what we actually need right now when you've
got the Chinese gumboats off our shores and Russia threatening
to put long range aircraft in Indonesia, and you know,
we're feeling a bit exposed because we're not sure how
committed the Americans are. We'd love people to say, come on,
we're going to make Australia great. We're going to all

(36:48):
rally round, and which is the kind of rhetoric that
both candidates used in Canada. Both Polyev and Karne both
used that rhetoric and the result both of them got
a massive increase in their primary vote.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
I'm looking at a number of headlines from this morning.
Liberal Party donors threatened to pull donations after coalition loss.
Is that any surprise, No.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
I think that we'll see what the how they feel
in two years time. Certainly there was a I think
there is there is will be a lot of anger
from donors because there was a few big donors who
were giving large amounts of money because they just could
see the danger that the labor government played was what

(37:41):
was to the business community and the prosperity of the
country more generally. And so they did get behind the
Libs and they'll fill they didn't get value for money,
no doubt about that. Whether they pull their funding on
what sure, But it's threatening.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
Look, we haven't actually discussed Peter Dunton and I know
that he's being discussed all over and there are people
who are very disgusted with him. But does he does
does he deserve it?

Speaker 3 (38:12):
Well, look, there are Peter Dutton and nobody's ever pretended otherwise.
Peter Dutton has had a few difficulties to contend with
from the beginning. He didn't look great. I mean he
suffers from a certain condition which means had not only
to lose his hair, he lost his eyebrows. So he

(38:34):
looks very similar to Christopher Luxon in many ways actually so,
but you know, he's not an attractive figure he visually,
and so that is unfortunately something you have to wrestle
with in politics. And also he doesn't easily show his
true emotions, so he's not he's not. He doesn't easily

(38:56):
sort of come switch from to the emotional rhetoric very well.
So when you're when you've got that doesn't mean to
say you're unelectable, which I just think you've got to work.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
You've got to do.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
Much much better than a nominal fifty to fifty or
fifty one forty nine to get elected.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
You just have to have that extra buffer.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
So in that sense, that's that's he doesn't deserve criticism
for how he looks, but.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
It is all that it is. But it is unfortunate.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
Yeah, And nor does he deserve criticism. For most of
the three years as opposition leader, which was remarkable, he
united the party room, he got and geared up. He
got them in a position to win, and they looked
ahead of the Poles. They were ahead of the Poles
at the start of the year. So he did that.
But then the question is, of course, well how much

(39:47):
was he responsible for the rapid decline in the party's
vote from about early March onwards?

Speaker 2 (39:54):
And well, entirely.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
And I think what what happened is that he became nervous.
We hadn't seen the whites of his eyes up to
that point, but once he was in the lead, he thought, well,
I've got to hold onto this, and then became extraordinarily
cautious with policy and.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
And not not.

Speaker 3 (40:16):
Going on the attack, not not running the same negative
campaign that Labor and so that caution in the end
cost him, uh the chance to be Prime minister in
my view, because you in opposition you can't be cautious.
You just have to go out there like a whirling
dervish and just just go it, go for it, you know,
and which is what Tony Abbott was famously very good at.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
In the States. They're talking about somebody had forgotten who
it was? Now was it was it musk anyway? Big balls?
Mm hmmm, you're familiar with what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
Big balls? They think I've read that reference? They do
you care to explain it to me?

Speaker 2 (40:57):
Well, just just just not frightened of anything, just I
got the got the guts if you like. But but
that that term has been adopted now and it's being
used in you know, all sorts of newspapers and what
have you. Right, I just think that that dutn't lacked
precisely that m Yeah, we often call it mongrel. I

(41:18):
think you do too.

Speaker 3 (41:21):
Oh, Look, I think so, I think I think yeah,
I mean, clearly that's right. I mean I think he
just lost his nerve towards the end and was so
worried of things being used against him, either by labor
or the or the press, that he just went into
complete defensive mode and and didn't present policies which he

(41:42):
should have done. For instance, I mean, there was a
very strong tax reform policy sitting in his draw that
the Treasurer of Opposition, Treasurer Angus Taylor had drawn up,
and it included scrapping, well no introducing. It included indexing
of tax brackets, which is a big issue here. I

(42:04):
don't know whether it's the same in New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
But look what is now you finished, because I'll explode.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
So indexing of tax trackets obviously when you know whatever
the threshold is, say thirty five thousand to go under
the second high the second rate of tax, that never moves.
So as people earn more, you know, more and more
people are caught in high and tax rates. The government
makes a lot of money that way by not moving
the rates. But of course it's desperately unfair and people

(42:34):
know it's unfair, so they had a plan to get
rid of that. It's going to be It's not cheap,
I mean, because the government's got to take a haircut
with revenue. But they had a plan to do that
and how they do it and where they make savings.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
But that was.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
Dutton said, Look, I didn't want that, So as I
understand it, that was Dunton's call. And so Angus Taylor
just had to buy his time and and and not
put forward this what I think would have been a
very popular measure. So that's that, I think is a
sign of a leader who's lost his courage.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
That that brings me to Michael de Percy and a
column from The Spectator yesterday. Angus and Dan can save
the Liberals and the mainstream media keep banging on about
how the coalition lost because they aren't left enough. That
is absolute nonsense. The Liberals facilitated the fracturing of the

(43:29):
conservative votes by being labor liked. Every conservative knows this
is true. Conservatives don't want the Liberal Party to go left.
They want the Liberal Party to be conservative. Well, all
of that's pretty obvious, I think. But bottom line is
is Angus Taylor a prospect?

Speaker 3 (43:48):
In my view, he's the best prospect. He is the
smartest man in any room I've been in. He's rapier
sharp when it comes to economic policy and policy more generally.
He's a deep thinker. He's an Oxford man. He worked
for he doesn't have to be in policy, which I

(44:09):
guess is weighing on his mind at the moment because
he you know, he had a very very well paid
job in the private sector as a senior advisor at
the companies around the world. I mean, he could go
back to that job and be making ten times as
much money as he can make at the moment. So
one of the things I reckon would be on his
mind right now would be do I really want the
pain and that it's going to come with picking up

(44:31):
this party in opposition. But it is precisely because he's
he's a solid conservative, is from the country. You know,
he's a farming family. He's got very solid values, in
my view, about about conservative values and commitment to smaller government,

(44:53):
or at least if more efficient government, and governments that
spend within their means, you know, the sort of Thatcher
and Reagan policy. He's committed to that, and that's his
frustration is he can't you know, that's so hard in
this in this era. So but what's happened is, of
course he does have some enemies in the party who

(45:15):
are just leaking mercilessly on him now, completely unfairly and
just complete nonsense. And they're doing that because it's a
deeply factionalized party, particularly in New South Wales, a very
strong so called moderate faction which would like to do
away with a lot of policies, probably the nuclear policy

(45:37):
as well. So there's a lot at stake here and
they will fight and quite dirtily to try and smear
him with, you know, the blame for the campaign, which
is absolutely unwarranted in my view, and they'll downplay his
credentials and everything.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
But I think he's he's.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
You know, he's a sort of you know, he reminds
me of It reminds me of a Bill English. He's
that kind of guy. But he just solid very similar
law and feel to Angus's Bill English.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
That's where I put him. Bill. Bill is a good guy.
He didn't have the persona to take people with him
on many occasions. I feel as as the as the
Prime Minister, would you say that Angus Taylor was in
that category.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Yeah, probably in the same way. He'd probably got to
gotta work on that side too, just as Bill English did.
It's consequence I think of being, you know, a certain
type of person where you think quite deeply about things
and you come to a recent answer, and you you
expect everybody else to come to that conclusion too, because
other people are like five steps behind you, and you

(46:48):
need to sort of bring them on with with more
more retail language. If you like, yeah, so I've got
like I mean, he'd be my pick. I think Dan
dan Tian is. The other possibility is again you know,
he's a country MP, he's from Victoria from one and
and he's a very solid guy, quite a sharp intellect. Again, look,

(47:16):
I think they both make good candidates, but I would
have thought that Angus would be the one they turned
to if they're simply going on the basis of talent
and ability.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
So another headline from this morning that got my attention
Anthony Albanese leads a more left dominated Labor party that
will stall economic reform and the opening couple of lines,
the fundamental question must be asked, in light of Labour's
thumping victory, whether as a nation we have lost the

(47:47):
war on economic dependency. It would appear to be over
for the moment. The problem will be that once dependency
is entrenched into the political culture, the economy will eventually
bite back. The only question is when.

Speaker 3 (48:00):
Any thoughts Yeah, I think I don't know whether the
country's move that way, but certainly the Labor Party has
a so I think they've elected. I mean, I don't
know the new members that are going to make a
difference in the party room, except to have seen them
on the television. General observation that they're all quite young
and predominantly female. And what we know is that young

(48:24):
female voters are probably more likely to vote Green than
Labor actually because that's their politics, and say it will
be there. We saw it in the last parliament. We
saw it. It came to the four not so much
of economic questions as Palestine. You know, there are a
lot of people even though you know, the Labor Party

(48:45):
basically walked away from supporting Israel, there are a lot
of people that felt they hadn't done a laugh, you know,
and it should be sort of calling for international courts
to judge Israel and for genocide and all this quite
extreme view. So yeah, they're going to face that. He
will have he's on the left of the party himself,
of course, but he's going to have to put a

(49:06):
lot of effort into calming the people on the left
that want him to go even further left.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
Why do you think it's young women who I have
a theory, but why do you think it's young women
who fall into this trap with regard to matters green
and other matters like well, the Middle East. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
I'm I'm hesitant on this one because I will be
called out if I make a judgment on what young
women think, and because not a woman young women think
the same. But it's marked. I can't give you an explanation,
but it is marked. In Australian politics now the difference
between men are eighteen to twenty five and twenty six

(49:57):
to thirty four voters and women in the same categories,
just like whide divide, and the women are predominantly Green.
I mean I was out on a few polling boot
before the election and you'd sort of see a young
woman of a certain age and a certain look coming
and you just put your packet a Liberal party how

(50:19):
to vote cards away because just you knew she was
going to go to the Green candidate or Labor possibly
but almost certainly Green.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
It's just.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
So wed hazard a guess. I mean that they've been
been to university and they've been indoctrinated since since they
first went to school about some of this climate change
stuff and you know, anti colonialism and we're all living
on stolen land, all that sort of stuff that's deep
in their heads. But that doesn't account for why the men,

(50:51):
the young men voters vote differently, so that I think,
you know less inclined to vote that way.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
So it's I don't know what it is. Well, well
you you touched on them quite rightly. The education system
has a great deal to do, and they lay the groundwork,
even even into kindergarten. Uh and even even matters sexual
in kindergarten. The media is I think responsible for the

(51:22):
for the rest of it. I mean, they get taught
this stuff or presented with with what what you just
discussed in the education system, and then it gets verified
as far as they're concerned by the media. Yeah yeah,
that would be right. Yeah, yeah, that's they live.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
In in that that world, that paradigm.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
Yeah, and it may be it may be that the
young guys are more interested in other things than looking
for the meaning of life.

Speaker 3 (51:54):
Yeah, yeah, well that's right, isn't it with fast cars,
football all the rest. Yeah, okay, I get I get that.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
Yeah, this is Rob McCulloch who has a blog site.
He is a professor at Auckland University. The worst finance
minister ever Labour's grunt Robertson and now the new one
who is competing for that title, Nikola Willis, have jointly
created a fiscal crisis in New Zealand. We currently have

(52:22):
one of the most one of the worst primary fiscal
deficits in the developed world in brackets, which is government
spending minus tax revenues excluding interest costs close bracket. In
the face of an aging population, New Zealand's public debt
will start rapidly increasing above its high host pandemic levels
starting in twenty thirty, as confirmed by the IMF. He

(52:47):
then goes on the quote a fellow blog of Michael Riddell,
our current finance minister has only one plan, which isn't
a plan, cross the fingers and pray for economic growth
to pick up. We've we've got major issues.

Speaker 3 (53:03):
Also, yeah, we've got those same issues. I haven't done
a cross comparison, but but yeah, I mean, this is
this is the problem. We've had a government elected with
a mandate to spend wealth without any mandate or even
discussion about how we earn the wealth. And that's that's

(53:23):
the problem for the two countries. They labor call it
a structural deficit. You know that exactly. What's what you've
just outlined in that piece, That we're spending more than
we get in revenue, spending more than we can raise
in taxes. It's not a structural deficit. It's a government
that can't live within its means. The massive increases in

(53:44):
in welfare spending, health spending, education spending, we haven't done
that just willian nilly, without any any back up with
how we're going.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
To pay for them.

Speaker 3 (53:56):
And as a result, the one we really should be
putting more money into now defense. You know, there's limited
funds available and limited enthusiasm to spend them. So we
are in a we are in a bind fiscally, and
that's was hardly debated in the election. That's that's the trouble.
We've were talking about everything except the important things at

(54:18):
this stage, and of the two critical issues, which is
national security and the economy.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
Just in conclusion, unless you want to add anything more,
the one thing we haven't mentioned is the influence supposed
influence of Donald Trump. And they're pointing to where there's
been a reaction Canada being one, Australia being another, and
saying that Trump's ruining the ruining the world, when in

(54:46):
fact that's far from the truth. Even this morning, there
is the story on the Romanian prime minister to resign
after conservative candidate crushes coalition in do over election. It
doesn't matter that we don't know exactly what the detail is,
but the point is that the prime minister resigning has

(55:08):
every thing to do with the fact that there's a
conservative running who is a follower of Trump. That was one,
and there's another one that I can't think of hand
oh farage of course.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
Yeah, yeah, Well when you talk about, you know, doesn't
lacking the mongrel then then yeah, I mean, particularly around
January time of the inauguration, there were a lot of
people on the conservative side, So you've got to be
more like Trump, You've got to be more like Trump.
They stopped saying that once Trump's problematic side started to

(55:45):
emerge in terms of tariffs and so forth. But I
never thought that was right. I mean, Trump is fantastic
for the American context perfect for their current political malaise
and managed to break through the system as they have
it there. But because our system is not like that,
neither is yours. You know, Prime Minister can't just come

(56:06):
in and do things by decree. You know, he actually
has to negotiate with Parliament and negotiate with his own
party first and then Parliament. That's our system, and I
think I happened to think it's a better system, so
we didn't need that. But yeah, I mean, because Trump
is so demonized on the left and by the left
of course that includes most of the media that you know,

(56:28):
you Dunne was just away from the start that he
had to be distance himself from this idea or you're
going to be the next Donald Trump and America and
you're going to Americanize Australia, You're going to americanize our
health service, You're going to know, et.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
Cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
That's what the Labor was saying overtly time and time again.
It was a big part of the negative campaign. So yes,
it gave labor the ammunition I think is what happened,
and that's not Trump's full I don't think you can
blame Trump for it. I mean, presumably he's acting in
America's best interest. We can argue about, you know, whether
his trade policy is in America's best interest, but that's

(57:06):
what he's doing and he's got a mandate to do it.
He's not here to represent New Zealand's best interests or
Australia's best interests. So there's just a thing.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
All right. And finally, finally, and you've given me the
lead for this. Living standards down something like eight percent
over the first term of the Albanesi government. You mentioned
the defense spending. They got humiliated with the voice. Would

(57:34):
you agree that they're eddie free speech labor.

Speaker 3 (57:40):
Well, they've shown those tendencies. So they try to pass
this misinformation bill, which is where you'd have basically a
government official would decide if you had misinformation on your
media website or on your podcast or whatever, and could
sanction you for that.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
Now, that's very dangerous.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
I think we'd all agree, because it's who decides what's
misinformation what's not, you know, so we can't That was
just genuine movie down the road to censorship. I think
like all on the left, you know they are, they
would do whatever they could to shut up their critics,
to silence them, and will do it. So I expect

(58:21):
them to move on free speech. Yeah, the restricts free speech,
just definitely, they will and go the voice again. Well,
because they can do elements of the voice without taking
it to a referendum. There will be a lot of
pressure on them to do that from inside the party,
from the left of the party, and I think they
will do something of that nature. They will, they'll legislate

(58:43):
something which will be, you know, in total contempt of
the sixty to forty vote that we had in twenty
twenty three. So yeah, of course they're going to come out.
But I do sense actually that albanezis learned its less
to some extent and realizes that he's got to avoid
doing that Woki stuff if he wants to hold the

(59:06):
middle ground, which he has to do, and he knows
he's got to.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
Do that, right. Yeah, So I said, finally, finally, But
I'd forgotten something that I think is very important. You
are a student, have been a student of Robert Menzies.
You know him better than I do, even and I
adored him as a teenager. Robert Menzies was the founder
of the Liberal Party. Suggestions are now being made that

(59:30):
it's time to abandon the Liberal Party and start something new.
Another suggestion was, and I can't think who it was,
was that what the Liberals and especially whoever the leaders are,
need to get in and read his speeches. All of
which is good advice, of course. But if Robert Menzies

(59:51):
was here today and he was involved in this, how
would he handle it?

Speaker 3 (59:57):
Well, he's instinct. What Rob Menzies did famously in nineteen
forties and nineteen forty four was to recognize that the
sender right was just into them, you know, twenty six
twenty seven different parties, and was not going to succeed
unless it came together as one organized force. That's what
the Liberal Party was put on earth to do, and

(01:00:19):
it's been remarkably successful up to now. But so I
think his instinct would be, Look, I'm worried that we're
going that way again. You know, we've got the same
sort of fracturing of the Liberal Party or the center
right vote happening, and he'd want to bring them together,
but he'd also he wouldn't want to do that at
any cost. You know, it would have to be sure

(01:00:41):
that whoever was that they shared common values, so it
would be to define I think what he'd be looking
to do is to define those common values. And it's simple
things like we want individuals who generally we much prefer
individuals to make decisions about their own lives, and the
government we much prefer to give responsibility to individuals, and

(01:01:01):
the government to give people opportunity, to make sure every
he's got equal opportunity. I think one of the things
he'd be concerned about his housing, you want, because he
thought that central the Royal Mensis philsophy as everyody should
be able to buy their own home. So that's obviously
a problem now, so he yeah, I think he would
those central principles and they're not hard you know, it's

(01:01:22):
not it's not sort of hardline conservative, I think. But
if he looked at the modern Liberal party, I think
he would be he would be disappointed that it's lost
half of its mission. So it's like center right parties
around the world have become since that and Reagan, they've
come to think they're only there to keep the economy
in decent shape and and you know, clear up Labour's mess.

(01:01:46):
But but because that's only there's only a means to
an end, and the end is a better life for people.
It's a richer life, it's a more fulfilling life, and
it's having that sort of more rounded vision of how
we improve the lives of people that the party struggles
with that and I think that's where it has to
look to give that vision because that counters, you know,
all labour stuff that we're going to bring equality in fairness,

(01:02:09):
because it never does.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
I had I bought a copy of his autobiography Afternoon Late,
I might have said this to you on release and
I just wish I had a copy of it today.
Now this is this, This really is the end, so
as an exit Reality bites by Nick Kava Substack.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
Yes, yeah, this is a substack. I'm sure lots of
people are familiar with that. It's a very good platform
for independent writers like me to to have this say
and it's it's it's desperately democratic in that in that
anybody can go on there. You know, anybody can start
writing on there, but people will go to people. You know,

(01:02:56):
you can only build an audience of people actually like
what you're right, and you can actually also you can
ask people to subscribe, so people can be a financial
subscriber as well, you know, which is always helpful.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
And that's that's.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
Very you know, it's a very good, sobering judgment for
ride like me on how good my stuff really is.
You know, the people really prepare to read it?

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Number one?

Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
And are they actually prepared to put the hands in
the pocket and put in a bit of support for
my work as an independent journalist. And surprisingly some people
are and I'm very grateful to that. But it's where
I can pull together all my work. But you had
to come up with a title, and I thought reality
Bites is it, you know, and that's it. I want
to write about the point a bit where reality and.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
The dreams and utopian dreams.

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
Come and come collide and when you have to face
up to real world facts because that that, I think
is where we're at on the debate on the economy
and well so many of the issues we've discussed today.

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
You indicated to me privately that you wanted to spend
a bit more time in your zealment.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
Yes, well it's I'd love the country. I love the
people and the scenery and and get to know the
politics or to know where you're up to. Really, I
was there or I don't know, just over a year ago.
But the christ the government was new then and there
was lots of hope for it, and I gather things
aren't going quite so well. So yeah, yeah, it's the differences.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):
It's very similar course to Australia in some broad senses,
but quite different in many others. And I love just
finding locating those differences and asking.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Why it's only three hours away.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
Yes, indeed, indeed, I don't know. This sort of stage
in the year, as we go from autumn to winter
is really my favorite time. I'm not a skier, but
maybe when the weather picks up.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
Indeed, all right, again, you've been You've been very generous.
Thank you appreciate it. Reality bites by in the CATA.
It's very easy to find, and I suggest to you, well,
I don't. I'm telling you it's worth reading. How many
are you putting out? A couple of week A couple
of weeks, that's what I try and do.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
It's not altogether, some of them that can't be quite
as regular as I'd like to be, but a couple
of week at least is generally what I put out.
And so yeah, please go on, you can subscribe for free,
or you can you can subscribe as a special page
subscriber and get extra content.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
Beautiful Nick, thank you once again, Thank you always good
to talk to you lately. This is a producer podcast

(01:05:53):
number two hundred and eighty three. And here we are
in the mail room, and I'm going to invite you
to go first, and then I've got an announcement tomorrow.

Speaker 4 (01:06:01):
All right, late, And this is from Howard not once
but twice in podcast to eight too, you quoted a
chorus and who proclaimed that Winston Peters had been the
man for common sense for all his political life. I
do not understand why mister Peters is constantly given a
free pass for the complete and utter lack of common

(01:06:21):
sense he displayed in twenty seventeen when he appointed jasindera
durn Prime Minister and in doing so led this great
country down the gurglar. His action was, in my opinion,
completely selfish behavior, with only one thing in mind, the
rise of his own star to the detriment of New Zealand.
Conservative and right wing commentators at the time were highly

(01:06:43):
critical of Peter's but now salute him and laud his
conservative principles and common sense I may be accused of
bearing a grudge and I have been told to let
it go.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
That will never happen. I do understand that sentiment, and listen,
I understand it also, and I felt that way for
quite a long time. But things change, time passes, and
some people wrecked fire their pasts. You can say he
hasn't that he could never do it. I say, live

(01:07:15):
for the present. In the future, you have to hope
you do now from Paul, And this is very coincidental,
is as Layton just now listening to your conversation with
Nick Cata. In describing the teal elites that live on
the shores of Sydney Harbor, one can make a comparison

(01:07:35):
to the governing elites on the shores of Auckland Harbor,
Simon Wat's being a classic example. Most of them are idiots. Well,
I don't entirely disagree with what you say, especially the
most bit. But how did he hear that? And I'm
now reading his email because this has only just been recorded.

(01:07:56):
The answer is, of course that this was done after
the previous discussion I had with Nick Cata on April sixteenth,
and I hadn't picked it up, and here it is
today now. My phone went buzz just a few moments ago,
just before we started the bailroom, and I mean literally
seconds before we started the mailroom, and the headline was

(01:08:18):
Liberal Wilson reclaims Goldstein. Tim Wilson is set to reclaim
Goldstein from Teal incumbent Zoe Daniel. This was from the
Australians rolling coverage of news from Canberra and around the country.

Speaker 4 (01:08:34):
Leyden Steve says it was humbling to hear read out
so much of my RC twelve submission at the end
of two eighty two. I'm very grateful and I can
but hope that it may help open some eyes that
hitherto have been forced shut by the all pervading official narrative.
As you suggested at the end, in an ideal world,
all young people should have access to such a font

(01:08:56):
of wisdom as Ramesh. I hope the Australians appreciate how
fortunate they are to have him. He mentioned how the
establishment left is now in serious defense mode and its
efforts to counter the populist right surge across most of
the West. That's no surprise when I think of the
words of Melanie Phillips some ten to fifteen years ago,
when she explained that the Left had an unshakable faith

(01:09:20):
in its intellectual, moral, and ethical superiority. The left regards
it as an absolute responsibility to defeat any opposing views
on the basis that those views are not just wrong,
that evil. And Steve says, of course, it's the perfect
diversionary tactic. Of course, accuse your opposition of doing what

(01:09:40):
you're actually doing and late.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
It's from Steve. Steve, appreciate it. Thank you. This is
from Alan ellen Trotter, who was one of the three
authors of the two books that were published that we
did a couple of interviews on and I mentioned them
on numerous occasions on climate change. Climate Actually, Eddie writes,

(01:10:05):
and this comes to you from Johannesburg, where we currently
recover from concluding a road trip with Australian friends for
the past five weeks, including a week in Kruger National
Park and citing the Big Five of game animals almost daily,
following a seventeen night cruise on Cund's Queen Anne from

(01:10:25):
Singapore to Cape Town. I like knowing what people doing.
It sounds like a fantastic trip, doesn't that During that
time we have listened to a couple of times to
iHeartRadio to keep abreast of New Zealand news and happenings.
It seems that the Paris Accord is destined for the
scrap heap, thank the Lord in the foreseeable future, especially

(01:10:45):
with China in the Russia and the USA approximately sixty
percent of global emissions being responsible for that not being
party there too. New Zealand could well be brave enough
to act sensibly and join that scrap heap of forlorn
commitment and terminate its ridiculous commitment to that nonsense. Let's

(01:11:09):
hope so as that alone would provide much of the capital.
This is the important part. Much of the capital required
for infrastructure expenditure needed to be applied to so urgently
and thereby reduce substantially the borrowings that need to be
made because of gross errors made by labor during the
COVID period. Paris exit right now, What a great start

(01:11:33):
for our capital shortfall, that is, by exiting the Paris
Accord quick smart anyway, ell, I'm glad you're having a
great holiday, and I take.

Speaker 4 (01:11:43):
Your point, Leighton Lorna says. She says her subject is
net zero is actually and her start of her email says,
it's actually not zero. Why why doesn't our useless government
pull out of the Paris Agreement?

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
Why?

Speaker 4 (01:12:01):
She says, no one has any guts or brain anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
And that's pretty much. That's pretty much the way that
it is. From Vincent, Hey, Australia, what have you done?
I'm plumoxed. Don't need to say much more than that now.
From jin A Ramesh, the Kur is a genius. He
gave a perfect summary regarding the state of some Western

(01:12:27):
countries today, saying you've got the soft states in the
West which are engaged in an orgy of national self
abasement at all the evils of the world that are
laid at our own doors at Australia's Labor Party proved
his point by pushing the Voice and Welcome to Country
campaigns of national victimhooden penance. Yet they voted Elbow and

(01:12:50):
his lot back into power. Sky News Australia reports that
the Labor Green's control of the Senate sets up the
most progressive parliament ever. I don't get why Australians refused
to learn from us Kiwi's We had six years of
Labour Green's government from Hell under Jacinda Adern, I've got
a hand it to the progressives. They always clearly stood

(01:13:11):
for communist ideology, even the Pope. As I reflected what
Pope Francis stood for after his death, all I could
think of was his anti Trump, anti capitalism, pro LGBT,
and pro climate change stances. For all intents and purposes,
Pope Francis lived more like a modern day politician than
the head of the Roman Catholic Church. He was more

(01:13:34):
comfortable being in Davos than being in God's House. In fact,
Heather Duplicy Allen remarked that he was obviously the Pope. Thankfully,
Ramesh the Khur reminds us that there are others in
the West who still want to preserve their national identity,
take pride in their history and their contributions to human

(01:13:54):
welfare and progress, through their enlightenment, through their industrial revolution
led by fossil fuels, which have raised living standards around
the world, which have made education and better health possible,
which have made life better for all of us. The
conservative West needs to unashamedly and clearly stand for the
preservation of faith, family, community, and country, without which we

(01:14:18):
would not have the first world countries we live in today.
It's very very well stated. Jin Thank you, missus, producer,
thank you, Thank you later and see you next week
now if you'd like to write to us, of course,
latent at Newstalks AB dot co dot nz or Carolyn
Caroline with the Wide News Talks AB dot co dot nz.
Do we love getting their male.

Speaker 4 (01:14:38):
We love getting your mail guys exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
Now, let me go back to the comment I made
to Nick when we were talking about how girls and
blokes are different. If you like an attitude to what's important,
especially when you're younger, and I may mention of education
and media, and I have a very good example of it.

(01:15:12):
I didn't have it until after the interview was done,
when I just came across it. But I'm saving it
because it's it's worthy of more attention that I have
time to give it now. But there is there is
a little trial I want to follow. Bear with me.
Why did we need a This is where I want
to start. Why did we need a court of Lord
to tell us what a woman is? It's written by

(01:15:35):
Brendan O'Neil from the UK and it was published in
an Australian news in the Australian newspaper. Actually, why did
we need a court of lord to tell us what
a woman is? There was a time when every babbling
toddler knew there were men and women and that they
were different. Even our Neanderthal forebears understood sex difference. They

(01:15:55):
didn't know much, but they knew half the tribe was
made up of grunting blokes who were good with spears,
and the other half of females who might get pregnant.
It skewed by putting it, and yet in twenty twenty
five were apparently need five judges to explain what a
woman is. Ours is an age of dazzling tech that

(01:16:16):
you can ask an app on your phone to explain
the War of the Roses and traverse entire continents in
mere ours. And yet when it comes to that simplest
of queries, what is a woman? People erm and r
and say I don't know. Shall we defer to the courts?
That's been my overriding emotion following the UK Supreme Court

(01:16:36):
ruling this week that essentially it was on mid April
actually essentially says trans women are not women. I'm glad
that ruling has been made, but I'm be amused and
kind of scared that we needed it and that's all
we need from it, because it's my lead into some
other things. It's the same sort of thinking, if not

(01:16:59):
the same sort of a group of people who will
argue with you that women can be men and men
can be women and get pregnant, etc. And who, on
the other hand, will push the climate change bs and
try and enforce it on all of us. So with
that in mind, the Spanish power outage provides a very

(01:17:21):
good example. Daniel Le carl who is who is an
economist I think from memory, and who writes extremely well.
It is. On April twenty third, I participated in a
conference at the European Parliament on the future of nuclear
energy with experts from all over Europe, where I warned

(01:17:43):
that with the current energy policies, blackouts will be the norm,
not a coincidence. The shortsighted and sectarian policy of the
activists who populate the government has led us to the
worst blackout in history of Spain. We have been without
communication or electricity for nearly eleven hours. This blackout, with

(01:18:04):
the immediate collapse of fifteen gigawatts of power in the system,
is the consequence of a policy that penalizes base energy,
key to providing key to providing stability to the system,
and plunders the energy sector. Governments have been dedicated to
closing nuclear power plants, making them unviable with the abusive

(01:18:25):
and confiscatory taxation, penalizing investment in distribution with absurd regulations,
imposing a volatile and intermittent energy mix, and burning energy
with elevated taxes and administrative delays. Of what could go wrong?
He asks everything, and it happened. Renewable energies, while essential

(01:18:49):
in a balanced energy mix, cannot provide cannot provide safety
and stability due to their volatility and intermittent nature. That's
why it is essential to have a balance system with
baseload energy that operates all the time, such as hydropower,
nuclear and natural gas back up. Destroying access to nuclear

(01:19:11):
energy with unnecessary closures and confiscatory taxation has been part
of the fundamental causes of the disaster and the blackout.
Then to the mesas wire Juaqim book The Spanish Blackout
shows why the green dream is unsustainable. There are a

(01:19:34):
lot of articles like this, I've just chosen the best
couple I've come across. When the Spanish electricity grid collapsed
one ordinary Monday in late April, the dreams of renewable
energy and the green transition team died with it. On
these pages, Ryan McCann was quick to point out that

(01:19:55):
under European Green Deal type political convictions, affordability and reliability
are wait. Affordability and reliability are not important virtue of
the European electricity grid. Shoving too much odious excrement onto
a single electricity grid is bound to break. While the

(01:20:20):
story is still unfolding, and the Spanish officials have denied
that renewables were the cause of the loss in frequency
that shut down all our electricity for some sixty million
people in Spain and Portugal, several commentators and the experts
have now publicly come out and confess that the overwhelming
reliance on SOLA at the time of the blackout was

(01:20:43):
to blame. The literal gas lighting by the increasingly irrelevant
mainstream corporate media was mostly sad. Amusingly, the author of
the propaganda piece in Reuters tried to diffuse blame away
from the green deities by saying that it wasn't the
renewable energy's fault, but the renewables in the modern grid.

(01:21:07):
Then he writes, spelling it the way it sounds. Okay,
let's back up. Have you heard anything about ESG, environmental,
social and governance recently? Me neither. There was a remarkable
turnaround in the corporate use of ESG in just a
few short years, from being all encompassing, uttered by every

(01:21:28):
CEO and shoved down the throats of every employee by
every HR department, the curse of the Earth at every
sufficiently large enough company, it's all just vanished almost overnight.
Nobody cared anymore. One recent survey suggested that only seven

(01:21:49):
percent of those who were hired a couple of years
ago to work on corporate ESG are still employed to
do that today. At it all happened quietly. Matt Levine
of Bloomberg Money Stuff Fame has repeatedly hypothesized that ESG,
like so much else, was a low interest straight phenomenon.

(01:22:09):
Once rates and inflation started biting, people were quick to
abandon virtue signaling environments, social justice efforts. Here's a prediction,
in light of the Spanish disaster, the green wave or
the ominous energy transition that shoves solar panels on every
roof and blankets. The landscape with wind turbines will suffer

(01:22:32):
a similar fate. Now that's only a little way into it.
Mesis Institute is where you'll find it. But that now
leads to the ultimate. This is a trail we're following it.
After referring to the Beatles song he Comes the Sun,

(01:22:53):
Thaddeus Marcatta writes, standing with both hands extended for a
fifty million pounds squeeze of the public teat United Kingdom.
Scientists claim the sun you celebrate in song contributes to
runaway climate change, and these white robed high priests of
Perfidious Albion's climate cult have a novel idea to control

(01:23:16):
the weather and forestall the impending apocalypse dimming the sun. Apparently,
for these climate cult dimwits, sunshine on their shoulders makes
them anything but happy. Per Simon Kent's article in Writbart News,
this is not the only hair brain scheme. These liberal
dimwits at ARIA promise for someone else's money. ARIA the

(01:23:41):
Advanced Research and Invention Agency. According to the Daily Telegraph,
a host of possible options for climate control are being
considered by scientists with government approval. Alongside fifty million pounds
in taxpayer funds. Scientists are considering outdoor field trials, which
could include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere or brightening clouds

(01:24:03):
to reflect sunshine as a way to prevent runaway climate change.
Clearly the old school itinerant cloud seeders preying upon the
angst of drought riddled farmers and their small towns have
nothing on Aria at its siren song of salvation, for
they have the entire UK government on board to foot

(01:24:25):
the bill for what should be should have been named
Operation Data Less. I'm not sure I pronounced that correctly,
but I know who he is, father at Icarus, and
that is basically where I'm going to. If you're interested,
you will go to Am Greatness and find it under

(01:24:47):
the name of Stadius Marcotta, and at that point we'll
say that throws us out of the studio. For podcasts
two hundred and eighty three, it's been very enjoyable. And
if you do go and look up some of those articles,
let me know your thoughts. I think it's fairly obvious
what they will be. Why is it? Do you think?

(01:25:07):
This is a question I leave you with, Why is it?
Do you think that people like mister Watts, people like
the Prime Minister, stick their fingers in their ears and
will not listen to a bar of any alternative. But
they're corrupted pathway, so latent at Newstalks ATB dot co
dot Nz, Caroline at Newstalks ATB dot co dot Nz.

(01:25:31):
We shall be backwards two eighty four very shortly, So
thank you for listening and we'll talk soon.

Speaker 1 (01:25:44):
Thank you for more from News Talks at B Listen
live on air or online, and keep our shows with
you wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio

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Leighton Smith Podcast #283 - May 7th 2025 - Nick Cater

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Leighton Smith Podcast #283 - May 7th 2025 - Nick Cater