Leighton Smith Podcast - Best Of: James Allan - December 17th 2025

Leighton is on summer break, so we are highlighting some of his favourite guests from 2025.

The term “lawfare” is getting plenty of attention; basically it represents the corruption that’s becoming more widespread in the courtrooms of the Western world.

Judicial activism and the politicisation of the law and legal system makes for a duo of issues that need addressing by the legislatures of countries which are the targets of the misuse of such activities.

In what we think is a very productive discussion on a number of current democracy headwinds, Professor James Allan is arguably better than ever.

We share a commentary on tariffs that cuts to the core intent of Trumps actions, and we visit The Mailroom with Mrs Producer.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news talks it B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
the information, all the debates of the now the Leyton
Smith Podcast powered by news talks it B.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to what we like to call the best of
the Laton Smith Podcast, where through the summer weeks, when
so many of us are taking well deserved breaks, we
replay a few of the year's podcasts that have been
selected by a committee of one for various reasons. So
for the December seventeen week leading into Christmas, we take

(00:51):
you back to April of this year and law Professor
James Allen, law professor Professor of Law if you like,
at the University of Queensland and the subject of law fare. Well,
that subject is getting plenty of attention. Basically, it represents
the corruption that's becoming more widespread in the court rooms

(01:11):
of the Western world. Judicial activism and the politicization of
the law and legal system makes for a duo of
issues that need addressing by the legislatures of countries which
are the targets of the misuse of such activities. In
what we think is a very productive discussion on a

(01:32):
number of current democracy headwinds, Professor James Allen is arguably
better than ever now. If you've not heard this podcast before,
there is much to learn. And as I've noted on
numerous occasions over the years, listening a second or even
a third time to some podcasts, you always pick up
something that you missed on the first story, even the

(01:54):
second time around. So I trust you'll enjoy and we'll
see you at the other end. The Age of Foolishness

(02:17):
A Doubter's Guide to Constitutionalism in a Modern Democracy by
j Allen, Published in twenty twenty two, The Age of
Foolishness is a doubter's guide to current loyally thinking about
all things related to constitutionalism in a democracy. This book
offers a thorough going skeptical critique of the views that
dominate our legal cast, including in law schools and among judges,

(02:42):
and placed too much weight on judges to resolve important
social policy disputes and too little on democratic politics. The
author argues that politics matters in a way that our
legal orthodoxy often downplays, and that author, of course, is
one James Allen, who we are all familiar with. He

(03:02):
needs no more introduction than that. But I have never
bought the book or got it. I didn't know it
existed until very recently. Welcome back to the podcast. Is
it a book I should read?

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Well, I'd say things have only gotten worse since I
wrote it in twenty twenty two.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Well that should have been my real question.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Actually, I know, you just have to look at what's
happened in the US. They tried to knock out the
leading opposition figure through what I think are incredibly weak cases,
and then what's happening in Romania and knocking out the
main opposition person in France. I mean it's not good.

(03:41):
Of course, you know, no one makes money from writing
academic books, so I'm not going to get rich out
of the book. But sure, go ahead and buy it.
My mum will be happy.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
I will buy it, as ask her if she would
sign it for me please. I could call this almost
if I was giving her the title This discussion assault
on almost everything legal, because it seems to be happening
everywhere from all sorts of levels and angles. How right
am I?

Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yes, I think there's a lot to that. I mean,
there's just a I mean I'm a sort of right
a center person working in the university. There are very
very few of us, so we see what's happening early
and the sort of sustained. I think it's politics, but
let's call it cultural worldview that is being imposed on people,

(04:33):
so to some extent, not about educating anymore as much
as indoctrinating. I mean when I went to university in
Canada in the eighties. Of course, the majority of professors
back then were left leaning way a smaller percentage and
now by a lot, but they were. But they had
that old fashioned view that anyone should be able to
hear both sides of the argument, and you could write

(04:55):
a good argument up and get a good mark. And
in some ways that has gone. You know, the universities
will tell you it hasn't gone. But you discuss any
student who's actually in the universities right now, there's an
incredible level of self censorship. If you're a junior academic
and you're on the right side of the right side
of the political spectrum, many of them have to be

(05:17):
quiet if they want to get promoted. It's not a
very friendly place. You can give lots of examples. So
we see these things coming before the rest of society.
I'm actually quite buoyed by the fact that President Trump
went back in November. He's actually doing things. He's ending
all the DEI, which is very maligned. It's just a

(05:39):
form of affirmative action. And he's he's calling out the
lunacy of of some of the transgender movement, letting men
play in women's sports, so and he and and so
he's getting rid of that. And you know, putting men
who claim to be women in women's prisons even when
they're rapist. I mean, some of these things just make

(06:01):
you laugh loud. You can't satirize them. So I feel
good about that. And uh, you know, I know the
preponderance of people, even on the right side of politics
outside the US, just can't stand the man. But I
think he's doing an awful lot of good things. Well.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
At the moment, things are in a bit of turmoil.
So I'm saying, you've raised it, and we might well
revisit it. But as far as tarifs are concerned, are
you even just a little nervous?

Speaker 3 (06:31):
Well, I used to teach wto I understand comparative advantage
and free trade does up wealth, but the simple fact
is that something like ten percent of the wealthiest Americans
own somewhere between ninety and ninety three percent of stock
market wealth. The next wealthiest forty percent. So from ten

(06:51):
to fifty they own the remaining nine ten percent, and
fifty percent of Americans own nothing on the stock market.
They have debts, they have credit card. Since Trump came
in the first time in twenty sixteen, so beginning of
twenty seventeen until yesterday, so including the stock market falls
we've seen, the stock market has gone up one hundred percent.

(07:15):
If you look at American productivity over the last fifty years,
it's gone up about it's about doubled in the last
fifty years. Now in Australia and New Zealand, we'd chew
off our right arms to get that kind of productivity growth.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
We'd like we'd like'd like it any productivity growth, any exactly.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
So they've had about in over the last half century,
they've had about a doubling of productivity, but wages have
only gone up. And this is off the top of
my head of about thirty five percent. So the people
who are screaming blue murder, and I'm a conservative, but
come on, the people who are screaming blue murder have
big assets, They have big investments in the stock market.
They're used to seeing it doubled every seven or eight years.

(07:54):
And you cannot deny that the globalization has led to
working class people losing factories, losing highly paid jobs, not
seeing wages go up. And those are the people who've
it for Trump, and why he should care about the
sort of soup comparatively rich top ten percent. Now, obviously

(08:17):
everyone is affected by the stock market, but wealthy people
are affected by it a lot more. And it's no
easy task to try to get try to restructure the
world economy, which right now outsources so many things, so
many manufacturing jobs to China, and then we borrow money,
as Trump's Treasury secretary said, who's a smart guy. And

(08:40):
then we're borrowing money from these Chinese peasants so he
can buy stuff they make. Yes, yes, you know goods
are cheaper on this, But there's lots of things in
life that are more important than money. I mean, I've
got a piece of the Spectator coming out this week.
There's a lot of things I'd take a mass. I
would take a pretty hefty pay cut if I could
have a few more conservative colleagues in my law school,

(09:01):
or if we could get rid of DEI completely from
the universities, I could give you five or six things
where I would take a big pay cut, because money
is not everything. Sure, if you're going to be impoverished,
it matters, But if it's a five or ten percent
cut to get you know, higher wages for people who
have jobs that give them a bit of you know,

(09:22):
self respect, well that's what Trump's trying to do. You might
not agree with that. You might think that comparative advantage
is everything and all that matters is getting you know,
slightly cheaper goods. But the problem is on that theory,
as I always used to teach it, what happens then
is you take that wealth and then you redistribute it
to the losers, because people lose in free trade. And

(09:44):
what pretty blatantly obviously is we're not redistributing the wealth.
And you don't want to do it through government programs,
and you don't want to do it through a big bureaucracy.
You'd like people to have jobs where they just made
enough money that they had half decent. And so you know,
I'm if I were Trump, I would be doing it
in a different tone. I'd be saying, you know, I
don't want to do this, but reci property because leave

(10:06):
aside New Zealand and Australia because we are sort of
clean hands at this and Trump's terrorifts really don't make
any sense. But the EU runs much bigger trade blocks
on the US, and the US runs on them higher terraffs.
They make it impossible to import agricultural goods so they
can have you know, French farms the size of your toilet,

(10:26):
and so you know, no one, no one really can
say that the EU has smaller terraffs on the US
than the US has on them. And this sort of
talk by the EU commissioned that they'd be happy with
zero terriffs on manufactured goods, but the whole point is
they specifically won't do that on agricultural goods, and New

(10:46):
Zealand was one of the biggest losers. I mean, we
all know that the EU are thugs when it comes
to agricultural trade, and so I have I have some
sympathy with Trump. He's not elected to help the rest
of the world. I don't know Australia got a ten
percent tariff. I don't know what you guys got probably
the same. Yeah, So that's at the bottom of anything.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
And you know what, you want to know what our biggest,
biggest expote is the moment red late red meat.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
Yeah yeah, I mean, here's the problem. If you take tariffs,
American tariffs, and how they affect our economies, and you
compare that to how this bizarre religious like pursuit of
net zero affects the economy, the net zero is way
more crippling. If we got rid of net zero tomorrow
both countries, we would be wealthier. Who cares about the tariffs?

(11:34):
I mean, our electricity costs in Australia are about three
or four times what they are in some US states,
and we have the world's highest minimum wage, and we
have a labor relations system news you don't get rid
of it in the early eighties, late seventies, it's completely bizarre.
You get these two bit third party pseudo judge types

(11:55):
dictating the terms of employment contracts, and so why would
anyone invest in Australia. Then you've got red tape, you've
got green tape, you've got now black tape, which is
the word for you know, indigenous Aboriginal leaders groups basically
rent seeking and blocking projects unless you pay a sort

(12:17):
of fee, So why would anyone invest in these countries.
I don't have any worries about the US economy. I mean,
it's true that terrorists are going to hurt for a while,
but you know, the stock market today is back to
where it was what about a year ago, and it
doubled in the last eight years, so there's probably a

(12:37):
little overvalue. I mean, I don't think it's Trump's job
to look out for the rest of the for all,
it's our job, and we're doing a lousy I mean Australia.
Australia has run seven quarters of GDP per capital decline,
and that's not because of mister Trump. It's because of
both parties in Australia, and to a large extent, it's
due to the idiotic response to COVID.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
You got it in one You and I are on
exactly the same We're rowing the same bite with regard
to the fact that it's it's not Trump's duty need
to look after the rest of the world and or
America's for that, and it's got this way. I think
through vice and corruption, there's been so much there's been
so much going down behind the scenes. There have been

(13:18):
so many people who have including senior politicians in America,
who've been making fortunes out of the inside information, et cetera,
that it's time that something was done about them and
about the state that the Americans find themselves in overall

(13:40):
at the abuse end of much of the rest of
the world.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Yeah, at the end of World War Two, it made
sense for the Americans to be a market for all
of Europe and get them back on their feet. But today,
let's be honest, most of Europe spends almost nothing on defense,
and they know that the Americans are going to defend them,
and so that's a massive implicit tax on some poor

(14:04):
schmuck in Arkansas. And they also run higher sort of
restraints on trade than the Americans do. Germany just makes stuff,
and they make it really well and they export it out,
but there's all sorts of blocks again on agriculture, especially
that that is pretty hard to descend. So the EU,

(14:25):
I don't think has any hope in the trade war
against If they get into a trade war against the Americans,
the party that runs the surplus almost always loses, And
since they have a pretty hefty surplus with the US
on trade, and again that's the wrong way of looking
at it unless there's a trade war. But you can't
win if you're the party running a big surplus. I mean,
I think Trump could cripple the Europeans and overnight just

(14:48):
by seeing that there'll be a four tariff on French
wine and German cars. I don't know what that would
be the end for Germany and really bad for France.
So I don't know why they're doing that.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
I think only a non drinker could pass pass a
tariff like that on French wine.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
I have started to like the big Californian chardonnaise, like
the big buttery, oaky ones, and you guys make this
phenomenal pino noirs. I could live without French wine.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Well, I've promised you a bottle of my pino o
for ages, but I've still got it. Look, you you
mentioned so many things in that little tirade that I've
got multiple choices. Let me start with Now, let me
just say, first of all, what triggered the call for
you to do the podcast? Whilst the Tea Kung and

(15:40):
Mary nonsense that's going on in this country at the moment,
and the judiciary. But the judiciary has has the cause
in common with the Australian judiciary, the American judiciary, the
French judiciary. So it's a it's almost a universal a
universal subject. But let's start with Australia because it's caught

(16:02):
my attention over the last couple of days. Macquarie Law School,
for instance, has been in the news for a for
a little bit, imposing imposing ideology in its in its classes.
Then over this weekend you've got the story of the
radical lefts much through the institutions, written by Janet Albertson.

(16:23):
And that's one of a couple of pieces that she's
written in The Australian that are simple, that are almost
must reading. And then we get to doctor Danny Linda,
to whom you are very close.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
Well, she's in my lascoal, but she's new. So here's
the thing.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
I meant, I meant, I meant physically close, not anything.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Oh yeah, physically close. Yes, yeah, yeah, she's and to
some extent I know that some of her comments were
taken out of context, but leave her aside, let me
comment on the other ones. So there has been this
move in the last twenty years, and it's often by
hard left sort of people who had had sort of
Marxist type views about the world. You know, Marxism effectively

(17:06):
you reduce everything into the view that there's a struggle
for resources, and then you get sort of romantic about
the working class and the proletariat. I just have to
teach that stuff in Hong Kong. Well, these days old
fashioned Marxists are the best sort of lefties because they're
actually open to other people having different views. So these
days it all seems to creep out in these sort

(17:28):
of weird forms. In Australia, they're talking about indigenizing the curriculum,
and it's roughly similar in the zeal What does that
even mean? I mean, why would you take a curriculum
if you're saying a law school do we want to
have a dispute resolution process that mimics what happened in
a hunter gatherer society. I don't. And when you try

(17:51):
to ask for details, like what does it mean to
indigenize the culture? What does it mean to throw around
these these words in the Maori or some sort of
Aboriginal language, it always ends up sort of being an
attempt to say, well, we have to respect called your
X And the answer to that is, well, some things

(18:13):
we might respect and some things we don't. I mean,
I'm not going to respect dispute resolution process that involves
to king of spear in somebody. I mean, what are
we at? Where are the specifics? And they can't give
you specific because then when the courts do it, it
seems to me it's always this sort of vehicle for
imposing political outcomes. They're always left wing. I mean, do

(18:36):
you have a pretty imperial judiciary in New Zealand right
now and they never impose things that the conservative side
of politics likes. They use that Peter Ellis case disgracefully
because that was a disgrace. How we talked about this before,
but what happened to Peter Ellis was one of the
great disgraces. And after he was dead, the judges who

(18:57):
caused the problem, they were the problem with basically convicting
an innocent person, and finally they gave him a posthumous pardon.
Big deal. What good does that do him? What good
does that do his mother? They both died with no
pardon and no recognition. They should have never been convicted.
But they use that vehicle to just bring in this

(19:21):
Mallori idea that wasn't needed to give them the pardon
and to decide for them. And I mean, it's not
even clear. It's so much uncertainty and nobody knows where
the law is coming from, and effectively undermines the long established,
old fashioned notion of the rule of law. And it
basically you're left with people saying, well, you have to

(19:42):
trust the judges. I don't trust the judges. I don't
trust them at all. I mean and so, and they've
done some things that are just it just looks like
they're not bound by any past ideas of constraint. And
so when people talk about and digitizing the culture or
digitalizing the curriculum, you have to ask what do you ask?

(20:03):
What are you asking us to do? And it does
seem a highly political enterprise in the universe. These they
say you can be open minded, and they say you
don't have to agree, And this is a sort of
response you're getting in New Zealand. You don't have to agree.
You just have to be aware of these things and
you have to show a little bit of respect. But
you know, why should people show there's some elements of

(20:25):
every culture you're going to like and there's some elements
you're not going to like, and everyone's going to be different.
It shouldn't be the job of a law society or
a university or a government to tell people what they
need to respect or not respect. It sort of undermines
liberal democracy and it's very hard to argue against it
in the universe. I can do it because I've got
a chair and i'm you know, I've worked long enough

(20:48):
that I've got fu money. I was sort of like
that anyway. I've just got that temperament. But if you
have kids, or a house or a mortgage, these universities
are not friendly places to those kind of people who
want to speak out. They might not fire you, but
they'll definitely make promotions harder, and they'll make it your
life difficult. And so will tend to self censor. Students

(21:09):
learn to self censor and sorry. And that's when you
finished by saying, and it's not as though there's any
symmetry here. It's an asymmetrical game because no one says
we have to respect Western culture. You know, the culture
that gave us antibiotics and jet airplanes and the rule
of law, and you know, cross examination and trials and

(21:30):
Shakespeare and you know Churchill. If anything, they don't respect that.
So it's this weird situation where you sort of hate
the culture that's delivered you the best places to live
on earth. And then you wonder why. Douglas Murray says,
the polls are showing eighteen percent of young people would
be prepared to defend their own country. That's in the US,

(21:53):
that's in Britain. I'm sure it's the same in New
Zealand and Australia. Well, why would they defend their own
country when you've spent eleven years telling them at school
that their culture is terrible, which it's not. It's self
evidently one of the best cultures ever to have arisen,
not to say it's perfect. And so you know, the
whole thing is asymmetrical. It's I think of this book

(22:14):
that a guy are great. He's a lefty but smart
and he likes to beate. His name is Stephen Pinker.
Twenty odd years ago he wrote a book called The
Blank Slate, The Noble Savage and the Ghost and the Machine,
just taking on three ideas that are wrong. The Blank
Slate is the idea that you're born as sort of
an open book that you can just do whatever you

(22:35):
want to be and evolution has it hardwired things into
you and it's just wrong. And that's the sort of
basis we get people saying things like, oh, I was
born in the wrong body. It's not even a sensible
claim to make when you think about it. What does
it mean you're born in the wrong body? And what
does it mean that you can just sort of stand
outside of the facts that are imposed on the world

(22:56):
that you have you know, X y chromosomes, trillions of
them all through your body, and you can just announce
you're going to be a woman. You know, I'm sixty five.
If I just said no, you know what, I feel like,
I'm a seven year old. I want to go seven
year old sports. I think I could still dominate in
seven year old sports. I'm not sure anymore, but you know,
we'd all go, you're crazy. There's a fact about the world.

(23:17):
And so you know, for me that transgender stuff is not.
I don't care what people wear or how they want
to live, but you can't play you can't play girls sports.
It's got such a big advantage. So yeah, that's right.
And the Noble Savage was the idea and he lampoons.
This is the idea that hunter gatherer societies were these idyllic,

(23:38):
utopian places where everyone got along. And we know for
a fact that a third to a half of men
die violently in hunter gathered because they're competing for resources,
and women get regularly raped and brutalized, and nobody wants
to live in the hunter gatherer societies can if you
can experience a sort of western welfare state, why would you?

(23:59):
And you know that's not a criticism, that's just a
fact about the world, and the idea that there's some
sort of you know, the environment is destroyed in hunter
gather or society is because you're every day waking up
trying to get enough food to eat. So who can
blame people for destroying the environment. But again you get
these weird romantic notions of the past. The other one
about the ghost and the machine is this idea that

(24:22):
somehow there's a you that's separate from your brain. And
you know, I know that some religious people think that.
I don't. I think Pinker's right, but you know that
the pretty powerful book, and it explains a lot of
the craziness. It's people who they say they're the Party
of science. But the left isn't really you can't support
much of the transgender sort of claims and be the

(24:44):
party of science, and you can't really talk about some
of the claims being made about hunter gatherer civilizations and
be the party of science. Is we just know that
a lot of it's wrong, indeed, and it's not a judgment.
I mean I didn't. There was no merit based on me.
I won the lottery of life by being born in

(25:07):
Canada in the nineteen sixties speaking English. Already, when you
speak English, you have won the lottery of life. I
can go as a lawyer and work anywhere and all
non English speakers have to speak my language. If I'm
a scientist, I can go anywhere and speak English and
they all have to speak English or they can't get
their papers published. We have the people.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Sorry, Yeah, we have an audience. We have an audience
in Canada. We had an audience there. We have an
audience in the States. But that's not why I mentioned it.
If that was your loto win, being born in Canada
and speaking English, what was your second lot I win?

Speaker 3 (25:46):
Oh? You know, I mean I was well, I was
very lucky that my wife picked me. I'm coming up
to my fortieth anniversary coming up in a couple of months,
and you know I got I must have caught her
at a really down moment after big night out drinking,
because you know that that's the dust thing that happened

(26:08):
to me. I've just been really lucky. But leaving a side,
and you know, it's way more important to who you
married than than the jobs you pick. But leaving that aside, yeah,
getting out and we just took jobs all over. We
went first to Hong Kong before the handover, which is
one of the great four years of my life. It
was like living in a Somerset mom short story. It

(26:30):
was just magnificent. And now it's so sad. I can't eat.
I can't go back to Hong Kong. It's so sad
what's happened there. And then going I loved, we loved
our eleven years in New Zealand. I'm glad I didn't.
Actually I practiced law at a big firm and then
for a year and a bit in at the bar
in London, and being a barrister in London is actually
quite a nice sort of way to spend your life.

(26:52):
But there were all sorts of reasons. I couldn't do that,
vis the reasons and stuff being a lawyer in a
big corporate law firm, which I did for FUSE in Toronto.
You know, two hundred plus lawyers in the firm Toronto.
I didn't like it. And you know I've saw I've
never it's a fact. I mean, everyone's motivated by money
to some extent, but it's never been the main motivation

(27:13):
for me. I sort of, I just I like, I
sort of fell into working in universities when it was
really still fun. My four years in Hong Kong at
the brand new university were really fun, and the Tago
Law School from ninety three to two thousand and four
was great. I'm afraid to say it is from what
I hear, it is not the same place that I left.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Let me reassure you your hearing is.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
Right.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
But seeing you've raised it. In two thousand and ten,
I took my boy the second one. We went to Melbourne.
He got the idea that he might like to go
to Melbourne University and we went to Melbourne. There's a
whole story here, but i'll reduce it. And we arrived

(28:03):
on a day we didn't know, we arrived on a
day when it was an open It was a public holiday,
but the university was open with tours and all of that.
So we went and he decided he wanted to be
on the campus. And there's only one college on the campus,
and he gained everybody wants to go there, and he
got access, he got approved, got approved for law, and

(28:25):
he decided he wasn't going to go to Melbourne after
that because there was a clash in subjects. He wanted
to do history specifically, he loves history, and it said no,
I'm I'm going to go to a targo. And I
breathed something of a sigh of relief because even though
my father, his grandfather went to Melbourne and I had

(28:46):
cousins and uncles who were lecturers there, I would have
had to pay for it through the nose. And it's
a different story down down in Otago. Now. He was
very happy that he went to a targo and so
was I. Question is, what would you advise if it
was today that that was taking place that discussion. What

(29:08):
would your advice be?

Speaker 3 (29:10):
Yeah, I mean there's an awful lot of degrees that
universities now give which have basically a negative value. I mean,
part of the problem is we've become credential mad. There's
a lot of jobs people used to do without a
university degree, and now it's a sort of arms race
of credentials, and you need to have a degree just
to do a job that really no one with a

(29:32):
straight face thinks needs a degree. And that's partly because
governments like to say I've got fifty percent of the
young people in the university, but universities really don't really
need to cater They shouldn't be catering to fifty percent
of young And that's not a criticism of people who
don't go to university. I mean, right now in Britaine,
we're about to there's going to be huge building for

(29:52):
the twenty thirty two Olympics. They can't get any tradees.
So here's the weird thing. We cut tuition fees at university.
That's basically one of the pledges right now in the
current campaign over here. And so people who are going
into law and medicine, upper middle class kids are getting
subsidized by hairdressers and plumbers who have to pay taxes

(30:16):
to support these people. It's a moral disgrace and it's
even worse when it comes from a left wing party
because they're supposed to care about that. Well, we know
they don't, and there's a flip going on in the
political spectrum. But how you can defend cutting tuition fees
which means it's coming out of the general revenue, which
means it's coming out of taxes, And no one says, hey,

(30:39):
you know, we're going to give you a free apprenticeship.
In fact, it's really hard to do apprenticeships now because
they've so overregulated them. Or you know, these young girls
have to go and pay to go and become learn
how to be hairdressers or peutians or whatever. So the
whole world is skewed on that front, and so other
than the fact of the matter that you often need

(31:00):
a credential for employers to let you in the door.
And I think that's changing it certainly it's changing in
the US. More and more people are saying, you know,
you've gone off and done a women's studies degree, or
you know, a Aboriginal studies degree or whatever indigenous studies degree,
and you've just become you know, it's like weaponized grievance politics.

(31:22):
And I'm not sure why would you want to hire
a person like that? What you So, of course there
are some degrees that are well worth doing and they're
moderately not too political. So engineering, even engineering is being politicized,
but it's a bit harder to politicize engineering obviously if
you have numeracy. I do my first degree in math.

(31:43):
If you're good at math, you're always going to get
a job. But a lot of degrees, so I went
through and did philosophy, English history a bit along because
you do a first degree in Canada along with math.
The kind of courses I took just aren't they just
aren't offered anymore by universities very much. Well, you know,

(32:03):
we always had everyone had to do a survey course
on Western civilization. You'd sort of you know, they used
to joke about it, from Plato to Nato, and those
are great courses you learned about, you know, everybody starting
with the ancient Greeks and making your way forward. Well,
they you know, they were seen to be id idealizing
or something Western civilization. But it's not like we didn't

(32:25):
look at the flaw. I mean, everyone should read Machiavelli,
you know, everyone should read a bit of Freud, he's crazy.
But and so that's gone and history has become more well,
we don't want to look at the great men in history.
We want to look at what happened to the chambermaid
in the seventeenth So it's boring. Nobody cares. We all
know they had a terrible life. I mean, it's not

(32:46):
that difficult to use your imagination to know that ninety
nine percent of people in the fifteen hundreds of the
sixteen hundreds in the seventeen I had a pretty terrible life,
and it was worse before then. And so why why
you know? You could you could sum that up in
about half an hour. But we so. So the courses

(33:07):
are being cannibalized because the people who teach them or
teaching them in a way that no one wants to
take them, and they're collapsing. You can see in the
US that people taking the sort of humanities type courses,
the numbers are collapsing, which is a real shame. I mean,
at one point when in the nineteen eighties, half of
the CEOs on New York Stock Exchange, the S and

(33:28):
P five hundred or whatever it's called, had the philosophy degrees.
Is their first degree because it taught analytical thinking, it
taught taking arguments apart. One of the great degrees you
could have was a philosophy degree. Not now. I mean,
it's okay, but it's not what it was. So I
don't know. I think it depends what you want to do.
It's hard to give general advice.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Well, so many young people who don't know what they
want to do.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
Well, you know, we went to university without even worrying
about a job and never cried. My parents never said
anything about it. I never thought about it. He just figured, okay, well,
this is the time of life to learn go away
from That's another great thing about to Tago. At the
time you'd go away from home. Home he learned academic stuff.
You learned how to live by yourself, how to drink
the floot and the flat had to drink. And you know,

(34:15):
the Puritans have taken over the University's one of the
great rituals. I'm get in trouble reminding people of this,
but one of the great rituals every year at Otago
while I was there for eleven years, was at the
start of the Frosh week, at the beginning of the
calendar year. Academic year. One of the beer companies, off
the top of my head, I think it was Twoey's
would always buy all the billboards around campus, and the

(34:36):
billboard always said Twoey's Beer helping ugly people have sex
for you know, eighty seven years or whatever it was.
It was funny and it had an element of truth
to it. Today they would say, oh, you can't say that. Well,
you know, it's too bad because you know, the Puritans
are boring, you know, a little bit of humor in life,
because you know it's partly.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
True, well almost eradicated.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
It's been almost eradicated. And then that you know, the
university has become massively overregulated. So I don't know. Someone
told me there's like six deputy vice chancellors of the Tago.
Now when I was there, I think there was one,
and even that was too many. And in Australia, the
so this this actually unites academics on the left and

(35:21):
the right of the political spectrum. We all hate the
massively over bureaucratic universities. And in Australia the wage bill,
well well over fifty percent of the wage bill goes
to people in universities who are not teaching and not publishing.
They're administering who would run their own small business where
half the money went to people who managed the people

(35:42):
who are making the money. This is nuts, right, And
that's what we have in the universities. They have these
affirmative action things which they dress up in the language
of dei or you know, indigenous concerns or whatever, and
they have they just have these massive bodies who make
you get grants and they look for grant getting. You know,

(36:04):
these are inputs. Government gives money, the university hires all
sorts of people that help you get the money, and
then you get the money and you use the grant
to write an article. And here's the truth about universes.
I still staggered. If you had two academics who are
exactly equal and one of them wrote a great article
in the top journal in the world with no money

(36:25):
from government, no grant, and the other one, you know,
put in for this ten million dollar grant. I wrote
the exact same article. Well, the person who took no
taxpayer money would be treated as a pariat and not
get promoted. And I'm not joking about that. Because you
must get grants. Why no one can answer that because
you have to keep people who work in the universities

(36:47):
getting the grants employed is the real answer. The government
outside of the hard sciences should end. Well you did
end that. That's one good thing Watson's done. Actually they've
ended all the Marsden grants and the social sciences and humanity,
so that was a great thing. Commend I commend them
on that.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Let me go back to set a Field complaint over
teaching t kung and mari in law schools rejected. I
want your explanation for this, whatever it is. So a
Select committee this we know the story because Gary Judd
case had lodged a complaint and it went to Parliament

(37:27):
to a Select committee to be discussed and decided upon.
So a select committee has largely rejected a campaign over
regulations requiring law schools to teach students about tea kunger
in Bracket's tradition, but recommended changes based on a related concern.

(37:48):
First made public in twenty three and taking effect from
the start of this year. The regulatory changes would require
a compulsory law course on t kunga mari under the
Legal Education curriculum, as well as the inclusion of relevant
content on t kung and mari in existing compulsory courses.
Committee said requiring tea hunger be taught as a mandatory

(38:12):
part of the other subjects rather than only as a
separate compulsory course, was unusual and unexpected and should be changed.
Labor said there was no need to change it. The
Green said the compliance sorry, the complaint process was flawed,
and Act said the complaint should be upheld in full.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
Sure it didn't need you on first say a.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters supported Judge Judge's complaint instaid
teaching tea kunger was cultural indoctrination. Now why did the
committee decide the way that it did.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
Well. The political answer is because mister Luckson and the
National Party are cowards. That's the simple answer. But again,
nobody can even say what tkanga maori is. It's sort
of like indigenized in the curriculum. I mean, it's a
nifty little trick. Your top court can just sort of
bring this thing up of nowhere in the Peter Ellis case,

(39:10):
and then the lawyers can say, well, look we have
to study this because it's got actual relevance in the
legal world. Why because it's been made up by your
top judges and imposed into the system, and so they
can say, look, you just have to know this stuff,
even though you can say, well what is it, We
have to know what aspects of t tanger Maori are there.

(39:32):
I mean, I assume that no one wants to have
the sort of you know, early eighteen hundred's Maori dispute
resolution system in play. So again it always seems to
boil down to well, you know, a generous appreciation of
this culture, and again, what does that tell you about

(39:53):
how you ought to be citing things as a lawyer.
It's very hard to understand other than as a vehicle
which demands that you have this view of the world
where all cultures are equal, which I don't think is
true in any factual work course not true. And it's
also it's because it's characterized in sort of vague, morphous,

(40:16):
fluffy terms. It's a vehicle that allows you to accomplish
left wing things, never right wing things, so that you
just knew that the court, the Supreme your top court,
would would make a declaration that you have to take
the voting age down to sixteen, something that no conservative
party wants, but lots of left wing parties want. You know,

(40:37):
they would never know where they're never going to make
a declaration because lawyers and the lawyerly cast are today
far to the left of the median voter. There's tons
of empirical data on this from the US where political
donations are public information. But you know, I say this
all the time, if you went back sixty years, the

(40:58):
median voter would probably be more conservative than Sorry, the
median lawyer would be more conservative than the median voter.
Today it's a standard deviation to the left. At least
the most woo workplaces you'll find in New Zealm go
into a big Auca law firm. I mean, you better
have your pronoun sort of tattooed on your forehead. And
you know there's no humor. No, it's all left progressive.

(41:24):
You know, let's get guys in miniskirts out there playing
playing women's sports. So it's it's a weird phenomenon.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
So did how did that start to arrive at that point?
What's the first step?

Speaker 3 (41:39):
Well, here's one of the geniuses of Trump is he
manages to get the Democratic Party to take sides on
eighty twenty issues, like eighty percent of Americans think it's
crazy to have, you know, men playing women's sports or
men who identify as women playing women's sports. And yet
this is the hill that the Democrats seem to want
to die on. You just can run through the cultural issues.

(42:03):
And one of the things I don't understand we see
this here in Australia the time conservative part don't want
to fight the culture wars, whereas the culture wars are
a winning political issue, and they did pools in the US,
and the three big issues were firstly immigration, secondly pocketbook issues,

(42:24):
and thirdly cultural issues transgender issues. How the universities around
all that woke stuff DEI But in a lot of
the key states, what won it for Trump was taking
a hard line on cultural issues. And this is just obvious.
I mean, if people knew how much merit was undermined

(42:44):
in universities by that, I mean, you know, if you're
a white male, you do not have the same opportunities
for scholarships or a lot of other things that you
do if you're you know, a favored group. And then
identity politics is arbitrary. They just pick groups arbitrarily. You know,
someone's one quarter group acts and three quarters group. Why

(43:06):
why is that person group ACKs. Why aren't they group why?
No one can ever say. It's like the old you know,
pre war, pre Civil war US rule that if you
had any black blood in you, you were black. You know,
it's racist and it's bizarre, and so I don't really understand.
I know, it's a sort of utopian left wing view

(43:29):
of the world where you know, Marxism has an economic
policy was a disaster, so they've given up on that,
and they channeled it into a sort of Marxist type
view about the role of women in society or the
role of people who have mixed ancestry. So just into
our just into our in the sorry, just in the price.

(43:50):
Here in Australia, the last referendum to change the constitution
to put in a to put in a sort of
bizarre and what would have been a disastrous entrenched body
in the constitution. She was again she led the NOKA.
At one point she said, well, I'm you know, over
fifty percent Aboriginal, and I think that life for Aboriginal

(44:13):
people is a lot better since the arrival of Captain
Cook and the Brits. And in terms of life span,
she's right, and in terms of the plight of women,
there is absolutely no doubt. And in terms of your
you know, you can just go through the list of things,
but you know she was pillory. You're not allowed to

(44:35):
say that. You're not allowed to say that, you know,
this life has been better. Nobody, nobody can control how
they were born and who their parents were, and so
you get no credit for that, you get no credit
for your skin color, and you get no downside. You
have to make the best you can of it. But
pretending that a hunter gatherer lifestyle is better than living

(44:58):
in New Zealand today or you have to be almost
bonkers to believe that. And it's a bizarre form of
what Pinker called this romanticism, this utopian ideolized is romanticism
that he called the noble savage myths. And he's right,
he's right. I mean, let's just give everyone an honest
The more intermarriage the better, the more you know, nobody

(45:20):
thinks about. I mean, race is not really a defensible
scientific concept because there's there's you know, there's almost no
genetic differentiation amongst humans. I think chimpanzees have massively more
than we do, so to the extent we even talk
about race, it's not really scientific, but everyone sort of
knows what you mean in a rough and ready sense. Well,

(45:40):
we shouldn't be thinking those terms. You know, we should
be just going out and having a beer and playing golf.
And you know, whoever does the job best gets the
job because you know, you tax people and that money
goes to people at the bottom. And you know, merit,
merit is only defensible to the extent that it delivers
better outcomes, which it should when better when better qualified

(46:00):
people have jobs. So I don't really I don't like
the modern trend. I think Trump is doing a good
job in the US of fighting against it and having
some wins, and so I like that, and all the
people who don't like that can't articulate what they don't
like about it openly, right, because it's sort of laughable.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
Look, let me, because you've let me down this path again,
let me go back. And I suspect I noticed at
the beginning that you went too keen to mention Danny Linden.
But I'm going to ask you this anyway. For those
who don't know, this is a lecturer who berated students
for Indigenous legal history walkout and we well, I don't

(46:45):
know how many people have actually heard the tape I did.
It was via the Australian newspaper. And she threatened students.
She threatened students, WA's what you say and what you
do if you want to do well in a law degree.
I'll remember or I remember things, she said, I remember
your faces, those who left, and she got she got

(47:07):
quite aggressive. Now, it turns out, and I looked at
her picture with a blank, blank mind, blank brain, and
some would say that's permanent. And I thought, now, what
is her problem? She's white, she's successful. Why is she
behaving in this absurd manner. Well, it turns out that

(47:31):
she has a bit i'd say, a drop of Aboriginal
blood in her who knows, But she doesn't look anything
like an aborigine. And her attitude, I think is her
attitude is a reflection on what has gone before, in

(47:51):
the words of the Vice President of the United States
up until the election, what has gone before, whatever got
rammed into her head came from somewhere, but that's what's
led her down this particular path.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
So a lot of people don't understand you First Amendment
law of free speech. I think I'm the biggest proponent
of free speech in an antipody in university. But here's
the thing. If you worked at McDonald's and you started
taking a lunch break from your job, from your shift
with big signs out front that said I'm a vegetarian,

(48:25):
don't eat here, you would be fired. And you'll be
rightfully fired, because the one thing, your free speech ends
at the employer's door, and there's certain limits that they
can rightfully impose on you once you decide to take
the job. And so I have in print said that
Australian universities as a whole would be better run by

(48:48):
moderately numerate year eleven students, and I think that's true.
But the one thing I have never done, because I
understand American I understand free speech, I have never directly
criticized my employer, who has actually let me say whatever
I want. I don't know why, because no other conservative
gets to. So the one thing I won't do is
the sort of I'm going to take a break from

(49:08):
McDonald's now and run down the people who've employed me
in general terms outside of specifically talking about my own employer.
Universities have gone crazy. They have gone absolutely crazy, and
we know from the data again from the political donation

(49:29):
data in the US. Somebody looked trolled some guy at
Notre Dame trolled through. I think it was from twenty
eighteen to twenty twenty three, but I might have that wrong.
Looked at every person working in the US law school
to see if they gave money and if so, was
it to the Democrats and the Republicans. And I think
the ratio was thirty six to one, thirty six to one.

(49:52):
And so it's very hard for people who who have
non progressive lefty views to get jobs, especially in some departments.
I mean, law schools aren't the worst. There would be
no there would be no National Party voters on betting
and any New Zealand University Mawori department, I'd be very surprised.

(50:14):
So that's a problem. And so these sort of views
are all over the place. And I agree with you
in general terms that it's a bit odd when somebody
has a ancestry that's you know, some small percentage acts
and some large percentage y and they you know, they

(50:36):
feel that they associate themselves with the acts. I mean,
there are cases in the US of people claiming to
be black who have no black They have no Black
ancestry or Elizabeth Warren. You know, she got her first
job at Harvard by claiming to be Cherokee Indian, and
it turned out that wasn't true. And now she's a senator,

(51:00):
right and everyone knew that with the credentials she brought
to the table. The only reason that Harvard hires are
the only reason is because they thought they could tick
that she was a Native Indian. And you know she
pretends that, Well, you know, I got no advantage from this.
It turned out that if you went onto the street
and picked a random white person, that person had more

(51:21):
Native Indian blood than Elizabeth Warren. You know, it was
like one to one thousands. But she was even lower
than the average sort of Anglo American. So of course
there are all sorts of sort of incentives for people
in practical terms. And then combine that with having been

(51:41):
told at school for your whole life that you know,
Captain Cook invaded and Western culture is a bad thing.
And you know, if you look at the hunter gatherer
people who are here before, what a wonderful, idyllic utopian
life to be. How do it's just all garbage? So
you can't really blame people who get force fed this.
It's like, I don't blame our kids today. I blame

(52:03):
my generation. We're the ones who let the education system collapse.
We're the ones who let you know, Australia's teaching results
are below Kazakhstan and getting worse. They didn't do that.
We did that. We didn't. We got to go to
good schools. I went to state schools my whole life
were in grade five. I knew more grammar with Jarum's

(52:24):
and participles were than than you know, I can remember
today and I'm pretty good with grammar. But I you know, so,
so we didn't. They didn't do that. We took all
the fun out of life for them. We killed humor.
We we did all these things. We made it impossible
for kids to buy a house because of mass immigration
and because of acid and.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
Hang on, did did we through? Who are you blaming? Actually?

Speaker 3 (52:51):
Because I'm blaming our generation people who voted to the party.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
Well, you see, I still want I still can't quite
grasp that, even though I even though I bicically agree
with you, but you take Australia, take New Zealand. People
kept coming no matter who was making up the government,
whether it was leed or called or so called center right.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
Not a party political criticism by me. It was a
criticism of our political class and the sort of elites
who've made the decisions over the last thirty or forty years.
They've they've been terrible, and you know, it's a bit
like COVID. They can't ever admit they made a mistake
because well, I don't know how they'd sleep at night,
and b they'd be destroyed. So they just have to

(53:39):
pretend that that letting in you know, massive numbers is
a good idea, and they used to pretend it was
economically beneficial, right you up across domestic product but even
but lots of recent economic studies have shown unless you're
looking at highly skilled immigrants and then there is an
economic payoff for sure, but family reunification and low skilled

(54:03):
sort of people coming in and claiming refugee status, all
they some of those people are just in a massive
drag on the economy. And we now have you know,
third generation immigrant welfare families. This is none of this
is good for the local people. And again, if your
argument is, well, if we let in tons of incredibly

(54:25):
poor third world people will drive down wages, which is
what a lot of Rockefeller Republican Chamber of Commerce types
really want. You know, they can get a cheaper cleaning lady. Well,
that's not a very good argument. I mean, you should
I don't mind paying more. And I think that's the
sort of Trump appeal. He represents people now at the
bottom end. And what I think one of the things

(54:45):
is that the political spectrum around the democratic world has
sort of flipped and conservative parties basically get the working
class vote now. And that's because left wing parties used
to be Dennis Healey type redistribution of wealth parties, but
they weren't woke, and they weren't progressive on social issues,

(55:07):
and they didn't you know, have a problem with humor.
And now basically left wing parties have become the party
of human rights barristers who see international law as preferable
to domestic law, who see something tawdry. Yeah, well if
they think there's something tawdry about a plumber having the
same say in public affairs as they yet because you know,

(55:29):
they've got three degrees, and it's you know, it's very distasteful.
I've never liked it. I've always written about it. But
the more that left wing parties become the party of
the inner city progressive elites. The more the conservative parties
are just representing the sort of average working person, and
that's the majority. And that's what that's what Trump's figured out.

(55:50):
I mean, he had not a single endorsement from any
publication I think, except for the New York Post. Even
the Wall Street Journal probably didn't support him. And it
didn't matter. He got incredibly negative cover because people have
realized that the legacy media has become a sort of
left wing talking shop. It's said, and it's sad, it's sad,

(56:11):
but you don't you don't get a fair deal.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
By the way, have I noticed a swing to the lift, Well, yeah,
a swing to the lift on the part of the Australian.

Speaker 3 (56:20):
I think so. But again they occasionally published me I
should be a little careful. I think if you go
about ten or twelve thirteen years, it was Yes, I
think that's true. And where all of us are petrified
what's going to happen when Rupert Murdoch dies? Because his
kids one of them's okay, and the other ones are
pretty well, aren't they? And you know, I mean, it's

(56:42):
a very profitable business and maybe that will override their desire.
But the more the more the Murdoch Empire tried to
turn itself into a New York Times outlet, readers and
the watchers will go I think I know mister Murdoch
was trying to run a case and where was it
delaware or somewhere to get the least wokes under control

(57:05):
the UMP. I think that failed, didn't it?

Speaker 2 (57:07):
I'm not sure that. Let me as we head to
the exit door, let me let me make mention of
two things and you can trick them as short as
you want. Under the heading of married law expert says
Ta Kunger, progress in the judicial system is unstoppable. Mamari
Stephens says it'll take two decades for the two systems

(57:30):
to fuse together into a at a rower New Zealand
Law Mary Law and Ta Hunger expert Ma Mamari Stephen
says judges are looking for application to presume it's toua
tic kanga, Tua te kanga or mari law in cases
before them. Judges are looking at application of this. That

(57:55):
trend is set together momentum from next year twenty twenty five,
when the general principles and practices of ta kung and
mary become a compulsory subject in law studies. The expert says,
like the common law, it will take decades for the
two systems to fuse together into ayatiro and New Zealand law.

(58:16):
But that's how it should be. The response I'm looking
for is what will that mean for the law?

Speaker 3 (58:26):
Well, if you're asking for a prediction, she might be right,
because basically right wing parties are gutless. I mean, the
National Party should have been passing legislation to deal with this,
because you're the judges are going down this road. They've
been to law schools, they buy into this sort of
what I would call mythology. I don't again, I don't
even know what it means to say to kanga maori

(58:48):
that you take a few amorphous concepts sort of like,
I don't know, respect that sort of lingers after you die,
and you sort of you say that Peter Ellis should
have been pardoned, but you didn't need any of that,
And anyway, there's so little content to it that you're
not really sure what constraining. And the more law is

(59:10):
open ended, and the more law is unconstraining, the more
that decisions are made at the point of application by
unelected judges. You can see why judges like this because
they're going to be making the calls. And that just
means that all that matters when you appoint a judge
is whether he or she is, you know, what are
their political views. This is the American approach. And one

(59:31):
of the things with unconstrained sort of legal materials, which
I would say is true of bills of rights, but
even more true of just whatever the kanga mawori is,
is that everything becomes political at the point of applification.
And the Americans have two hundred plus years of dealing
with this and they know they have an openly political

(59:54):
appointments process. And you know, American in the in the
Westminster world, the British world, we talk about the judges
when they when they give a decision, we talk about
their judgment. The Americans talk about their opinion because they
see every thing is just an opinion, which is true.
I think. I think the American terminology judgment connotes that
they've sat down and they've had this well considered thing,

(01:00:16):
completely divorced from any subjective biases, and it's just garbage.
You know, your top court of late is imposing sort
of progressive shibbalus on on the rest of us. Well,
there's an easy way to deal with that in New Zealand,
which has no written constitution. Just pass a few statutes
and Luxon just doesn't have it in them. I mean,
I if I were New Zealand first or act, I

(01:00:40):
would be not happy with the lack of courage. But
I suppose.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
If as time goes by over the next twelve months
or so, and there was growing dissatisfaction with National, which
of those two parties the two other parties, would you
think which one of them would be the most effective?

Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
I don't know. I mean, I mean Wint Peter's when
he's good, he's good, and when he's bad he's terrible.
He should have never put just into our during in
in my view, but that despite what he got.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Admit that, because he'd never be able to sleep and
he'd have to hide his head in shame.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
So yes, yes he would. He would have to do that,
and that caused a lot of problems. And you know,
partly it was National Party incompetence. But yes, I agree
with thoughts. Uh, well, you know, I think they both
serve different markets and given you have the terrible MMP
voting system. As long as they both get in, they
those two parties should be able to work together on

(01:01:42):
at least some issues. Many. Probably the problem for the
National Party is they represent a sort of leftover wealthy types.
They don't want to pick fights or a bit cowardly.
They don't they can put their kids into private schools.
They don't care about culture issues because they you know,
they have stable, two parent families and they can talk

(01:02:04):
to the kids at home, and you know, it's not
good for the rest of us down the road. And
then when you know, a sort of maverick outlier comes
in and wins in the US, they're more they're more
horrified by Trump than they are by the complete devastation
that was brought on by Biden or just Sender or Adourn,
you know, because Trump doesn't talk like an educated person.

(01:02:26):
He's quite smart, but he does you know, he he's
somebody they can't One of the things I yeah, one
of the things I like about Trump is everything he's
doing he said he was going to do before the election.
He said he was going to bring in terrorists, he
said he was going to fight the I every single
thing he did. He's promised. Now. I don't know about you,

(01:02:47):
but for me, as a Canadian whos lived in Britain
and here and New Zealand, right of center political parties
continually promised things and then they never deliver. And so
Trump is this refreshing breath of fresh air where I said,
I'm going to do this, and I'm doing it and
if you don't like it, don't vote for me. Is
effectively the motto we used to the sort of wink wink, nudge, nudge. Yes,

(01:03:10):
we'll say a few things we're going to sort out,
you know, the the sort of group identity politics doesn't
then they get in and well, you know that's a
bit hard. We don't want to We don't want to
deal with a few radicals who might have aggressive protest
movements or something. You know, it's just it's it's it's
it's just a weakness. And the last never seems to

(01:03:32):
be the left side of politics is last week. You know,
in a way I sort of admire them. They win
and then they start doing stuff and they work.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
They reward themselves rather well for it too.

Speaker 3 (01:03:43):
Especially definitely they definitely do that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
Yeah, So last last point, uh and it doesn't have
to be long. The chief irony of Chief Justice John
Roberts tenure at the Supreme Court is that the man
so doggedly devoted to defending the judiciary has done so
much to undermine it. In doing so, he has threatened

(01:04:06):
not only the Court's legitimacy about the republic itself. Comment.

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
Yeah, I mean it started with the Obamacare case, the
Affordable Care Act, where he just changed it was going
to lose on a proper understanding of the Constitution on
federalism grounds, so he just called it a tax, even
though neither lawyer had argued it was a tax, and
in fact Obama had said it wasn't a tax because
he didn't want the judges to be seen as meddling in,

(01:04:36):
you know, a big ticket political issue over how you
deal with medicine and healthcare. And then you know, he
dissented in Daubs. That's the taste. It over ruled Roe v. Wade.
And he's always trying it seems like his judicial philosophy
is what is the most politically popular position here, and

(01:04:58):
he's very low. We don't want too many changes. But
the problem is, if you have a written constitution, I
don't like them. But if you're going to have one,
then the judge's job is to applau the rules. Now,
I'm an originalist, You're you're constrained by what was intended
by the people who passed the Constitution, and if you

(01:05:19):
don't like that, you amend the Constitution. And by being
so overtly political Roberts, he's made everyone angry and so
unfortunately on a couple of cases he's gotten the woman
Amy Barrett Coney to play along with him. We'll see
what happens. The big issue right now are these nationwide

(01:05:40):
injunctions by district court federal judges in the US. I
think there's about seven hundred of them. Then, you know,
the Democrats having lost in voting booth are so do
they look for favorable They forum shop and they find
a Democrat judge, and then the Democrat judge issues. So
this is pretty low level. This is these are district

(01:06:00):
court judges they issued nationwide injunctions. These are pretty new.
They didn't have them until about fifty or sixty years ago.
So throughout most of you history and there were more
of these injunctions issues in the first you know, month
and a half of Trump two then you saw going
back to I think Kennedy. And so if you're going

(01:06:22):
to play that kind of game, it's a very dangerous
game to play because it's it's it's pretty overtly political. Now,
the Supreme Court could have sorted that out. They had
a five to four decision on a temporary injunction, can't
remember the name of it, Missouri or something, and they
just sort of sluffed it off. They said, we can
only decide this later when it's you know, and it's

(01:06:44):
not temporary anymore. They should have sorted out right then.
I mean, it'd be quite easy just to say district
court judges cannot issue national injunctions and it has to
go to a circuit court of appeal, or you know,
they could even have the Supreme Court could say only
weekend issue nationwide injunctions. That would be fine because I
can tell you what the Republicans will learn from this.

(01:07:05):
They will learn to appoint a bunch of district court
judges so that when the Democrats are next in, the
judges block everything they try to do. And the normal
rule is that the left does things aggressively and the
right doesn't at first, and then the right does too
it's like the blocking and getting rid of the filibuster,
and any any Republican with the brain is going to say, okay,
well we'll do this too. You will get nothing through.

(01:07:29):
And it's it's there's no democratic theory in the world
that thinks it's a good idea to be able to
look around at seven hundred odd judges and find one
and they've all been appointed by Democrats to issue these
Trump blocking injunctions. At the very least, you ought to
have gone up and had a full panel of the

(01:07:50):
one of the Circuit Court of Appeals. But again, maybe
even only the U. Supreme Court should be able to
enjoin the executive because if they don't have our Westminster system,
they have a they have an overt separation of power system.
Right in the constitution. The executive is the president, so
you don't so the constitution override statutes. If the president

(01:08:12):
wants to do something that's part of the executive power,
he gets to do it. And so I'm waiting to
see what the Supreme Court was. I think that Amy
Conant Bearer will come back when it gets to be
the full non temporary injunction. And if she comes back,
then the amazing thing about Roberts is he might flip
over to you know, he doesn't like being in the minority.

(01:08:36):
I think he got pilloried a lot in Daubs. That's
you know. I think that was the right decision. Whatever
you think about abortion, nothing in the US Constitution stopped
state governments from legislating one way or another. And ironically,
after all the scaremongering, it turned out it didn't cost
Trump the election, and there are basically the same number

(01:08:57):
of abortions in the US today than there was before.
Because if you live in California, the rules have loosened,
and if you live in Mississippi they've gotten a bit tighter.
So if you're a woman Mississippi, it is true you
have to take get in the car and drive over
state lines. But that's called democracy. You know. You can't
expect every policy to go your way. I'd like I'd

(01:09:19):
like a few to go my way here in Australia,
but not getting too much going our way right now?

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
Where do you keep at it?

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
All? Right? Thank you?

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
I leave you with one thing to ponder. I'm looking
at I'm looking at the back cover of the spine
of a book on my shelf. Scalia. If Anthony Scalia
was the chief Justice of the Supreme Court, what a
wonderfully different world it would be.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
That is true, But you know what, I have moved.
I've always liked Spilia, but I now think Clarence Thomas
is even better.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
Well, guess what's next door to Scalia, Clarence Town.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
Yeah, that's a good that's a good autobiography he wrote
about himself.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
I haven't read it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:02):
You know what he made. He made a mistake at
the front cover that many many people make where they
he quote the famous line from Robert Frost. Two roads
diverged in the wood, and I took the one less
traveled by, And that has made all the difference. And
I used to think the same as everyone else that
you know, that meant you have made choices in life,
and that really affected how you played your life played out.

(01:10:24):
And my wife and I went with friends to Vermont
and hiked from ind to ind and we got to
the Robert Frost area. And it turns out when you
read the entire poem, not just the last stanza, Frost
actually was saying, it doesn't matter what choice you make,
it's all going to turn out the same. And It's
just one of those poems where when you read the

(01:10:44):
whole thing you just go, oh god, I've had this
wrong the whole time. It's quite bracing. It was quite
a clever poem by Robert Frost. It's it's a bit disappointing,
but it's clever.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
So The Age of Foolishness A Dati's Guide to Constitutionalism
in a modern Democracy. I'm going to order it's.

Speaker 3 (01:11:07):
The more the merry I can, I can keep my
wife and the lifestyle she deserves.

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
I better pay double then. All right, Jim outstanding, outstanding, great,
thank you all by.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
I think you've got to agree that the Jim Allen
is not just informative but incredibly entertaining as well, and
it's always a pleasure to have him on the podcast,
as we will continue to do so. The only thing
left to be said at this point is that missus
producer and I wish you a very merry Christmas, stay safe,

(01:12:00):
and we shall present you with another replay in well
on the twenty fourth, actually the Davy Call Christmas.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
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.