May 5, 2025 • 10 mins
Tonight on The Huddle, Josie Pagani from Child Fund and Thomas Scrimgeour from the Maxim Institute joined in on a discussion about the following issues of the day - and more!
Minister Erica Stanford is in a spot of trouble after it was revealed she sent pre-Budget announcements to her personal email before they were announced last year - one of tens of examples since she's been a Minister. Is this a good look? Should we be concerned?
Mark Mitchell has expressed interest in extending prison sentences to reduce recidivism - do we think this is the right call?
Is the Trump effect impacting elections? Speculation claims Australia and Canada voted left in response to Trump's policies. What do we make of this?
A wedding planner says the typical wedding is $87,000 these days - how much is too much?
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Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Joseph Gurney, the Huddle Child Fund CEO, and Thomas Scrimger
of the Maximum Institute. How are you two?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello?
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Are you there? Thomas? Hi, you'll like you'll like my
little reference to the Bible because you work for the
Maximum Institute.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Oh exactly, Hither it's that great to say that you're illiterate.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Thank you very much. I think that's a delay rather
maybe or maybe I just had him thinking on his
feet right there, Eric Josie, what do you think of
Erica sending himself the sending herself rather the the Gmail
account stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So, I mean, nothing bad has happened, but there is
a precedent for this, right. The reason that politicians have
their own uh you know, they don't send their their
professional emails that from their political addresses to Gmail is
because there's a risk that stuff leaks or they send it.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Because it's not into encrypted.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
But look at the signal thing, the scandal in America
with Pete heg Seth and Mike Waltzh's now lost his job.
It went I mean that it just blew up. It
was it was chaos. Right, they're sending it to journalists,
they're sending it to his wife and his brother and
so on. So the reason why you have these processes
is to protect information that might actually But.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
What I would say to you, Josie is, in the
case of the signal thing in the US, it wasn't theoretical, right,
they actually included a journal who should not have seen
any of the stuff at all. They actually included him
in war plans. This is theoretical with with Erica. As
far as we know, she's been sending herself some budget
documents about little old like five million dollars spend in
New Zealand. Who cares, yes, but it.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Starts there and next thing, you're waging war on Yemen.
You know, you've got to have the rules in place.
So Luxon does have to pull her up. But it's
not a story that lasts beyond today, not unless there's
something else that TV ands and Mikey, which.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I doubt very much. Thomas, what do you make it?
You like totally exercised by Erica is sending herself emails
to her Gmail account.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Well, I'd like to wait till I see the full
story of the details, so I don't jump the gun here.
But obviously it's not a good look. Security is really
important for cabinet ministers. We live in a world that
is not as friendly as it might have been in
the past, so that sort of discipline around data is
pretty important. So I don't know how serious it's going
(02:10):
to be, but certainly Luxon should be taking a hard
look at the decision making and security processes about government information.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
He should tell them to stop doing that. Now, what
do you think, Thomas about the idea of dealing Well, well,
I have to be honest with you, I'm disappointed that
Mike Mitchell didn't want to replace all the short sentences
with long sentences, are you, Oh, well, I.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Think sentencing is one element of the justice system. I
don't think it's the most important one. I mean, it's
probably more significant that people have a concern that they
will be caught and successfully prosecuted in the first place.
And then the second problem is that the prisons themselves
and Mean Corrections just commissioned the report a couple of
weeks back it came out, and the prisons have just
(02:52):
a profound gang influence. They run a certainly exercise a
strong amount of power in the prisons themselves. So if
that's the state of the prison and seeing people there
for a longer amount of time. Isn't actually going to
solve the problem. So I think there are kind of
other elements other than sentence lengths that could.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Be Isn't that the opposite of what Mark Mitchell has found,
Like what he's found is if you do a long sentence,
you're less likely to reoffend. It's the short sentences. There's
actually the people who stay there for a short amount
of time who are likely to go out and do
naughty things.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Again, well, that's possibly correct, but I think Mark Mitchell
doesn't have He said he's looking into this. It's not
an air type plan. This is going ahead. So certainly
it's fair enough to look at sentence lengths are a
part of the justice system and crime, you know, as
a problem that people are concerned about. But in the
(03:44):
first place, prisons aren't first and foremost about rehabilitation and recidivism.
Those are important secondary concerns. But really we should be
looking at are the sentences proportionate to the crimes, Are
the prisons working well as prisons? And then recidivism and
rehabilitation are a second conversation.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Okay, hold your thought on that, Josey, I'm gonna come
back to you after the break. I want to hear
what you've got to say. All right, you're back with
a huddle Josepiganny and Thomas Scrims. You're right, Josie, what
did you think of what Mark Mitchell said?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
He's looking at the evidence right now and he's not
making any decisions. The first thing I would say is
going to cost billions of dollars. We're already spending an
extra nine billion to make twelve billion on defense, which
I think we need to do. It's a lot of money,
so you've got to do You've got to think about
the trade offs first. That's that's going to be a
lot less money going into health to go into something
(04:32):
where the evidence is mixed. So, yes, this data coming
out saying at the moment looks like shorter sentences, you
come out and recent you do more recidivism and you
cause more crime. But that evidence is quite mixed. If
you look at the evidence around the three strike slaw,
when we had it, crime didn't go down. So people
were getting longer sentences. Crime wasn't going down. The difference
(04:52):
is the rehab, the you know, the halfway houses like
Dave Letelly's parents who run Grace amazing, right, and Howard Lee.
You know they teach people to give them skills like
driving cars. They give them.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
But not allho houses are good, Joseph.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Not all halfway has gone. But the ones that wrap
some support around them when they come out a job,
something that makes them not go back to the gangs. Right,
a job, a house, learned to drive a car with
a regal license, all of that stuff makes a real difference.
So I think, Mitch, I hope we'll look at all
of that and go where can we do that best?
And consult with Dave Letelly, consult with Shane White out
(05:29):
at Horney White to Tea who does kapahaka in the
prisons and has probably turned around more people than any
government program. So talk to those guys.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
You get it, right, johnas you reckon that there's a
trumpy pattern here and what we're seeing with the elections
and if so.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
What is it? Oh well, I think certainly in the
Canadian elections, Trump had a massive effect. The Conservative leader
Pierre Poliev can probably feel a bit hard done by.
The Canadian national identity is pretty well based around not
being the Americans. So you know, anything that had the
saintest word of Trump and they ran a mile from
(06:02):
I'm not really sure it's the same with Australia. They're
a lot further away. The tariffs aren't quite as severe
for them. Anthony Albinezi has just been elected for his
second term. You normally get a second go. And Peter
Dudden wasn't the strongest candidate. They didn't have a clear
policy vision, they weren't able to articulate that, and just
(06:23):
didn't talk about the things ordinary Australians were worried about.
And then finally he just wasn't that likable. He wasn't
a charming, charismatic figure. So media love Trump stories because
it gets clicks. It's tempting to look for it, but
it's probably a bit more boring than that Australians cared
about bread and butter issues and the Australian Liberals than
offer them something for them.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I think if you're looking for patterns, there's a lesson
there for opposition parties of any right or left that
if you go into an election thinking that arising the
polls is support for you, and not arising the polls
to say we don't like the incumbents of the government.
So that's what was happening in both Australia and Canada,
and both parties I think mistook that for support for them.
(07:04):
So when that fell away and Trump's chaos looked so
chaotic that you had voters going, I choose competence over chaos.
I choose someone who looks like they could run a corner,
daring over the nutter in the.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Way say about elections, we always say that elections are
about the economy, right, yeah, and Donald Trump, so it's
about what you got in your pocket. And Donald Trump
and all the chaos that he's causing at the moment
threatens what you've got in your pocket. It makes you
feel vulnerable. So that's the other lesson, right, So you
go from the incumbent and you go for the competent one,
as you say.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
And the lesson for Karney and Albanesi, Australian and Canada
have just suddenly won from incumbency is that people just
want you to make their lives better off. And it's
and I think for the Right that's playing the populace
card here. The lesson is, you know, people don't want woke.
They're very pleased that we're past Pete Woke. They don't
want the opposite of that. They don't want a conservative
(07:58):
gross stuff, and they don't want to sort of over
correction that I've been a conservative culture war. So they're
just sick of talking about it. And I think both
Dutton and Poliver and I'm loving all the different ways
that we're pronouncing his name, but that he campaigned as
the Trump candidate. So did Dutton. Then they tried to
walk away from that and back off and go I'm
(08:20):
not Trump, I'm not Trump. I mean, if you saw
Dutton's face when one of his candidates said make Australia
great again, and he went, oh bloody hell.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, poor old Dutton, he wasn't ever going to get elected.
I mean, you just need to look at his face. Hey, Thomas,
how much did you spend on your wedding?
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Oh well, hither I saw that this might be coming up,
and you'll be pleased to know. In the last two
and a half years, I've been to nine weddings, so
I'm a bit of a wedding attending expert at the moment.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
My agent funerals Thomas.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
So yeah, that's the other end of things. But honestly,
I heard the interview and the wedding plan of saying
kiwis or spending eighty seven thousand dollars on weddings. I
don't know that any of the weddings have been to
in the last couple of years would have spent even
half that. But I think the thing they had in
common is that they weren't hiring wedding planners to organize
(09:10):
their wedding. But I think it is interesting that people
still seem to think weddings are important. You're talking about
delaying them until after other life milestones, but people still
clearly see something in weddings and celebrating commitment, and that's
something that we should encourage.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, well, it's because it's your me, me me day,
isn't it. Joseph? What pressure?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
If you've spent eighty nine, let's call it nineteen.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
One of my lister's friends has spent ninety thousand, and
just heard him say on the radio, nobody spent that much.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Now not the happiest day of your life. I mean,
for me, my reading was a blur. I didn't eat anything.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
I hated it. It was hard work.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
And if you spent ninety k you'd be just sitting
there going. Oh my god, I'm miserable, and what happened
to the cost of living crisis?
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Guys too right, I totally agree what's going on here? Hey, guys,
thanks very much, really appreciate it. That's a huddle. Josepiguani,
Thomas Scrimer.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
For more from Hither duplessy Ellen Drive, listen live to
news talks it'd be from four p DM weekdays, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
Joseph Gurney, the Huddle Child Fund CEO, and Thomas Scrimger
of the Maximum Institute. How are you two?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello?
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Are you there? Thomas? Hi, you'll like you'll like my
little reference to the Bible because you work for the
Maximum Institute.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Oh exactly, Hither it's that great to say that you're illiterate.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Thank you very much. I think that's a delay rather
maybe or maybe I just had him thinking on his
feet right there, Eric Josie, what do you think of
Erica sending himself the sending herself rather the the Gmail
account stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So, I mean, nothing bad has happened, but there is
a precedent for this, right. The reason that politicians have
their own uh you know, they don't send their their
professional emails that from their political addresses to Gmail is
because there's a risk that stuff leaks or they send it.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Because it's not into encrypted.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
But look at the signal thing, the scandal in America
with Pete heg Seth and Mike Waltzh's now lost his job.
It went I mean that it just blew up. It
was it was chaos. Right, they're sending it to journalists,
they're sending it to his wife and his brother and
so on. So the reason why you have these processes
is to protect information that might actually But.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
What I would say to you, Josie is, in the
case of the signal thing in the US, it wasn't theoretical, right,
they actually included a journal who should not have seen
any of the stuff at all. They actually included him
in war plans. This is theoretical with with Erica. As
far as we know, she's been sending herself some budget
documents about little old like five million dollars spend in
New Zealand. Who cares, yes, but it.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Starts there and next thing, you're waging war on Yemen.
You know, you've got to have the rules in place.
So Luxon does have to pull her up. But it's
not a story that lasts beyond today, not unless there's
something else that TV ands and Mikey, which.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I doubt very much. Thomas, what do you make it?
You like totally exercised by Erica is sending herself emails
to her Gmail account.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Well, I'd like to wait till I see the full
story of the details, so I don't jump the gun here.
But obviously it's not a good look. Security is really
important for cabinet ministers. We live in a world that
is not as friendly as it might have been in
the past, so that sort of discipline around data is
pretty important. So I don't know how serious it's going
(02:10):
to be, but certainly Luxon should be taking a hard
look at the decision making and security processes about government information.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
He should tell them to stop doing that. Now, what
do you think, Thomas about the idea of dealing Well, well,
I have to be honest with you, I'm disappointed that
Mike Mitchell didn't want to replace all the short sentences
with long sentences, are you, Oh, well, I.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Think sentencing is one element of the justice system. I
don't think it's the most important one. I mean, it's
probably more significant that people have a concern that they
will be caught and successfully prosecuted in the first place.
And then the second problem is that the prisons themselves
and Mean Corrections just commissioned the report a couple of
weeks back it came out, and the prisons have just
(02:52):
a profound gang influence. They run a certainly exercise a
strong amount of power in the prisons themselves. So if
that's the state of the prison and seeing people there
for a longer amount of time. Isn't actually going to
solve the problem. So I think there are kind of
other elements other than sentence lengths that could.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Be Isn't that the opposite of what Mark Mitchell has found,
Like what he's found is if you do a long sentence,
you're less likely to reoffend. It's the short sentences. There's
actually the people who stay there for a short amount
of time who are likely to go out and do
naughty things.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Again, well, that's possibly correct, but I think Mark Mitchell
doesn't have He said he's looking into this. It's not
an air type plan. This is going ahead. So certainly
it's fair enough to look at sentence lengths are a
part of the justice system and crime, you know, as
a problem that people are concerned about. But in the
(03:44):
first place, prisons aren't first and foremost about rehabilitation and recidivism.
Those are important secondary concerns. But really we should be
looking at are the sentences proportionate to the crimes, Are
the prisons working well as prisons? And then recidivism and
rehabilitation are a second conversation.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Okay, hold your thought on that, Josey, I'm gonna come
back to you after the break. I want to hear
what you've got to say. All right, you're back with
a huddle Josepiganny and Thomas Scrims. You're right, Josie, what
did you think of what Mark Mitchell said?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
He's looking at the evidence right now and he's not
making any decisions. The first thing I would say is
going to cost billions of dollars. We're already spending an
extra nine billion to make twelve billion on defense, which
I think we need to do. It's a lot of money,
so you've got to do You've got to think about
the trade offs first. That's that's going to be a
lot less money going into health to go into something
(04:32):
where the evidence is mixed. So, yes, this data coming
out saying at the moment looks like shorter sentences, you
come out and recent you do more recidivism and you
cause more crime. But that evidence is quite mixed. If
you look at the evidence around the three strike slaw,
when we had it, crime didn't go down. So people
were getting longer sentences. Crime wasn't going down. The difference
(04:52):
is the rehab, the you know, the halfway houses like
Dave Letelly's parents who run Grace amazing, right, and Howard Lee.
You know they teach people to give them skills like
driving cars. They give them.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
But not allho houses are good, Joseph.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Not all halfway has gone. But the ones that wrap
some support around them when they come out a job,
something that makes them not go back to the gangs. Right,
a job, a house, learned to drive a car with
a regal license, all of that stuff makes a real difference.
So I think, Mitch, I hope we'll look at all
of that and go where can we do that best?
And consult with Dave Letelly, consult with Shane White out
(05:29):
at Horney White to Tea who does kapahaka in the
prisons and has probably turned around more people than any
government program. So talk to those guys.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
You get it, right, johnas you reckon that there's a
trumpy pattern here and what we're seeing with the elections
and if so.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
What is it? Oh well, I think certainly in the
Canadian elections, Trump had a massive effect. The Conservative leader
Pierre Poliev can probably feel a bit hard done by.
The Canadian national identity is pretty well based around not
being the Americans. So you know, anything that had the
saintest word of Trump and they ran a mile from
(06:02):
I'm not really sure it's the same with Australia. They're
a lot further away. The tariffs aren't quite as severe
for them. Anthony Albinezi has just been elected for his
second term. You normally get a second go. And Peter
Dudden wasn't the strongest candidate. They didn't have a clear
policy vision, they weren't able to articulate that, and just
(06:23):
didn't talk about the things ordinary Australians were worried about.
And then finally he just wasn't that likable. He wasn't
a charming, charismatic figure. So media love Trump stories because
it gets clicks. It's tempting to look for it, but
it's probably a bit more boring than that Australians cared
about bread and butter issues and the Australian Liberals than
offer them something for them.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I think if you're looking for patterns, there's a lesson
there for opposition parties of any right or left that
if you go into an election thinking that arising the
polls is support for you, and not arising the polls
to say we don't like the incumbents of the government.
So that's what was happening in both Australia and Canada,
and both parties I think mistook that for support for them.
(07:04):
So when that fell away and Trump's chaos looked so
chaotic that you had voters going, I choose competence over chaos.
I choose someone who looks like they could run a corner,
daring over the nutter in the.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Way say about elections, we always say that elections are
about the economy, right, yeah, and Donald Trump, so it's
about what you got in your pocket. And Donald Trump
and all the chaos that he's causing at the moment
threatens what you've got in your pocket. It makes you
feel vulnerable. So that's the other lesson, right, So you
go from the incumbent and you go for the competent one,
as you say.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
And the lesson for Karney and Albanesi, Australian and Canada
have just suddenly won from incumbency is that people just
want you to make their lives better off. And it's
and I think for the Right that's playing the populace
card here. The lesson is, you know, people don't want woke.
They're very pleased that we're past Pete Woke. They don't
want the opposite of that. They don't want a conservative
(07:58):
gross stuff, and they don't want to sort of over
correction that I've been a conservative culture war. So they're
just sick of talking about it. And I think both
Dutton and Poliver and I'm loving all the different ways
that we're pronouncing his name, but that he campaigned as
the Trump candidate. So did Dutton. Then they tried to
walk away from that and back off and go I'm
(08:20):
not Trump, I'm not Trump. I mean, if you saw
Dutton's face when one of his candidates said make Australia
great again, and he went, oh bloody hell.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, poor old Dutton, he wasn't ever going to get elected.
I mean, you just need to look at his face. Hey, Thomas,
how much did you spend on your wedding?
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Oh well, hither I saw that this might be coming up,
and you'll be pleased to know. In the last two
and a half years, I've been to nine weddings, so
I'm a bit of a wedding attending expert at the moment.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
My agent funerals Thomas.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
So yeah, that's the other end of things. But honestly,
I heard the interview and the wedding plan of saying
kiwis or spending eighty seven thousand dollars on weddings. I
don't know that any of the weddings have been to
in the last couple of years would have spent even
half that. But I think the thing they had in
common is that they weren't hiring wedding planners to organize
(09:10):
their wedding. But I think it is interesting that people
still seem to think weddings are important. You're talking about
delaying them until after other life milestones, but people still
clearly see something in weddings and celebrating commitment, and that's
something that we should encourage.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, well, it's because it's your me, me me day,
isn't it. Joseph? What pressure?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
If you've spent eighty nine, let's call it nineteen.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
One of my lister's friends has spent ninety thousand, and
just heard him say on the radio, nobody spent that much.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Now not the happiest day of your life. I mean,
for me, my reading was a blur. I didn't eat anything.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
I hated it. It was hard work.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
And if you spent ninety k you'd be just sitting
there going. Oh my god, I'm miserable, and what happened
to the cost of living crisis?
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Guys too right, I totally agree what's going on here? Hey, guys,
thanks very much, really appreciate it. That's a huddle. Josepiguani,
Thomas Scrimer.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
For more from Hither duplessy Ellen Drive, listen live to
news talks it'd be from four p DM weekdays, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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