Leighton Smith Podcast #280 - April 16th 2025 - Nick Cater - The Leighton Smith Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news talks it B.
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It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
the information, all the debates of the now, the Leighton
Smith Podcast powered by news.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Talks it B.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Welcome to Podcast two hundred and eighty for April sixteen,
twenty twenty five. The Australian election on May third may
even be more important for New Zealand than our own ballot.

Speaker 4 (00:38):
Of twenty twenty six How is that?

Speaker 5 (00:41):
She might ask?

Speaker 3 (00:42):
And the response is that Australia has become not just
New Zealand's second home, but a bolt hole for hundreds
of thousands of Kiwis. The number may well be a
million or a bit more. The only realistic alternative to
those who have declared that New Zealand does not hold
their future not just an overseas experience, but a conviction

(01:04):
that the grass is greener on the other side of
the Tasman. There they're going, and there they will stay,
well maybe. Nick Cator discusses the pros and cons of
the Lucky Culture, a book that he wrote twelve years ago,
and how the outcome of the election will affect the
future unless be blunt. The Australian election so far has

(01:25):
been described as the most boring, the most tedious, the
most useless, the most unimaginative, the most unproductive election ever.
And it makes me think of that great Australian song
I still call Australia Home, And I guess how out
of date it might be, sing a songwriter who both
wrote and performed it, Peter Allen, would be churning in

(01:48):
his grave. Now, before we get to Nick Cater himself,
let me quote you something that he wrote recently April seven.
It's called beyond parody. In November of nineteen ninety seven,
Christopher Pearson speculated in a column in the Australian Financial
Review on how long the global warming panic would be last.

(02:09):
Two decades earlier, global cooling and the coming ice age
had caused similar anxiety, yet had been largely forgotten. Perhaps,
having safely negotiated the millennium, which is a major cause
of all this anxiety, we may collectively surrender to about
of unqualified optimism. He wrote that he wrote more I

(02:30):
doubt it because the appetite for catastrophe is now highly
developed and mass media delight in pandering to it. Pearson's
pessimism was well placed. The climate change narrative proved to
be exceptionally robust despite its weak empirical foundations. Only now
a quarter of the way through the twenty first century

(02:52):
and more than a decade after Pearson's untimely death, is
the global warming paradigm collapsing under the weight of its
own complexity. And after the mail room we shall continue
with Well, we'll expand on what I've just quoted with
a lot more detail. But note both climate science and

(03:14):
medical science have much to answer for, as do some
specific individuals in different areas of both.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
But in a moment. Nic Cato.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
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Speaker 4 (04:51):
Now, with the.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
Australian election in mind, back in I'm going to take
you back to twenty thirteen, twelve years ago, twelve years
ago almost to the day, when a book was released,
The Lucky Culture and the Rise of an Australian Ruling Class,
And the author of the book came to New Zealand
and I met him for the first time and we

(05:13):
did an interview and it was very good and we
have remained good contacts ever since. I want to quote
you something A bold and provocative book about Australia's national
identity and how it is threatened by the rise of
a ruling class. Nick cat, senior editor at The Australian,
tracks the seismic changes in Australian culture and outlook since

(05:36):
Donald Horn wrote The Lucky Country in nineteen sixty four.
His belief is that countries don't get lucky.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
People do.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
The secret of Australia's good fortune is not found in
its geography or history. The key to its success is
the Australian character, the nation's greatest renewable resource. The commentator
then concludes, I particularly loved Nick Kato's passion for the
great Australian dream. It is the first step in restoring

(06:05):
that dream. The author of that review was one Rupert Murdoch. Nick,
you must have been very flatted when he wrote that
for you.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Oh, yes I was. I was quite amazed that he
had time to read it.

Speaker 5 (06:17):
Really. Yes.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
He was very kind about the book and ordered a
bunch of copies that we had to send over to
New York, who was going to give to his senior executive.
So I was quite pleased about that. So I think
the book, in its way had had quite an influence
on the debate at the time.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
Now the question is, and the reason that I wanted
to quote that was in the twelve years since, what's changed,
what has happened that might have denied you the goal
that you set.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
I think I've sort of nailed it really with that
idea of the rise of a ruling class, you know,
by which I mean the people that we variously call
the elite, the anointed. You know, we got all sorts
of names for them. We haven't really glanded on a name,
and both we've come up more recently with the idea

(07:10):
that you know, they are the woke people, the woke class.

Speaker 5 (07:14):
But it's definitely there.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
And and I remember at the time when I wrote
that book twelve years ago, going on Q and A,
which is a show on the ABC and the and
the host was genuinely genuinely confused about what I meant
by the elite. He said, aren't you're a member of
the elite. Aren't you're You know I was a member
of the elite, because I'm at that stage I was

(07:36):
a senior editor at The Australian and I guess I
still have various titles classifive years the elite, because that's
that's to misunderstand what I was saying.

Speaker 5 (07:45):
It's a. It's an attitude of mine.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
It's whether you think you're there, you know you have
you have have the right to boss other people around
and tell them what to do, and tell them what's
the car they can drive, and what they need, what
kind of how many solar panels, the need to put
on their roofs, all these things that have crept into
our lives from people who have this perfect vision of
how society should be. But they've become very, very power

(08:08):
and even more much more so since I've been you know,
in the last twelve years. And it's interesting to note,
you know, I looked in the book at the big
issues at the time that were dividing the country, and
you know, there were things obviously like climate change was
a big one, the Iraq War, human rights. In the

(08:29):
terms of race relations, there was all that stuff going
on back then about the Race Relations Commissioner getting ahead
of themselves, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 5 (08:38):
But that I didn't mention in that book.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
There's no mention whatsoever of same sex marriage. And yet
that was that was to come about well, I think
five years later, but at the time twenty twelve, you
just didn't it wasn't even talked about nobody spoke about it.
The Prime minister of the day, Labor prime Minister said
they believed in traditional marriage to the foreign minister who

(09:01):
the gaff current foreign minister believed in traditional marriage. So
then one moment they all believed in traditional marriage and
the next they didn't. Their whole country sort of flipped.
So they have these kind of crusades and things which
come out of the blue and come from nowhere, and
they're always moving on to the next one.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
Do you think do you think that Obama headed anything
to do with that that change?

Speaker 2 (09:25):
He was, Yeah, I don't. I mean, I don't think.
My theory is not that they these people an individual
will influence it to the extent they'll drive it. But
they certainly empower people. You know, if Obama parmas, Obama
certainly empowered people to get quite aggressive on these kind
of issues, and that spreads the course around the globe,

(09:50):
just as Trump is empowering people in the opposite direction
now and a kind of counter revolution against that. You know,
people feel people who don't go along with this woke
nonsense feel empowered now to say so in a way
that they didn't before. Because Trump's sort of paved away,
and so it's okay, nothing happens if you just if
you state that a man and a woman at two

(10:12):
different things.

Speaker 5 (10:12):
You know, those sort of statements.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
So the title the Lucky Culture it was as you
saw at them. Would it be the same title now
were you writing it again?

Speaker 5 (10:26):
I know it wouldn't be the same title. I don't think.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
I think I've been writing much more about this division,
cultural division between the elite and the rest of the country,
which is so pronounced, and it's really the driving force
in politics now. As I said in the book, I
wrote that it was the cultural The new political dividing

(10:51):
line in the country was not left versus right in
the traditional sense. It wasn't labor versus liberal and national.
It wasn't Catholic versus Protestants as it once was in
this country. It was this division and that holds good.
That's the way people vote. And you've seen in that
seeing politics in Australia evolve to try and adjust to

(11:12):
those new lines. So you know, we had this rise
of the Teal MPs, which you might have read about
the last the last election when there were five seats
six in all because they'd lost one of the previous election,
six coalition seats, six conservative seats that were just suddenly
taken over by this new party. It is a party.

(11:33):
They style themselves as community independents, but in every way
they got their justice parties. They operate as parties, but
they are how would you describe them political terms? I mean,
the first thing to notice that they're funded largely by
the renewable energy industry, and that's two huge amounts of money.

(11:53):
But that's because they're very pro say, doing something for
the climate. But they sort of styled themselves as a
slightly nicer version of the Liberal Party. In fact, there's
something quite different than more kinder the Green Party if
you look at their voting patterns. But that's that's what's happened,
you know. It's it's the old blue collar, solid conservative

(12:14):
coalition territory in the inner metropolitan areas has just defected
from the mainstream parties, and.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
The and the and the the seats that they have
been successful in, you'd have to say, would you not
in practically every case the top end.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Oh, in every case, the top end, it's stark, It's
it's absolutely stark. So it seats well if you come
in if you if you were to come in by
boat to Sydney. I don't know any anybody does that
for New Zealand these days. But as you enter the heads,
you know, to the left and right to the north
and south, you've got Teal territory lining the harbor right

(12:56):
the way along to the city, and then it extends
up to the north up right up to Pittwater. There's
another Teal seat and so on in Melbourne, the same
in you know what was men this blue ribbon seat
of tour of Kuyon, you know around Turak and that
sort of territory that is now Teal country. And so

(13:20):
that exactly the electorates they've got. And it's interesting if
you look at the demographics, they are starkly different to
the rest of the country, largely because of their wealth.

Speaker 5 (13:30):
You know that.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Their average household wealth is probably about twice the national average.
They're very comfortably off. They don't actually drive much. They
drive a little bit, but they don't have big car
journeys to work or anything like that. They live completely
different lives in many respects. Very large number of people,
something like fifty percent or up to fifty percent own

(13:52):
their own home outright, and there's only about twenty five
percent on a mortgage, so they have quite a different life.
And you can imagine what we've been through recently with
rising interest rates. They've been largely untouched. You know, there's
no household recession happening in those parts of Australia. They're
completely out of touch. The very people I described in
my book, you know, the sort of strangers in their

(14:13):
own country in a way, but they don't know that
there's things that they are Australia. They think the rest
of Australia thinks the way that they do, because it doesn't.
It thinks in a very different way. Well let's get
to that well shortly.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
But you mentioned Coujong and you mentioned Mensis, the Prime
minister who established the Liberal Party, which is supposedly the
equivalent of National here. But there are differences that well
we won't waste time on. But what popped into my
head when I heard you mentioned both those names, Coujong

(14:50):
and Mensis, how do you because you've done a lot
of work on Mensis, how would he react today to
well to the teals.

Speaker 5 (15:00):
Well, yeah, it's a very interesting question.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
I've never addressed that I'm going to now though, and
maybe there's a basis for a column in this he well,
Mensi's Mensi's great strength was political strength was his appeal
to what he called the forgotten people. And and they're
you know, they're they're the middle class people, hard working
people most of them, but not particularly wealthy and not

(15:26):
not particularly poor. They're just people that want their kids
to do well at school and build themselves a better life.
Their their homeowners, and Men's has made them homeowners, homeowning.
Home ownership went up dramatically under his goal, because under
his years, because he saw that as a vital part
of a stable society and making families prosperous. So yeah,

(15:49):
so he's supporting those people. Well, he's the people that
we're talking about who now occupy Kuyong and these suburbs.
And not exactly those people for the most part, you know,
they are they are the wealthy ones. Mensis described some,
you know, the sort of upper class or the wealthy
class in his famous Forgotten People's speech as people that's

(16:11):
not what the Liberal Party is for, because they are
pretty they can look after themselves. They don't need, you know,
a government to to speak to come out and speak
and do things on their behalf. They can get on
with life, just as the trade unions could.

Speaker 5 (16:28):
His views.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
So the middle the middle class come in the middle
of that, and these are the very people that have
been dispossessed. So I think he might be quite appalled
at some of the attitudes of the teals and their
their sneering approach to ordinary people, and how they condemn
them because they don't you pack the right things in
the lunch boxes, and you know, they they don't drive

(16:51):
electric cars, and so he would he would find that
are wrong, because men's at the heart of Mensis. The
key to understanding Mensis is really the Christian Gospel. Although
he didn't he wasn't a God bother in the sense
he didn't talk, you know, shake people believing in God
or anything like that. But he was deeply Christian and

(17:12):
he believed that everybody was equal before God. And the
translation of that in politics is everybody deserves equal respect,
everybody deserves a fair go. And that's an expression which
we talked about so much. When I first came to
Australia in nineteen eighty nine, knew about what a fair
go was. You hardly hear that expression. These days. But

(17:33):
that's at the basis of how Australians used to treat
one another as just a matter of course, that everybody
deserved a fair go, and you didn't judge somebody just
simply because they were, you know, they had a lowly
job or they were down on their life. You said
a low to them and you tried to help them
out if you could.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
I don't know whether I mentioned this to you, but
my grandfather was the mirror of Preston for a period
of time in Melbourne, and I remember them as a
young kid. I remember both him and both both Granddad
and or Mama and Papa as we call them, going
off to lunch with with mensies on on one occasion,

(18:19):
and I think there was I think there was more
than one. What this might be an unfair question for you,
but how would you describe Preston today?

Speaker 5 (18:30):
I can't even place Preston.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
I must I must have been well, I had just
had had due north from Leigon Street and and you'll
get to Preston.

Speaker 4 (18:42):
Well.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
This is extending this part of the conversation too long,
I know. But we we went to Melbourne and did
a tour with with a cousin of mine a few
years ago and we went to Preston. I was born
in Preston Hospital and we went and looked at the
building in High Street, Preston where he ran a real

(19:10):
estate business, and out the back there was a sort
of a shack arrangement and that was my first home.
And we went and looked through the through the hole
in the back gate and it's still there.

Speaker 4 (19:26):
It was amazing.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
But what disturbed me the most was that the town hall,
and I think I'm right in saying the town hall
where my mother had her twenty first birthday was now
a mosque.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yes, yes, no, I've called it up on Google Maps.
I can see exactly what you mean. Yes, that doesn't
surprise me. That would be that kind of territory. It's
just north of the sort of inner city bubble, which
is where the greenshold sway with the seat of Melbourne,
which has been a Green seat for I think since
twenty ten from memory. So yeah, you get into that

(20:03):
territory where it becomes much more mixed. You get these
large pockets of Islamic community and other ethnic groups, and
then you also get the sort of working poor. You're
in working poor territory. I would imagine that up there,
because it's where people, you know, have maybe two jobs,

(20:25):
the wife works and they've got a few kids. And
they were but they're not getting ahead. In fact, they're
getting back. They're going backwards at the moment, particularly because
of inflation and mortgage rate rises. So yeah, those places
are quite different. And I've visited similar places in Sydney
recently during the election campaign and you go, is this

(20:46):
for real? Like how could people live one way here
and in a completely different way when you get into Sydney. Yeah,
it's striking.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
And in many cases disturbing. Now, now let's get down
the basics. What are the main issues in this election?

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Well, I don't I don't know that they're Well, the
main issue is cost of living, and the second main
issue is cost of living, and the third is cost
of living, and then you get a whole lot of
things related to that, like the price of energy because
energy has gone up an enormous amount. You have to
go a long way down people's list before you get

(21:26):
the climate change. Even actually, interestingly in the till seats
these days, they've moved on to other things, so that
is overwhelmingly the big issue, and both parties have been
trying to address this in various ways, neither of them
in really adequate ways, I must say. I mean, the
Labor Party solution to high energy prices is to subsidize them,

(21:48):
so you still pay for them. You just pay for
them in your taxes, I guess, or your children end
up paying for them by paying off your debt. So
it's very poor policy. And with housing prices, well, you
know that both parties have really come out with ways
to try to ease the pathway for peace to get
into housing by the first time ever under if you

(22:13):
get a coalition government under Peter Dunton, they will make
your interest rate payments on more is tax deductible for
certain people.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Certain I think that was a clever strike.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Oh, it's very clever strike. I haven't looked at how
they're going to manage that fiscally, how they're going to
pay for it, but I think it's it's great. I mean,
you certainly, going back to Mensis, you certainly need right
now some way of altering things so that people can
get into the housing market, because you know, Mensis changed

(22:49):
homage and ownership from about fifty percent to seventy percent
of the country. You know, it's now going backwards to
about sixty five or sixty six. So that's a bad thing.
It's a bad thing for people, and it's a bad
thing for the country, and it's a very bad thing
for the Liberal Party because they are a party of
homeowners and they do very well amongst people who own
their own homes, are buying their own homes. They do

(23:10):
less well from renters. So you know, in every respect
that's a that's a key policy and a key part
of the house of living, cost of living equation, and
so yeah, it's the cost of living. Even for the
Greens Party incidentally, which you used to be the party
that campaigned on saving the planet and climate change. Not

(23:32):
hardly a word from them about that this time around.
Their two big policies are free dental care.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
And here comes the good one, folks, free dental care.
Which the next one, oh that well, housing, the one
where they want to lock in housing rents. You know,
they're not strict restrictions on on on landlords are raising
rents those sort of things, so got price restrictions there.

(24:01):
And the other one, of course is free university education,
so you know that's it's a school nightmare and the policy. Luckily,
they'll never be empowered. Don't you have free university education already?

Speaker 5 (24:15):
No, No, we don't.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
We have.

Speaker 5 (24:18):
We have a were you're smarter than we are, Well,
we have.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
We have a system of loans called the HEX loans,
the higher education something. I don't know what it stands
for actually, but you know, so you get you get
a very you get a soft loan from the government
to pay your fees. And actually the courses are heavily
subsidized by the government anyway, so you end up paying.
You end up with the debt, the hex STET, which
is a problem in itself because that means that you

(24:45):
come out of university, and people come out of university
later and later these days, have done more and more degrees.
They've lost a few working years when they could have been,
you know, putting a bit of savings in the bank,
and they've got a massive debt.

Speaker 5 (24:57):
They've got to pay off their hex.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
Stet, and how on earth can they afford to save
for a house. So that is part of the housing
policy issue too. But I don't I think we want
to go back to free education. That's surely surely not
the answer.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
Well, you've got insane people running the country. In part,
let me quote Adam Bant's latest socialist brainchild, The renter's
right to solo is the dumbest policy in Australian history.
And I'll give you the next sentence. Band obviously thinks
that investors are so desperate that they'll invest in the

(25:33):
housing regardless of the regulations the Greens will enforce. The
Greens will force Elmo to adopt when Adam becomes the
Prime alt Minister. Now what does that mean?

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Well, yeah, so Labor is not going to win by
a majority, although the polls might suggest that they are.
I can tell you categorically exclusive to this podcast, that
they will not win a majority because the way that
the seats fall and the fact that the national swing
doesn't really reflect the local mood anymore. So you know,

(26:10):
there's a wide variation in spring in swings between different seats.
That's what's happening in successive elections here. So you can't
take the national swing and say well that's how it's.

Speaker 5 (26:19):
Going to go.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
So he'll end up with a minority in Parliament. He
will have to lean on the Greens and the Teal
MPs who sit on the cross benches to help him.
There's a few independents, but they won't be enough. So
he's going to be hostage to the Greens that they're
going to want to do deals with him, and they're
going to want to trade off. They want you know, housing,

(26:43):
you know, sort of slap landlords in chains in return
for something else, you know.

Speaker 5 (26:48):
So they're in that territory.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
It's not going to be it's not going to be pretty,
it's not going to be good for the country. It's
not going to be good for labor ultimately, because it
will mean that the backlash will come against them and
we may get a more decisive result against them at
the next election. But that's where we're heading. The Greens
will be pulling the strings and frighteningly, the big thing,

(27:10):
I think, in a way, the most fearsome thing of
all that the Greens are driving and is coming from
some sections of the Labor Party, is an anti Israel policy.
So you know, decades, ever since Israel's creation in the forties,
the Australia has always been a solid ally of Israel.
We are no longer because the Labor Party has changed

(27:32):
our policy and the Greens are even worse. You know,
they're really off with the Palestinian extreme line from the.

Speaker 5 (27:40):
River to the sea. They don't believe.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
They say Israel has a right to exist, but they
don't actors if it does, et cetera, et cetera. So
I find that deeply distressing and it's been deeply divisive
in this country where we have a very, very very
successful Jewish community that have contributed so much to this
country and still do so.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
It's going to be interesting to see how that comes apart,
because it must come apart at some stage. Let me
ask you where do you think for a new Zealander
to go for the best coverage and advice on Australian matters?
Where do you suggest that would be? And I'm talking print?

Speaker 5 (28:20):
Oh, in print?

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Well, I think the Australian is still a solid newspaper.
I would work for The Australian for many years as
part of the Murder group of companies. Look, it's stayed
remarkably solid. You know, the values that it really had
in nineteen sixty four and it's established have stayed with

(28:42):
it against all the odds. Not many newspapers have done that.
So I'd put the Australian in the same league as
the Wall Street Journal as being a paper that really
will give you a reasonably fair and balanced coverage but
will not sort of skew wildly to the left as
most newspapers do, including yours.

Speaker 5 (29:05):
Course.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
So yeah, that's a good start. Spectator has some good
comment and I must express my bias here. I write
for all these publications, but the Quadrant magazine, which is
a monthly magazine has been going since nineteen fifty six.
That's much more of a thoughtful long form magazine with

(29:27):
long form essays that I think is going great guns
at the moment. I should first all acknowledge the death
last week of the former editor, Keith Winshuttle, who was
a great man and really got that magazine to where
it is now, and the current editor, who is my wife,
Rebecca Weier. So I'm deeply conflicted and I should say that.

(29:51):
But I think that if you wanted to get an
idea of the debate where it's going on crucial issues,
Quadrants always a good publication subscribed, is that, And that's
probably about it.

Speaker 5 (30:01):
I mean that you.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
I mean, I find maybe it's just me getting more
and more narrow minded, but I find less and less
to read in what we used to know as the
Fairfax Press, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, now
owned by nine Newspapers, which is a division of Channel nine,
the television company. So you know there's those, there's slimmer

(30:23):
and slimmer papers. I haven't adjusted to the to the
modern digital world terribly much. The only exception in that
stable is the Australian Financial Review, which interestingly is doing
better than any of those once great papers that used
to be the rivers of gold. The Financial Review is
now the strong one because it's providing some you know,

(30:44):
a bit more quality information, particularly on business matters. So
that's that's about a lot. But it's we're pretty well off. Really,
we were certainly compared to New Zealand.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
Well, of course, of course, Well Spectator was what I
was goaling for when I asked you the question, because
being a weekly publication, and I'm quote from it quite
regularly because it's because I think it's so on target.
But having said that, let me refer you to because

(31:15):
you've raised climate climate issues. This was from the April
second edition, the leading of Article Australia. And let's not
forget that Spectator now devotes a page to New Zealand
pretty much every issue, and I'd like to see more
of it anyway. This was from the April second edition. Labor,

(31:36):
in cahoots with the Greens and the Teals have introduced
mandatory climate reporting laws, where even small businesses and suppliers
to larger businesses will be increasingly forced to comply with
onerous carbon emissions reporting. The continuation of these laws was
reiterated but largely ignored in Treasurer Jim Chalmers budget, despite

(31:59):
the devastating impact it'll have on productivity and profit margins
across the nation now, Michael Bohm wrote, carrying severe penalties
including prison. The new law is aimed at forcing the
private sector to meet the government's net zero climate agenda.
At the private sectors and ultimately Australian consumers huge cost.

(32:22):
The fact that you see we've got we've got a
problem here. We've got the National Party as the main
party in government. The Minister for Climate Matters is a dope.
He's pushing net zero at a time when well so
is your government. But it's one of the left, at

(32:44):
a time when the rest of the world, with any
intelligence is letting it go.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, I mean net zero is one of the great
projects of the of the anointed ones that you know,
the world class that that's and that goes across parties.
So doesn't surprise me that you you've unfortunately got somebody
who's still going along with that there because of the
Conservative Party in Britain got sucked into it under Tony Blair. Sorry,

(33:13):
so I'm terribly bloud under under Boris Johnson, of course.
So yeah, I mean it's a nonsense and it's it's
collapsing all around the world now, not in Australia where
we've got a Labor Party which is just so driven
by it. It's painful. It's painful for all of us
in our electricity bills and that the nutty projects that

(33:34):
are getting funded and the amount of Australian countryside that's
been ripped up, national parks being ripped up to put
windmills and pipelines and everything else.

Speaker 5 (33:44):
This is nuts.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
So yes, of course, that's that's that's really disappearing around
the world now. European countries are desperately looking for a
way out of these commitments that they made and the
course of action which they took leaning heavily on unreliable
renewable energy.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
New Zealand's are slightly different cases that you've got so
much hydro electricity, of course, but that's to get you
so far, and you don't want to be going down.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
We've got we've got everything's going up here, water is
going up, power is going up and not just once
but more and people are really feeling it. So there's
a commonality of issues between Australia and New Zealand, unquestionably.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
But our housing prices too, I think that's a big
issue with you too, and housing availability.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
Well they're building trash as well. Now, yeah, that's the
that's the problem. Now, look, we should get onto the
two leaders. And there's been quite a bit of criticism.
It was only yesterday that they had the party launch.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
Your take on it, Well, you're like quick summing up
of the two leaders. Antony Alberanezi we know has been
in government now for one term for three years. It
feels like he's been in government for four terms in
the sense that they look look like one of those
exhausted governments with no clue known them what to do.
But that's just a comment on the But he's a government.

(35:15):
What did they do in their first term?

Speaker 5 (35:17):
I don't know. You tell me.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
You remember he spent a year and a half with
this Voice campaign to get an Aboriginal voice to Parliament,
went to a referendum, failed dramatically sixty forty against and
so that was his first half of his prime minister
first term gone. And since then, well nothing. You can't
put your finger at anything he's done, except anything that's helpful,

(35:43):
that is, except drivers further and further down this renewable
energy path, and disastrously in my view, refusing to look
at any other alternative sources of energy. Power stations of
collapsing for lack of maintenance because nobody wants to invest
in them. It's not a pretty sight. All that's added

(36:03):
to inflation. They spent big so spending. Government spending as
a proportion of GDP used to be below twenty five
percent for really the whole of the century, really, for
instance John Howard's day, around twenty four to twenty five percent.
Now it's now twenty seven and a bit. So they've
pushed up government spending with age by huge amount, by

(36:26):
a lot, and on rubbish stuff like they're not spending
it on defense that'd be a good thing to do
right now, but no, it's it's going on things like
the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which is everybody knows it's
heavily rotted, but nobody knows how to fix it. And
these education we're spending so much on education now per pupil,

(36:48):
so we're just yeading.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
But you're yes, but you're you're sufferings as we have
been in both mathematics and literacy.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yes, well, that simple kind of equation. We're spending probably
forty percent more in real terms per child on education
these days, but they're doing worse or by international standards
than they were ten years ago, twelve years ago. Ye,
we're paying more for a worse outcome. You know, if

(37:22):
you were a commercial buyer, you'd say, I'm not buying
this product anymore. I'm going to look at a different
way of doing it. But because government's never worked like that,
so yeah, we're stuck with this high spending as in
New Zealand would be the biggest challenge for an incoming
courlish government to get spending back under control, but while

(37:42):
at the same time ramp up our defense spending, which
for obvious reasons, has to be done.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
All right, so you've covered el been easy to some degree.
What about Dutton.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
Dutton is he is a former Queensland policeman. He looks
like a form Queensland policeman, he sounds like one, and
in public he gives that air. He's actually a deeply intelligent,
thinking guy and is on the I suppose you know
he's a conservative. He has very conservative values and so

(38:19):
forth and policies. But he's done a remarkable job in
picking up the party after the collapse at the last
election three years ago, unifying the party room in Canberra
and remarkably because there haven't been any noticeable splits or leaks,
and then getting them into a position where, certainly at

(38:41):
the start of this year there were many people that
were confident that he would actually win this election. I
think I was always doubtful about that because of the numbers,
but he's certainly making a go of it. And if
Albanez is forced into minority government and the Liberals and
win a substantial number of seats, as I believe they will,

(39:02):
particularly in labor areas like in former labor strongholds, then
he'll have achieved a gal for the party. Even if
he doesn't become Prime Minister this time around and set
it up for a win next time. So yeah, I
think he's he's been great. I mean, people have been
very sometimes a bit critical of him because he doesn't
have the sort of he doesn't have the sort of

(39:24):
drive or that Tony Abbott did in the sense that
he's not sort of bouncing around the place and speaking,
and sometimes he does hold back on issues where people
would like him to speak out. They wanted to be
more vocal on some of these issues. But one of
the problems for him at the moment is that the

(39:44):
Albanezy government keeps wanting to call him Donald Trump for Australia,
which isn't of course, but that's now become a slur
among some people, although there's certainly people here, myself included,
who would like to see a little bit more and
more of the Trump's style, if not the substance.

Speaker 5 (40:03):
In the Conservative I read.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
Something earlier today that that was going back to net
zero and he has been Dunman's been reluctant to pursue
it publicly. I gather I have the opinion that he
privately is in favor of dumping that zero. Yeah, you

(40:27):
may be able to confirmed.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
Well, that would be correct, I think, without wishing to
sort of give his ways secrets. But where the Liberal
Party landed on this Liberal Parties remember and Malcolm Turmble
was deeply divided on this.

Speaker 5 (40:42):
Malcolm Turble was all on for the full green economy nonsense.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
And most of his party weren't, so that it was
the deeply divisive issue in twenty nineteen at that election.

Speaker 5 (40:56):
They came to a.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
Position where they decided, well, we're okay, we will agree
with we will go along with what we've agreed to
do in our Paris agreements and international agreements, but we're
not going to go crazy and if Australian jobs are affected,
we'll think again. That was the position they came up with,
and they did that quite deliberately, because when you looked

(41:18):
at the way the country was split on this issue,
you had about twenty percent who in you're in my
camp here saying this is rubbish, let's get out of it.
You know, there's the evidence for climate change doesn't justify this.
And then you've got another twenty percent at the other end,
which are the sort of the whole world's about to
catch fire, and we've got to hide under our beds

(41:39):
and what can we do to save the planet. And
then in the middle you've got sixty percent, which is
just the ordinary people who think, well, yeah, sounds fair enough.
We'll go along with it, we'll recycle our rubbish and yes,
we should do what we can, but let's not go
bar me. So that's where the Liberal Party is, and
by doing so, it captures that ground, and I think

(41:59):
from polling that I've seen, I think it's still that way.
I think if you came out and said, oh, we
think climate change is crap and we're going to abandon
net zero, that would be politically difficult to do right now,
certainly in some seats in the city seats. So I
think he's playing it safe really, But.

Speaker 4 (42:20):
Are Bay City seats he's not going to win anyway?

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Well, I think that's right. Some of them we will,
but we're never going to. You know, I don't think
it helped us at the last election, signing up for
net zero, for instance. You know a lot of MPs
in those kind of seats told me it would, but
it didn't. Categorically it didn't. We lost those seats to
the Teals. So yeah, I don't think it's a useful path.

(42:46):
So he's not going to buy into that yet, I
think what we're buying into it in practical ways. I
think in his so he's going to stop all these
new transmission lines which are costing us a fortune and
ripping up, you know, areas of farmland and indeed natural
areas of natural beauty, you know, unspoilt native forest.

Speaker 5 (43:09):
So he's going to be stopping that.

Speaker 2 (43:11):
And in stopping that, then that kind of winds everything
back anyway, because if you can't have the transmission lines,
you can't you can't put the new solar farms in,
the new solar industrial estates, so I prefertical, you can't
put the new turbines in. So it will pull back
and we'll move to a much more sensible policy, which
is gas. In the short term, we're going to get

(43:34):
a lot of gas going with nuclear. In the long term,
what is long term? Oh, probably realistically, I guess you'd
have to say twenty years from now by the time
we get the first one online, by the time we
get the regulationary things done. Yeah, it's a bit of
a myth that the nuclear takes a long time to build,

(43:54):
you know, it's actually, I think the average worldwide is
seven and a half years from start to finish. But
before that you've got all the regulatory and nonsense to
get through. So that's what takes time, and that takes time.
Whatever you're doing, it takes time with solar or pumped
tydro So it is a myth in my view to
say that it takes too long.

Speaker 5 (44:16):
But what does too long mean? With nuclear?

Speaker 2 (44:18):
I mean I knew this is when New Zealanders obviously
be moving too. If we put in a nuclear power
station today, if we were able to start one today,
it would its life would be eighty years minimum, probably
ninety years, maybe even one hundred. So that means, let's
work it out. My granddaughter's great grandchildren or certainly grandchildren

(44:42):
will be using that electricity from that power station. That's
the sort of long term investment we really need to make.
But the other countries are doing it very successfully, but
we seem to have an aversion to it in this
part of the world.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
Yeah, well it's worth here on the same subject mining,
there's gold, and you've had a couple of gold stories
and companies being prohibited from doing from from digging and
what have you. But then I read the other day
something about two of the special minerals, and I couldn't

(45:21):
I'd not seen either of them before. But Australia apparently
has a good supply of these two particular minerals. Now,
who was it that wrote the letter to to Donald Trump?
When I say the letter to Donald Trump, I think
it was published in the papers as such, I don't
think I don't think it was sent to him on
a personal basis. But it was an argument that was

(45:44):
laid out about how Trump should treat Australia a little
differently because you've got a good supply of these two
very important minerals, and there is America has a shortage
of them. So, in other words, be kind to your
next provider.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Yeah, yeah, well I think that that makes a lot
of sense. We've got we've got a lot of almost
everything here, and we've got got we've got a lot
of lithium for the batteries. We've got a lot of
these rare earths. Although they're rare, earths are actually more
common than you think. The rare doesn't mean they're rare.
It just means you have to refine a lot of
dirt before you get to the minerals inside and anyway,

(46:23):
there's lots there's lots of this stuff here and for
their modern economy silicon for instance. So if you want
to if you want to build some good, solid trading
partnerships that don't enrich China, then yeah, sure we should
be doing more with the US. You mentioned you mentioned gold. Incidentally,

(46:44):
that's a real boom trade at the moment between Australia
and the US because Americans are investing in gold because
the economics are so uncertain. But you know, there's much
more we should be able to do. Uranium is the
big one. Why aren't Well, you know, we have I
think sixteen percent of the world's uranium known uranium reserves,

(47:06):
and we only mine about eight percent. We're only contributing
about eight percent of the world's uranium market. We should
be opening uranium minds in the Albanezer government blocked one,
but we should be doing that. I mean, that's the
US will need uranium. We're all going to need uranium
as we expand energy generation. Eventually every day I think

(47:29):
will have to come round to that, and so we're
key to it. We've got that stuff. We could be
the Saudi Ira Arabia Iranian, but not really because you
can get it in Canada and Kazakhstan and other places.
But we've got you know, we could be very helpful
trading relationships with the US, secure ones that don't involve
the Middle East or China.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
I was going to ask you a question about the States.
I did see something that Victoria might be the big
decider in the end. But for people, what I've got
in my mind is people moving from here to Australia
and they're still leaving in fairly large numbers.

Speaker 5 (48:07):
I believe.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
Queensland is the place that most people go for retirement.
I think Victoria, for whatever reason, is the place that
people go to work more Sydney also, of course, and
other places as well, but I'm talking about the dominant numbers.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
Yeah, let me give you an update on that. So Queensland. Yeah,
it's a big retirement statement. It is also a big bustling,
growing economy. And I would think if you're a New
Zealander and you're looking for somewhere you're going to find work,
then I would say Queenstand's a very good place right now.

(48:50):
One of the factors in that is the Olympics in
twenty thirty two. Excuse me if I haven't got that
date right, I haven't focused on it, but where they're
hosting the Olympics in Brisbane. And this is leading, of course,
as it does around the world, to massive investments in infrastructure, roads, railways, stadiums.
So if you're in construction or engineering or any anything

(49:14):
related to that, then it's a great town to move to.

Speaker 5 (49:17):
Right now.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
My son's an engineer and geo technical engineer and I
keep telling him to move up there, but he's quite
happy in Newcastle. So yeah, I mean there is that
that is going well. It's got a coalition government of
conservative government that's pulling back, interestingly from a lot of
the net zero stuff. They're winding back their commitment to
this stuff. Uh, and we will have to keep the

(49:41):
coal stations, coal fire out cold fire, coal fired power
stations going for longer. They've already scrapped one of these
pumped hydro projects. They should scrap the other, but maybe
they'll get round of that.

Speaker 5 (49:53):
So yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
So I think Queensland is looking relatively good. New South
Wales likewise, very strong economy, very probably the most mixed
economy in the country. So it's resilient and it's it's
got great infrastructure. Now anybody who hasn't been the Sydney
recently should come and just ride our Metro, which is

(50:15):
the most brilliant piece of suburban railway I've been on
anywhere in the world.

Speaker 4 (50:22):
I've been on it, so I know what you mean.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah, So and the tunnels, like you know, Sydney used
to be shocking for traffic. Well now you go just
drive for kilometer after kilometer underground. I mean, I've been
going out to Western Sydney a fair bit recently and
I would spend the first fifteen to twenty kilometers underground,
you know, doing a very respectable ninety k is an hour,

(50:46):
whereas before it would have been stop start and traffic lights.
So Sydney is a great city and New South Wales
is doing relatively well. And then you get to Victoria
and it's really going downhill, like big time in every respect.
It's got the highest debt of any state. It's on

(51:08):
on lots of measures. It's losing industry, it's losing employment.
The only thing it's not losing is education. Employment. There
that a lot of overseas students. The universities are basically
the big earners in Melbourne these days. So it's a
very sad and sorry state in many ways, and that's

(51:28):
why you know, it's been that way under a labor
government out of Dan Andrews of course are sort of
the covid ogre. So it's going back to be it's
swinging back definitely in the Coalition's direction. In the federal election.
That will mean that they will gain possibly as many
as five seats there, which is a lot and will

(51:49):
help done a lot. But they're winning seats interestingly in
those outer metropolitan places, places like Preston and beyond where
people are just sick of it and they've been doing
it tough for the last three years, these seats that
they've never held, like Carwell is even in play, that's
round Melbourne Airport and beyond. So yeah, so yeah, there's big,

(52:13):
big change there. There'll be sweets seats go to the
Coalition in New South Wales to a similar kind of areas.
But Victoria is going to be the big mover, so
that that gets some some gets done in some way
towards it. Tasmania, well it's Tasmay who is Tasmania, But
it's it's doing okay and reasonably okay as a state.

(52:37):
So that's lot of a head place to be either.
And South Australia is always South Australia. It's always about
to chance on the next big thing and never actually
does you know it's it's it's becoming more and more
kind of government town in you know, the government expenditure
on public servants and other publicly funded jobs is big.
Is the big earner there, and yeah, there's nothing much

(53:01):
else in side.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
So I take it. I take it. It's a it's
a labor government.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Yes, yeah, went back to that. I had one term
of coalition government, not very successful at all under Stephen Marshall,
and it's now back to a very good peterman. Anawskis
is the premier. He's a very good premiere, well respected
by the business community, much much more to the right
of the Labor Party and much more sensible and less radical.

(53:29):
And he is for nuclear. Incidentally, he's said so a
number of times. He doesn't say so too much because
that puts him at odds with the federal Labor government
and they don't like that. But he would jump on
board with nuclear right away, with one of the biggest
uranium right mines is in South Australia, so yeah, there's
there's great potentially in South Australia. As always, it's always

(53:50):
a state of potential. And then WA, which is you know,
the economic engine room of the country. Won't you won't
be able to work in WA and but they swung
dramatically to Labor at the last election, even though the
coalition has much more mining friendly policy is so one

(54:10):
of the big issues there at the moment is the
Browse Basin, which is its massive offshore gas reserve off
the Northwest coast, and that's reaching the end of its life.
It needs an extension. It needs legislation to allow it
to go for another thirty years and the Labor government
is sitting on that. It has not agreed to give it.

(54:33):
It doesn't really want to because there's lots of opposition
from greenees for absolutely stupid reasons. Liberals Dunton has committed
to do that within thirty days are coming to power,
so I think in way Libs will probably pick up
a seat or two, but they won't do remarkably well there.
So yeah, you can see around the country where we'll

(54:54):
pick up some seats and hopefully that's a bit of
a guide. Also to the state of the States in
a way.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
Well, you didn't cover Northern Territory. I know it's not
a state, but just Center helped me out.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Just Center in Napajinta Price Senator.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
I noted on television yesterday she was referred to as
the best speaker by far in the party, in the
in the coalition.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
Yeah, well she I think she she really came to
prominence with the Voice Aboriginal Voice to Parliament referendum she
opposed and she gave the Liberal Party in the National
Party of the confidence to oppose it to and I
think I think she was she was the turning point
in that debate. She is a remarkable woman. She's just

(55:46):
written a biography which I haven't read. I must read it,
which everybody tells me is fantastic. It's about this terrible
upbringing she she had in an Aboriginal community in in
in the Northern Territory. You know, the long history of
family violence, murdered, death, horrible things. But she risen from

(56:08):
that to become the great champion. I think for for
all Australians.

Speaker 5 (56:14):
She would say she would score us.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
So she doesn't think of herself as a champion for
Aboriginal Australian. She's a champion for all Australians. So's she's
great and she's a senator from there, and we'd like
we would like to see more of her. We would
definitely like to see more of her on the platform.
And I think Dunton's gradually bringing her into it more
and more. And but this in Northern Territory has a

(56:37):
great future, if any if only we could introduce capitalism
to it. Really, you know, much of the state is
really not capitalist. World is run by the government and
government housing and you can't open up anything any kind
of business without government permission, and it's really locked into
that mindset. But Northern Territory, I believe, watch it go

(57:00):
once they open up the Beterloop Basin gas field, which
is massive, not just gas but oil. Incidentally, if they
want to go there and this, this would transform the
Northern Territory. If we let, if we did the drill
baby draw philosophy, that will transform the Northern Territory and
die we will be the new Dallas. In my in

(57:21):
my in my belief.

Speaker 4 (57:22):
But the two word a two word comment.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
Do it exactly exactly look it's very exciting. I have
been up there and seen some of the trest test
drilling that's going on, and it's just you just go, what,
You've got that much oil and gas under under here
and relatively easily extracted, and we're using modern tracking technology
and get it on the boats, get it down or here.

(57:46):
We'll solve our energy crisis in one fell swoop.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
Nick, just a quick comment on immigration, is that is
that likely to be an issue?

Speaker 2 (57:54):
It's a massive issue with people here. It's a huge issue,
i'd say, you know, in terms of issues cost living,
cost living, cost live, and then probably energy and immigration.
Immigration though is is it's not the people don't want
my We are a country of migrants. We're really accepting
of them. We've got you know, most of them. Almost

(58:14):
everyone settles in eventually and becomes a great Australian citizen
in my experiences. Some who don't, of course, But yeah,
not that we don't want them. It's just to we're going, well,
this is just nuts. It's bringing in more than a
million migrants under the Albanesi government. We're not building you know,
three hundred thousand homes. It's probably what we'd need to

(58:34):
do to keep up, So they're adding to the housing
pressure and that's causing resentment.

Speaker 3 (58:40):
Have you considered that's Albanesi might be doing that for
the same reason that Biden did.

Speaker 4 (58:46):
And that's to that's to Rea.

Speaker 5 (58:48):
What's the word away.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
Look, it's a theory, but I don't think it doesn't
Like as with Trump, it doesn't work because migrants are
not rusted on labor voters anymore, even if they ever were,
you know, they are not. The Indian community, for instance,
is now. You know, if you if you look at
an area, if you're if you're a part conservative MP,

(59:10):
and you see there's a lot of Indians in an area,
you go, oh, great, that'll be a good one. Because
the Indians are very into the democratic process and they
understand it well and they're largely well, there's you know,
a lot of them are small business owners. They certainly
want the kids to have an education, and they're conservative.
You know, they've got family values. They don't like stuff

(59:32):
like same sex marriage and all this stuff. So they
are naturally on our side of politics. And I think
this is absolutely true right across even with the Muslim community,
which has been for a long time. We thought that
was just rusted onto labor. Well they're peeling away from
labor now big time. And I was out in the

(59:53):
western suburbs with a candidate for the Coalition who is
a Muslim. Actually he has about fifteen percent Muslim in
his area, and I said to him, well, what's the
big issue right now for your Islamic voters and he said,
we'll cost are living. Course, like they're no different, and
they're small business owners and they're very doing very well,

(01:00:14):
a lot of them and even set up their own charities,
and they're great people. Really, they've just been Our impression
of them has been badly skewed by about the ten
percent radical minority, so you know who support Hamas and
all those extremist things. So but that's really only about

(01:00:34):
that ten percent. So it's like saying, you don't judge
the Islamic community by those nutcases any more than you
judge Melbourne by the green MP Adam Banto holds the seat.
You know, It's it's just not like that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
Not a different note. You wrote a piece on BP
the petrol company. Yes, can you summarize it for us
in three minutes or four minutes or five minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Yeah, British petroleum as they became in the fifties, been
going since the start of the centially one of the
most successful all companies in the world, right, going from
about in the twentieth century and then and then when
Tony Blair came to power in the late nineteen nineties
and Britain was going all sort of modern and Tony

(01:01:22):
Blairish BP was one of the first companies to come
out and say, well, we're going green. And they changed
their logo. You might remember they had a yellow shield
and yellow and green shield and they changed it to
this sort of flower and the words BP. They let
us BEP shrunk in this logo and went down to lowercase.

Speaker 5 (01:01:41):
They didn't like.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Being called British Petroleum, so they started to call themselves
Beyond Petroleum and they were going to get into renewable
energy and everything and save the planet. And there was
groundbreaking in the late nineties and early two thousands. Well
what happened, you know, share prices went down. They also

(01:02:05):
had a couple of big disasters, if you remember, big
bus and people killed, and that was because they hadn't
put money into oil maintenance, because they thought the oil
bit of their business was dying. And they wouldn't waste
money on maintaining it. So oil and gas, so they
were going big time into renewables. Well, it was absolute disaster.
It was twenty five years of hemorrhaging profits. They should

(01:02:27):
call instead of beyond petroleum, they should have been called
beyond profit at that point. But they've turned around. They've
now seen the light and they've they've said we're not
going to do that anymore, dropping our twenty thirty clean
energy goals and we're getting back to drilling. We're going
back to our basic business. And I think that's great.

(01:02:47):
It shows the way a lot of these corporates are going.
They're waking up to this nonsense now and just getting
on with things. But I just it took twenty five
years for them to realize that. Twenty five years with
the share price tanking and everybody's saying how badly they're performing,
But it took them all that time before they realized
that they had to change course. And I think that

(01:03:08):
as Peace are writing quadrant on this, it shows the
strength of this climate change narrative, this sort of almost
religious narrative that nobody dares resist, even though in practice
it turns out bad but it does show that things
change eventually, and I think this is what's happening in
slowly in Australia, certainly in the US and Europe. People

(01:03:28):
are realizing that this green dream isn't working and we're
just going to get a bit more grounded in the
way we deal with the energy policy and the environment.

Speaker 4 (01:03:38):
Well said.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
So as a conclusion, a very quick prediction for the outcome.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
I can confidently say will be a hung parliament, no
clear majority, and will almost certainly be in Labour's favor.
So Labor will form the next government with the help
of Greens, Teals and Independence, and Albinizi will come out.
He'll look, he'll feel triumphant, but it won't be a

(01:04:11):
triumphant victory. It'll be very split victory. Country will not
be behind him. He won't have a clear mandate for
anything except just sitting in Curably House for the next
three years.

Speaker 5 (01:04:21):
So that's that's the outlook.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Really, he's not very exciting or enticing.

Speaker 4 (01:04:27):
An early election the next one.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Well, let's see. I think they're averse to early elections
in principle. I think now I think he would he'll
muddle through in some way for three years. I don't
think there's any doubt about that. But what he has
to trade off in terms of good policy to do
so is another thing. And what state the country is in?

(01:04:52):
What state? Yeah, it doesn't be a thinking about really,
but anyway, we'll just have to get on with it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:59):
Will be after the election we'll do another another shorter
podcast than this, but just to cover off things. How
they how they went, and with I might go from there.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Good on you like always good to talk to, and
I'll look forward. I will have egg on my face
or otherwise, we'll see great to.

Speaker 3 (01:05:17):
Talk to you, and I appreciate it as always, and
we'll talk to them. It's a pleasure. Now before we

(01:05:38):
get to the mail room, there was something I meant
to do at the top of the program, and having
failed to remember that, I'm going to insert it here.
I want to refer you to an article that I
insist you must read. There's no other way I can
put it. It is a must read. I have a
in my head. I have a collection of authors in

(01:06:00):
this country who I consider to be the best. I'm
not going to break them up, but there is a
collection of them at the top, not many, but a
few and one of them is Anthony Willie, retired judge,
and Anthony Willy has penned the piece that it comes
from ENZCPR dot com, NZCPR dot com Muriel Newman's website.

(01:06:27):
It's entitled there are none so blind as those who
will not see, and it covers a number of areas
that are concerning much, if not most, of the country
at the moment. And it is probably the best article
I've seen for well some considerable time on this particular
area especially. Let me just give you an idea. Here

(01:06:49):
are some subheadings separatist, marianfiltration, public land ownership, coastal marine,
title partnership, language, education, the rule of law, democracy, These
are all subheadings and political courage. And somewhere in there

(01:07:10):
there is another one that and here it is science.
It's the shortest one of all the others run different lengths.
This one Science runs three lines, and properly, that's all
that's needed. The legacy of hundreds of years of fact
based science is being devalued by attempts to introduce Maori

(01:07:33):
spiritual values and experiences. Scientists are being deplatformed for speaking out.
That's it, doesn't it whet your appetite. Now after the
mail room, I'm going to extend the discussion on that
area of science, not from Anthony Willie, but from elsewhere.
But this article is one that you really must go

(01:07:56):
and find and read NZCPR dot com. Anthony Willie, there
are none so blind as those who will not see.
I leave it with you, Layton Smith, now business producer.
We are here for podcast number two hundred and eighty.
We'll get the three hundred mIRC before much longer. Obviously,

(01:08:17):
are you good today?

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
Late?

Speaker 4 (01:08:18):
And I'm great? Why do I keep us as usual
as always? Life is good?

Speaker 6 (01:08:23):
Go, Christine says regarding your interview with Professor James Allen.
I'm just listening to your interview with James. It made
me smile, as what Trump is really doing is the
greatest reset, taking the opposite direction of the WEF and
Grant Robertson's the great reset. I hope the American people
have the strength to keep the faith and let Trump

(01:08:43):
get on with the job. God bless Donald Trump and
help him succeed. Kind regards to you both.

Speaker 3 (01:08:49):
That's from Chris Chris Well stated, I believe thank you
now from Michael Interesting Matt bargoldas a podcast to sevenate
the message or the messenger dilemma. And he refers to
me and says, you, as an old time broadcaster, well
well know the value of the voice. It used to

(01:09:11):
be a prerequisite on radio. Matt Magalis may write well,
but his vocal delivery is poor. In spite of your efforts,
des Gorman had the two of the four strong, clear,
direct and uncluttered. Oh well, I don't know quite where
he's going with this a reflection on the judicial takeover
attempts both here in France and the USA. When I

(01:09:34):
was young, opposition groups merely assassinated their undesirables, such as Kennedy.

Speaker 4 (01:09:39):
Is this progress? Also?

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
When we were young, we threw out the old, ushered
in the new, and through hell and high water, we
enjoyed our lives. We are both now old. You're assuming
a lot. You know, you're only as old as you feel.
Maybe you feel older than I do. We are both
now old, but wiser but older. We are being thrown out.
I don't think so. What is the real reason here?

(01:10:05):
Give me the courage to change the things I can,
the grace to accept the things I cannot, and the
wisdom to know the difference. Now, I got to go
back and say, as far as Matt was concerned, it
was a day that I don't think I mentioned this,
but there was chaos and we didn't resolve the chaos
until two minutes before recording time, like it was two

(01:10:28):
minutes to nine, and at three minutes past nine, this
is before I'd actually got to him. Missus producer had
a text, are we still on today?

Speaker 4 (01:10:41):
Anyway?

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
By the time she got here with the text, we
were already underway. But it was that the problem continued,
I should say, and it was a recording problem, and
it was a recording problem at outside the outside the studio,
so that things worked here fine, but the voice coming
in didn't. And I have to say it was a

(01:11:02):
lot worse than you realized, Michael, because the talented technician
who took to it proved it dramatically. But we got
there and I think everybody understood what he had to say.

Speaker 6 (01:11:13):
Latin Judy says she's talking about unconsented spiritual instruction in kindergartens.
That's her subject. She says, I'm writing as the sole
caregiver of my four year old son to raise an
issue that may interest you as someone who values freedom
of thought, parental rights, and transparency in public institutions. In

(01:11:33):
many state funded kindergartens, including my son's Maori, panthetic beliefs
such as artur that means gods and karaka addressed to
them are being taught not as cultural stories, but as
spiritual fact. This is embedded into daily routines, often via
in viro schools and other EC programming, without parental consent

(01:11:57):
or even disclosure. This to me, raises important questions. Why
is spiritual content being introduced at all secular taxpayer funded ECE.
Why are parent's not informed and no opt out of it?
Why is only one belief system being normalized while others
are excluded? Is this yet another example of creeping ideology

(01:12:19):
and public institutions, this time reaching our youngest children. I
now have a folder of official correspondence and documentation ready
to share your Duey or team be interested in pursuing
this further for your podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:12:31):
And that's from Judy and Judy. We'll give it some thought.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:12:37):
That sounded familiar and I was pondering whether we've done
it before, but I think it was me reading it
when it came in. Now from Mark. Greetings from the
disunited Kingdom of once Great Britain and parts of still
occupied Ireland, where we celebrate the twelve thousand arrests made
per year by our brave and fearless Please of hardened

(01:12:58):
and desperate criminals endangering everyone by writing very bad things
on Facebook, rendered even more dangerous by quite often being
the truth. I was musing over the necessity of your
splendidly DEI supporting them, Minister Chris or will it soon
be Clarissa Luxen or possibly Fluxen asking coming in for

(01:13:23):
a bit of that these days, asking their Minister for
Sport that the next Rugby All team of Colors include
at least seven women with a similar proportion on the bench,
and guaranteeing it consists of differently abled people with a
proportionate mix of ethnicities reflective of ayetroas diversity. Notwithstanding tityrity

(01:13:44):
rights enabling the chiefs to have a never relinquished sovereign
right to also pick the squad. Of course, they should
encourage their next opponents to follow suit, and President Macron
may well oblige. But should they disappointingly utter a gallic
non then even if diversity fails to deliver the greater

(01:14:06):
number of points on the score, the all team of
Colors will have demonstrated to the world that they win
the Equality Cup, if not the Bledislow, and show that
Ayatiroa leads the planet in replacing privileged merit with equity.
Yours in diversity thirteams leyden.

Speaker 6 (01:14:28):
Jin says, firstly, congratulations on your thirteenth wedding anniversary. I
have not seen you both in real life together, but honestly,
both sounds so right for each other on the radio.

Speaker 5 (01:14:38):
Isn't that nice?

Speaker 4 (01:14:39):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 6 (01:14:40):
Jim James Allen was right. It's not Donald Trump's job
to look after the rest of the world. It may
sound selfish at the outset, but Trump's America First agenda
gets one thing right. The president or prime minister's primary
job is to look after their own people and country.
If they fail that, nothing else they do matters. And
Trump doesn't care nor worry about how negatively mainstream media

(01:15:03):
betrays him because he knows he is doing exactly what
he promised at the election. And then Jine goes on
to talk about our own outfit here and he says,
if national is going to be in James Allen's words,
Gutler's about protecting our nation from unelected bodies like the
United Nations, the leftist mainstream media and the co governance cabal.

(01:15:24):
Then we will end up with the diabolical three headed
demon that is Labor, Greens and the Mari Party. And
he says, Leighton, We're off to Australia for the next
ten days, but I'll still tune in because you're too addictive.

Speaker 3 (01:15:39):
That's very nice. Now this is also in the same category.
When I read this, I felt a motive to be honest.
I listened to all your podcasts and enjoy them all,
whether agreeing or disagreeing. I love the discussion with James Allen.
I could not find anything that I would challenge him on.

(01:16:02):
It's a connected world. And when you mentioned Leyton Smith
of Southland and cycle accident, well, I was one of
the ambulance officers who attended his accident, Shane. That moved me,
it really did, because that was I figured that was
around the thirty year ago Mark. I haven't tracked it back,

(01:16:24):
but if mister Smith in Southland is listening, then maybe
he can.

Speaker 4 (01:16:29):
He can just remind me of what the.

Speaker 3 (01:16:31):
Actual date of it was where he lost his leg
and his hip and life changed forever. But it's an
amazing I love it. It's the sort of coincidence that oh, and.

Speaker 6 (01:16:41):
You have to you know wonderful people like Shane who
No Wonder he remembers it thirty years later, those sorts
of events that those people deal with all the time,
all the time, not just once.

Speaker 4 (01:16:55):
You know, No Wonder he recalls it.

Speaker 6 (01:16:58):
And missus producer, that's it, No late, and I have
one more, don't cut me short. Ian says, most people
have had a guts full of activist judges. It was
pretty clear to most of us that Parliament made the
law and the courts enforced it, not interpreted, not updated,
and certainly not created it. The key example of judicial

(01:17:19):
activism is around the Treaty and now a court is
being asked to rule that the government's decision to reintroduce
higher speed limits is illegal on what planet. Time to
shut down unelected activist judges once, and.

Speaker 3 (01:17:33):
Time to start naming and shaming them and going for
the jugular. And of course I don't mean that literally,
but the email I read the couple back, which was
having a bit of a go at the Prime minister,
I agree with you, you know, and so do so many

(01:17:53):
so do an increasing number of people. Missus producer, We
see you next week, Thanks Layton, thank you. Okay, Now

(01:18:16):
let's deal with the two sciences, climate science and medical
science and see where things are at. This is the
sort of thing that you won't find anywhere in the
mainstream media. Why because they're still blind, Going back to
Anthony Willie's title, as unso blind as those who will

(01:18:37):
not see. I think some of them do see and
they still deny it, which is a great failing, a
great character failing in journalism and editorial staff, et cetera. Anyway,
the silencing of scientific curiosity. Mary and Demasi is a
scientific writer. She worked for the ABC in Australia for

(01:19:00):
quite some time, and then she fronted television for a
while a scientific program, and then she decided that she
couldn't there anymore and she got out and went independent. Now,
when she published her first article, I was enraptured by
it from memory, and I made contact with her and
she declined to come on the podcast, and I understood

(01:19:23):
why she'd only just broken free.

Speaker 4 (01:19:25):
She did not.

Speaker 3 (01:19:26):
She explained she did not want to get tard with
a brush of any kind that would betray her independence
as she understood it and wanted to maintain it. And
I get that, so I forgave her and haven't bothered
the since. But she continues to make a good contribution
to this particular area, the silencing of scientific curiosity. As

(01:19:50):
a scientific writer and researcher, I've witnessed the decline of
medical journals firsthand. Once forums for open debates and intellectual rigor,
they've morphed into gatekeepers more concerned with preserving a narrow
orthodoxy than pursuing truth. US work has exposed how journals
suppress uncomfortable questions, avoid studies that challenge dominant narratives, and

(01:20:16):
operate under a peer review system distorted by bias and
external influence. But never have I seen a more absurd
example of this decay than the retraction of a hypothesis paper, Yes,
a hypothesis authored by doctor Sabine Hazan in Frontiers in Microbiology.

(01:20:38):
Her twenty twenty two article hypothesized that ivermectin might mitigate
COVID nineteen severity by promoting the growth of Bifidobacterium, reducing
inflammation via the gut lung axis. She cited preliminary observations
in twenty four hypoxic patients who recovered without hospitalization after

(01:21:00):
combination therapy including ivermectin. She made no claims of definitive proof. Instead,
she proposed a mexia mechanism worth investigating. That's the point
of scientific hypothesis. But in May of twenty twenty three,
more than a year after the article was peer reviewed
and published, the journal retracted the paper following a series

(01:21:22):
of complaints on pub peer that's what it's called pub peer,
offering only a vague explanation about scientific soundness. Seeking clarity,
I contacted both the journal's editorial office and the editor
who handled the paper, Professor Mohammad Alikhani at Hamerden University. Specifically,

(01:21:44):
I sought an explanation for retracting a hypothesis, but I
did not receive a response. This silence is damning. Retraction
is a serious step, historically reserved for cases of fraud
or clear ethical misconduct, but here no such claim was made,
nor could one be substantiated. The journal simply erased the paper,

(01:22:07):
offering no transparent justification, no engagement with the scientific process,
and no accountability in fact, it violated the very guidelines
that journals are supposed to follow. The Committee on Publication
Ethics advised that publications should only be retracted if they

(01:22:27):
contain seriously flawed or fabricated data or plagiarism that cannot
be addressed through a correction. Hassan's paper was transparent about
its speculative nature. In a January twenty twenty three tweet,
Hasan challenged her critics, it's a hypothesis. Prove me wrong

(01:22:48):
her capitals. She wrote, After all, that's the essence of science.
But the journal's decision to retract sends a message that
even theoretical propositions are now intolerable. Now there, I will cease.
It goes on for a little bit longer. Well, actually
it's not long. It's not too long, so let me

(01:23:11):
carry on. Wasn't my intention, but I will. Having tasted blood,
Hassan's critics kept digging. In January twenty twenty five, Future
Microbiology retracted another of her studies, this one examining ivermectin
based multi drug therapy. Hazzan her co author Australian immunologist

(01:23:32):
doctor Robert Clancy. This man is top of the class.
At the University of Newcastle and others strongly disputed the
decision after the journal failed to conduct a meaningful investigation
into the alleged data integrity issues. The irony is palpable.
While pundits argued over Ivermectin's efficacy during the pandemic, Haszan

(01:23:57):
was one of the few actually doing the hard work
to test its effects, collecting data, proposing mechanisms, engaging with
the science, and yet she's the one being silenced, which
begs the question why is there professional jealousy in the
microbiome space. Are pharmaceutical companies threatened by low cost alternatives

(01:24:19):
like ivermecton pressuring journals to kill competing narratives. If so,
the Securities in Exchange Commission the SEC should investigate suppressing
research that could affect investor decisions by inflating the perceived
value of anti virals or vaccines could amount to securities fraud.
While there's no definitive evidence, the pattern is hard to ignore.

(01:24:43):
Two retractions, no clear misconduct, and a growing campaign to
discredit a scientist whose work challenges are profitable status quo.
So if you want to find it for yourself. Mary
Anne Demasi, mari Anne mary Ane Demasi is d Emasi.

Speaker 4 (01:25:04):
You'll find her now.

Speaker 3 (01:25:06):
The next one is longer, and I'm going to make
a much less reference to it because you can find
it's from Brownstone at the Brownstone Brownstone dot org. Ethical
collapse in the peer review of a leading vaccine journal.
This article tells the story of one of the most
disturbing breaches of scientific ethics that we've encountered. There are

(01:25:28):
two authors that we've encountered in our academic careers, buried
in the peer review process of one of the world's
leading vaccination journals in the midst of a global health crisis.
Our story begins, as many many things do in science,
with a question. A provocative study published in Vaccine, a

(01:25:48):
highly influential medical journal, asked our intelligent people more likely
to get vaccinated. The study, conducted by Zerr and colleagues
twenty twenty three, examined soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces
during the COVID nineteen pandemic and concluded that quote higher

(01:26:08):
intelligence was the strongest predictor for vaccine adherents. We read
the study with growing unease. The conceptual leap was striking
the methodological The methodological choices questionable and the ethical implications
deeply troubling, especially given the context. These were not civilians

(01:26:31):
making autonomous medical decisions in ordinary times. These were young
conscripts operating within the rigid military hierarchy, subjected to intense
social and institutional pressure to vaccinate during a historical moment
when a strict COVID nineteen vaccine passport policy was in force.

(01:26:53):
We drafted a brief letter to the editor just five
hundred words, in accordance with the journal submissions guidelines. In
this letter, we raised both scientific concerns at ethical red flags,
questioning whether what the authors labeled adherents could truly be
considered voluntary under the circumstances. We also argued that if

(01:27:13):
the authors genuinely sought to measure medical adherents rather than
institutional compliance, they should have focused on the fourth dose
of the vaccine. To the two authors, Yakov Affir O
Phi R and Yaffer schir Ras Yaffa s h I R.

(01:27:36):
Dash A Z from Brownstone dot org. Very easy to
find and I'd get onto it straight away if you're interested,
because it'll be still on the homepage. Now the other
area of climate science. Two articles again. Again I'm going
to reduce them to the essential first one is very easy.
New study finds human CO two impact too weak to

(01:28:00):
play dominant role. In a new study, geology professor doctor
of my guess here Wogiku Stankowski sta Nkowski has summarized
some of the reasons why the prevailing narrative that humans
can drive climate change by burning more or less fossil

(01:28:23):
fuels cannot be supported by the evidence. Past natural climate changes,
such as Greenland's temperature increases of up to ten degrees
centigrade within just fifty years fourteen thousand, seven hundred and
eleven thousand, seven hundred years ago, confirm that the modern
climate change rate just zero point zero five degree celsius

(01:28:49):
per decade since eighteen sixty falls well into the range
of natural variability. Further, a CO two concentration change from
zero point zero three percent to zero point zero four
percent is not signal dificant enough to impact temperature change

(01:29:11):
in the global ocean, which covers seventy one percent of
the Earth's surface. If carbon dioxide were the main driver
of temperature fluctuations, its concentration variations would have to be enormous. Currently,
CO two levels around the world four hundred parts per million.
If this entire difference is attributed to human activity, anthropogenic

(01:29:35):
pressure accounts for no more than fifteen to eighteen percent.
Natural factors such as tectonics, changes in galactic phenomena, and
the Sun's magnetic fluctuations continue to modulate climate changes. Remember
how anybody who mentioned the Sun had anything to do
with so called climate change or global warming got pilloried

(01:29:58):
from the get go, torn to shreds. Human activity can
only play a non dominant modifying role at most. The
overall trends in climate change rhythms will continue to be
determined by the complex nature of galactic phenomena, the energy
magnetic fluctuations of the Sun, and their interactions with Earth's

(01:30:19):
magnetic field. That article can be found at climate Change
Dispatch now. The last article is ten environmentalists Myths by
Edward Ring from am greatness dot com. The first Earth
Day was organized in nineteen seventy in response to a

(01:30:41):
growing public concern for the environment. Many of these concerns
were entirely justified. In nineteen sixty nine, for example, a
slick oil along the industrialized stretch of a river in
Ohio caught fire, generating national awareness of the need to
reduce water pollution. Similarly, in coastal cities in California, most

(01:31:02):
notably Los Angeles, the exhaust from unleaded gasoline created air
pollution so dense you couldn't see the hills of a
few miles away. That would be like some of the
cities in China even today. So there are ten issues
where environmentalism has been misused with consequences that have either

(01:31:22):
been of no benefit whatsoever to the environment or have
even caused harm at our list them for you. We
are in a climate crisis, and then the author explains
why that's not true. Second, there are too many people,
and the author explains why that's not true. Number three,

(01:31:44):
we're running out of fossil fuel. The author says, while
this is technically correct, the situation is nowhere close to
what was famously predicted in nineteen fifty six and by
American geologist m. Hubbardt, who claimed oil production in the
use would peak by nineteen seventy. Number four, biofuel is
renewable and sustainable. Nothing could be further from the truth.

(01:32:07):
Number five offshore wind energy is renewable and sustainable, absolutely not.
Number six, renewables are renewable, No, they're not. Number seven
renewables can replace fossil fuels, not any time soon. Number
eight new housing must be confined to the footprint of

(01:32:29):
existing cities. He then concentrates on California. Really, this is
not true for California nor for the United States. Also
talks about India and other places. Number nine, mass transit
is necessary to achieve sustainability. It's hard to imagine a
claim more at odds with reality. And finally, number ten,

(01:32:52):
wilderness areas are sacred dis mantra has caused more harm
than good to the wilderness and as a lengthy piece
on why that is the case. The ten myths identified
above are some of the fundamental premises of invironmentalism, and
they are flawed. They are exploited by special interests for

(01:33:13):
profit and control. Our challenge is to restore environmentalism to
its honorable routes. We have to recognize and reject these
flawed premises wherever they are applied. And that article, of
course is I think I said that at the beginning
of it is from climate change dispatch dot com, and

(01:33:34):
that will take us out for podcasts. Number two hundred
and eighty go look up those articles if you're interested,
and I'm sure plenty of you are, and you'll find
a much more fulsome explanation than I've led you into. Now,
those four articles are only representative of what's available and
what's happening that we are kept in the dark about

(01:33:58):
by both politicians and most of the media, and it
is getting extremely frustrating and we should not be taught it.
So what have we got. We've got kids in school
who are still being misled I'd say lied to, but
that might be encompassing too many of the teaching staff,

(01:34:22):
but some certainly are but misled into believing things that
simply are not true, and not being taught to think
for themselves or even given the opportunity. So we're also
dealing with politicians who don't know what they're talking about,
and like previous governments, they repeat the they repeat the

(01:34:46):
talking points that are handed down to them, which is
why they won't debate them. And that's been the case
for well over a decade, but even longer. So that
will take us out for podcasts two hundred and eighty.
I've got high hopes for to eighty one will be
interesting to see. So if you would like to correspond

(01:35:06):
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Leighton Smith Podcast #280 - April 16th 2025 - Nick Cater

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Leighton Smith Podcast #280 - April 16th 2025 - Nick Cater