Today we're recording on Gadigul country and.
We'd like to pay our respects to the traditional custodians of the Gaticol people. I know, you've got to dig this. It's like I've been given like an extra sprinkle of something. You've got layers, Yeah, I've got layers.
I was just thinking, I'm like, we're just such beautiful storytellers.
You're making a lot of sense to that girl. No, I'm done.
I've been too honest to go.
So, now that the federal election is over and the Liberals are left licking their wounds, we thought it would be a good idea to start talking about politics because as mob, we know we are inherently political. Unfortunately, what does that mean?
Tell me what that means?
Well, to me, that means that a lot of politics are thrust upon our lives. Yeah, automatically. Okay, you know what I mean. As a group of people, so unfortunate. That's why I say unfortunately, because we didn't choose this path. We didn't choose this life. But as you know, Brook, a lot of our mob don't understand politics, haven't had
the education around politics. And also it inherently also, isn't that important to us because it's not a part of our community in terms of how we our community govern Yes, of course, so we thought we would get an expert in.
Where is he?
No, today we have Joe Hildebrand.
Feel so cool all of a sudden, you guys, no, thanks so much for coming. It's absolute pleasure.
And taking the time out because you're a busy, busy man.
Yeah, we are busy, but it's good to be busy. It's better to be busy than to be dead in this game. They're the only two alternatives.
Well, if you did something exciting just before the election, you had the PM on your pody, so you're one of the only pods that he jumped on. You know. It was Abby Chatfield and tell me how that come about? And I was the chat Yeah I've heard. I heard you have a long existing relationship with the panda.
Yeah, yeah, I look I like Albow. We go back a very long way. I was pretty close to Kevin Rudd. You were probably weren't born when he was.
Prime Minister, but I do remember the apology.
Yeah, he gave the apology and that was a huge moment obviously for first Australians, and it was hopefully going to be the kind of first step in this sort of ongoing journey. I hate using the word journey but to reconcilia. But it just keeps coming out resistion, closing the gap, and that mark was sort of closing the gap thing, and sadly that gap hasn't closed. But and then the Labor Party just destroyed itself and I basically got PTSD and it's like, what are you doing? Yeah?
And Albow was one of those people who was always throughout that period where people were chopping and changing and loyalties were being tested and people were swapping sides and all the factions were all messed up, and I could go into all that stuff and bore everyone to death, but Albo stayed pretty true. And I just remember thinking, this is someone who has actually behaved with integrity and decency as much as anyone does in politics, like no one is, no one has purre. But he's a decent blow.
It's down to earth, and I sort of just always backed him, and I backed him as a as a leadership, as a leader for the Labor Party when no one else was like everyone else, there was no way that that's ever going to happen. Bill Shorten's going to come and he's going to win in twenty nineteen, and he almost won in twenty sixteen.
He did Yeah, I do right, and.
Then sort of miracle happened and Albo became leader and then he became PM, and then he was going to lose the last election. Everyone said.
And so maybe as a part of your job title, it's psychic.
Maybe maybe it's psychic, that's right. Maybe maybe I'm manifested. Maybe I'm the albow whisper. That's why I just manifest although that's my superpower. It's like, what can you do a superman? I can fly and I'm in vulnerable. What can you do? Joe? I can manifest elbow?
So who's the next per?
But yeah, so I got in on the ground floor with that guy. So we are pretty close and I think we have a you know, we're mates. And so yeah, I said, do you want to come on the podcast?
He said yep, And then we wanted him actually on our podcast.
You should have let me know, grease the wheels for it totally.
Look, I think that you know, he was trying to keep a low profile, I think, and he only got on you know, he went to places where he trusted people, So he doesn't know us.
I'm sure he would know you and trust you and love you very very much. I thought I was from while I thought it was the only podcast he hadn't been on because he was popping up all over the place.
But they're back in. What do you think of the Labor victory?
I look, obviously I'm pretty biased, but I think it was a great figure. I was one of those people who said it's going to be a Labor majority. All these people were saying, oh, you know, it's fifty three forty seven and it's going to be a hung parliament. It's like, no, fifty to fifty is a hung PA, you know what I mean. Like, all these polls were showing really big swings to the Labor Party. Normally the government gets swings against it the second time it goes up,
and it was getting swings in the other direction. And I think people just weren't believing what they were seeing because, you know, because of what had happened, for example, in twenty nineteen, when everyone thought Labor was going to win even though the situation was completely different, and so I was very confident Elbow I think it's fair to say it was pretty confident. Yeah, and again I was looking at the numbers and it's like, well, this matches up
exactly with what I'm hearing. But everyone's sort of talking about something, So I thought it was But having said that, the result exceeded everyone's expectation.
Yeah, because Joe manifested.
Yeah, I just told them by the way way Yeah, don't even buy the campaign's kick back at Kirabilli House. I love that.
I want to know, like, what is that world? Like? Like I guess, like I, you know, our experience with politics is in I don't know what's your experience experience with politics.
I honestly would say that for many years I put politics to the side. I say that our community is inherently political, but that was something that actually made me feel like I didn't want to know much because it all seemed like our community was used as a football a lot of the time, and especially even in this current political landscape, I feel like, you know, the welcome to country not sitting in front of the flags. These
divisive views were really put against our community. So for me, for many many years, I felt like I the more I knew, the more I was concerned, and so I actually stayed away from understanding and I felt like I actually didn't want to dive into, you know, the nitty gritty of politics.
Do you think a lot of people do that because it seems like it's a bit too like I guess like information overload, over stimulated by all the campaigns, Like you don't know.
Well, yeah, I think, do you think? I think maybe in our community there there's not that it might happen in other households and other parts of the Australian community and family groups, but for us, there's not to sit down and let's talk about politics conversation a lot of the time. I don't know if that ever happened in your life, but for me, there was never a moment
where my parents or my family seemed invested. And even around the Voice referendum, I felt like, yeah, there was a spotlight on our community, but there were so many corners of our community that didn't want a part of it. So I think that, like there's also a distrust with the government, there is a disconnection there. Look at the you know, systems that are in place that have negatively
affected our community. It's about the institution yeah, there's there's not a lot of trust I think, so there's definitely been a disconnection from our community. But I want our community to know more. And I'm actually really couraged by the stats that I saw with this election and how
many people came out to vote. I think that it shows even though I had this view that, oh, our country is quite chill around politics, people still and you know, maybe the voice referendum made me a little concerned about what this political outcome would be. But I think the stats of people getting out there and actually having a say and using their vote has been encouraging for me
to know more. And that's one of the reasons I suggested doing an episode like this, because I'm like, Okay, if the masses are interested, like, I need to now figure out where I stand in politics. So you're the man, You're the man.
Well, I think what you were saying before and at the top of the show, I think was really interesting with this idea that in black communities, people feel like politics isn't something they're involved with, it's something that happens to them. It's something that comes down from them on them, from above and often has a kind of crushing effect and I think that has been obviously, I mean, that's obviously been a huge problem throughout our history, but it's
also I think still kind of a problem now. And I think it's why we saw things like you know, the Voice result that we did, where there's not that I suppose full engagement with how politics and politicking works and how the machinery of politics were and politics isn't kind of like it's not like a sort of matrix that you get into. It's something, it's all around, it's everything, right,
Like everything is politics. So in terms of you know, when you're talking about trying to win a referendum, I was obviously supported the the Yes campaign, but so quickly I just saw the whole thing falling apart. I thought I saw it just and it was and I was going nuts. I mean, we talk about kind of I'll be a bit camp, but we talk about you know, you know, I'm like texting people technic pms and we've got to do something about this is going off the rails.
It's terrible, and they were trying everything, and of course, because it's politics, right, one of the the things that the government didn't want to do is kind of look like it was owning it too much. Labor didn't Elbow didn't want it to say, this is want it to be my voice, the BlimE minister's voice or Labour's voice. That was how the coalition, that was how the opposition was trying to cast it. This is the politicians, this
is Labour's voice. You're saying, no, no, no, this is this is what you know, the Ularu gathering at Uluru wanted, and you know this is this is for Indigenous people, this is for you know, First Nations people. But then there was kind of a lack of clarity among First Nations people. So you know, black leaders, Indigenous leaders are sort of fighting amongst themselves or contradicting each other about what it should look like, that's not and that just keeps going on.
That's right, and so that's what people are seeing.
So people, so people are seeing. So you've got sixty percent of Australians who think, oh yeah, that sounds like a pretty good idea, and then they sort of see this whole thing which I think is born of you know, I was speaking to someone in the campaign about you know, I said, you know, you can't have sort of people I really really love and back, like you know, Noel
Pearson is just hero of mine. Even had people like Marshall Langton, who's a bit more sort of fiery and yeah, but again someone I respect enormously, but coming out and saying things like oh well, if you don't vote for it, you're not going to get any more welcomes to country, or you know, this is being driven by racism. Any people who oppose it are racist. Up, I'm seeing all
this stuff. This is this is poison. This is toxic because you've just told anyone who's got misgivings about it that they're either racist or that they're so stupid or gullible.
That's right, And so people feel.
Like that's right. And again this might be And I was speaking to people of campaigns and what are these guys doing and they said, well, they're not campaigners of course, you know, then they're not politicians. So they're going off script. And again, so this is what happens when you don't know politics, or you don't know sort of how politics work,
all the way messages are received by the community. Then you're going to sort of sleep walk off a cliff on an issue that you know, something that could have been a real game changer. So I guess that's so people say I don't know much about politics or whatever you do, you just don't kind of know, you know, like everything you do is political, everything that affects you. You know, why didn't the voice get up? You can call it politics, you could just call it real real
life Australians who just weren't connecting with it. There wasn't a people didn't feel a connection or a relationship with what they were being offered. So if you call that politics, so I guess I would just say, don't feel like politics is just something that happens to Politics is something you're doing all the time. It's not some weird esoteric thing that all these smart people are doing in kind of.
It's a big boardroom and they're all, this is something that we saw your tiktoket. Yet, No, it's not that chart. It's deeper and it's a bit more.
That's right down.
Yeah, there's levels and layers to it.
I'm assuming, Yeah, yeah, that's right. And so you know, like even when the PM comes on on podcast, we just sort of we're not talking about you know, how do you get a piece of legislation through the Senate. So, so you know, what's it like, you know, how do you deal with all the shit that you cop on
social media? Or how do you that's right? Or what is you know, someone says, oh, the Russians are going to use Indonesia as an air base, right on Australia's dorscept how do you respond, Like, how do you respond to information like that? Yeah, and a lot of a lot of the way you do that is as a human being and what your instincts are and what you kind of feel is right and what you feel like the first thing to do is so again, politics is personal,
The personal is political. Everything it's all around us.
Were you surprised by any of the results, Like a lot of people in the community were quite surprised about the Greens.
Yeah.
You know, there's been such a massive social campaign around Adam and the Greens and there was a lot of I suppose new voices, new media encouraging the Greens and what they were standing for.
But then me and Abby Chatfield, yeah, podcast so it's it's interesting to see the responses to the Greens losing their seat.
Did you see that happening?
I knew they were going to lose some of their seats, or at least one Brisbane was always in trouble. And then that's obviously in Brisbane, and then another Brisbane seat Griffith where Max Chandler Maytha the Housing very high profile Housing spokesman. Is Labor really wanted to go after that? That was any talk about politics being personal. That was Kevin Rudd's old seat, and that wasn't a seat that both Labor and the Greens were going for and the
Greens weren't. That was a Labor seat that the Greens took off them, which Labor was not expecting to lose in twenty twenty two. So it's like that sort of the seq to the Hollywood action blockbuster. You know, they're back at this time. So so you know, people in
Labor really, you know, instinctively personally. You know, they could have got seats from anywhere else, and they did, but they really wanted to get that one back because it felt like a kind of personal blow to to Labor's you know, kind of heartland, a former prime minister's seat. So again they were very they were targeting that very
heavily and happy to get it. I don't think anyone thought that Adam bat would lose his seat in Melbourne, and again Labor didn't put much money into that seat, but it ended up he ended up losing really badly, like the actual overall vote in the country didn't do too badly. It's about the same.
Yeah, I think they're trying to explain that as well.
That's right, so and they're getting like the you we were talking before about. You know, young people overwhelmingly vote for the Greens, right, But the problem is that young people are not all living. There's not one seat which is just like like one young people. They're spread out everywhere. So you can get twelve thirteen percent of the vote, but unless you can get enough to knock out. So all you have to do if you're a Greens trying to win a seat, you just have to knock out
You just have to knock out Labbor. What you really want to do is knock out Labor because you're going to get more of their preferences preference, So don't you don't want to run first or you can't, but you just want to run second. You can just get second and knock out Labor and not LIB. So if you knock out the LIB they're probably going to go to Labor before they go to Europe. If you can knock out Labor, you get all their preference. And so this is why I've always said the Greens are not really
Labour's friend. They actually the Greens do best by eating away at Labour's votes and in seats in Lower House seats by trying to relegate Labor to third so they can steal all their preferences.
That's a great explanation. It makes so much more sense to in my head. I'm like, yeah, totally.
I actually tried to explain to my partner who has just become an Australian citizen. Yeah, hasn't done the test, has done the test, but has done the ceremony and then we'll vote next to you. But I was trying to explain this and I've done such a terrible job your life because he looked so confused. He was like mm hm okay, we're going to move on from this.
Ye, it is.
Well the preference is like, what do you mean. I'm like, well, you know the one to six, so think.
About think about it. Yeah, because a lot of people from especially like Australia is really really rare and it's got compulsory voting. That's right, and that's a really really good thing. Right, So people say, oh, we shouldn't have it, you know, should you should have the right not to vote whatever. I don't care. You don't like you say you don't. You don't have the right not to be governed. You don't have the right not for politics to not
happen to you. Sorry, no, I don't want to pay my taxes because I'm not into politics, or I don't vote. You don't have that right, so you might as well expect it.
And it means that if you don't vote, you get fined.
If they find it. Only just went up to fifty Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think when I was in my early twenties, we had an election and I didn't vote because I just un something and I was like.
I don't know, remember all those local government elections you voted in? No, Well, you know what, did they ever find it? They never find it?
My family. This is the first year that I encouraged my family to vote. Like yeah, So that's how I sort of that triggered for me was, oh, I'm actually being a little bit more.
You know, you're a pretical animal.
So I messaged my brothers on the day, my dad and everyone, and they all went and voted, and I think that's maybe possibly the first time.
That's why Labour one, you know what, it is his victory to you and.
I did my part.
But yeah, the good but the good thing about Campaulcity is it means that you don't have to rely on what's called getting out the vote. So it means it's something like Donald Trump can't happen in Australia because if you don't really care much one way or not that about Donald Trump, yeah, you just sit at home. You
just don't come out to vote. And in an American election, maybe only fifty to sixty seventy percent of people might actually vote, so about a third might just stay home, whereas in Australia, all those people have to come out and vote. So if they're not into so being extreme and making people excited or angry or scared about an issue like in Americas, always abortion and it's always gun, right, it's right. No one cares about that here, No one's
voting on that stuff. Yeah, because it's all really boring bread and butter. It's like it's whether you get a one hundred and fifty dollars rebate on your power bill. Know, but in America they do that because those are the
issues that people really really care about. There are people who come out and vote for their right to carry a gun, or to have an abortion, or to stop other people having and that's the number one most important thing to them, because they're a Christian, or they're a feminist, or they're a gun own or whatever whatever it is, but it's what you're most excited about. And that means that American elections are about issues that are really passionate but also often polarizing.
I was going to say, very.
Exactly, and we're really lucky that we don't have that here. And so so in first past the post, which is what they call it in the UK or in America, where you got to get out the vote, you might get the best candidate. Australia, what you want is to get the least worst candidate. So the preferential voting system means that you might not get even you know, a Green MP in a seat who actually ran behind you know, the labor of liberal candidate, or you know, in the
teal seats, the liberals get more votes. First preference votes than the Teals do independence.
The independence right, why they called tis is just the color.
Of it, because that's the color. So they're all they're all meant to be independence. But someone noticed that they all had the same color and the same branding, and we're all getting funding from the same source. Everyone goes hang on independence, and so they if that was a silly question. But like.
Owt to say, this is nicely, But aren't they like a lot of white women? Yeah, because when I'm driving through these suburbs, I'm like, wow, these people have massive budgets for promo.
They're basically like really rich greens.
That's right, Yeah, so that's right.
How do I get that money?
You just call sign at homes of courts and were given to But so the Teals, you know, they don't win on the first preferences, but they collect all the preferences from Greens and labor and everything, and so they're not the best candidate. The person who wins the most number one on their ballot is that they might be the LIB. But the Teals are like the least worst, so they're what everyone else would rather not have a LIB and have anyone else.
Yeah, basically that's right.
And that's how the Teals get elected. Does that make sense?
Before we go, I wanted to just quickly ask, Yeah, I think one of the main things when it comes to politics is not understanding the structure. So is it possible from the top down to give us a quick run through of what holds our country together in terms of the systems.
Yeah? Absolutely. The best thing about what holds our country together is it's the vibe. Right. So we've got a constitution, very Brook, We've got I'm all about the If you can read the vibe in politics, you are going all the way if you can think I think this is what I've got a gut feeling that this is.
There could be a campaign.
How I feel about this thing? And I think pretty much most Australians are with me. You're done at me.
But I think I have a very strong gut feeling. I think I very have I have intuition.
I have a gut feeling that you have a gut feeling. I actually feeling. I have a feeling that feeling. It's not just my Yeah, so we've got just to be incredibly boring and get my geek on. But we've got a constitution right, and The constitution just basically says this is how you make decisions. It doesn't make the decisions, and it doesn't it doesn't even tell you about the prime You have to have the prime minister there, or you have here's what ministers do when they run departments.
Everything that the government actually does every day isn't really in the constitution. All the constitution just set does. It says, this is how you figure these things out. This is how you decided, this is how you put together a parliament. Yeah, basically this is you know, if the states and the state and federal parliaments have a disagreement, this is who wins. This is the areas that the federal government has control over,
and this is what that sort of stuff. So, and then everything else is kind of what is called convention. It's like, well, we do this because this is how it's done, and there are lots of you know, in ancient Rome there was no constitution written down. They just called it the moss manoram the old ways, this is how we do it. In England there's actually no written constitution.
There's this is huge history and people have to go back and say, oh, what did we do the last time we had, oh, the Normans invaded whatever, you know. And so in Australia we do have a written down constitution, but it basically says, this is how you put the parliament together. Yeah, and then and then you sort of figure it out yourself. And so things like you know, forming government in the lower House with the prime minister, the head of a cabinet, with ministers in charge of
their departments. All of these things are conventions that have just sort of evolved over time. And the good thing about that is that as times change we can kind of adapt them. We're not sort of stuck with a bit of paper that says, no matter what's happening. One hundred years ago, a bunch of people decided that you had to do this, and now that's what you have to do because this is your document. And this is where the US can sometimes run into trouble when it's
got the right to bear arms. That was when you know, you know, militiam and were using muskets to fight off the English and now it's being used for oozies to do drive by shootings.
This constitution is it a book?
Yeah, it's a very small book. You can get it online. You can just gurgle it. You can just gurgle it. And it's actually a really slim, kind of elegant, flexible document. So it just says, you know, if you can't get your legislation through Parliament, here's how you have a double dissolution and you have another election and then you just figure it. And then it basically just says figure it out amongst yourselves, and then it's very easy.
Yeah, and it's laid back like you'd be right.
It's like new age management workshops. We're not actually going to solve your problem. We're going to teach you how to solve your own problem.
Hr of the country.
And then the controversial one, of course is the reserve powers of the Governor General. So the one really controversial bit of the constitution is that the Governor General technically can sack the Prime Minister. Now to catch twenty two, the Governor General can dismiss the Prime Minister and say right, dismissed the government, say no, go to the poll, so dissolve the government basically, but the Governor General also has to act on the advice of the Prime Minister.
So this only happened once in a country.
It only happened once, and it happened nine to seventy five, and guess what, it's never ever going to happen again, even though it's right there in the Constitution to say the Governor General can do this any time he or she wants, but it will never happen again because the vibe people just didn't like it. It was just so toxic and so bad that even though the Libs a coalition won in a landslide after that decision, everyone just thought, no, you can't do that again.
Who selects the governor General? Is it the king?
No, it is no, it is the PM.
So who has the power to correct great.
The governor General. That's right, So technically the boyl fats. So technically the Governor General is the Vice region so vice regal, so the deputy so that the King or Queen's representatives in Australia. So usually the Governor General goes around cutting ribbons, the sort of thing the Queen does back in the UK, cutting ribbons opening, you know, telling everyone what a good job they're supporting charities. So the Governor General is the the patron of certain charities. But
all the executive stuff has done by the PM. But technically, so technically, according to the Constitution, the Governor General is actually the person who is fully in charge of everything. But the Governor General is meant to act on the advice of the and the Executive Council. So there's a is there vice some weird thing Viceregal councilor so there's
meant to be. This is the closest thing that the Constitution has to the cabinet, right, but it's the and you can there are still sort of official roles that people have and you know, and the most senior would be like the vice president the council, because the governor General is meant to be the president or whatever, and so so cabinet technically, according to the Constitution, is this advisory body to the Governor General, and the Governor General
is the one making all the decisions. And the Governor General is appointed by his Majesty King Charles is but no relation what's going on. But the way that the entire country actually functions is entirely based on convention. It's entirely based on the vibe. That's what makes it awesome.
This has been such a great episode.
We so appreciate you, but.
I wanted to ask you one last question, maybe when are you asking? Well, I was going to ask maybe you have a question of your sleep, but I was going to ask, will you ever go into politics?
Absolutely? No way.
Why need you?
God? No, God love you.
No.
It's just it's it's just when Peter Garrett went into it, and I just thought, why would you do this? You go from a position where Peter Carrett, you're the leading to Midnight or everybody loves you, and you go from that to a job where you know, almost like almost half the country is going to hate you. And that's if you're winning. Yeah, yeah, yeah, if you're not, it's the other way around. And so that's right, and you know,
and again it just choos. It's just such a rough game and it's just and you have to be so tough. I'm probably too much of a sensitive in your age guy. You know, the stuff that people hurl at you, like even just when you're in the public eye, it can be a bit full on. But in politics, like and you know, I talked to politician about this or you know, like like they do actually get a bit kind of brutalized.
But like I you know, the politicians, I know, none of them, like like like Elbow for example, Chris Mins will not even look at Alba would just not even look at that. Will have people who do their social media for them because if you looked at this stuff and I see some of it, you know, because it pops up on that, you know, Instagram. Instagram's meant to be friendly.
Man, you're telling me that they don't look at their social media. Chris Mins follows me and likes my stories and it's not.
Even that's legit, that's true true.
I'm like, he likes my stuff. I'm like, wait, are you in the current way to an event?
Like exactly again? Yeah, well yeah time it was just brutal and yeah. And I think there's also a rule of thumb that whoever anyone who wants to be in politics should be immediately disqualified because it should be the people, the reluctant leaders that you that you want because they're the best ones because they don't want the power or the Yeah. So by just saying I'd never be a politician, wow, I'm actually the perfect.
You're actually you go, you know what your campaign is about.
Its about the vibe.
For the vibe you would get in for that. But Thank you so much.
For the first time I did.
I suddenly feel young and cool again.
There's no age here. Thank you so much, Joe, Thanks Legends,