From the Skying Center. This is Paul Murray Live Hio mate, Happy Monday.
Thank you to everyone who joined us in Springvale on the outskirts of Melbourne yesterday. So good to see, so good to hang out. Had a huge thank you to Caylor Bond who is here on Thursday night as I spent a bit of time with the family.
Firstly was my wife's birthday.
Love your Darlin, but also an opportunity and I know you'd get this as parents or grandparents, but it was the school performance thing. But they don't really do plays and he more certainly not at our school, so every single class gets the chance to do a dance. And of course my kids were the most awesome. But it is just that incredible experience, isn't it. We you get to see these little people who you're held in your arms standing up there with a big smile and a
confidence that only comes from challenging yourself. So I hope you got the opportunity to see that at some time over the weekend with the little ones that you love too. So let's get into tonight's show. I want to show you a bloke from the UK who's kind of going to explain the Australian economy better than I could explain parts of it here. We won't be doing it any to show you a little bit of what he had
to say. Of course, I'll talk about the madness of the protests, but there's a little detail that you need to learn before you have any expectations that something's going to happen to these people, and a little preview of the next big things happen in the American election, and that of course is the vice presidential debate between the blokho they want to constantly talk about abortion and the other one who wants to pretend he's not going and that being the guy on the right of your screen
to introduce laws as he did as a state governor, to take kids away from their parents if they don't believe that the kids should transition. But first, as always, Australia first, and we try to focus on the number one issue that matters now. For those who are invested in the stock market, today was a very good day.
In fact, there was a brand new record high for the stock market, So all well and good if you're somebody who is day trading or is pulling their money out anytime soon and of course, in Camber today, the excitement was that the federal government has enough money left over to had itself on the back.
The federal budget is in better shape than anticipated.
The surplus for the most recent financial year is six billion dollars higher than forecast. Australia's finances are looking billions of dollars better tonight.
Treasureer Jim Chalmers says the first back to back budget surpluses in almost two decades proves the government has tightened its belt.
Yeah, I'll tell you why that's not true in like thirty seconds. But first some gloating from Grimjim.
This is a powerful demonstration of our responsible economic management. Responsible economic management is a defining feature of the Albanese labor government and it wouldn't have happened without our responsible economic management. It wouldn't have happened without our spending restraint.
Oh wow, wow, as the kids would say, gas lighting for the rest of us. Well, let's just start to pull apart this garbage now. The reality is that this government has been able to post its surpluses because of the amount of money that is coming through its front door. And guess where the number one source of money for this federal government is you and me, those who pay their tax by being an employee. In fact, have a
look at this number here. Treasurer Jim Chalmer's second budget has been underwritten by the highest share of personal income tax since before the GST was.
Introduced back in the year two thousand.
So that's twenty five years of the system that was put in place by John Howard and now he reaps the most amount. Ever, when it comes to income tax, the amount of personal tax paid by Australians boomed by an extra one million people who were securing jobs under the government and bracket creep.
You see, remember the two little too low tax cuts.
Well they still of course had not just those but also a whole bunch of people who ended up going up a bracket, meaning they were paying more tax, in which the norminal income growth causes individuals to pay higher average taxation rates each year. Now Australia and its budget is a Ponzi scheme because when we were twenty five million people, we were of course running in a deficit.
Now we are the best part of twenty seven million people because this government in the past two years I'm not counting the other half that they have still had responsibility has brought in more than.
A million people.
Now, yes, some of these people may be old under family reunion, some of them may be young because they're the kids of the workers who end up coming in.
But when they talk about a million brand new jobs.
Guess who has them the people who have come into the country. The net migration number remains one million and seventy three thousand, eight hundred people.
So that's the actual.
Mats behind what he it's talking. There's about economic restraint. It's about bringing in as many people as they physically can, hoping that they get a job, hoping that they pay tax to plug the holes of the promise spending which would otherwise without those million people, have had us in a budget deficit. Now, the budget surplus, as you know, fifteen point eight billion in twenty three twenty four. It is down from the one that was twelve months earlier.
But have a look at this. Personal income tax topped three hundred and thirty one billion dollars, or fifty two percent of the federal government's total tax take, so literally more than the GST, more than company tax, more than half of every dollar the federal government has to peddle up against the wall comes from you and me.
That is the reality.
Now, I want to show you a graph that was in the Financial Review today to help explain this particular phenomena.
Now, firstly, have a look at the.
Blue squiggle which is the top there, that shows personal income tax. Now the government when the GST was introduced, the tax take was forty five and a half percent of the total revenue to government. Twenty five years later, you may well notice quite and up to since this mob took.
Over fifty two point three percent.
Now, a very faint line that I don't expect you to see on television, but maybe actually you can see it there with the red is the GST, which basically has been about the same amount of money in terms of the percentage of money that the federal government gets each and every year. But the percentage which wildly fell when the GST was introduced, has slowly inched right back to where.
We were twenty five years ago.
Where the government is now fifty two point three percent of its money coming through its front door is coming through its front door as a result of personal income tax.
And before this treasure returns around.
And again gives himself a gold star, and how amazing aware because two surfaces in a row means the economy is amazing. Every bit of spending that we've got is responsible.
Well.
The prediction of his own treasury for the next twenty something years is that they are about to spend way more than even the money they get right now. So even though personal income tax is going to be more than half of the money that they get. What you can see there is every single line after the dotted line is an expected deficit. Now they get slightly better while we're getting towards the end of the twenty thirties, and then fum all the way into the deepest of
black holes. Now, remember, every one of those deficits ends up being added to the previous one, which means the trillion dollars in debt fast becomes one point two one point five, and eventually we start to march our way
towards two trillion dollars worth of debt. Because the way the whole thing is structured is that unless you have a Ponzi scheme of more people coming into jobs and more people therefore paying tax, the actual amount of money that is already put aside and has locked in every federal government still to come into our future, regardless of their political position, they have to spend more than last year, more.
Than the year before, more than the year before, more than the year before.
Certainly as people get older, hence why as workers leave, they need to fill the Ponzi scheme for every one person who's no longer paying tax you want to replace. But because we don't have enough babies in the country, or as we showed you last week, there are many, many, hundreds of thousands of people who still owe money to universities because they have never actually earned the fifty thousand
dollars to start paying it back. So much so that now eighty two before billion dollars is being spent by the federal government on higher education but not being paid back by its students, let alone this federal government making spending decisions that has seen welfare as a percentage of the total pie of the budget steadily increase even in the two years that they've been able to produce a surplus. These are the realities of the economy as it sits now.
The government wants you to be distracted by today's headline about this year's budget. They want you to be distracted by what's happening when it comes to the stock market. But guess what, there is some data, there is some detail that show that it's only the top end of town that does okay. The rest of us, well, we are struggling. In fact, what does the ABC have in
common with the Australian newspaper. What does the Australian Institute of Company Directors have in common with the left wing thing tank the Australia Institute where the Greens get a
lot of their data from. That Australia is in a per capita recession, meaning that while the government will tell you that the economy is not in a recession because it is ever so slightly growing by zero point one or zero point two or zero point three percent, the only reason that's happening is because the federal government is hiring and state governments are hiring more public servants and giving them greater pay rises than the ones that anyone
in the normal economy would actually be doing. It's also because the state governments, thanks to the money they get from the federal government, which of course is in part and mainly the GST, is turning around and spending a lot of money on infrastructure, but they're spending way beyond even the money that's coming in, meaning they are borrowing.
Meaning the collective debt of the States is now in line with the federal government, which, as I just showed you, is only going to go deeper in the hole from now until the twenty sixties. So if your wages have not kept up with the inflation that has been roaring for the past couple of years, if your wages have not kept up with the twelve interest rate rises under this government, then you're going backwards. And in fact you
have been going backwards not a little bit. In fact, you have been going backwards now for six quarters in a row. That is now a scenario where we are getting close to two full years of a recession in real Australia. Now, despite the fact that let's show that number again, a million people have been added to the overall population, meaning that a million people are now paying more tax to the government. That is now of all of the money it gets getting more money from indo
dual taxpayers than it is anything else. This is hiding the reality of the Australian economy. It's not about the headlines they can tell you in canber. It's about what is actually happening in real Australia and believe it or not, an economics reporter on the ABC will help point this out.
GDP is actually a pretty blunt kind of measure when it comes to economic performance. All it does is measure the amount of staff that we produce and consume. So you know, there's an argument that it's a dumb way to keep yourself out of recession simply by adding more people into the economy, because it's not a real reflection of your economic performance. So if you trip that out, we're gone backwards for six consecutive quarters, which is not a great performance for the economy.
And the other thing and why I don't think that Australians are going to be moved to think more warmly about the federal government because of what may or may not be happening with the federal budget is, as we told you last night, there are more people than ever before who need to to a charity to find something to eat for themselves or their families. We know that people are going without food for themselves for their kids.
In fact, we spoke to the bloke from Turbans for Australia last night on our ourtound show that was in Melbourne about how many.
People need help from his organization.
Young couples working full time, a part time or even two jobs. You put food on the table to average pensioners and homeless people and others. So everyone in the society is suffering at the moment due to this rising cost of living.
So despite the fact that the federal budget now has more money than they intended to spend, meaning they have billions of dollars left over, there is no plan to give the charities that are taking care of the people at the absolute bottom of our economy are sent more, let alone any further changes for you or I the actual engine room of the Australian budget, any changes to help you or I when it comes to cost of living, which means that people like Jackie Lamby quite correctly say
I don't care what your budget number is. The reality is that when Australians are hurting, you are missing.
Nobody gives us stuff about a surplus. Mate, I can assure you right now, people are doing it hard out there. Nobody's talking about a surplus. And if they were, and they truly understood to be saying, well, how about you put some of that surplus out to us so we can put bread and milk on the table for our kids and do that without without raising the inflation. You know, surely with a surplus, people are really hurting out their caual. Honestly, give them more.
Find a way to do it.
Principally and most importantly is that I don't want to muck around when it comes to the inflation numbers. And they're going to say, well, if we sent people checks that had caused trouble, why not crack off a billion dollars of the money that you have now been able to see said that you have nowhere else to spend in the economy, and spend a billion dollars of that extra money and give it to the charities of Australia as a one off payment to help people who are
in trouble today. Another reason why there won't be a political bounce out of the government telling you how amazing their economic responsibility is because again we're not living in that world.
As you know, the cost of living crisis leads.
To many lies that come out of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. Now, despite the fact that friendly media will turn around and say that because the inflation rate is now the best it's been in a couple of years time that literally they posted this was Channel nine mission accomplished. But mission accomplished when it comes to inflation is just as fake as George W. Bush saying mission was accomplished in Iraq, a war that kept going for
the best part of ten more years. And let me explain, in fact, I won't explain an economics report from Sky News in the UK. He explains beautifully why the headline number that gets all of the politicians excited to say we've got a two in front of it, and the media who wants to move on from this story because they're bored with it, is not felt by you and I. In fact, you see it's not just about the last number they reported.
He'll explain better than I can.
That's the cost of living crisis. Suddenly we went up from prices being around there to prices being there and you don't really see that in this data, okay, because inflation is really just measuring the difference between that and that. And if you look at those two lines, you're talking about a two point three percent change. That's the number we're talking about today. But for a lot of people it's not about that. It's about the difference between this
and that. And when you look at the difference between this and that, that's twenty percent.
See that's the point.
The two from this quarter is added to the two from the previous to the four before you get the point. This is the Australia version of that graph. Now the government would want you to say, well, hang on, it's gone up and now it's coming back down. No, every little one of these points, of course, you add together. So even though the numbers going up, so say again, I'm just going to make it easy to understand. They might be threes or fours, and the very top is five,
and then five becomes four, becomes three, becomes two. You add it all together, and prices are way higher than they were in twenty and twenty, where yes there was a pandemic. But more importantly, let's compare it to prices in two thousand and nineteen or even twenty and twenty one.
If you started that journey.
When it comes to twenty and twenty one to today, all of that looks like it goes up and it comes down, but it's actually one on top of the other, on top of the other, on top of the other, on top of the other, which is why the government gets no credit from those of us who are in the real world who may not be playing the stock market like people did today. The people who don't have a business that means they can pay a top marginal
tax rate of the company tax rate. Instead they work for a business, meaning that depending on how much you earn, that's how much tax they take on top of that. Of course, there are millions of Australians whose superannuation is taken out of their wages. It's not their wages and superannuation, you see. That's the scenario for everyone in the government sector, but for everyone in the private sector. A very significant number of people have all the money they earn and
then the government takes some for your retirement. This government has got legislation which means they take more, meaning you are about to continue to get under this government, a real decline in the amount of money that you get every fortnight or every month that you then have to turn around and use that money to pay for things that cost way more than they did before they became the government, or try and pay off a house that's
gone up twelve times in interest rates. So I don't care what the Camber Gallery says about what happened today. In the real world, it's hurting as bad as it ever has which brings us to the opinion polls today and Newspoles started to break down some of the numbers that they have been looking out over the past few months.
They were able to do so state by state. They were able to start to break down things by it by gender and even the amount of money that people earn to see what their perception was of the government. The headline wasn't amazing. In fact, it's not good news at all when it comes to the Labor Party. But it is really bad news for Anthony Albernezi, who remember has said I've never lost a news poll. Or I'm about to show him how he losing a news poll. You see, if you only go by the two party preferred,
it's never got worse than fifty to fifty. But if you go by the amount of votes they got when there was an election versus the amount of votes that are on the table today, a fall of three and a half percent in New South Wales would result in multiple seats disappearing from the Labor column. An almost two percent drop would do the same in Victoria. They're so far behind in Queensland that they might be able to fend off the Greens perhaps, but they're unlikely to win
any further seats. They may well again be able to hold off in places like South Australia, and interestingly, the assumption was that some seats could be disappearing in Western Australia, but at this moment there is no change in the primary vote.
Now.
Of course, thirty six is way below the fifty point one you need to actually win a seat, so preferences matter. If you say, buger them all, you're going to get a labor government. If you decide to put a party of government that you wish to be the government, as you're number two, then you will get something other than a labor government.
But again the Prime.
Minister himself, the Prime Minister, of course, says I've never lost a newspole. Well guess what, Pal, You are now losing newspoll in every state. In fact, if you have a look here, the dark red or marone is the number of people that are satisfied with the Prime minister. The sort of orange are those who are unsatisfied or dissatisfied with the Prime Minister and those that are uncommitted
as the gray. You can see that nationally, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia all are in negative territory for the Prime Minister. In fact, nationally, fifty two percent of people are dissatisfied with the Prime Minister. Break it down by state and you have the same number in New South Wales, half of Victoria, fifty six percent of people in Queensland, fifty four percent of people in South Australia, fifty two percent of people in Western Australia.
Well, what about by age, surely it's just the oldies.
No, All bar eighteen to thirty four dissatisfied out rank satisfied with middle aged people from thirty five to forty nine, from fifty to sixty four, and people whom hopefully have been able to retire on their own terms at sixty five plus. You can see the middle column, which is dissatisfied, grows the older you get, because the older you get, the wiser you get. Okay, Well, maybe it's just sort of okay, it's a whole bunch of self funded, retire
re rich people. That's a problem too. Remember how this government is totally focused on cost of delivery. Well, people who weren't between zero and fifty thousand dollars majority are dissatisfied with the Prime minister. Between fifty and ninety nine they are majority dissatisfied with the Prime minister. People who went over one hundred to one hundred and fifty are dissatisfied with the Prime minister.
And one hundred and fifty grand it's what you earn.
And remember all of those groups represent more than half of all of the federal government money that they get when it comes to all of the taxes. So companies aren't paying it. People are paying it. Companies are paying their fair share. The GST is doing what it does, but in terms of the total pie, it's growing, as are the costs, as are the pressure.
Which is why I talk about it every night.
While we focus on it all the time while others may come and go and sort of, you know, pretend they will be. We're on it every night because we know how nervous people are. So maybe it's just a bloke thing. Maybe it's just a bloke's earning any money because remember it's the Liberal Party that has the problem with women. Well that's a problem too, you see, both men and women are dissatisfied with the job that the Prime Minister is doing.
So as my colleague Andrew.
Clenell was doing the today to try to find out what Labour insiders, we're thinking about the polls that showed every gender, every income bracket and all bar the youngest of voters have turned on the Prime minister. What would that mean for his current slender majority government.
Well, a Labour source has told me that right now they're behind in four marginal seats in New South Wales.
Let's have a look at them.
This is where Labor I am told and then along that that's after redistributions and margins, right, so that's why it's called liberal there Gilmore in the South coast, Robertson on the central coast, Patterson in the Hunter and Banalong in Sydney. My source tells me as things stand, Labor are behind in these key seats.
So after the election it was seventy seven seats. After the by election it was seventy eight seats. They lose those four we are down to seventy four and we're off to a minority government. And we have and even crossed the Murray River or gone north.
Of the tweed.
As for the idiocy that we have seen on our streets over the past couple of days, I agree with everything that's been said by all of my colleagues who have with great articulation and passion spoken obviously about the madness of people who are amongst us who would be celebrating the death of a terrorist. Now, as you know, politicians have decided that this is the line in the sand where apparently these are the people who must be brought into line for supporting the wrong side of the fight.
It's time for the Prime Minister, the Home Affairs Minister, the Attorney General to make very clear the community's expectations to the police, but the law be enforced, that people be charged, that there be consequences for this abhorrent behavior.
This has been a failure of leadership from the Prime Minister from the word go.
If we've got people here who think that that organization is okay and they're saddened by the death of this terrorist, if they're on a visa, they should be deported.
My apologies, So I thought there'd be a couple of labor ones in there. Obviously, the opposition's been very strong for the best part of the past twelve months about this stuff, and well and truly before. But as for the government, Tony Burke, who of.
Course we all know why he says. What he says is saying.
That anyone who's responsible for holding a Hesbalah flag or celebrating the passing of a terrorist leader, I will cancel their visas we can. I make a grand prediction. I think the extreme majority of people who would technically fall into that category were born here. You see, the reality is that the extreme majority of people who are being charged with terror offenses in Australia were born in Australia. They should be the people who are the beneficiaries of
the great ulticultural society. That meant that they felt loved by this country, understood and accepted by this country, because of course it was their parents or maybe grandparents who came to the country. Yet something is wrong when the people born in this country would gladly turn on this country in favor of people who would go after this country.
So forget all the visa business. So let's imagine the state laws that are in place would be the ones that the Australian Federal Police would be using potentially to go after people for holding up terrorist symbols.
Now, when these laws were all.
Past a couple of years ago, this was all about, generally speaking, banning things like swastikas, right, and banning things like the Nazi salute. Because HESBLA is a terrorist organization recognized as in this country. As such, any sort of paraphernalia in favor of them would be in the exact
same box. But again, if you think that there's about to be a whole collection of arrests and a whole collection of books being thrown at this people, again, I'm sorry to say that the system talks one way but walks almost in the direct opposite reaction. In fact, despite the fact that the Federal Police have said that at least six people, wow, six people may well end up on the wrong side of the law.
In a statement earlier.
Today, the Federal Police said that displaying ophibrited flag in isolation was not enough to charge an individual with a terrorist offense. So many of these people may not end up anywhere near terrorist charges.
So again we go back to.
The state laws where the banned symbols like the terrorist flag would end up being what you're going to cop. Well, guess what, there is no minimum sentence for these fines. There is only a maximum. The maximum fine in Victorious twenty two thousand dollars. The maximum jail term is twelve months. The maximum fine in usipios is dollars or fifty five thousand.
Dollars for a corporation, or the.
Maximum is twelve months. So let's imagine the police, who of course have done very little, if not bugger all, to go after the people who protested in the way they did immediately after October the seventh. Well, they finally find people because they go through the footage and then they decide they're going to hand this to the Department of Prosecution Public Prosecutions, who will then decide whether they
do or don't charge. Well, then they'll of course get in front of judges and magistrates who could send them to jail for twelve months or not, or find them fifty five thousand dollars or not. Now let's turn our attention to the United States and what's been happening there. Of course, the countdown to the election. We will be in the United States for the election, but I've got some interesting data for you tonight to give you a little bit of a greater picture about whom is actually
winning right now. So there was an opinion poll which is showing that Latino voters or LATINX or LATINX, depending on how lefty you.
Are, guess what.
The Democrats in twenty twelve had sixty five percent of Latino voters. Hillary Clinton had sixty nine percent, Joe Biden had sixty three percent, and Kamala Harris has fifty four percent. When Trump first ran, it was nineteen percent, then it was twenty seven percent, and now it's forty percent.
Latino voters, of course, make.
Up millions of voters all over the country. And even when this polling, which came from the left wing news organization NBC, was being discussed on the airwaves of NBC, one of the commentators who doesn't like people thinking for themselves and not just voting as one ethnic group all the same all the time, will got racist about it.
Latinos want to be wait, they want to be with the cool kids. They want to be I mean asking Latinos all the time and they just say, well, if a Donald Trump is done when he was leane, he's such a good businessman, It's like, no, he's not. He had bankruptcies. But they don't want to be identified with all of those other immigrants that Donald Trump speaks so badly of, including me as a Mexican immigrant. So they're like,
we'd rather read let's be with him. But those numbers, they could cause Kamala Harris the election.
So if you think for yourself and you make your own decision to choose Team Red or Team Blue, you're a race trader if you choose one over the other. This is the definition of racism. But that lady will no doubt get invited back onto those TV shows if something similar had been said anywhere else, and you'd be saying, for what it is disgraceful. Again, if those numbers are true and there is a giant uptick in Latino voters,
then you know Trump's probably going to win. And in fact, the very latest opinion polls are actually starting to point towards a potential victory. I've spoken a lot about real clear politics. Now they do averages of all the different poles, and if an election was held today and they said the poles were one hundred percent right, then Trump would win two eighty one. He needs two seventy to Harris's
two fifty seven. Now, of course, all of that comes down to the state of Pennsylvania, which they say he will win. Without it, he would lose according to this map. However, the statisticians that we've talked about in the past who've had Trump winning say that Harris is a greater chance of winning because they think she will win Pennsylvania. In fact, they said there's a fifty eight percent chance to forty one percent chance of her winning that state.
So let's get into Pennsylvania. Now, as you know, there's seven different.
States, and I think that in many ways people are overly focused, but everyone says that basically.
You win Pennsylvania, that'll be the whole game.
So five most recent polls, again, let's have a look most recent poles that dropped good for Trump before that tie, before that good for Trump, before that real good for Harris,
before that a tie. However, I went back and I had a look today, and I had to look just how wrong were the poles these five particular and specific polling organizations about the result in two thousand and twenty three point one, three point eight, four point eight, Bloomberg didn't do them four years ago, and Rasmussen was under two percent. So let's imagine that we corrected for all of their wrongs. And again this is me just doing
an exercise. Here, the five most recent polls in Pennsylvania would say Harris just Trump a fair bit, Trump by a country mile, Harris comfortably, or Trump pretty comfortably.
But nothing to see here.
The Poles are always right, apart from the fact that they were wrong four years ago, and apart from the fact they were wrong four.
Years before that. But you know, Latino voters just want to be white apparently. Goodness, quick break back with more plenty to talk about.
We did begin the debate for the rest of the show, looking forward to this plenty to fire up about, including will normal people care about a budget deficit or budget surplus?
That and a whole lot more here on pau Murray Life.
Thanks for watching this Monday, and again thanks to everyone who came and saw us last night in VIC. All right, let's get on with it here. Sam Crosby in the man cave and doing his best right now. Senator Matt Canavan of course, jordanus right now from Rocky. So let's get into the polls, all right, where Sam Prime Minister's
able to say, I've ever lost a news poll. I just showed dissatisfaction, right, every income group, every demographic, with the exception of eighteen to thirty four war, it's men and women.
Can we can write you know what, I'm going to answer your question, but can we can we talk about this subject when the polls are going in our favor, you know next time they're going okay, can we have this? Can we have this conversation again if you want to come back after the election, what happens?
But okay, so today we end up again in this scenario where the budget unequivocally good news under conventional political wisdom, but they're in a hole. Do you think that the election, by its very nature means all of this gets reset or does stuff start to get baked in here?
Look, I take your point budget surpluses. I take a point from that to story of budget surpluses look terrible when people are genuinely struggling, and I work for a charity. I see the struggle literally every single day that I'm at work. That said, the one thing that I don't think you want to do right now is start going and spending and spraying this money all over the economy.
And I'm not saying a thousand bucks for everyone, billion dollars for charity.
Sure, and you know on behalf of my work. I will take it, right, I will take it. But quite seriously, you know, right now, the one thing that the government is hanging their hopes on is an interest rate cut sometime between now and whenever the election is going to be. And you're only going to get that by yes, ratcheting up large budget surpluses. So yeah, I take the point that it is a difficult thing to say to someone
who's struggling to put food on the table. It's okay, we've got a fifteen and that's going to result in a lower interest payment and therefore your rent.
It's a long boat boat to draw.
But if you think about what's actually driving the pain that people are experiencing, it's generally related to interest rates.
Matt, what does the slices of the slices of the slices, either in the poll or certainly that the attempt to say, hey, good news today, what does it tell you.
Well, the election's up for grabs, that's for sure. I mean the Liberal National Parties will remain the underdog here. We're very rarely does the first term government get defeated. Hasn't happened since the Great Depression or o'tanney abbit basically did it and got done it at the finish line, correct. So it's a.
Tough slog but it's very very close.
The Australian people, i think, remain unconvence about the mission, the purpose, the lack of a plan from this government. It's very tough times. It's tough for everybody, but the government really just rests back on slogans, not a real plan.
Their budget has been marked by massive spending. All economists say that, yes, they delivered a surplus, but that's on the back of a booming commodity market, bigger terms of trade than we had after the GFC, and they've gone and spent most of that and that's added to inflationary pressures. They've hired thirty thousand public servants, that's an extra seven billion dollars in the payroll. They've chucked thirty billion dollars
at various green hydrogen critical minerals booon doggles. It's just not the thing that should be done right now to try and rain inflation. All the strains know that they've got to tighten their belt right now, and they just don't see their government doing the same. So people are dissolution and they don't know what's going on.
But equally so, I mean that I'm pretty sure not many barbecue stoppers having a chat about per a per
capita recession, right. But the reason I show those numbers, the reason I talk about what that English bolk was saying that it's not about the last most recent inflation number, it's about all the additions that come before it that basically feel like another brick in a brick in your saddle bag constantly, let alone the twelve interest rate rises, So okay, one, two comes down when you're still ten ten up from where you were before the journey started.
I think we're in a scenario where we're going to end up having a conversation that's going to be held among a.
Certain group of people.
They're going to say, but look at this, and look at that, and look at the stock market. The economy is great, But the vast majority of people watching, hearing or listening to it are going for who?
I think you've summarized the government's trap right now. They're in a bit of a trap where they do say, look, isn't it great? Inflation's shopped by point one of a percent? Rough, isn't it great? You know, the economy's ground by point three of a percent. Nobody feels that. You know, the government's effectively telling you to not believe your lying eyes.
Your eyes in front of you see the price of everything going up in grocery store is much high than what CPI prints at most things have got twenty thirty percent easy in the last few years, and you stand a living going backwards. They see that the government points
to a surplus today, how great it is? Well, you know, if you actually delve into the numbers, and I'm sure not many people do this, but get a inkling of it that in fact, over the government's fort estimates the next four years, they'll rack up on their own estimates one hundred and twenty two billion dollars of deficits. They could borrow one hundred and twenty two billion dollars extra, and they want credit for the thirty five billion of surpluses they've meeked out in the last couple of years.
I mean, it's absurd.
The budget is massively expansionary right now, and that's adding to people's pain.
So Sam, for the labor people that I hate watching us right now, and again, I appreciate it all. So I do appreciate it. You've spent a bit of time in the States. We'll talk about that in a second. But obviously the Democrats are trying to turn around and say, don't worry about the full story of the four years. Look at where we are today. Where we're slightly the fire is not as intense, but of course that collective
effect is what you have to be confronted by. So how are the Democrats saying to somebody who goes, hang on, everything costs more than it was, everything is.
Higher than it was.
How do they convince them that, again, their lying eyes are their lying eyes.
Yeah, I don't think you're looking at persuasion too much in the United States now. Now it's about getting out the vote in your areas and suppressing the vote in their areas, and that goes the same way for both sides. One of the really interesting people that we or groups we spend some time with we're doing the advice for the Democratic Party, and they were saying, essentially, in Pennsylvania, you have run out of air to buy. Every single ad is basically Trump Harris, Trump Harris. And so we
went there. We're in Pennsylvania for a day and we copped a feel of this and literally every single ad and so it's no one's trying to persuade you about a policy merit or anything like that, which is why when we look at the news, we're seeing Harris not give you any kind of plan and Trump's sort of typical crazy ranting.
Which I have much to say about this a little later. But again different in Australia because you don't have to do that. Everyone is forced to go and enroll hues, meaning that the reality of the.
Data, well, I mean it means that our elections you focus on, you know, negative gearing and the tax treatment and investment properties.
Doesn't the government do great?
Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, But we're having these furious debates about frankly, relatively minor changes and we're not talking about guns and abortion and these things that motivate your base to get out to vote, because your base is going to.
Be there yeah, correct, And I don't know what the Australian version of MAGA is, but anyway you can send me an them. Paul, let's go on news dot com dot you quick break back when more what's it like to prepare for Baptist?
You know, it's my favorite sport. I'll tell you about that and back to the lads in a month. Now.
Where we were last night in Springvale on the edges of Melbourne is also where some of my favorite people go work each and every day and is the Arabus Motors board team. Now, I, as you know, absolutely love the owners of the company, both at Betty and Daniel, and I love the people who work all the way from taking care of the tires all the way through to Barry Ryan, who was of course the bloke in charge of the day to day when it comes to
the team. We had a chance to have a chat about what it's like to prepare for Bathist.
Preparing for Bathist's always special because it's such a big race, it's such an important race and it's such a team effort to get a result. So yeah, it's always special to make sure that you can tick that box and get everything right and if you get everything right at Bathist. You've done a really good job and it's the biggest race of the year. We take pretty much your whole cars, where there's spare parts, if not two cars, whether spare parts,
so yeah, everything you need to rebuild a car. The most important thing they've first that might save the day is probably.
Your attitude.
Good attitude and that that can save the day, whether it's a driver or the crew or whoever's running the car. It's just, yeah, just being calm and having good attitude. You can't practice Queen calm and just being ready for any moment that happens.
Probably that's the biggest thing. Paul.
He's not that annoying compared to motorsport journalists that they're annoying. He's a professional. You always know when falls around because it's a car smoke. He's lingering, and you know, he's great to have around. He's always there's a joke there and there's a hangar.
But there's a lot of support too. I love your baths.
I'm glad we've got a beef in there because often that is our conversation. I can't wait to see what happens when it comes to about this it's going to be awesome. All right, let's continue the chatting here with Sam Crossby. I think he's going about this himself. You're your plan, you're there all right now. I thought we were going to have a political panel or something. Work by the racetrack. Yes, imagine what the people want. Imagine the man who certainly would be there in spirit is
not on the goalie. A couple of weeks later, of course, has Mat Cannavan. So Matt quickly to what is behind you now? The opposition has come out hard against the Internet's censorship bill, and quite rightly, I think that this thing would be surprised, but we know that the Greens would probably love it door, Matt Dave will trade something for it. Lamby probably because she said crazy things in
the past about people like Elon Musk. So despite the fact the opposition's coming out hard, there is a path through the Parliament.
Yes, so there's a risk Paul know that about it than I think, Just like digital ID a few months ago, the government could seek to ram this through with basically no or minimal debate. There was no debate on its digital ID bill in the Senate. It was an absolutely outrage there are a lot of amendments being moved. They
just had to be voted on block. And the government scheduled the Senate inquiry on this bill to come back on the Monday of the last sitting week, so there's days a few days there before the end of the year. They could ram this through again, but people just have got to make their voices heard. Submissions closed today, but normally inquiries accept late submissions if you want to make one under this bill. And as you say, this isn't
attack on free speech, it's a licensing a censorship. I'd just like to quickly point out one thing that does get missed a bit. What the government's doing here is effectively deputizing social media companies to do the censorship on their behalf, to be agents of the government effectively. Keep in mind, almost all of those social media companies are foreign owned companies. So we're giving the authority to a US based company to censor Australians and their own political speech.
And worst there's a company called TikTok out there. They're captured by this Australian goverment is giving license to TikTok to a company that does have ties with the Chinese Commuist Party to license and censor the speech of Australians.
It's outrageous.
Well so much so that remember in the United States, because of the connections to China, they want them to be severed and sold, otherwise it will be banned. That's the Biden position. Okay, actually Trump is on the opposite of that particular question.
But we'll all see where it goes again.
Just quickly back to the States before we're done, Vance Walt's the VP debate?
Do vps matter?
Know?
Does it mean that we know what the media outlet's going to be, which is Waltz is like everyone's dad. He's not and Vance is the craziest person you've ever seen.
He's not.
We know what the media in narrative will be for a week. Do you think that that's the inevitability no matter what happens out of the debate?
Sam, Look, I think the inevitability of this is no one watches, and those that do have their minds firmly made up.
I don't think watching reserve grade.
God love you if you do it, but we know that you're not the casual fan.
I don't think it moves the dial in any direction. It does, however, give Vance a chance to rehabilitate himself. He has not had a good campaign. He came in on a high, He's not had a good campaign. He you know, his prospects if Trump were to lose, do not look good.
If he can put up a really good.
Show against Waltz, then you know, maybe he can rehabilitate his career after this.
Yeah.
I mean, we know if Harris loses, it's not going to be Waltz. We know if Trump loses, well, of course, you know, the Maga crown can be placed anywhere else. So I want to ask you this one quickly before we go, Mack, what's one bit of data or one story that is rolling around in the American campaign that you think is more important than people are giving it credit for, or something people should just hear as part of their overall knowledge about what's happening on the other side of the world.
It's kind of what you highlighted before, Paul, and that is that the Poles never being better for Trump, like, never been better for Donald Trump.
And if you.
Do correct them for the bias they've had the last two election cycles, he's winning by the length of a Strait. Now, I don't know, Maybe those poles are corrected their areas. Maybe people aren't as shy as coming out as Trump supporters. Now I'm not so. It was both election cycles. By twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, support for Trump was massively underestimated.
And when you look at when you drill down and look at those polling companies that got it closer to write, companies like Atlas Resnusin, they're at the moment pretty strongly in favor of Trump. So keep coming back to that fact that he's probably the best candidate as his JD. Van's his running mate for those Midwestern seats that are the crucial areas.
Yeah, we'll see. Give me the year fifteen second version.
Look, my great worry is what actually happens on polling day, especially in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is an open carry state. Tensions are really.
High right now, something's going to happen.
Well, no, no, no, no, no, absolutely not. But what people are talking about election monitors where both campaigns will have people walking out the lines and it just gets too rough and people will be walking up and down the lines in them militia gear. And that's a bit scary.
Thank you very much to appreciate it.
On that I I good bought not we'll see you again tomorrow or not when Agel Farage is here. And as always a light to buy in a couple of minutes.
Yeah h