Live on Sky News.
This is Sharry, Good Evening and welcome. Coming up tonight, Anthony Albernezi's set to announce a plan to tackle anti Semitism that includes outcomes from our.
Sky New summit. I have those details in a moment.
Also tonight, the Secrets of the mushroom Killer, Aaron Patterson's hidden.
Addiction to true crime.
That's coming up, plus why has Trump shut down the Epstein Files? I talk about this with world famous journalist Michael Schellenberger, and Penny Wong refuses to say if she's been duped by a Marco Rubio impersonator. But first tonight, new details are emerging about Aaron Patterson's life and what drove her to a point where.
She killed three people with a deadly lunch.
The journalist who originally broke the story, John Ferguson, has met Aaron Patterson and describes her as cold, mean and vicious. He says she's lied so much that it's now hard to determine fact from fiction. He points to the untruths about her having ovarying cancer, the use of her multiple phones, lies about foraging for mushrooms, whether she owned a dehydrator, and how she was wearing white pants on the day she claimed to be suffering from food poisoning as a
result of the beef Wellington meal. Ferguson will be on the show tonight. He describes it beautifully, saying that at the center of her life was a pathetic graveyard of fiction.
Not completely normal around the way she was responding, But the number one thing was that I could tell she's really bright. And that's kind of unusual because usually when you end up in these any sorts of big crime alleged crime stories, they tend to be if it's not white color crime, it tends to be lower as socioeconomic, whereas you could see here that's a woman or means, you know, from everything we're told, it's a good mother,
you know, and extremely well educated. So there's a few sort of little differences in this story.
And John Ferguson will be on the show a bit later. But even for someone who's unusual, as he says, and prone to lying, the cruel way in which Aaron chose to murder her in laws Don and Gail Patterson, and also Gail's sister Heather, is inexplicable. They suffered the excruciating pain of organ failure from the death cap mushrooms, a slow and painful death.
It's a miracle that.
Baptist pastor Ian Wilkinson survived after spending weeks in an induced come and given he was the only person to live after that death cat mushroom meal, his evidence was crucial during the trial. He said that he and his wife, Heather, were so sick after the lunch that they slept next to the toilets at their home before being taken to hospital, and the doctor who was on call at the hospital when Aaron arrived said she was faking symptoms, and he
describes her in brutal terms. Doctor Christopher Webster said that she is a colorous, calculated killer.
There is an eerie sort of disquiet that you have in her presence, but it's not the typical sort of scary ogre type fear that you have.
It's more visceral than that. It's sort of, you know, her.
Oddness gets under your skin and penetrates your brain. Then she's not it's not pleasant to be around her.
When Aaron Patterson told doctor Webster that she bought the mushrooms at a supermarket, he said he knew she was guilty.
Where to get the mushrooms?
And that's when she said Wilworth And I'm like, yeah, okay, that's you're guilty.
I knew from that moment.
And the audio is now in the public domain for the call that he then made to police right after her hospital visit.
This is doctor Chris Webster calling from Lee and Gatha Hospital and I have a concern regarding a patient that presented here earlier but has left the building and is potentially exposed to a fatal toxin from mushroom poisoning.
And so began a lengthy police investigation. They found that Aaron led an isolated existence. She spoke about her upbringing in messages that were published by The Australian Today. In the messages, she said, we had a horrible upbringing. Mum was essentially a cold robot. It was like being brought up in a Russian orphanage where they don't touch the babies. Dad wanted to be warm and loving to us, but Mum wouldn't let him because it would spoil us.
So he did as he was told.
But none of that explains her cruel murder of three kind hearted elderly people, or her bizarre reaction to it.
It's a tragedy.
What's happened?
Can you tell us about the meal that you pulled?
So devastated by what's happened, but the loss of Donning.
Don is still in hospital, the bossome Ian and Heather and Gale. It was some of the best people that I've ever met.
Looking back at that now we know they were crocodile tears shed for good, decent people that Aaron Patterson deliberately murdered in a cruel way with still no possible motive.
Now.
Prime Minister Anthony Alberzi will front the media tomorrow alongside Special Envoy Julian Siegel as she presents her plan to tackle anti Semitism. My understanding is that her recommendations will include many of those from our Sky News Antisemitism Summit. At the conclusion of our summit, Alex Ripchen from the Executive Council of Australian Jury presented a fifteen point plan to.
Help tackle the crisis.
Yet the Albenzi government entirely rejected it. Alberizi himself wrote a letter back refusing to adopt a single one of those recommendations. Of course, that was before the Federal election, when he was more worried about upsetting the Muslim community than taking proper action on the hatred against Jews. But the election is now over, and the antisemitism crisis, of course hasn't abated, with a synagogue firebombed and a restaurant
stormed just on Friday night. And so tomorrow the Prime Minister will stand alongside Jillian Siegel and commit to taking action to protect the Jewish community. Now the question is whether the Prime Minister will support her plan, and my sources tell me he does already have a copy of
her comprehensive report. His decision to hold a press conference on this topic this week comes after he's been under sustained pressure over his lack of action on antisemitism, and specifically he's been under pressure to commit to the fifteen point plan from our summit.
He's like gutive.
Counsel, an Australian jury is pleading with you to reconsider or to least to consider their February proposal to stop anti Semitism in Australia.
Will you do that?
And if not, why not.
What we're doing is working with the Special Envoy.
Shadow Foreign if As Minister Michaulia cash and Liberal Senator James Patterson put pressure on alban Easy to adopt.
This plan on my show this week.
He has been presented with a constructive list of recommendations by the people who have been affected most egregiously by antisemitism in this country.
Is they thought that antisemitism would go away on its own, that it wouldn't require leadership, that it wouldn't require action, that it wouldn't require fortitude, that it wouldn't require strength. I hope they have now been absolved of that false assumption, because this is a crisis, it's an ongoing one, it's getting worse, and it requires leadership and action now.
So, as I said, my understanding is that some of those recommends from our summit will be included in the plan Jillian Siegel announces tomorrow. But the question remains where the Albanesi and Tony Burke decide to adopt these recommendations. And if Albanezi does adopt them, well, why did he reject them earlier this year? And I can't help but wonder if it's because the election has come and gone.
And if that's the case, the conclusion is that the Jewish community were the victims of political expediency where the Albaneze government didn't want to lose Muslim votes and so didn't confront the anti Semitism challenge. And this is a sobering thought and it is most likely the case. The change in tone from the Albanese government in recent days
is noticeable and quite astonishing. Lifelong pro Palestinian activist Tony Burke seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation we're facing when he stood outside East mel And Synagogue on the weekend.
Arson attacks, the chanting calls for death, other attacks and graffiti. None of it belonged to Australia, and they were attacks on Australia.
The chanting calls for death, the vandalism, the graffiti, the fire bombing. This has all been going on for months and months and months, and in fact some of it started right after October seven. Yet we're only hearing this language now, and this change in sentiment is also reflected.
In parts of the media as well.
The ABC has been the worst perpetrator of anti Israel propaganda since October seven and before. There are too many examples to count of how they continually choose to portray Israel as the villain and make false claims about unethical conduct. There are experienced journalists who must know the truth but deliberately report.
A biased view of the war.
So it was refreshing and surprising to see some solid reporting this week on the ABC. The ABC seven to thirty program did put tough questions to the activists who stormed the Melbourne restaurant.
Does that help your cause? Does it help your cause to be scaring diners on a Friday night in Melbourne?
Imagine lying on a hospital bed in a tent as a displaced person, or trying to keep your starving children safe in a tent.
But those people were just they're just going out for dinner, you know, they're just trying to have a nice dinner. On Hardware Lane, it must have occurred to you when you've seen the coverage that a lot of people find this very objectionable.
Do they find the murder, naming, genocide objectionable?
Norman Hermann's questions were spot on, and then ABC journalist Patricia Callis wrote a surprisingly great article where she makes some excellent and intelligent points. She says, there's been a suggestion that people who are repulsed by anti Semitism don't therefore care about Gaza, and she says this is a
narrative that has been constructed to justify the unjustifiable. And she writes about how it's not just government and leaders who need to take action, but she says it's the collective responsibility of all to ensure that Jews feel like they belong as free citizens in our country. Patricia writes the attacks on Jewish people in Melbourne on Friday night should send chills down the spines of all Australians, Jewish and non Jewish who value diversity, culture, and the right
to be safe. She says, I've seen online a view that we should only and exclusively be concerned about the death and destruction in Gaza, that by even discussing the anti Jewish attacks in Australia, we have somehow made a choice to accept what we see unfold in the Middle East. She says it's time to call out this dangerous binary.
This is a false and despicable choice by bad faith actors unwilling to confront the frightening position they are putting Australian Jews in attacking Jews in restaurants, in synagogues and on our streets. Is deeply rooted in anti Jewish sentiment and in anti Semitism. How can it be an act of political expression and protest to.
Target your fellow citizens?
And she asks what kind of cognitive dissonance and radicalization has happened to convince anyone that this behavior is anything other than violent hate. Now you wouldn't blink an eelet at a at a column like that on Sky News or in the new Scott publications, but we haven't seen
comprehensive coverage of antisemitism at the public broadcaster. And her message of collective responsibility to address this scourge carries weight coming from a senior journalist at the ABC, because too many of the ABC reporters are pro Palestinian activists who you'll never ever hear uttering a word about hatred against Jews.
And so it's in this changing climate that finally Albanzi is expected to speak out tomorrow about antisemitism, and we hope he'll endors Jillian Siegel's action plan, some of which was developed during our summit, and standing up at the press conference alongside Albanesi will be Tony Burke. In twenty seventeen, the pair were headlining a policy forum on Palestine alongside anti Israel activist Bob Carr. Now this pair are in
charge of solving the anti Semitism crisis. Now, we can never forgive alban Ezi, Burke, Penny Wong and others for how they've allowed this crisis to flourish, how they've put our families in danger, how they've ruined Australia causing it to be a violent, racist, unsafe.
Country for Jews.
But this is the federal government, our Australians, our fellow Australians elected. This is the government we've been dealt with at this point in time. And unless you're going to leave the country, well for as long as we continue to live here, we don't have another option. And so we need to urge the Albanzi government to take serious action on anti Semitism, and we need to hope that they fully endorse Jillian Siegel's.
Action plan tomorrow.
All right, let's bring in our panel now, big show coming up, as I said Michael Schellenberger shortly on the Epstein files, John Ferguson on the Mushroom case of it later, but now let's bring in former Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger and a labor legend, Graham Richardson, great to see you both.
Michael.
We've had this antisemitism crisis for twenty one months now. Why do you think the Prime Minister is only taking it seriously now?
Well, because when you have a second synagogue firebombing, when you get restaurants trashed by these radical left wing activists, when you get cars defaced, when you get another Jewish restaurant in Melbourne on the weekend defaced, it's getting worse and worse. And I think Albany's is the point now where under his watch and it'll forever be a staying
on his Prime ministership. Things have deteriorated since Penny Wong's appauling comment after October seven that Israel needs to exercise restraint, and it's been downhill from there. So I think it's got to a point now where things are so bad he's being forced to do something he doesn't want to do.
We know he doesn't want to do anything. He's a left wing pro Palestinian activist by historical definition, Tony Burke of all people, for goodness sake, Well, that'll give the Jewish community a great deal of comfort to have Albanezy and Burke up there on the padium.
All you need is.
Penny Wong and that'll send people right off. So I think he's been forced in to do something through sheer, embarrassment and outgoing And now with the comments you've just reported of the ABC and Patricia Cavellis, this is now widening away from the Jewish community and right thinking Australians to a lot of other people who think that's got to stop.
It's got to stop.
And maybe that's maybe that's what it is.
Maybe it's now he's under pressure from other media outlets, not just Newscott I think so.
Rich.
As Michael just points out, we know a leopard can't change its spots. So do you have any confidence that Tony Burke and ALBINIZI are going to suddenly take this issue seriously.
I believe they've always taken it seriously. It's just they have a different view, I think to a lot of people, including yourself and probably me, I understand that. I think I've never liked the view that Anthony or Tony have on this, even as a labor men. I can't justify that. I think they're wrong, and I've always had the same view on this question.
I mean, I don't mean to disagree, but I think you can have a different view on the wall, But on racism, I just don't think you can have a different view. I think there's right and there's wrong, and anti Semitism is wrong, and they should have acted on it, you know, nearly two years ago, twenty It could three months.
It could have been done sooner.
It could have been done sooner exactly.
All right, Let's turn to Trump's announcement today that he plans to slap tariffs on pharmaceuticals and copper.
Here he was, we'll be announcing something very soon on pharmaceuticals. We're going to give people about a year a year and a half to come in and after that they're going to be tariffed. If they have to bring the pharmaceuticals into the country, the drugs and other things into the country, they're going to be tariffed at a very very high rate, like two hundred percent. We'll give them a certain period of time to get their act together.
Yeah, so two hundred percent absolutely massive. Or here was the Treasurer reacting to the news.
They're obviously very concerning developments.
We are talking about billions of.
Dollars of exports to the US when it comes to pharmaceuticals.
And Michael, this will increase the sure on Albin easy to get a deal done, but he's not in any position to do that when he has zero relationship with the President.
Well, that's true, Shari. And the problem is he cannot go to the White House. I mean, this is the bizarre thing. And Greg Sheridan has basically pointed this out on numerous occasions. You've got the Prime Minis of Australia who can have four meetings with the communist leader of China, one of the most repressive regimes in the world.
He can have four meetings with him.
He's more comfortable visiting China, but can't visit our trading partner and major historical ally and the country with him we've been to war on any number of occasions. Why he cannot risk a meeting in the White House. He cannot sit in the White House and run the risk of a Zelenski moment because in that meeting in the White House, our ambassador will have to be there, Kevin Rudd. So you've got Rudd standing there behind one of those couches.
Given all the things he said about Trump. And but he's given what he said about Trump at at that festival. You got jd Vance sitting there. Who knows what Vans might say to say it cross the room to Kevin right, aren't you the bloke that called our president, you know, a threat to democracy, a crazy man, etcetera, etcetera. That meeting could that meet a village idiot. That meeting could explode.
Now in the conference of how these things work, Albany's advisors will have sat with him and said, listen, we can't go to an overlops meeting. Try and get him on the sides of one of these conferences where you can be photographed with him, had cameras shaking hands, so you can say I've had a meeting with him. But for goodness sake, they've said to him, you cannot risk a Zelenski moment in the White House because that will live on in Australia in US history forever. And that's
why you can't go to the White House. That's why I can't have a meeting. And isn't that bizarre. We can't meet our major ally, Yet he can meet the communist leadership in China on four occasions. It's totally bizarre, Shari.
Yeah, I mean he was.
I reported this a couple of months ago that he was a few months ago. He was desperately trying to get a phone call. But now maybe he doesn't even want the meeting. As you say, Richo, would you say this is the worst relationship Australia has had with America since the Whitlam government.
Yeah, I would.
Do you want to expand on that?
I think this is deplorable now. I think we have got to take into account the fact that you're only ever going to have one ally like the United States. You're only ever going to have one nation that can put an umbrella over you and try and put.
Well, I think we're losing Richo's audio a bit there.
Kick from the oh sorry, can you hear me?
Now?
Yeah, you're cutting in and out. Your audio is cutting in and out. We might move on to the next topic, Michael. This has been quite a big story today. It's the latest gender face. A convicted double murderer has requested to be transferred to a women's prison after suddenly identifying as a woman. This is nineteen years into his forty three year sentence.
A murderer.
The acting news otherwise Premier Ryan Park told the Telegraph that this isn't going to be happening. He doesn't find it acceptable. He doesn't think the community would find it acceptable. But Michael, this is getting ridiculous, isn't it.
I think mister Park's words probably echo those of the majority of the Austrainian public. Sad and as difficult as circumstances are of the convicted double murderer and his personal circumstances as difficult as they are with in relation with sexuality, I don't think it's reasonable let that person haven't committed to murders be transferred to a women's prison. So no, I think I agree with mister Park, who's right again as he was the last time we spoke about him.
Absolutely, he is one of the excellent ministers in them men's government. But this is the issue with this policy where people believe that any man is a woman. I mean, this is where it ends in circumstances like this, it's just bizarre. Michael Kroeger, thank you so much for your time. And if riche's there, well, hopefully a better.
Audio next week.
All right, Well, the White House has been fending off controversy this week after it shut down, claims that there's an incriminating Epstein client list. We've heard about the Epstein list for a long time now, and then suddenly there was this official memo that said it is the determination of the Department of Justice and the FBI that no
further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted. Now, key members of Trump's team had promised transparency on this topic, and it was a key point of interest among the Maggot base, and previous comments from Attorney General pat and Bondai also suggested that this document, this list not only existed, but that she had it on her desk.
The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients.
Well that really happen.
It's sitting on my desk right now to review.
Now she says there's no list.
So is there something here or is it all just wild speculation? Well, President Trump was asked about it today. He certainly didn't appreciate the question, and it was during a cabinet meeting.
Have a look, are you.
Still talking about Jeffrey in Epstein.
This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking me, we have Texas we have this, we have all of the things, and are people still talking about this guy, this creep That is unbelievable.
I spoke about all of this with world famous journalist and author Michael S.
Shellenberger a little earlier.
Michael Shellenberger, thank you so much for your time today.
Thanks for having me.
Now, there was this expectation that under the Trump had been fustration we'd see the release of the so called Epstein files. But we've now seen the Department of Justice and the White House claim there aren't any files.
What do you think the truth is here?
I think that what I think is what I think most reporters here think and most of the public think, which is that there's a lot of files. I mean that, you know, the Attorney General said it at truckloads full, you know, tens of thousands of videos. Epstein's victims had said that there were that they were videotaping the sexual activity, sexual abuse, the sex trafficking.
You look most people that have covered.
This, and by the way, it's it's left wing, right wing, mainstream news media, Miami Herald. I mean, it's pretty widely held among the journalists that have covered this that this was a sex blackmail operation with ties to the intelligence community, the Central the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was at Epstein's apartment multiple times. That was reported by the Wall Street Journal. Bill Gates famously was there and his ex wife told reporter that it was a major
reason for their divorce. This is serious business because it's not just about sex trafficking. It's about really the undermining of democracy potentially if they're entrapping politicians in you know, sex blackmail operations. You know, you have both the attorney of the Attorney General, you have the director of the FBI, the deputy director of the FBI, who have all said that.
This is that there's a lot here.
You know, before Trump was elected, his director of the FBI, Cash Battel.
Said that that the.
There was a cover up occurring because of the people on the list. The deputy director said that foreign intelligence from some Middle Eastern nation was involved in this, which most people interpret as Israel. So there's just a lot here. And I will say credit Trump's supporters. They have not taken what the Trump administration has said at face value.
They're demanding answers.
They've shown a lot of independence here, which I think is a positive assign for our democracy. It's sort of one of the side things that's come out of it.
Well, there were high expectations that we'd have a new era of transparency in this administration, and this was one of the key fields. There are others, of course, But when it comes to the Epstein issue, we saw accusations from Elon Musk that Donald.
Trump was named in the files.
Musk of course deleted that x post and removed those allegations publicly. But do you think there might be any basis to the fact that Trump may be mentioned in some capacity and that could be why the full files aren't being released at the moment.
I mean, you know, look, I mean, Trump had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. That's bringing well documented. There's photographs, there's videos. Trump has talked about it. Trump has repeatedly said that he did not engage in any inappropriate behavior, you know, I mean, I think the best argument that there is nothing linking Trump to Epstein is that the people that tried to prevent Trump from becoming president tried to put him in prison. They tried to prevent him
from running for office in a variety of ways. They trumped up a lot of charges, trying to turn misdemeanors into felonies, all in the so called lawfair to prevent Trump from becoming president. If they had Trump tied to Epstein, I don't know why they wouldn't have used it.
You know.
On the other hand, if there's a lot of people implicated, maybe it's considered you know, the nuclear option, and there's just so many people implicated. I mean AGAINI the current FBI director last year said that there were people in Congress who were implicated by this, So you know, we
don't know. But like you said, you know, it's the con It's not like if this were happening in context where we were getting transparency and disclosure on a lot of other major conspiracies and I don't mean theories, I mean proven conspiracies, then I think the response from Trump's
base would have been different. But the reality is they just haven't delivered on this particular part of Trump's campaign promise, which was not just transparency but also really reforming the intelligence community, which we haven't done for fifty years, and I think most people think we need to do.
Michael, I just want to ask you about the devastating tragedy of the flash floods in Texas, the warning systems were massively inadequate, and we're seeing school children who lost their lives.
Because of it. Is this a leadership issue and what needs to happen now?
Yeah, it's a really great question. I think that the first thing is that whenever there's a natural disaster, the media says it was completely unprecedented, that there had never been extreme weather that we'd seen before, and therefore it was fundamentally about climate change.
On this particular.
Disaster, the media also said that it was because Trump had cut the budget for the National Weather Service. Both of those things have been debunked roundly. I think a credit to ACTS and social media for being able to spread the truth on this. But the fact of the matter is that precipitation is actually declined in that part of Texas, that in fact, flooding has been going on for a very long time.
In fact, the.
Flooding was going on for so long that it was something that people had that the locals had tended to ignore. I mean, I think that this is one of the very important things that comes out of these disasters, is that you know, it was raining very hard and there was you know, there was this flood risk and there people did know about it, but they had been warned for so often. So I think the other lesson is you have to you really have to have the government
go and either evacuate people, require that people leave. And then yeah, it's just what you said, you know, it's basically very simi bull. It's you know, it's these big warning systems, these big loud speakers on you know, up high and because they think people are their phones or their phones are out of service.
So I think that's just.
The hard lesson from it is that you know, they had you know, been going on.
Since the eighties, the flooding, so.
There was a proposal to have these big loud speakers and warning systems.
They didn't do it.
Of course, there's some cost involved.
Obviously that looks ridiculous given the deaths and destruction that have occurred. But yeah, I think that's one of the lessons is that you just have to have these sirens in place to really raise the alarm and cut and make a difference between just a mild mannered warning and a really serious one.
And in fact, in that area I read that in nineteen thirty two there was also major flooding.
So you're right, this has been an ongoing.
Issue for the area and they should have been more prepared. Michael, thank you very much for joining me once again.
Always a pleasure. Good to see you, Sherry.
Isn't it great? All right? Still to come?
Will Alban Easy finally take action on anti Semitism? Advocate Marnie Pearlstein will join me live plus all the dirt comes out on the mushroom murderer Aaron Patterson. We'll find out her secret addiction to true crime.
That's after this quick break, Welcome back.
Well.
Now that Aaron Patterson's trial is over, the curtains are lifting on the.
Mushroom murderer's past.
New information about the extent of her lies and manipulative behavior are emerging now that the media is no longer gagged by the legal process, and this includes stories of multiple cell phones, lying about medical conditions and a ponschant.
For true crime.
No one has covered this case more closely than the associate editor at The Australian, John Ferguson, and I spoke with him a bit earlier. John Ferguson, you originally broke the story about Aaron Patterson. What can you tell us about the case now and about Erin now that you couldn't pot on while the trial was ongoing.
Well, I suppose, Shari. It's the nature of the woman.
She's a triple murderer, she's nasty, she's been indictive. I think she's controlling some of the things that were tried to be said about her husband. It was actually her untrustworthy, a serial liar, you know, someone that fundamentally you wouldn't want in your life.
John.
There's been a lot of discussion about what her motive could possibly be for murdering her in laws, kind hearted people and their relatives, and the attempted murder of a Baptist pastor as well.
Why do you think she did this.
I think it's revenge against her a strange husband, Simon. I think it was all about that. There's no sensible reason. Obviously, you don't go around killing people, which she has. But I think it was about that they just fell out, her and a husband, and their relationship became progressively worse. Her in the court that in late twenty twenty two, he changed his marital status to single, which had an impact, she believed on what income she could get potentially.
From the federal government.
And so at that point very much their relationship collapsed, and she obviously wanted to get back at him, and as we know, she invited him to that lunch on July twenty nine, twenty twenty three. You can only imagine that he was the prime target and these elderly people are collateral.
And for someone who you have described as fairly intelligent, quite.
Smart, did she really think she could get away with this? Was she not thinking about her children?
Look, it's it's bewildering Sharie, to be honest, but you know she's We now know her. She's a convicted triple murderer and someone who attempted to kill another elderly person. The thing that's really hard, and it's coming up a little bit, is that she was a true crime sort of.
I would say Nafie that basically she was really into true crime, but she hadn't focused on basic issues like you know, you can be tracked now very very readily that you know obviously your communications are anything you buy, you know, you go and buy food, dehydrate of your credit card, not only can they get the receipt, but if they want to, they can get the CCTV if he drops, if you drop into a petrol station on route, like she did the day after the murders, you know,
she was seen there on the CCTV. It's a very different world we live in, but you would think a really highly intelligent woman, and she is. Her mother was a very well regarded children's literature academic. Her father was very bright, her sister's extremely bright. You know, these were seriously well read people, but really not very practical zero zero practical life skills.
I would have thought. I mean a story that I wrote.
Soon after the convictions about her time working as an air traffic controller.
She was really dysfunctional.
She basically, you know, this is a bit harsh, but she had poor hygiene, she didn't get on with She was quite terse and angry towards people. I've spoken to Aaron Patterson and she's a very unpleasant woman. And obviously now she's a triple murderer as well.
Yeah, I didn't realize she was a true crime night as you say, was she into true crime fiction or television programs.
Fiction?
And she was also she had a large network of friends online that were interested in cases, true crime cases. And this is where her social network was basically she didn't have many friends at all at land Gatha where she was living.
But what she did have she had online friends.
And they were all over Australia where they talked about true crime cases like the Kelly Lane case, which you would have heard of.
That was one of them.
And so that's where she got her social nourishment from. As it were, that basically her life wasn't lived deep within the land Gatha corn Borough communities.
She lived it online and then of.
Course she was Conversely, she was considered by the evidence to have been a good mother.
I'm not sure how you can be a good mother.
If you run around killing you your children's grandparents, But that was the evidence hurt in court.
Yeah, exactly.
And was it true the reports we heard early on about scenes of death drawn on the walls in her house.
Was that accurate?
Yeah, that is accurate. So around two years ago, after.
The news became public about this case, there were some weird scribblings on at the house that Aaron Patterson owned in corn Borough I think it was in Shelcotte Road, just basically referring to death and you know, rip of tombstone, that sort of thing that had been scribbled on the wall. Now we don't know who who did that, but it was very odd, and the people who came in to paint the house how to look at it and have gone, well.
What's this all about. It's just really unusual.
Now, it might have just been juvenile behavior by someone, but it's I can't recall going into a house where, in an educated person's house, where there's scrawlings on the wall about death and that sort of thing.
It's really unusual.
And I cannot stress how unusual Aaron Patterson is. When the four guilty verdicts were handed down, she was as she was still and emotionless as you could possibly be when they read out that Gyl Patterson, Simon's mother the guilty verdict. Then there was there was a slight movement in her throat, which it was very slight. I was only sitting i'd say one and a half to two meters roughly from her, so I was watching her very closely.
That was it.
But to the I suppose the naked eye, you know, ten or fifteen minutes made us away, you wouldn't have seen it. So, you know, this is a really odd cat that we're dealing with and you know, completely unusual, a multi millionaire in the lie of multis but worth a fair bit of money. She had a lot of reasons to live a prosperous.
Normal life and she chose this path of murder.
Yeah, such a bizarre case.
And John, you've been right on top of it from the very beginning.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, Shari.
Okay still to come.
Why won't Pennywong say whether she was one of the three foreign ministers duped by an AI impersonation of Marco Rubio? And can we trust that Albinizi and Tony Burke suddenly care about anti Semitism? Ahead of the announcement tomorrow, Advocate Martey Perlstin will join us live after this quick.
Break Welcome back.
As I spoke about earlier in the show, Alban Easy and Tony Burke are set to join Anti Semitism Envoy Gillian Siegel as soon as tomorrow morning as she presents her plan to combat antisemitism to discuss that's bringing our community Advocate Marni Pelstein, Marney.
So good to see you in studio. Now.
You know I mentioned this from time to time, just how depressing it's been to watch our country disintegrate since October seven. It's become a violent, racist country that feels increasingly unsafe for our Jewish community.
Is this a sentiment that you share?
I absolutely share this sentiment. I have often reflected on my grandparents' journey to this country from.
Poland just before the Holocaust, trying.
To get as far away from antisemitism as they could, and I think they would be turning in their graves right now. It is so depressing, And I think the Australian public are only seeing.
The really big things that happen.
You know, they're seeing the fire bombings of synagogues, and they're seeing vandalism of restaurants and cars.
But what they're not seeing.
Is our day to day lived experience and our kids. You know, who might the school that my children go to, Kids who are being harassed on their way into school, Eggs being thrown at school children, kids receiving death threats, people in progressive and artistic spaces who are losing work like that, just the smaller things that people aren't seeing, which is just so depressing and debilitating.
And sometimes it feels inescapable because you know, the young kids, whether they're at school or at universities, they're confronting on a daily basis, certainly at most universities.
And then it's.
Inescapable online as well, social media. It's been so prolific they hate it.
Is inescapable, and then even if they right now are traveling and wanting to get away from it and decide to go to a music festival somewhere, they.
Cannot escape it exactly.
Now, we don't know whether Albanize is going to commit to Jillian Siegel's recommendations tomorrow. We do know that some of her recommendations were adopted from our summit, our anti Semitism summit that you attended in February. That was that fifteen point plan that Alex Rifchin announced at the conclusion.
Of our summit the same night. So you know what's changed.
Why would ALBANIZI reject those recommendations in February and now perhaps be prepared.
To adopt them.
Well, I think in February it was it was pre election, so there was you know, wanting to stay safe before the election, but also I think you just seriously hoped that this problem would go away, and it hasn't gone away.
It's just getting worse and worse and worse.
And I honestly don't understand why some of those recommendations or all of the fifteen point plan wasn't implemented straight after it was delivered, especially number one, which was to call this problem a national emergency, which it is, because this is if this was any other group in this country, or any other crisis, it would have been dealt with quickly on a national level.
I mean, if you look at the.
Situation with early childcare safety, he's made national recommendations that are being accepted by all the states and territories, and I can't understand why that hasn't happened with anti Semitism.
I just don't understand it.
And that's why we held the summit, why we organized it in the first place, because they were the government wasn't doing anything. It was left to us to try and come us, as in the Jewish community, to try and come up with this which plan. If we're talking depressing, that's the most depressing part, because which other group of people in this country have to come up with their own safety plan.
It actually was unbelievable as I sat.
At that summit, thinking our community has been forced to come up with our own plan to try and keep ourselves safe because our government won't respond to this issue on a national basis.
It's going to be very in a sense confusing for the community.
We're used to this government constantly attacking.
Israel and not taking issue of antisemitism seriously.
Are we meant to now trust them that they're going to take action?
No? I mean even if they do take action, the trust has gone. We've waited so long for something concrete to be done.
We've seen a rise.
We've seen a seven hundred percent rise in anti Semitic incidents in this country since October seven, twenty twenty three. There is no way, I think, on the whole that this community is going to trust the intentions of Albanzi, Wong and Burke.
There's just no way.
And there are too many other things that have been going on that show us that they actually don't have the best interests of our community at heart.
And yet we have to learn to live with them. It's what we've got.
Unfortunately, Marni, thank you so much for coming in and for joining me.
Thank you, and of course for your strong advocacy. Thanks you know, Okay, still to come.
Penny one refusing to answer questions about whether she was one of the three foreign ministers duped by.
A Marco Rubio impersonator. That's after the break, welcome back. We're making global news today.
Is this AI scam impersonating US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The Washington Post reports that an impostor using AI to impersonate Rubio had contacted at least three foreign ministers, a US senator, and a governor. We put questions to Pennywong's office, but she's declined to comment on whether she was one of those contacted by the fake Secretary of State, citing security concerns. We joining me now is technology commentator Trevor Long. Trevor,
thanks for your time. What do we know about this scam?
Good intoning to show you this is the latest, you know, a long running range of AI scam. So basically what we're talking about here is impersonating Marco Rubia, either by voice or even by image. Now it's not clear which was used here, but my guess is their voice messages being sent on secure messaging apps and essentially, if you recognize a voice, you have a familiarity, and that is the trick, and it's being used in household scams let alone.
At this level, it doesn't appear to have been successful in any way, but it opens up a huge range of security concerns for governments worldwide. Given that you know, picking up the phone and calling your counterpart, maybe we need to question whether or not it's really that person on the other end of the line.
I'd argue that it is in the public interest to know which foreign ministers were contacted. We need to know which security systems.
Need to be improved.
If it is Australia, I think we should we do deserve to know that. But clearly this type of fraud is only going to become more common as AI develops.
That's right.
Well, the bigger thing here, like alongside the AI is the vulnerability of getting access to someone directly. So if foreign minister, as for example, was contacted where they contacted directly on their own mobile device, therefore does the scammer have access to that person's personal details and able to contact them directly? And secondly, how more detail will they
exploit them using AI? Because you've got to remember that using AI with someone as high profile as Marco Rubio, you could easily create a video that looks like they're talking to you using their voice, So we have to be very cautious from a national security level. How seriously we take communications outside of the old school, you know, big red phone in the office desk.
It's also an issue with whether you can trust content. Can you trust video that you see online, particularly if it is of well known people or politicians doing various or nefarious things. I mean, this is going to become really difficult in the future. In ten seconds, Trevor, is there a way to verify whether videos AI or not.
The only way to vary something is to have essentially a secret code word. Great, great suggestion for families, have a code word that only you and your family know it. In this case, only a foreign minister knows. That way, If the AI doesn't mention the code word, it's.
Not real, very scary, all right, Trevor, Great to see you. I'll see you tomorrow at eight. And here's poor Mari