Ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding. He has arrived, Colonel Sergeant Private Paul Marriage from the Croatian Legion Army, and he's arriving on.
The back of his fucking hum V. I knew you'd like that.
I know during the pandemic that you were locked away, you were a bow and now you've bought an ex army car.
Are you starting your own army? I don't comment on future invasions. Is that what you said?
You all?
Do you say? Darling? Tonight I will be invading.
The tiny island of Crete.
Yes, so Gordy is referring to the hum V that I bought, and you can have a look at my socials for that. Why did I buy it? The answer to that is I was bored during COVID. Was it a good idea? No? Was it expensive yes? Yes? Has it been more expensive that I thought it would be? Yes? And did I get ripped off by people in Australia? Yes? But also why? Like honestly and I just always wanted one?
I know, but I feel like this is this hasn't been answered properly in any of your content. There hasn't really been like a why it's just been because I felt like it, because.
I wanted to. Why did you buy super ap back?
Well, they're both big green tanks.
I bought a green new I always wanted a green You. Yeah, what are you gonna do? You're gonna pop down the shops with that thing? Probably not? Are you going to entirely inconvenient to drive? The mirrors are terrible. You can't see out the back of it or the front of it. It's wider than a lane. It doesn't really go well in car parks. It has no features. It's highly unsafe.
Well, it's got features, but it comes with some sort of ammunition and reloading feature.
Yeah, anyway, but it's cool. I love it, So check out the video YouTube if you haven't seen that yet.
Anyway, when you in the sequel of The hurt Locker, yes very soon. I watched that yesterday. Have you seen that movie? Oh my god, you're humb's in it? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, but it is incredible. It's set during the Iraq War. Just watch it. It's probably one of the most eye opening accounts of war that I think you'll say sounds serious. It's a touching story about a boy and his dog. What else has been going on in your life.
Not too much. I actually ran into someone the other day and I asked them if they'd be on the show today.
Oh, yeah, by one of your friends.
They're going to be coming in very soon. You may have heard of him. Oh, they're coming in yeah today. So clear your stuff, clean the desk and stuff. Okay, do something please.
I have my briefcase full of shredded newspaper, which is just the receipts from our law case. Well, okay, so someone's coming up.
Yeah, so it is. Actually I won't even tell you who it is. You've probably already seen it in the title, but just have a listen to their voice and see if you can figure out who it is if you didn't bother reading the title. Okay, after we speak with him as well. By the way, I run through some feedback that we got, and there is I think we have a stalker. Oh I like them. I think we have a stork. Is it female? Probably not, just judging by everyone that listens to this problem.
Can you imagine can you imagine if we had like female fans love the way you talk about cars.
Boys.
Actually, the woman who sent us the hugo is female.
Oh, there you go.
Yeah, well she is from the country of I am a man, but I compete on the woman's swimming team.
I also used the date Paul marriage.
Any who, any of them?
Right, Well, so we have a guest coming up. You've got a hum vy. I still don't have my outback. Everything in the world, world is as it should be. Should we just get into our let's do that if you bring him in, Come on in, mate, take a seat. You know, when you said you're going to bring in one of your mates, I thought, oh God, here we go. Because I thought it's just going to be one of your engineering forty year old virgins.
And I was going to say, that's so far, you're pretty pretty close twenty years.
But then John Kiddogan's just walked in, and now I'm slightly nervous.
Yeah, I have that effect.
Welcome buddy, Thanks for coming in mate.
It's a pleasure to be here. It's a long time since I've done this kind of thing.
Yeah, right, Well, because people would know you obviously from YouTube primarily, and I wanted to get a bit of a backstory in that because one of the things I love about your content is agree with it or disagree with it. You've always got an opinion, and what I love is you've always got an intelligent argument for that opinion.
You agree with it or not. You know, here's the.
Thing, right, if you watch the news like you watch seven news, nine news, doesn't matter, You've got no idea what the host ever thinks or any of the reporters, right, and that's why you disengaged from it. They're talking about some car that drove through a fence in Adelaide because it's a slow news day, right, But you've got no idea what anyone really thinks, Like what does Mark Ferguson really think about that? No one knows. He specifically trained
not to have a view. And it's a complete mechanism for disengagement. So what I do is I use all of the dirty tricks that you learn in news and current affairs, Like I can read the prompter endlessly without flipping over my tongue, but I invert the medium by injecting what I really think into it. And it's quite disorienting. But people can't put their finger on why.
It is interesting because you sort of think back in the day, saying the sort of the seventies, the news was delivered differently, and I get times change and stuff like that, but it was it was sort of factual, but there was almost like a bit of a merit to it. I just the news today is very much you've got to pick and choose. I think it's as necessarily unbiased as it used to be.
There's been a violation of trust with the audience. There's no predisposed contract of trust anymore. And that's why like John Stewart, my hero, the host of the Daily Show, and became the most trusted newsman in America, despite the fact that he was a comedian. And I'm not saying he's just a comedian because comedy is freakin' hard, right, But he used satire to build a bond of trust with the audience, and you never misunderstood where he stood
on particular issues. And he wasn't afraid to do the hard stories. He just flipped them and did it differently. He wasn't part of that partisan scene that they have over there where they've got left wing media and right wing media and they're always you know, their take on the news is two people in between a host shouting at each other. That's entertainment.
Is he the one who's slipped back here, by the way, No, John Stewart's the I'll show your picture of hi because you'll you'll know, because there's a few out there. There's one who.
Watched the career of Stephen Colbert and exactly, yeah, that's what.
I'm thinking of, sort of got slip back here and.
Yeah, you're right.
Steve Carell as well, Yeah, yeah, right.
Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert were comedy hacks on The Daily Show and that made them something.
Yeah right, Well it's interesting because Colbert I still don't find funny, Stuart I found funny, and Corell I find very funny. Yeah, but it's his humor was fantastic. Used to watch Daily Show daily obviously, but it was always a really good watch. And then when they started shopping and changing hosts, I felt that they started getting a bit more reserved and there wasn't as much actual opinion in there. You know.
He did a famous speech once and it actually said did you ever see that the show the Newsroom with the yeah, yeah, that speech that they do in episode one was his was based on an actual speech.
That he did.
Yeah, totally. Yeah, He's done some amazing work and advocacy too, like advocating for the first spondors in nine to eleven, so they got decent compensation out of Congress, and Congress is like, oh, we don't want to know. He's become the poster boy for that. He's extremely impressive when he's not taking the piss out of someone like his IQ's off the chart and he can think fast, and he's very impressive.
Dude, tell us a little bit about your backstory, because we sort of touched on that.
Everyone asleep.
Yeah, no, look, I need it. I've been up for three days on four bags of coking.
He's the cure. Well, like your co host, I've got a degree in engineering and I spent about twenty minutes using it before I said fuck that, I'll become a journalist. And Mum and dad went, oh my god. We failed because it was either drug dealer pimple journalists, right, they were equally bad.
Yeah, that was all terrible members of society.
I actually did engineering because I loved cars. Cars decided that they wanted me on their team at about the age of three, so I had to figure out a way of doing that.
So you like cars from the age of three, there was something there where you kind of went, oh, I love that.
Yeah, I don't know what it is. I don't think. I don't think you choose what you do. I think it chooses you, you know. And there are some people who are kind of adrift and they haven't been chosen yet by some vocation that they really gell with. But I got the car bug and that here we are, you know, And then I kind of did everything in news and current affairs, like heaps a live TV, heaps a pre recorded TV and radio two. I did a
lot of live radio, which was fun. And then they all kind of fell apart, and I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to run a mad experiment where someone who was a motoring journalist had done all that shit, inverted the medium and said what he really thinks. And that's like if you've got this wonderful wooden bridge that you've built over twenty years and then you just go one hundred percent Dresden on the fifteenth of February nineteen forty five,
because it's fucking spectacular, dude, You just watch it. It just catches. It hasn't stopped smoking since it's been about ten years now, and there's still smoke erupting from the bridge. People say to me in the calendustry there, we love your stuff except when it's about us.
Yeah, you know, it's like media watch everyone loves me, especially in like my industry, in the radio industry. And I think there's like their tagline is everyone loves it until they're on it. Yeah, and it's true like everyone because say, for instance, as you know, the radio industry so bloody small. It's like, oh my god, such and such is about to be on tonight. Oh my god, they're investigating such and such. We've got to watch this.
Oh they've found out no one gives a fuck. Once it goes on there, you forget about it. The next week it's on there for a little bit and then you forget about it because I know, and I think you know this person. But there was someone that used to work for a car manufacturer.
And let's name names. This podcast hasn't had enough legal troubles. Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't need any more, especially from this person.
So he basically would go on a morning show with his products. I know this story claimed to be independent and a long No, I don't know. He is more popular than him if you can imagine. But yeah, he got scolded for that, and nothing came of it. His job never went nothing changed. So I think it's media watch is one of those things that people get hot and bothered about but ultimately doesn't really change anything, I don't think. But yeah, that's why I think the employer
kind of would get a bit pissed off. Now, he stayed there for quite some time after that, and I think the employer endorsed it, So I'm going to anyway, you've got.
To look at the cumulative benefit that that manufacturer derived from all of those effective placements versus you know, a couple of minutes of pants down on the ABC, which plenty of people don't watch.
Yep, exactly.
Yeah, so you did some life radio and you did some TV.
Where could we have seen you back in the day?
Back in the day was a current affairs motoring expert it and then I transitioned.
To oh that's a different meaning to Channel.
Seven's motoring experts. So I wore a different set of genitalia there.
Yes, that was fun.
You had to hand you Nazi, Yeah, and they saved a new set on it was amazing, slightly bigger, but lopsided go together. And then at the same time I was doing a radio to you, and I'd have to say, I used to think it was hard to train yourself to be an engineer. There's lots of mathematics. It's endless physics and mathematics as ball test. But paneling your own live radio show, yep, that nearly I bled from the years. On several occasions doing that, I thought, I've only got
to do three things at once. Here, why is this falling apart?
You know? Yeah, it's weird.
I like to think of it as just it's playing a piano, and it's kind of like you get.
That it's playing a piano while you're welding and your clothes are on fire.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I think i've after a while, you would have found it that after a while, it's kind of I don't know, you just learned to yeah, muscle memory, yeah yeah, yeah. You don't even think about it. No, if some shit goes wrong and you're off air, or a music bed starts playing over a song or whatever, you kind of you automatically know where it's at and what to do without even thinking about it.
It teaches you coping mechanisms. And one of the things I learned really quickly was that all these people in TV like TV is like being spoon fed, Because if you're a host on TV getting stuff spoon fed, and they're talking to you in the control room in one ear and they're saying back in thirty seconds on camera two and all of this stuff right, you're getting all of this extra handhelding hand holding right, And in radio it's just you. So you've got to have the coping mechanism.
So when something goes wrong on TV, you're in a live cross in the middle of nowhere, your ifb goes down, you can't hear anything. You just go I know what to do. I'm just going to wait for the tally light on the camera and I'll just talk for two and a half minutes like it's a package. And after that they talked to you. You know, you get a call and it's like, how did you know how to do that? Dode this look live radio? It was only two and a half minute.
Yeah, I've got a shocking temper if stuff goes wrong in my studio when I've and it's generally if I've got to rely on someone else, pause. You've sort of seen me, Yeah, I've sort of You've seen a little sprinkling but quite racist. Okay, okay, yeah, I find that personally when you've kind of got to rely on someone, my rule is don't. Yeah, I'm very much a solo shit because if you've got to rely on someone and shit goes wrong, I hate that. I just concentrate on
my own backyard. Everything's got to be my way or the or the highway that way if something goes wrong, and you would have you must have found that a little bit with what you're doing now, with the content you're uploading too, because I guess it's all you, right, Yeah, it's all you.
You're doing man. Yeah, well actually I wanted to ask you that. So you obviously went from what you were doing previously to YouTube. You're doing it all on your own. It is a lot of work.
Yeah, yeah, like as you as only you would know, yes, right, because you're a bit of a not only a young hero.
But a YouTube thank you, yes, thank you.
And you're you're doing awesome on YouTube. It has to have respect him to say this.
I did.
I sleeped him one hundred bucks just before you walked in.
Positive payment up front.
No, I do appreciate that. And look, I genuinely feel the same about the stuff that you do. And I think it's also funny that a lot of people think that you absolutely hate us and you're out to get everyone and all this sort of stuff.
I've roasted you guys, yes, endlessly, which is which is hilarious, Like it was hilarious when You're left nine and it was, you know, it's just hilarious. And the thing about being roasted is I find it amazing how presumptuous so called motoring journalists are, because these are dudes who spend their lives reviewing cars and they hate having their work review Like that's not that's not a dichotomy or anything, is it.
Yeah, they're busy roasting manufacturers all the time.
But we don't want our work scrutinized by the likes of you, you bastard. But you guys are smart enough to know that a roast is just that. And there's no such thing as bad publicity. And if you take a transcript of anything that is satirical, any joke, right, it's the most horrifically libelous, slanderous, distasteful, racist, whatever it's just unacceptable. But it's a joke.
Yeah, exactly, it's the whole purpose of it. It's not said to offend someone. It is a joke.
If you stood up in Parliament House and delivered it like it was. Here's what I really think.
The Human Rights Commissions.
Trying a couple of jokes.
She did. She's pretty funny.
She just forgot to say, guys, jokes.
She just forgot that.
Man at the edge, she just thought, ah, the clear end, I'm just punking news.
She forgot that.
But yeah, look, I think everybody who's on the consumption end of video, audio, whatever, even just the written word, like people go, i'd oh mate, or love to be a car reviewer. How do I get a job doing what you do? I go come out for a day, dick heare, Let's just see how cushy it actually is.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's there's a lot of work.
And it's not just at the track fanging some car endlessly job done, like producing reports and that the grunt work, like the absolute glamour of take fifteen on something like Jesus.
And I mean you know that yourself, you're shooting it yourself, you're editing it yourself. You've got your own studio setup that is like a legitimate thing. It's not a green screen. That's what I was king. I have to be honest.
I was like one of the YouTube clips, I was like, is that a green screen? Kept sort of looking and then I'm like, no, there's a different angle and a different angle. And he's doing this in his garage on Glamorous.
So glamorous. It's a shitty, dank double Garrett doesn't look.
He's got the screws up there, He's got everything that.
That's the fakeness, inherent fakeness of the media. It's so cruddy at its call, but you can make just the right bit of it looks so slick.
Right, Yeah, well that's I mean when you see Paul in the flash totally as opposed to on TV, it's yeah, yes, yeah.
Another thing I wanted to ask you as well, a lot of people want to be murdering journalists. My advice would be don't, Because every time someone asks for advice, I say, do you want to get paid nothing? Do you want to have to rely on manufacturers to do everything for you? Do you want to never actually own any of the cars that you drive. If so go become a murdering journalist, say that with radio too.
No, that's not even Joe, It's like but it's the.
Same thing, right. Yeah, you will have a select few that are successful and everything works out, but most motoring journalists you don't want to live that life.
It's the perfect job if you hate your home life, because you can be away for roughly half of it, and when you go away, it's business class verth clicker, five star Limo transfers. It's the rock star treatment for someone paid roughly the same as a cleaner.
Literally. Yeah, I mean some of the starting salaries. I knew a couple of people that worked there not that long ago. That we're getting forty five grand a year. I don't even think that's legal.
But my first radio gig was thirty two grand go and that was nineteen forty two. We'd just come out of No but that would have been about fifteen years ago. But that was thirty two grand. And fuck, I'm telling you now, like over the space before this one, over the space of a good fifteen years, it didn't get much better.
Yeah, but it's supplying demand, right, You've got all these people who want to do. Yeah, the actual supply of jobs is so limited, so it's that. But unless you can turn it into a full on business, as you guys have done and as I've done, the pay is ship and there's increasing pressure to just be a car company sicker fan whose main job is not journalism but just the reiteration of press kid talking points. And I'd rather just buy a razor blade.
And of bourbon before we go back to YouTube. I'm curious you mentioned there the whole business class thing. We often hang shit on other murdering journalists on the show here because I hate that sort of not me pose the biggest bit blood, I just.
He's the second biggest big Yeah, that's.
There's a bigger bitch here, literally and metaphorical.
I love that.
But I think that that that is something that is that is interesting because I think that you can't have a genue an opinion about a product, like a one hundred percent genuine opinion about a product, if you are there on their dime, you're flying business class, you're staying at all these fancy places. You can't hand on Hart tell a camera, this car is garbage. Do not buy it. Because they're all standing around they review the footage before you get it. It's just all sorts of not going to work.
So well, here's my review of every Volkswagen, every Jeep and every land Rover. Okay, these things are fucking beautiful. They are. They are like a Jeep Grand Cherokee is so Jack Bauer ye that I want, right, And I've never driven a Range Drover that I hate it, never right, And every like a Volkswagen Golf GTI classic hot Hatch.
Right.
You can't not love driving those cars. So my review is these are the tits. Don't own one. You're insane if you buy it because it's great to borrow for a week and give back. But you are crazy if you own a ship box like that, because that manufacturer is predisposed to throwing you under the bus if anything goes wrong. Here's the evidence from the a Triple C of all of the times that they've breached their obligations, that the extortionate repair cost, blah blah blah, their poor reliability,
European bill quality is a myth. And we could just go on and if you're the public relations manager of one of those car makers, yep, they can't afford to invite somebody who will say what is actually objectively the case. So they're sick of fan mining, right, because they've got a million dollars to spend on the launch of whatever, three hundred thousand, whatever it is, and you don't get paid.
Your sociopathic asshole who runs the import operation is going to rip you a new one if you invite someone who just gives an objectively balanced view of how they roll.
Yep, right, yeah, exactly. Well that's a simple fact to it. And that's why, in my opinion, if you are buying a new car today, I would not buy anything based on one review because that one review is someone who has been probably whined and dyed by a manufacturer and they can't objectively say this is good or bad. My advice always is to look at five or six reviews, look at the stuff that you do, and take it for a test drive yourself, and then have a look at the history of the brand as well. And it
is hard when new cars come out. You obviously don't know what they're going to be like in ten years, if a small new platform blah blah blah, but you do look at some of the history, some of the recalls, and you have to make up your own mind. You can't just rely on reviews, and with this age of influencers, it is the worst. My wife will buy so much shit from everywhere based on what she sees on Instagram.
Oh man, those like mum bloggers and stuff like that. The influencers on Instagram. Yeah, I mean, of shit, just a front door every day.
But it's the people that will get flick the keys to some new car. I love it because it's a new car. Their other car is a ten year old, twenty year old ship box. Of course they're going to love it, and then of course they're going to tell all their followers how good it is. And that's why I think that these days it is really hard for you to have these objective car reviews. And that's why what we try and do is a little bit different.
Like I'll actually show people measurements and the stuff that I say in my week with the car, that is what happened to it.
I got to say, whose idea was the hardness tester? For the fucking dad?
So do you, by the way, that derometer? Do you ever take that into the bedroom and.
Go I actually have is a finer scale.
Smaller dorometer. I didn't want to ask you. Actually, I've probably never asked you this before, but you guys get flown all around the world for this sort of stuff and you're standing there in oh, I don't know, Switzerland and you're road testing some sort of a new car that's coming out, and you're like, it's a bucket of shit.
And then it comes to Australia and you know there's been no Australian sort of testing or whatever of it, and you've to stand there and kind of go, man, these guys flew me across the world for this sort of stuff.
Like there's a flip side to this equation too, though, right, because you're a journalist employed by a publisher who is deriving a direct commercial benefit from the advertising from that brand. So if you get in between that, if you stem
that tight, that's really bad. Like I've had, I've been the subject of some full on car company tantrums where I've been, you know, a journalist as a freelancer usually, but in between the publisher, maybe a television publisher of some note, and then a large Australian car company with a line on the badge that is no longer here. You know, and their full on tantrum is impossible. It's
spectacular and you wouldn't believe it. So if you say things that a car company doesn't like, there's a whole cascade of mechanisms that kick in, Like if you keep behaving like that, we can't lend you any.
Of our cars. Yep, and extra job it does.
Okay, And we're not going to take you on our gigs, right, and we're going to take you on our launchers right. And then if you keep doing that, and if your breach is egregious enough, the marketing director will ring up the commercial director of the publisher and have a meeting about get this clown into line. And if your mortgage depends on you doing your job, then that is a really uncomfortable position for you. And it's extremely expedient, and I understand why people do it. They go, this is
pretty cushy. It is nice at the pointy end of the plane, and I don't want to have another one of those meetings. So I'm just going to hear the talking points and I'll put my own spin on it here. But this car is getting seven point four out of ten.
Yep. That pretty much that sums up exactly what it's like, and I think there's cars. Yeah, I think it's the same for any industry that we Trevorlong on the show recently is the tech guy? Yeah, a lot with do you know Trevor? Yeah, how many people do.
It's just like a lot of people just think he's like a hobo walked in off the streets. I just wanted to break from selling the big.
Those vacuum cleaner is like, you wouldn't believe what sucks? All right?
I was needing at the back of the Carronor going, man, you've got to turn out the dos and sucks the crime of a Toba.
But yeah, he was openly telling us it's the same in tech. Tell me how you do it?
Is a car expert surviving the inevitable backlash from saying what do you really think? From time to time.
I think they now realize that we have our site, which is now as of last month, Austraighta's biggest new car site in terms of visits. We are caring less about media spend because the business is pivoting to a Leeds model and the media spend is contracting so much. It's not like the days of Car Advice where it was mega dollars and you know, you could just print money. It's now contracting so much and they've they've taken a
bit of control and we need to reverse that. And we're sort of big enough now where you can kind of just do what you need to do.
That's fascinating to me because you know what the response from the car industry is to me, deafening silence. Yes, right, I never get anyone ring me up and say no, that's wrong, right, But I don't ever. They don't do pr.
Do you know how much they talk about you? Oh?
Yeah, like you would not believe well Satan? Like who would you rather interview? Satan or Jesus?
Way better? Stories?
Stories?
Say?
Is what I did to hear for last year.
State would share the cocaine.
A lot of people don't know. But you used to be the editor of Car Advice, and I was so to speak under you at the time. It was it was a lot of loads to bear, but I took it like a champ. It was intimate and one of our things at the time was growing video. And I have just this little gem I'm going to very quickly played. We're going to put this on the socials.
Beautiful look at this guy. Yeah.
So what we did is we had a we're going to cut to the studio setup and this was a video where we were looking at the mans to three and then.
What's the date on that?
Yes? Oh, oh my god, what are you twelve? With an ourfro? I know it's very that's amazing. Yeah, so no, go back.
I need to say, oh my god, you probably would have been the only ten year old with a full dash of pubes.
That was the backstory to that. You were with Car Advice back then. And actually remember one time I got into a lot of trouble from you because we were at Geneva Motor Show.
Apostrophe in the wrong place?
Was it? Oh no, no, it was worse than that, And upon reflection, I shouldn't have done it. But I used the word wanker when we're into a wankle in trying to be funny tone, and it turned out it wasn't that funny according to you.
So are you trying to crack jokes? I'm funny.
Look the backstory there was and I find this utterly hilarious. We've got to air this right because back then Car Advice was viewed as being those assholes, those upstart assholes. The car industry hated Car Advice. It was just a blog that was on a real publication that was just Albas's blob.
It's it right.
So, like you guys were young, fresh and like the old boys were kind.
Of at their they brought me on as editor, and basically I had to get One of my briefs was to get the car industry engaged with the brand. So I had to go and meet with Audi and say, I'll leverage my unsullied reputation, right and and I guarantee that these guys will toe the line.
And I bet my reputation.
And if you told me that, if you told me that in ten years time, I'd just be sitting in my garage.
Yeah.
It's just amazing that the entire inversion of that dynamic becaurse now car expert and in the closing stages of Car Advice before they shot it in the dick and made it drive olbosn't Tony and Paul became the respected journalist and I became the antichrist. So it was a complete version of that dynamic. It's amazing.
It's just funny and yeah, I think that those were fun times because we were learning a lot, and you taught us a lot because you know, we knew nothing elbows.
I think it's fair to say that you used to hate me.
Oh look, but I enjoyed a good argument. So that was good fun. Were you?
You were smart ass back in the day when I mean this quite sincerely, and you don't get that very often. And we can cut it if you think it's discontinued everything. I actually think you're to and out. Okay, thank you, look.
At that right, I'm cutting that shit out. No, that's the thing.
It's take the other hundred.
There are a lot of people in this industry, and I know that we're fucking chopping and changing directions here, but just recently you did a video about one in one particular person.
Can I just ask, just like, if we can just I've just bought a super of outback XT sport and I'm just wondering, do you think I could toe with that? I'm thinking, like, I don't know, maybe I'll get some sort of excavator style trailing ye.
Put like a young day venue on.
That's just what I feel like doing. I feel like doing that one day everyone does. Yeah, do you think I could like toe that like safely?
Well, I think objectively you could tell it that's been done and proven. Oh can you do it legally? I don't think so.
Your opinion, you don't.
I don't think it's safe to put that amount of load on the towball.
Right anyway, totally unrelated a mystery, guess Tom Baker come here.
People often think that that kind of thing is a personal attack from me, and I get how somebody would not like me upending them for doing something that stupid. Okay, but there's a public safety dimension to that. If you present that in the context of expert advice, that's dangerous and illegal, right, and it should be called out as such. Someone's got to do it. You're right, And I didn't defame him at all. And I've actually got a lot of respect for Tom because he's developed a niche. They do.
I'm Tom Baker, this is Jason gos right, Like, he does that and it works. There's a niche for that, and he's not a bad car reviewer, right, It's just that when you step into a different domain where there's a lot of technical constraints, and if you start towing something that's heavier than the vehicle towing it. You really need to get that right because the inertial effects of the thing that you're towing are beyond sufficient to nudge
the toe vehicle out of the way. Because the kinds of trailers that we tow with in Australia for caravans and boats and all manner of things like that, there are pig trailers. They've got centralized axle groups and that means that they pitch forward very freely, befowd and backwards. Then they're uncontrolled comparatively in pitch, and they're also comparatively unstable in yours. So that's like the plane of a old vinyl record. We're rotating in that plane, they're unstable
like that. They're okayan roll because the wheels are out to the side. But if you get a big heavy trailer, it's restraint in pitch and your is dependent on the inertia of the vehicle towing it.
Right.
Paul's getting this for later, Yeah, there'll be a test.
All I'm saying is a big heavy trailer, if it's too big and too heavy, it can easily nudge the tow vehicle off the road and the bigger that mass gets, and the bigger the physical size of that thing gets, the more likely that is to happen. And the much more diligently you've got to approach that exercise. And those guys really did not approach that diligently enough, and the advice they gave was bad.
Well, actually think that all of that is true, but the worst part is the optics of it being an insurance company, because guess what if you had a crash and they came to inspect it and said, no, you've fucked up the trailer loading, you won't meant to have a venue that far up a thing.
Yes, that's an interesting night.
That's my biggest problem because as a consumer, an insurance company are the first people to try and fuck you. They will be there at the front of that line. So I think I've got that.
Hamphlet with a he's or ankles and this is the preferred grip.
Like you know, people make mistakes, but I think that this was on another level altogether. I haven't seen an apology or an admission yet.
Have they taken the video down?
The videos come down, But to me, I would be very quickly lining up and saying look, I didn't know what I was talking about. I'm sincerely thanks for your feedback. Blah blah blah. That's all it needs to be. It happens.
I think that's a plus. Fore your integrity, Yeah right, if you own it. It's like, hey, we're not fallible. We thought we were doing the right thing, but on reflection, that was bad and here's how we should have done it. That'd be the video I'd do next and ps right, one hundred and ten bucks At super cheap Audo, you can buy a set of scales that are purpose designed
to measure the towball download. So before hooking up an unfamiliar trailer to your car, you spend and let's not forget the car that you're doing the towing with is worth fifty or sixty grand and some of these can taj mahals. They're acoustically transparent aluminium hitoire right, three and a half ton effluent carriage, so you can he's and hers affluent through the Great Australian outback.
Right, they're one hundred thousand dollars.
You can afford one hundred and ten bucks for a set of scales to measure the table down Jesus, or you can visit a public waybridge and measure everything, the gross combined mass and the taball down.
They make it so easy literally drive onto it. You have one axle here, one axle here. It prints it out for you on the screen. You don't have to do anything.
A politician could do it.
Yes, that's telling you something.
Hey.
One thing I did want to bring up was how many times have I been sued for defamation?
Yes? Actually that is something. Have you because we have gone through this with just your shoes off, how many times have you received letters? No? Really, never out never right, suck shit, wear one up on bud.
I've been I've been extensively trained though about how to avoid Yes. And the other thing about defamation, right, is the amplification factor, Like look at Ben Robert Smith. How many people now know about Ben Roberts Smith conduct who did not know about it arising from the initial stories that were published, right, plenty, hundreds of thousands probably, So there's an amplification factor. If you sue someone for defamation and you lose, it gets amplified exactly right, and everything
you say is potentially defamatory. But there's a couple of great defenses like truth substantial truth is pretty good and honest opinion as long as you get the hair and makeup on honest opinion, right, you've got to present it as actually being your opinion and not a fact, and it's got to be based on true facts that are presented to the audience so that they can make an informed decision about that. But maybe the two balancing sort
of axie is. The other thing is if it's satire, then this is why cartoonists don't get sued for defamation, right, because it's really not. It's not defamatory in the sense that it doesn't make people shun that person, and it doesn't destroy their reputation. It just makes you get.
You'll get south Park, right. That would be the perfect example of one that would be sued seventy thousand times over. But you do.
And the Spice Girls, right. Tea dub has never met the Spice Girls to my knowledge, right, and he's never been on tour with them. But it's just a funny way to present the grubbiest lobby group in the country that isn't an oil or gas lobby group.
Actually, I was going to say, we should be careful what we say about Ben Robert Smith, because now that Paul has a hum vy, I'm pretty sure they're like right or dies. He picks him up and they go.
Little cruises together and stuff.
Hey Benny, what do you reckon?
It is you reckon?
We can tell you zigways off that cliff.
You enjoy that video?
Yeah, mate, that thing is a beast. And I just yeah, it's got its own post code, it does. And the amount of trouble I went through and the amount of dodgy just fucker is that you really tried to screw me over along the way and most here in Australia as well. Yeah, it's just horrendous, how dishonest some people are.
All in the name of biosecurity.
Mate, security in my mind, the fact that you had to take your car apart, and.
I took it mostly apart, but there were some parts that clearly were not visible from from the naked eye, but it was still past because another guy came. Wasn't the really diligent guy. It was his colleague and he goes, oh, I didn't have to do all that pass. I'm like, oh, thanks, So biosecurity I think is just And then you had to put the things together. Yeah, thankfully it's got like this bit goes here. This built for army people you clearly identify with that they're not. I'm not saying army
people are stupid or anything. I just mean it's built for that situation where they can put it back together quickly and not have to read through seven thousand manuals to make stuff work.
Right. Yeah, Hey, you did a post recently about getting through the court system. I guess unscathed basically overturning what was it, a speeding red light camera?
Red light camera? Right?
The way you articulated that, especially at the start was brilliant, and I wanted you to tell the story behind it because I'm all for road safety and all that sort of stuff, but I honestly think a lot of this stuff is money grabs by the government.
People talk about road safety and they talk about road toll, the road toll as if it's a door to door in Fallujah, right, Like, it's not like that. The most dangerous year on the roads in Australia was nineteen seventy, and it was I always forget, but it's about three It's either three thousand, seven hundred and ninety or three thousand, six hundred and ninety people died on the road in
nineteen to seventy go. It's a lot, it's heaps, it's rough, it's more than three times what the road toll is now. But there's also been this dramatic increase in the number of vehicles and the number of k's we drive, And like in Australia we drive two hundred and ten billion with a b kilometers, which is more than thirty return trips to Pluto, Okay, and about eleven hundred people die.
That's lower than the toll from suicide. And you know, there are other accidental causes of death, like being at work is a big one, and accidental falls are big as well, and nothing like the resources are devoted to suicide prevention, for example, and we get more benefit from that than we would to getting on top of the road toll. So driving is fucking safe. This is something
that is never told to the average person. And what's what's improved the road toll between nine and seventy in now, Okay, we change the culture about drink driving and we made seat belts manditory. Yes they're huge, okay. And then there's been this incremental and overtime substantial improvement in civil engineering, meaning safer roads and vehicle safety. We've got safer cars, right, So we've chipped away at that, and enforcement plays a role. Okay,
certainly enforcement plays a yeah, totally. But the thing is the regulators in each state they want to take all the credit and all they do is enforcement. I forgot to mention meta call practices as well. Right, there's been a dramatic improvement in critical care for badly injured persons. Okay, so that's why road death is reduced. It's got fuck all to do with enforcement. So enforcement has become a
de facto form of taxation. If you drive a car from time to time, we're just going to ping you a little bit more tax And I'd say to the average roads minister, why don't you just fess up about it and say, well, actually, we need another billion dollars. So we're just going to divide the number of registered vehicles in the state a billion dollars divided by the number of registered vehicles. Here's what the new regio fee is.
And we're going to have a fair enforcement system where there's a twelve pointer called drive like a fuck with right you've mate, you know why I've stopped you. You drive like a fuck with just then that's your license. Go on holidays for three months. That'll be a thousand bus. Okay. If that was actually the case, I think most people
would get behind it. But when these offenses become technical in nature only, and yeah, technically you committed this breach, right, but we're still going to find you the full amount
get fucked. Then you lose faith with the system. And when you lose faith with the system, there are some really bad knock on effects because you get called for jury duty okay, and the courts that the police prosecutor is trying to put away some properly bad motherfucker who's a drug importer or something, and half of the people sitting on the jury are going, I don't trust the fucking cops. The only thing I've ever done with them they pulled me over six times.
I lost my fucking job.
Right, there's that kind of dialogue going on inside people's heads, and in fact, inside the New South Wales Police Force, the proper cops call the highway patrol the jury wreckers because they're fully aware of this phenomenon. Right, we'll just get that put a call out of the jury wreckers, see if they can come here with the fucking pizza.
You talk a lot like trevel Long.
It blows my mind the amount of finds this, and especially the way I guess appealing for a fine as well.
Well. They say you can appeal for leniency right if it's a trivial offense, if you've got a good record. So I hadn't been booked for a driving offense for thirty three years, despite driving all these Porsches and BMWM cars, and I should have probably been booked on occasion, but happily I wasn't right AnyWho. I had this clean record that was more than three decades long, and my offense was I just had brain fade one day, and when the right arrow went green, I misinterpreted that as permission
to proceed forward. I went half a car length forward and went, oh, that's bad, and jammed the brakes on and I stopped roughly a car length ahead of where I'd been stopped for the past thirty five seconds or what thing. And I appealed for leniency to Revenue New South Wales and they wrote me back a very polite
letter which I'll summarize, now get fucked. And I thought, well, bug, I'm going to take it to court, right, And I took it to court, and I had this submission, and it was the world's best submission, right, It was the best submission ever. It had two character references from a former Deputy Prime Minister and the local member for the
state legislature. We did some road safety courses in the local area, and the Federal Police have got a chapter with my name on it in the High Speed Pursuit Revision, a review that they did a few years ago. So we did all of that and I've got it all there, and it speaks to the triviality of the offense, and it speaks to my driving record, the work I'd done in road safety, and the likelihood of reoffending. Like been licensed for forty two years, don't think I've got another
forty two in me. Probably safe to let me back out on the road. And the magistrate just looked at it like this and pushed it to one side and said, I'm not even going to read that, right, And I went.
This is bad.
I said, would your honor prefer a concise, verbal executive summary? He said, Noah, I don't want that either. Can you just issued me what's called a Section ten one, a dismissal. Section ten of the Crime Sentencing Procedure Act nineteen ninety nine allows the magistrate to consider the totality of the circumstances plus all these other things like your age and your character and your record and anything else they want to consider, and they can dismiss your charge if it's warranted.
So if you stab someone thirty two times and it's all called on video, and you've got a double bag with crystal meth in it, and you know a dozen bishops have seen it as well their eyewitnesses.
Don't expect from me last weekend.
Don't expect your section down one day. There's a one B and a one C you can get as well. One B is what you might think of as a good behavior bond, right, so then they can say, yeah, we're going to dismiss that, but we're going to they call them conditional release orders. We're going to require you to be not committing another traffic offense for twelve months or two years. And then one C is the same thing, except they require you to do an offenders program. So
it's a drug offense, it'll be an addiction program. In the case of a traffic offense, it's the traffic offenders program. But if you really are just an anti social cock behind the wheel and you don't deserve it, in fact, you deserve more of a knee in the slats than the original fine, they can amp.
It right up. Yeah, because that's the risk you run, right when you go to court the makers grand and go.
Two grand and twelve months off the road.
Yeah, I mean they can go the original farmer's two hundred bucks. I'm actually going to make it whatever and I'm going to cancel your license, whether that's and that's the problem, right, if you genuinely want to appeal it, you run the risk of that, And that's why a lot of people don't because they're like, Oh, I don't want to lose a day off work, I don't want to have all these problems.
Because sometimes it's just easier to take three points and six hundred bucks or whatever.
You're kind of used to.
I'm kind of used to being asked questions by people and standing in front of a microphone and being on the spot, right, But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't slightly nerve racking.
Well, you're in it, and I've been through this experience as well. I'll explain why in a second. But you you're in a room there with a lot of people who may have done some really bad stuff. And this is the frame of mind they put you in as well, because you associate yourselves with some of these other people. You don't want to be there, you don't want to be seen there. It's just not a nice place to be.
But they set it up in that way so that you're dissuaded from doing it, and they set it up in such a complex way that the first thing you do what it's like in New South Wales, but you get to mention, which you attend. You then get a court date to go to. And at the court date, if it's one of these traffic fences, they have a prosecutor that works for them, they're on retainer. Typically they'll bring in if there's a police officer involved them as
a witness. It is quite an intimidating thing and you made immediately to feel like a bad guy before anything's even happened.
Everyone else does it every day, yeah, right, The prosecutor does it every day. The magistrate does it every day. The police officer who's coming in to testify against you, if it's a cop thing, then he's been to court a million times, yafull he knows how to test a lit if he has to.
It'd be like him coming to host a live radiation. He'd have no idea what to do to be intimidating. It's still a.
Live cross on seven tomorrow morning, six fifteen. Let's see how you go.
It would have been a time to like, yeah, yeah, wow, this is the thing. And I went through something similar when I graduated UNI. I had to go to my graduation and I thought I'll catch the training because I can't be fuck looking for parking. And I went to the train station. It was the point where they were switching over to Mikey, which is the totally fuck ticketing system we have in New Victoria. Is that still there? I think, So I don't.
Do it commers.
So I went to the train station and wanted to buy a paper ticket. And got to the train station and they had up until a month after this point that paper tickets were going to exist. The machine was out of order, and I thought, well, I've got my Mikey here, it's a concession one. I'm no longer a student. I'm not going to use that because they'll dick me for not being a student. As soon as I get to the train station, I'll buy a ticket explaining what's happened.
At this point, I'd caught a train a few times, get on and the ticket inspectors are there, and I thought, I'll just show him the photos. The reasonable people didn't give a fuck, gives me a thing, and I said, okay, well I'm going to take this to court, and he didn't care anyway. They I decided to take it to court. At the mention, the prosecutor came up to me and offered me a dismissal. But with the dismissal, I had to plead guilty, and I'm like, fuck that, I'm not
pleading guilty on this. So I was slightly different to Johns scenario. So I went back again for the actual court case, and with me, I had my brief of evidence, had all the photos, It had the legislation for tickets, which was that you had to have made a reasonable attempt to buy a ticket. I had the exact coins in my hand that I photographed, the machine wasn't working photographed and what they did the two ticket inspectors, because they're always hunting in pairs so they can work at
work as witnesses. They lied to the magistrate. They said they both stood there and talked to me, and they both listened to me. One just kept walking. They weren't even together. And I thought, if I'm up against these liars, I mean, you're never going to win. And thankfully the magistrate was reasonable look through the evidence. The prosecutor just had nothing, and they found me not guilty, dismissed, and I got to claim cost as well for the two
days that I lost from work. So I think that if you are in that position, obviously, if you're doing one hundred and eighty and you go I didn't do it, it's like, all right, well, lasers are virtually accurate to within a kilometer an hour over a kilometer speed. Cameras are accurate these. I don't bother wasting your time on that. But if you're in a situation like your in or I was in, if.
It really is true doing it and you've got a good record, then it's not like you're gaming the system. They've written the legislation exactly for that, right, So you I also wanted to send a message that I wasn't just going to copy it on the chin. Yeah, right, And I think more people should do that if there is a serious case that they might get a dismissal.
And the other thing about all of this stuff that would really be of benefit to the listener is that if you get stopped, it's your conduct when you get stopped by the cops, for example, is really important. Like you should be respectful because things can get dramatically worse for you if you're not. But you should also a not make any admissions because the cop might have nothing yep. Right, he might sincerely believe that you've done whatever he accuses
you of doing, but he might have nothing. Okay, So his objective is going to be to walk up to you and get you, particularly he's got a body camera.
Yep.
He's going to want you to make an admission that you did it. And if that's a laid down maasaire, you can no longer plead not guilty. Right if you admit it, that's like, yeah, I stabbed him, so what right?
And then you decide later on.
Actually it's just with a paper clip That's one of the first question they will generally ask you when you're pulled over, is do you know why I pulled you over?
Yeah? Because that's an omission of.
Guilt, right, Yeah, because I was speeding, right Yeah.
And you could play it both ways as well. I mean, if you in the history of people getting pulled over by police, telling or argue with them, I don't think anyone has ever got off a fine where they eventually, after ten minutes of arguing, the cops go, oh no, no, you're right, off you go. So I don't think being aggressive helps at all.
But not making a mission anything, Yeah, admissions are so bad. And the other thing you should do is film it on your phone if necessary, but to go probably better with big fat wide lens. Right, just film everything.
Yep, I'll tell you what works really well. Tell them me a sovereign citizen.
No. I actually did that the other day when I went got a random breath test, just going through one of those, and she goes, how's your day going, And I said, I'm a sovereign citizen and then she just feat like that. I'm like, I'm just kidding, and she thankfully laughed and didn't shoot me. Or anything. But you see some of those.
Things, you weren't a ninety year old granny with a steak, now.
But that's the thing. It really is about how you conduct yourself, and it is about not putting your foot in it, because ultimately they will stop, let's say ten to fifteen people in a session, they will take some very basic and if you've admitted, all they're going to write down is Yep, they've admitted it. It's at this recording on my GoPro or my voice recorder. I'm good to go. If you don't admit to anything, there is a good chance that of those ten they haven't taken
notes down. But the time it gets to court, they have to have sufficient evidence to be able to do anything. And if all they've got is you saying I didn't do it, and they don't have anything else, I mean, they have no ability to charge you with anything.
Well, that happened to former Prime Minister Paul Keating right right. The cops alleged that he drove through a red light.
Yep.
He said no, I didn't, yep, and they gave him a ticket for it. He took it to court. They said he did. He said he didn't there was no other evidence, and the magistrates said, well, on the balance of all of this, there's no compelling there's reasonable doubt.
Yep. Just because the cops says you did it, it doesn't mean that that's true. No, they're not somehow not. You know that they're not all perfect non liars, you know what I mean, Like, how can they have to have something?
But in between my red light transgression and it being dismissed was six months. So if you're a cop and you work the full six months, can you even remember the interaction with the dude?
Absolutely in court? No, yep, exactly, It's just.
Be a sea of face, Yeah, wouldn't it.
You know. The other funny thing as well, had you have approached that intersection, breaked late and stopped in the position where you were prior to it going read, nothing would have happened. This is the thing. So just because you drove forward but didn't go through the actual intersection, you now have six months of your life you have to worry about all this stuff and waste your time getting references.
Well, it's not cost effective to go to court, right BECA, It's just not not even if you don't have a lawyer, right.
It's not for you or the taxpayer. No, No one wins out of that, yep.
So the thing you've got to do is you've got to decide what the definition of value is. Because if you're doing it to save money, just pay the fine, right, But if you're doing it to make a statement, and in my case, I was hoping it would be a
decent story as well, so that's worth it. But it took me roughly two days off work to get my shit together, and part of that was I paid a lawyer, like I'd interviewed a bunch of lawyers about it in the past, but I thought, you're a dick if you don't actually get a game plan out of a lawyer. And that cost me three hundred and thirty bucks, which was nearly as much as the fine, So you know you're not going to be financially in front. But the other thing is if you get booked, you should fight it.
If it's fightable, you should fight the first one because if you wait till your license is hanging by a thread, the court will look at your record and you look like a shit driver, and you'll be less likely to get a dismissal if you've got a bunch of current offenses.
What's the term they used, by the way, was it a pardon?
Like, what's the It's a dismissal.
It's an actual dismissal.
It's a dismissal under Section ten.
That's good crime, because that's what you know. For me, I reckon, like the wording would want to be we fucked up.
Do you know what I mean?
It's dismissed, like you admit the guilt of it. And they look at the totality of the circumstances and go, you know what, We're going to let him off. Yeah, I said, no, fine, no points, no black mark on your record, which is pretty cool. And in fact it was. It was the one light. It was the one shining light of actual fairness within the system, at least as
far as I saw it. And I watched a bunch of other traffic offenders getting up throughout the course of the morning, and the ones who deserved it, they got their dismissal, and the ones who didn't they got told they weren't getting it, you know. So I saw that as actually being a reasonably fair and just place, unlike all of the interactions up to that point.
Yeah, that's that's a good point. I wanted to ask you, you know what's next for you? Are you our death?
Most probably, I'll tell you what I'll tell you what's next for him. We're going out after this.
Oh yes, and we're just unfortunately it's out to have some pizza. But no, Wow, that's a big night out. And I mean, are you are you happy doing the YouTube stuff? Do you have any other plans? You know, what's your what's your sort of what are your future prospects? People are just happy cruising.
Can't you accept my future prospects are? I'm fundamentally unemployable right, And like Satan isn't going to get a job anywhere else. He's in Hell, He's got ship to do. I'm like, I'm like Satan in this domain. There's fires to stoke and there's people to roast, and you know that kind of.
Makes me to keep you busy.
And it's not like I'm going to make anything up. We live in this post satire era where the news is actually a bigger inversion of reality of here's the test, you.
Know, utopia, right?
The show? If if I were writing a script for a show, and I mentioned some of the plot to some of the stories like Carlos Gone Right, escaping from almost certain long term imprisonment in Japan, being smuggled out of his rather opulent penthouse apartment in a fucking musical instrument case and put on a plane, a chartered plane by two former Special Ops dudes. Like if I wrote that in the.
Script, you cannot make it up.
Some executive at via common ring up and go mate, play off the crystal.
Maybe you'll never get he ends up in Lebanon as well as mate, Okay, go back and.
Get and he's a national hero, right, come on, But if you look at Rupert Stadler as well, and you know, if you look at the former.
Winter Corn, oh yes, yeah, Martin Wintercorn.
Like Winter Corn is under indictment in the US and the only reason he'll never get prosecuted is because and he doesn't extradite It's citizens to the United States because of that nastiness you know back in the forties.
Yeah, well, okay, well, let I guess solidifies that so we won't see you know, you've got autoex but we won't see you know.
Fan that's coming up act is Yeah, well this is me with some velvelen, you know what I mean.
What I mean, I don't think we'll see an only fan. I'm almost certain about that. But I've always thought there was there's a broader application for that kind of thing that I do, because there's so many media sicker fans, right, and it's nauseating. And I think the audience is smarter than they were in the seventies too, you know, Like there's a really fascinating biopic with a whole bunch of big names in it, like Robert Downey Jr. And that
it's it's called good Night and good Luck. Everyone should watch that because it's that pivotal moment in journalism in the McCarthy era in the United States where they actually decided to start taking sides yep, right, And if you're interested in how the media works, it's a really interesting story.
Right.
So, what we've got at the moment is so many sicker fans. So we need a few more alaric and upstarts like you guys have got potential in the alaric and upstartery department. Although I appreciate that you still want to be on speaking terms in the car industry for the most where it's like I couldn't give a shit. You know, you're not talking to me again, Okay, dude, understood. I'll try and sleep. Okay, so enough.
Actually just on that, just a couple of quick questions while we wrap. Is there a car this year that's made you happy? Like?
What?
Is there a car that you kind of go, yeah, this is actually lives up to the.
Hype or that you would surprise. Yeah.
I don't know if it's released this year. But the car I would buy just to please myself right now is he under thirty en? Because I think it's just goodza fun.
Great answer, Yeah right.
BMWN three and cars of that nature. They just intimidate the shit out of me. They're exciting. But I can't milk a car like that for all this work.
I haven't got that, so I don't think many people can.
I also think most of the people consuming those sorts of cars, I really don't think they're taking it to the track like I honestly don't. I think it's very The track stuff is a very niche thing.
They want people to look at them in their M three And the only thing is they're not the only dot that they're not joining in that particular sequence is most of the people looking at them in their M three are thinking what a.
Correct answer.
But it's interesting because, like they you do spend a lot of money for these cars, say, maybe not so much to the Ends, but for the M three, and that's quite a track focused car. You're really not going to ever be able to drive that to it's true potential. You can kind of show off to mates and can go check it out. Look how quick I can take this corner and all that sort of stuff.
But the M three is looking back at you when you're doing that. The M three is looking back at you and going, is that all you're going?
Yeah?
Lol, yeah, whatever the German equivalent of that.
Yeah, the end.
The Ends are cool little cars too.
I really do like you're going to be a pretty spect driver to milk the shit out of them too. I've got to say, like the performance potential can only be accessed on a track, and you have to be on it to make it, to make it really perform. So it's a it's a really good package, you know.
Like the fact that they called like the front wheel drive on it a feature too, I thought was really interesting when it was first released.
After a while you kind of go, yeah.
This is like, well that is really spooky, like it allows you to get on the gas so far in advance of an apex, because you know you're playing this game a chicken with yourself on the track all the time, like how early can I get on the gas? How early can I get on the gas all the time? How late can I break? How early can I get on the gas? And the answer is a lot earlier than that, dickhead?
You go again, right, yeah, what about what about EV's? Where are we? Where are we at with the Yeah? What is your thing on EV's? Because I know that you you had certain views on elon Musk. Where are you at with evs? Because my opinion has changed?
Mine was since you bought the hummer?
Yes that's right, yeah, yeah, we've we've owned two teslas now and the first one was a lithium ion and since then, looking at thermal runaway and how dangerous they can be in those situations, my mind has changed on the LFP batteries that aren't susceptible to that kind of thermal runaway as susceptible as susceptible to that kind of thermal runaway and to me, if I'm putting family in the car, it's just a better safety feature for me. Do you think that we're there yet with that battery ticket?
I know that an internal combustion car will catch on fire as well if you put a lighter near combustible fuel. But are we there yet?
Yeah? Okay, So the big difference is you can put a combustion car fire out with water.
Or film and fairly quickly as well.
Yeah, But with a catastrophic thermal runaway, the decomposition of the electrolyte in the bat manufactures its own oxygen gas, so it can't be put out by deprivation of atmospheric oxygen, which is a conventional firefighting mechanism in Europe. What they have to do before the thermal runaway occurs, when the car's just on fire making a few bit of smoke sort of thing before it really kicks off, They put
it in. They get a truck and they bring a big tub of water, like a big carsized bath tub, and they crane the car into that and water is the thermal shock absorber from hell, and that just keeps sucking heat out of the battery so that it doesn't reach the state of catastrophic thermal runaway, and the catastrophic thermal runaway phenomenon is what ultimately sunk the Felicity Ace about a year ago.
That's right, the moment that had the stack of porschey Vs and eat.
So one of them kicked off and had a on the balance of probability, no one knows because it's three and a half kilometers down the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, right, but four thousand cars. That ship had the capacity to carry four thousand cars. I don't know if it had the full four thousand on board, but anyway, it was a two hundred million dollar disaster, and it's because of the different nature of thermal runaways.
Right.
So we're not there with evs. There's two major things. We're not there with the integration of them into society because in the West field of the future, there's going to be one hundred EV's and many of them are going to be plugged in, and one of them might have been in a minor fender bender, and the bumper could be on with gaffer tape and it could have a problem with the battery, right, and you plug it in,
Mum and Dad go shopping. And it has a thermal runaway and it picks up the three or four evs around it. They have thermal runaways, and when that thermal runaway event happens in an enclosed space, it's extremely dangerous because of the chemicals like hydrofluoric acid. And the other one is cobalt. Right. Two firefighters in Victoria are medically retired because of their exposure to cobalt following a EV file and they turn up with a PPE.
Right.
The thing about cobalt is you get it on your skin. It fucks you, right, you don't even have to breathe it. Okay. So we're not really there in terms of the management of these risks. And it's a real dichotomy when you've got low probability events because it's not likely that it's going to happen. Probability is really low, but the seriousness, the severity of the event when it does happen, is extremely high. So we haven't really integrated that into society.
And I think we're also over selling evs to the population. And that's evidenced by when you look at the EV Council and and who sponsors the EV Council, right, Who pays the bills. There there's a lot of energy companies because what a lot of energy retailers want you to do is they want you to look at the EV because it's a shiny new toy you can buy and we can save the planet.
But also you can use a shitload of electricity. Yeah, and help us make a lot of money.
Yeah, coal projects and gas projects, they're all over the horizon. You can't really see them, but you can see the evs. So in terms of their environmental benefit, their greenhouse benefit,
they're being over sold. Then if we get Harry Potter's freakin' wand and replace every passenger car in the country with an EV right now, we make an eight percent difference to our greenhouse gas emissions because that's the contribution of passenger cars, right, Passenger vehicles like light vehicles, And that's if the electricity used to charge them is all sustainable electricity, which it's not. Okay, So this conflation of evs with
real climate action. They're part of a solution, but the real big part of the solution is coal and gas, and nobody wants to talk about that.
Yeah. Well, and that's that's the thing with EV's. I think if you're buying it to make an environmental stance. I just don't know that it's the right thing at the moment. And we didn't buy ours for that reason. I just wanted a fast TV and that's what it was. And I rarely have drive it anyway. My wife drives it, and you know it does it serves that purpose. But I do think infrastructure is shit, and it really pisces me off with companies like charge Fox who take all
of this government money to roll out infrastructure. You go, there's our taxpayer money. They're partly funded by governments. A lot of the charges they do are funded by governments. You go there and plug in. Thing doesn't work.
And by the way, they seem to be answerable to nobody.
Well, this is the thing them. THEO was drunk. Sorry, I should have still Again, the authority that basically dishes out this money for these projects, We've contacted them to ask them how many of the charges that taxpayers have funded are currently working. No one responds to any emails that.
They don't want to talk about uptime.
No EV Council is is just a money spinning operation. If you have a look at how many employees they have, and how much money car companies and these energy companies are paying them. Tell you what, there's not much being spent, but there is a lot coming in.
So so the last key of launch I ever went on was the key EV six, and I said to them, let me drive on home because it was in camera, so it'll make it.
Okay.
So here's what happens. They give me the keys to the car, they say, yeah, here's your EV six, and I go, how much charges have got? And they go all the charges downstairs in the hotel room were blown up, so we don't really know. A couple hundred k's maybe, And I go, okay, that's great, I'll charge up on the way home. So I pull up in Goulben and one of the charges is dead like brown bread, and the other one is reported by the app as being up, but it's got a completely black screen. So it's kind
of like trying to use your smartphone with no screen. Okay, bit difficult, It's okay if you've got a great memory. And then the last charger is up, I go, great, so I pick it up, plug it in, and I've charged up a thousand EV's by now, so plug it in.
And what's going to happen first is it goes through this handshake routine where where the plug goes into the socket, the socket grabs the plug so you can't withdraw it while it's being charge and strike the world's biggest welding up right, so you can feel the servo motor or whatever it is trying or the solenoid trying to grab it. And it's trying and failing right because the plug is worn. There's nothing wrong with the car. But at this stage
I've exhausted all charging opportunities. I can't get back to Sydney without making this work. So I have five or six cracks at it, and on the sixth crack, it grabs the plug and I go, yay. I knew i'd get there eventually, but what a prick to ease right. And then so I get home, but I'm making these plans to call Kiir and say, hey, if you want your EV six back, it's parked in the back lot here and I'm hitching a ride with somebody.
Else and there's my uber bill as well.
But that was a better story than reviewing the EV six, because this is the reality of the whole deal, and if I'd bought an EV six in Canberra, dropped eighty thousand dollars and my own money on it, and that was my first impression of driving it to Sydney, which hypothetically should be a piece of piss, I'd be gutted.
That's the issue, right. These car companies can't do really anything about it, and that's why Tesla has been so clever in the way that they've rolled out charging infrastructure and they're now charging brands. I mean in the States now, Ford and I think GM have now said that they're moving to Tesla's charging standards. They've moved away from CCS or the type one plug, So I think that that's
a sign of things to come. But it's also bad news if you own a Tesla because you had these exclusive charges that were only yours, that are now very busy during public holidays, that very shortly will be accessible by everyone who doesn't own a Tesla.
Where's the grid upgrade program? Like if you're some rich wanka in a in observatory tower down there in Kent Street, right, I know someone who lives there, So there are no EV charges in that car park I've ever seen anyway. If you want to upgrade that, where's the power going to come from? Because if you wanted to put a seven killer watt charger in every one of those parking spaces for the electric utope ere of the future, where's the local grid upgrade? Where are they rolling that out?
I'm not seeing a whole bunch of NBN style dudes in pickup trucks, you know, putting big, bigger, fatter wires in the street.
Yeah, that's what turned me off, actually, because my apartment building wouldn't allow you know, charging stations at all.
Didn't you do that?
Yeah?
I was just about to say, many of them won't. And the only way to get around it is to do it. We've just done at our place, and basically that is rolling out an initiative to install av charges and I'll explain how it works and the cost of it. So we ran cable trays through the entire car park, We install Wi Fi through the entire car park for
cars to do upgrades and whatever. And then what we did is we did a load study on our incoming supply over seven days to look at peak and troughs, and then what we did is determined overhead supply deducted a safety margin and that was your EV capacity. Then what happens is there's a load manager, and what it does is it constantly reads the incoming supply to tell you how much you have in terms of buffer, and then as the EV's plug in, it'll ramp up and
ramp down EV. So if it's off peak, you can have up to seven odd killer wats, and if it's on peak, they'll ramp it down to a killer WAT potentially if they're all plugged in at once. Yeah, all great, except for our apartment which has one hundred and seventy five units just on the mass. That's about seventy odd thousand dollars for that upgrade so far. And there's a couple of extra bits and pieces that need to happen. Now.
A lot of apartment buildings if you look at it these days in the news body corporates don't have a cent to spare shows. Has been well managed because i'm the chair, but it's been a well managed terms of budget, and we have this overhead. If you don't have that over head and you rent, or even if you rent and you don't own, it is very hard slash impossible to have an EV that you can charge at home,
which is ideally for us. We only ever, you know, we've done twenty thousand k's in hours now over the period of a year. We basically only have a drive to Geelong or to Ballarat to see families. It's one hundred and ten hundred and twenty k's away. If I'm driving further, I park the EV. If it's a long weekend, I park the EV and we'll take our other car because I don't want to get trapped with a two year old winging in the back seat at a charger when I'm tenth in Q waiting who knows how long.
And that's that's the reality, and people don't like that. When I mention it, I'm a public enemy number one of the Tesla Model three Model Y Owners club on Facebook. I had to leave the group because there's so many just fuckwits in there.
But EV's are a religion. Yeah, there's a group in society for whom EV's are a religion. It's not unlike gun culture in the United States.
Exactly.
You can't make logical arguments with EV zealots.
You just came exactly, And a lot of the time it's their first new car or the newest car they've had for a while, and they're blown away with all these features, like yeah, when I put the indicator on, the thing comes up on the screen. I'm like, okay, under key, you do that, Like it's yeah, Tesla didn't invent this stuff. They really their self driving stuff is
horrendously bad. But no one, no one talks about this because they don't want to admit that the thing they've spent their life savings on is yeah good, Like it's great. I like the car, but it is not this amazing utopia of car.
I think they also get they love the fact that they're in some sort of a group as well. I guess generally, if you or anything to go by, those people don't have a lot of friends, and so they just like the feeling of belonging. And why not have a belonging feeling to a big dickhead group?
That's anyway? All right, Well, this has gone a lot longer than I thought it was going.
Yeah, yeah, one quick thing, EV, right now.
What are you enjoying in just in EV? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, the EV that I would really enjoy doesn't exist, because I want an EV for about thirty five grand that's only got one hundred and twenty k's of range. It's a bit of a poverty shitter. That's your second car, so that your big Humma or your diesel or something can stay in the garage when you just need to nip down to the shops. You don't come back with, you know, forty dozen cases of beer and some red meat.
Yeah, something, pretty much. They do have their benefits in the city though. I know that whenever a fucking bus drives past you or something fiant truck and you choke to death on the side of the road, that kind of stuff will be improved with EV's in the future. But the funny thing is the ones that produce all that buses and trucks don't really work well as EV's at the moment.
So Australia's got a real problem with that though too, because in Europe, if you've got a bustard asshole truck, as trucks get older, they move west. Yes, yes, so the move east, they move to eastern Europe right. And in America, when trucks go from new to old they go south, so they go through Mexico and Columbia. So all the evil, pollution belching shitters are going to the
less socioeconomically affluent places. And in Australia, what happens is your old truck stops doing long haul and it starts picking up containers in botany or something and taking the marning wood. So the oldest trucks on our roads, which have no fundamental pollution control, emitting the most toxic carcinogenic shit, are driving through the most populous regions in the nation, which past schools, which is not that fucking stupid, is it?
You know, like, come on, so evs will clean up the tailpipe back, but there's no there's no real political will to do that with our most polluting vehicles because that would be an attack on battler's because that's who picks up containers.
Yeah, exactly, And that's the double edged sword. I also don't want them spending all of my taxpayer dollars to help some wealthy person buy an EV unless they are thirty odd grand. The guy that's buying one hundred thousand dollars EV doesn't need an incentive or some ability to reduce the amount they're spending on it. I mean, that's just ridiculous.
I don't think the car industry can supply them in the requisite volumes anyway, because there's fifteen million light vehicles on the roads in Australia. And if we were miraculously to get our hands on half a million EV's a year, right, it's going to take thirty years to replace combustion. So people who think that this transition is happening and it's miraculous and it will be wake up one day like this and all of a sudden it's all evs. Well, you wouldn't want to be fifty thinking that.
I am amazed how quick though, that.
The marketing and everything that goes with it has really been up in the last even eighteen months for evs, Like I remember when we first started this, right, I remember one of the first news stories we were talking about was within two years out he thinks they're going to make more money on their evs And I.
Was like, has changed? What?
Yeah, But these statements are not held up to subsequent scrutiny.
Exactly.
They're a good headline now. You know, in fifteen years if that changes, if we get to twenty thirty five and we can't actually ban combustion, because you can't get enough in you can't get enough electric cars, and you know.
Most people can't afford them. Yeah, so if.
That happens, then we'll just change the narrative. Yeah, go bit Youtope, you're on it.
Well now, to anyone listening at the moment, if there is anything you want us to ask John, it would be great to have him back on again and send us through your questions, you know, just anything you want to know out out of him. I know that you respond to a lot of people on your YouTube. Any sort of weird shit people have asked you. Do you have any sort of weird fans?
Is there ever a day?
So nice, very quickly tell the story. Yesterday we caught up with John for a coffee and as we're walking to the coffee place, this bloke stops us and he goes, sorry, I just wanted to stop you for a second. All your videos. I thought he was talking to me because he was a younger bloke, and I thought, okay, of course, he just looked straight past me and looked at John and who's made a glow by day. My favorite part was he goes, oh, by the way, one of my
really good mates does YouTube videos as well. You should check them out. His name's Tom Baker. I just said, mate, your copy too much of an avid viewer because he's currently under a bus at the moment.
When was the last time you've spoken?
That was a That was a fun story. But do you get sort of randos and stuff all the time.
Like here's the thing. I was on TV for twenty years right regularly on top like Current Affair and today tonight they were top rating shows even though you know it's trash. Robson was a bloody sort what neighbors, neighbors at war? What's in meat? Miracle underwear? That all vegetables? Are they really healthy?
Yeah?
That psychics? What's your cat really thinking? So hardly ever got recognized but from YouTube. The difference between TV and YouTube is you choose to watch YouTube, You choose the specific thing that you're going to watch. So basically every time I go out, I get recognized. It's amazing to me, and it's never some some dickhead who wants to who wants to knock your head off.
You know, it's interesting, isn't it, Because you get a lot of people who and this is why I think it's it's a vocal minority that you don't like you.
But there commenters aren't the whole audience. There a subset of the audio.
Pisce week to do anything anyway because they're there on a keyboard with anonymous underscore seven one six.
You know, Yeah, I'm not worried to me, I'm not worried about the guy who the guy who says something unsavory to you in the comments feed. I'd be a little more potentially concerned about someone who just you know, is quietly plotting world domination in his basement and he's got me near the top of the list.
Get rid of that.
Tickets just a dartboard with your faith.
No, it's actually a much nicer experience. The really perverse thing though, And there's no exception to this. No one ever introduces himself yep, right, because they've already got a relationship with you.
Yeah right, that's interesting.
That's cool because I've known you for six years. If if I've known I don't walk up to Paul yea and go oh, Paula.
Yeah, that's it. We do sometimes just to see what kind of reaction you'd get. Yeah, if I had a brain, and well look that was that was good fun. So yeah, look, you do have any questions, shoot them through and we'll see if we can get John back on again. Yeah.
I loved it.
We can talk talk ship. There's a lot of ship to be spoken about. It's underrated.
Talking shit is underrated.
Absolutely. You know I love listening to podcasts when I'm on a long drive, just especially this one. Yeah, yes, of course, yes.
Then I'll get a text that you really shouldn't have included that in the podcast. That's probably not a good idea.
Do you edit out the guests and Gordon just listen to your own stuff?
Yeah, pretty much we did, so we take out the soundtracks and then I won't even hear you guys. That was a good laugh. Yeah, Jesus, a good question.
Funny, wasn't in sightful post stand in front of the mirror? If only I could pull the pants off my own reflection.
Jesus, beautiful, excellent, Thanks guys, There you go. That was That went much longer than expected, but it was really good to catch up with John and just talk about stuff. It is. It is funny how a lot of people think that we all hate him and he hates us.
But I didn't even realize honestly, I didn't even know you guys had beef.
I like him.
I like the fact that he calls people out and he has an opinion, and I like the fact that he's got an opinion, he's got an argument to back it up, whether you agree or disagree.
I think that's really everyone's allowed to have an opinion. That's the thing, framing how you like, and to be honest. Whenever he roasts me or Elbows or Tony in a video, we genuinely find it hilarious. So wow, he's got some zingers. Yes, every time he does something, I get contacted by stacks of different people on social like, oh my god, did you see this? And I'm like, no, but how good is it? People think, yeah? But anyway, But now let's get on to a little bit of feedback. Okay, So
there is something a little bit troubling here. So on on our Apple I tune, there is a person the gone a Bit too Far question Mark question Mark question Mark guy who left us a one star rating and said that Paul, you have a.
Brand, Yeah, you have an engineering brand. So I just assumed it was a fellow engineer or some bitchy person from the car industry.
Or Daniel Daniel, but this person changed their rating, so they changed it to five stars, left a comment. They then removed that rating and brought it back again with this comment titled Gordy has improved. Oh what I've improved? But hold on, let's not get ahead of itself. Paul, you have a brand to protect and Gordy is not doing you any favors. The smutty humor is quite pathetic. Congratulations on your recent gong. I think he is dong. So thank you to that person for the nice bits
and the gaudy bits I don't really care about. But who are you like? You just tell us who you are and it's okay. You don't have to hide behind her.
You've got some sort of like secret of Mara Now well, I mean, come on mate, one of many, I guess.
Let's go to the email.
You are big on the mums. Hey, apologies about our emails lately. If you've sent us an email, please can you resend it because our email system seems to be a little bit down. Let's pull up some dms. This one's from Garth. Thanks for contacting us, Garth. This is great. I saw Paul's orgasm face after his G four RST review. No, Donnor insight, Well, you be surprised she's pretty flexible that she was wrapped around that rollcage. Jesus, why do I have like an image of like Flubber that movie. Yeah,
so he sent us that. He also sent us Oh okay, so do you know thet House boys?
No, but I've watched their content y Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, he centers the I think he just wanted our opinion on the Toyota Corolla hybrid or wheel dry. But interesting? What else is he said? Seriously, we pay so much money for boring cars. As we move to electrification, it seems the gap from function to rip your tits off is astronomical. Remember when the Ford Falcon was thirty eight K to the ah, this is interesting, Yeah, to the XR six Turbo it was like ten k. Now spending forty k just to get the tires hot.
Yeah. Yeah, I actually think that's a really good point. And my theory is that manufacturers are obviously moving to electric vehicles, and what they're trying to do is make you more comfortable with spending a lot more money, So they up the price now so that when EV's come there's a less of a bridge to gap, gap to
bridge one of the makes no sense. But yeah, I think the problem with that is that some car companies that haven't released models are just charging more for the same thing that three or five years ago was significantly less. The other problem as well is that this is going to be their method of discounting. So now that they've jacked the price up ten to fifteen to twenty percent, they'll do a five or ten percent off deal friend
of financial year. But there's still five or ten percent up from where they were three to five years ago, where they were still making money. So I think it's quite clear that people are really paying a lot for cars at the moment, and it's not just one brand that's doing it. So it is something to be aware of and perhaps look at the second hand market if that is a little less hard to bear.
This one thing is from Intrigued Coop.
Intriguing.
Okay, sorry, first of all, Intrigue, yere you go. Intrigued Coop said, as this great photo of the goat car right, shout out to little Pavlo riding his goat car. I have to get to school, Papa, Can I thank the goat?
Did this at three am. I trying to sell my or one and a half year old daughter. Is gold. Good on you? Yeah, amazing.
We're sending that guy a little something something too. He's in wa not fucked out the postage, just to he can come and get it painted on it.
Where are you from?
Corrup Corp, Cory rap col core Ca PASSNIP.
I don't know. Over on the emails, we got an email from Jean Paul Coverlin. Guys, this podcast rocks, keep it up. Thank you. It's okay, So I'll reread it out because he sent it to us. I just want to let you know that I have intelligent information about an already made Ford everest Raptor that has been built and is currently stored at the Ford Geelong Compound. It's
only fifteen staff involved in the build. It is said the raptor will not be made into production as the cost of the unit compared to the Ford Ranger Raptor is extremely more and it isn't viable to produce at the time. It is said that the efest Raptor is a better looking unit and has widened guards than the ute. It will only go on display in the coming year at the Goodwood Festival of Speed as a concept by Ford Performance US and Seema.
Rumors, and it was built here in Geelong. Apparently interesting, you go to Geelong a lot.
No yiga gig. This is great.
I just remember that it's.
The worst thing I've ever started. But yeah, interesting. I believe that.
I believe what he saying is true. I reckon there is one in existence in a bunker underneath. I hope they Ford, HQ and Geelong.
It is a logical thing. If you have a look at what range of Raptor has achieved recently. At one it's class in the BAHA one thousand. They just finished the Fink Desert Race here in Australia and it won its class, their best production car, and they've just announced that it's going to be doing Dakha. This is really a roll cage, but it is fundamentally stock car. Pretty bloody amazing. That is cool.
Oh you know what's starting to pop up in the US actual physical versions of the nine to eleven DAKA.
Oh yeah, cool, looks it's an interesting car. See if you park that next to the Lambo, the Strato Hurricane. Yeah, I just reckon the nine to eleven looks so much better. It just looks like it can actually do the stuff that it's meant to do, whereas the Lamb beginning, I don't know. I just feel like they've kind of just done it for the psych of doing it. Oh, I'd still love to check it out though.
Oh my god, I think the nine to eleven definitely has more ground clearance, Like it does look like.
A pumped up more of a car. But man, there would be something about that.
Yeah, mate, fucking move them an, I can check out the strato.
That's good. If you did enjoy that episode, please, like I said, let us know if you want to ask John anything and get him back on.
We're definitely going to get back on it. He's actually going to be doing a jelly wrestling.
Match with Trevor.
Oh.
I can't wait to see that.
It's gonna look like two lava lamps smashed together.
Yea, yeah, but yeah, we'll try and get Trevor back on as well. Yeah, let us let us know what you think of the show. Contact at the Driversshow dot com, todau or on our socials and also, if you haven't done already, please leave us a rating on the platform that you're listening to share the podcast with your mates. Ye, make sure everyone knows about it. We really appreciate the support and all the comments that you guys leave us all the time.
Yeah, one more big thanks to John. Really do appreciate you coming on. You know who we should get on and it's probably someone only you could wingle up like you've got the contact?
Is it, Kim John Munn? No, okay, it's.
Donna, and I think it's time you take a drive in Regional Victoria, Regional South Australia, wherever the fuck you and Donna shacked up in that bloody caravan of courage and you.
Should bring her on.
I think it's just got a tech from Donna.
We can send me your request for Donna. We've got to get her on, well, get her off