You can listen to the Front on your smart sneaker every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Friday, August nine. Medical experts are calling for Australia to overhaul its plastics regulations. New research indicates there are chemicals in some plastics which are linked with the development of autism. That's a big health story with implications for all of us. Breaking now
on the Australian dot com dot AU. Disability service providers say they're going broke because of a multi billion dollar accounting problem with the National Disability Insurance Scheme. They say the NDIS is underpaying the providers who look after Australia's most needy people. There's a new player in American politics. The former high school football coach Kamala Harris has picked as her new vice president. He's a straight talking Midwesterner
and the gun lobby hates him. Today we meet Tim Walls, a social studies teacher, a high school football coach, and once he became a prominent Democrat politician. Tim Walls was a hunting, fishing, gun rights advocate. I'm Tim Walls. You know.
Growing up hunting taught me a lot about responsibility and respect, lessons I hope to pass on to my kids. I'm proud to stand with the NRA to protect the rights of sportsmen and gun owners.
Until this, Oh.
My god, Oh my god, oh my god, we're still shooting, shooting.
Animate they screate this. We have act to shooter in room three two one five.
Three two sustained automatic gunfire at the concert.
Fifty nine now dead, more than five hundred injured.
The most deadly massacre of civilians by a loan shooter in the United States is sorry history of gun violence. The twenty seventeen Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas. It turned Tim Walls away from guns.
The time for hiding behind thoughts and prayers is long gone. What we need is action, and we need it now. So here's what's going to happen. Here's what's going to happen. We've got gun safety bill on the table, and we're going to get it passed and.
I'm going to sign it. He donated all the money he'd ever received from the NRA, the most powerful lobbying organization in the States to charity. After the Parkland High School massacre in twenty eighteen, Walls had a confronting conversation with his daughter op walk up like.
Many of you did five weeks ago, and Debt said, Dad, you're the only person I know who's an elected office. You need to stop what's happening with this. I'll take my kick in the butt for the NA I spent twenty five years in the army, and I.
Hunt As governor of Minnesota. He dramatically tightened gun restrictions, and now he's Kamala Harris's running mate. He welcome the next Vice President of the United States, Tim Wall. There's been lots of speculation that Kamala Harris would choose a straight white Midwestern dude to reassure the voters. Well, she did, But Tim Walls is more complex than the cliche might suggest.
Some of us in here are old enough to remember. I see you down there, I see those all white guys. Some of us are all remember when it was Republicans who were talking about freedom. It turns out now what they meant was the government should be free to invade your doctor's office.
On the keystone issue of abortion rights, something the Democrats are pinning their hopes on this election cycle. Walls is loud and proud in Minnesota.
We respect our neighbors and their personal choices that they make, even if we wouldn't make the same choice for ourselves. There's a golden rule, mind your own damn business.
Wolves is derided by the Republicans as a political weather veane, someone who can't be trusted. The Democrats say, over a long career in the federal House of Representatives and in state politics, he's just changed his mind. Walls hits all the progressive notes from the Democrats' dreams in an accent that's meant to tell you he's not part of the East Coast liberal elite.
When Vice President and I talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make.
Your own healthcare decisions.
And for our children to be free to go to school without worrying they'll be shot dead in their classrooms. By the way, as you heard, I was on the best shots in Congress. But in Minnesota, we believe in the Second Amendment, but we also believe in common sense gun violence laws.
It's only been a few days since Walls was named as Harris's running mate, and he's already on the attack. One person firmly in his sights Donald Trump's running mate JD. Vance.
Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland. JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a best seller trashing that community.
Come on the crowd at Walls's debut speech to the Democratic faithful in Pennsylvania. Loved Walls's shtick, and there was one line in particular that brought the house down.
And I gotta tell you, I can't wait to debate the guy. That is a if he's willing to get off the couch and show up, so.
You see what I did there. If you didn't see what he did there, then this moment needs a bit of explaining. You might need a coffee for this one. Soon after JD. Vance was nominated as Trump's running mate, someone put out a tweet saying there was a very strange passage in the first edition of Vance's autobiography, Hillbilly Elegy. It said that on pages one nine to one point eight one, Vance wrote about having well carnal relations with a couch. Those aren't the words that we used. By
the way, you get my drift. Of course, there's nothing like that in Hillbilly Elergy, which was actually a lyrical exploration of poverty and what it's like to be an outsider. This couch stuff is completely made up. It's ridiculous, but the Internet being the Internet, people ran with it. The fake story was all over social media, Instagram, TikTok x, even Fox News referenced it. It seems like the Republicans are getting a big ged Vans should I say couch sized?
Wake up hod he or didn't he? It got so weird that the Associated Press released a story with the headline no, JD. Vans did not have sex with a couch, But the horse was out of the gate, and the fact Wolls invoked it crystallizes something Wolls brings to the Harris campaign. He's a little bit daggy dad, a little bit vicious political street fighter. He's rolling out a line. The Democrats have been working hard since Kamala Harris stepped up as candidate.
Just an observation of mine that I made. I just have to say it. You know it, you feel it. These guys are creepy and yes, just where its hell.
JD. Vance hasn't dignified the couch thing.
Why would you?
But he has returned fire, and it's Wolls's military history. He's coming after coming up next things get even more personal. And if you're interested in the US election, make sure you subscribe to The Australian. You'll never miss a moment with all the latest news and analysis. We're at the Australian dot com dot au and we'll be back after
this break. Jdi Vans is doing a press conference. He's talked about law enforcement, his policies, the usual campaign trial stuff, but the press aren't so interested in that.
Last night, doctor walt suggested that because of your league education and your Silicon backing, your political career and tho yourself are part of the elite water.
A reporter asks Vance to respond to Walls's digs about his Yale education and Silicon Valley patronage, the very elite Vance is so vocal about taking down.
Well, look, I came from a family where nobody in my family had ever gone to law school. I grew up in a poor family. The fact that Tim Waltz wants to turn it into a bad thing that I actually worked myself through college and made something myself. To me, that's the American dream.
JD. Vans is good at this. He didn't actually dress. The accusation is morphed into part of the elite. But before anyone can follow up, he's on the attack.
When Tim Waltz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did. He dropped out of the army and allowed his unit to go without him. What bothers me about Tim Waltz is the stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you're not. And if you want to criticize me for getting an Ivy League education, I'm proud of the fact that my mammoll supported me, that I was able to make something of myself. I'd be ashamed if I was him and I lied about my military service like he did.
Wolls spent twenty four years with the Army National Guard, that's the part of the US armed forces made up of civilian soldiers. Over that time, he responded to natural disasters and deployed to Europe in support of operations in Afghanistan. Eventually he rose to the position of command sergeant major. Then in two thousand and five, Wolls retired so he could run for Congress. This was two months before his unit received orders to deploy to Iraq. The stolen valor
line of attack is compelling, but it might backfire. JD. Vance went to Iraq, but he wrote in Hillbilly Elegy he never saw combat. Instead, he worked as a military journalist for the Marines. Famously, Donald Trump received a medical exemption from the military for bone spurs in his heel during the Vietnam War. That diagnosis has previously come under serious scrutiny, but Walls's military history isn't the only thing from his past under the microscope. Here's a Republican ad from this week.
What could be weirder than signing a bill and the law that requires schools to stock tampons in boys' bathrooms, or weirder than signing legislation allowing miners to receive sex change operations. Try electing the man who signed those bills vice President of the States. Enter cheep, weirdo Tam Walls as governor of Minnesota.
Ooh, the tampons go with me. Last year, Walls signed a bill requiring Minnesota schools to supply menstrual products to students so far, so unremarkable. But some Minnesota Republicans took exception to the wording of the legislation, which said sanitary products should be available to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students. The Republicans said, shouldn't this be
about female students and the girls' bathrooms? Maybe the gender neutral bathrooms too, Why would you implicitly include boys' bathrooms? An amendment was drafted, but the original wording remained. Now the Republicans are calling Walls tampon Tim. Gender identity is a hot political issue in the US, and the Republicans sniff a weakness. So will Tim Walls be the next
Vice President of the United States of America. If there's something the past decade of global politics has taught us, it's that you can't fully trust the polls, but it doesn't hurt to have a little peak every now and then. With Tim Walls on the Democratic ticket, it's still shaping up to be another razor thin election.
A new poll from PBS News and PR and Maris shows Kamala Harris with a three point lead over Donald Trump nationally.
That's within the poll's margin of error. A number of recent polls indicate there's been a tipping point for the first time. Kamala Harris is slightly ahead of Donald Trump, but there's a long way to go. The US election is on November five, but the next big set piece is the Democratic National Convention, kicking off on August nineteen. We'll have a team at the DNC bringing you all the news twenty four to seven at the Australian dot com dot au. Thanks for joining us on the front.
Our team is leat Sannaglau, Stephanie Coombs, Kristen Amy at Jasper League, Tiffany Dimak, Joshua Burton and me Claire Harvey.