Welcome to the Late Debate.
Good evening.
I'm James Macpherson with Liz Storer and Caleb Bond. Coming up, council parking permits being sold on the black market. We'll tell you what's going on there. And when we look at the papers, Queensland Premier Stephen Miles throwing huge amounts of money at a mining giant, though we won't say exactly how much, and a Melbourne council's radical plan to lower power prices. But first we've got massive breaking news here on the Late Debate.
About hour ago that.
Australian breakdancing sensation Rachel Gunn aka Big Girl ray Gun, she broke her silence about that Olympic Can we call it a performance? Finally talking about what happened, releasing this statement on Instagram.
Have a listen, Hi, everyone, Raygun here.
I just want to start by thanking all the people who supported me.
I really appreciate the positivity and I'm glad I was able to bring some joy into your lives. That's what I hoped. I didn't realize that that would also open the door to so much hate, which has frankly been pretty devastating.
I don't know about hate Caleb, but she certainly brought a lot of joy.
I mean, I laughed myself silly at that performance.
How I was glad that when I actually watched it live, because I had the unfortunate chance to sit down on the couch at about half past midnight last Friday and watch it live, that I was about a bottle of red deep at that point. Because if I wasn't a bottle of red Deep, I may will have cried myself
to sleep that night. I mean, look, you know, I understand that it's hard when you're in the public eye and you get criticized, etc. But if you go to the Olympic Games to represent your country, the whole country expects you to do well, right, and she didn't do well. She went there to compete in a sport where you are judged. It's not a well, I mean sport. I use the word loosely great breakdancing is. It's not a sport.
I'm sorry. It ain't a sport. But it's not like running or golf or whatever, where you can do it based on a score. You have to be judged by judges who decide whether or not they liked your performance based on various techniques and whatever that you have used, you are judged. She went to the Olympics to be judged. She was judged by the judges. They gave her a big bat zero, and then the rest of the world judged her performance. What did she expect she was getting herself in for?
Did you just say technique? I wasn't where there was any technique, not at all.
I mean, looking some of the other performances, there might have been some technique, but you know, seriously, to complain that, oh my god, there's been always outpouring of hate. There hasn't really been hate. It's just been people going what the hell did we were?
If you didn't see the performance, perhaps you can't relate to the outrage because it was objectively terrible. I don't think the woman can break dance at all. And the funniest part was watching the faces of the crowd in the background watching her, because they're all serious breakdancers from all over the world flown in to compete, and they were watching her with mouth open.
One of the problems is we don't tell people early on you know you're just not good.
Don't do it.
I disagree with you, because remember Australian Idol. Right, the best episodes in Australian Idol were not when they got like the top ten and Guys Sebastian is wowing us. All the best episodes were the early ones where you had these people rock up thinking they were the next yeah,
you know, Bob Dylan, and they were atrocious. I stopped watching once they got through the riff raft to the good people because you know, good people are a dime a dozen, but people with illusions of grandeur, those are the people who are truly entertaining.
She's she's a great entertainer for the risk that.
We're oats for those terrible your crap get out of here.
That's why it shows good because people tuned in to watch them be taken down a peg or two and people like ray Gun should have been taken down a peg or two. And going back to your point about qualifying, I think one of the other rules for Australian competitors you wanted to qualify was that they already had to have a passport, so they couldn't get a passport subsequent to qualify, they had to prove that they like it's just ridiculous anyway, she's broken haha. Her silence good on her.
Something tells me we won't see her competing anywhere again anytime soon. And if there's anything good to come of all of this, it will be that break dancing will never return to the Olympics again. And to that, I say, who Ray just the one song exactly exactly as well. Well, actually shouldn't have been a once off. It should never happened in the first place anyway. Be that as it may. Now in Victoria, Dale'sford and anyone who's been to Dallasford knows it is a wonderful part of the world. I
have been there. It has great pubs, great people. It is a lovely part of Victoria. But Dan Murphy's wanted to move into the town, and no wonder because it is a rapidly growing part of Victoria, very popular holiday spot. Lots of people have, people with money, I should not have holiday homes in Victoria. So Dan Murphy's thought, well, here's a good place to expand into. They went off and applied to set up a shop and they've had their application denied. Can you believe it on the basis
that it will be harmful to the community. Now, look, there are existing bottle shops in Dalsford, so it's not as though it's a dry town. And you know we're talking about setting up a grog shop in Alice Springs. We're talking about you know, bad lands of Dalsford. It's pretty good territory in Victoria, and the local council Hepburnshire, fought hard against Dan Murphy's opening up, and the CEO of the council, Bradley Thomas said in response to this
being knocked back by lick A Lison since today. The decision which was announced this morning was made namely on the basis that granting the license could pose a public risk, encourage harm and have adverse social impacts. I mean you'd think we were talking about opening up a safe injecting room or something. Oh, they've already done that in Victoria. Yes, that is safe. But you say I want to open up a Dan Murphy's shop. No, no, no, that is harmful. I mean you have to look that there's a few
things here. Clearly it is the good people of Dalsford don't want to the nice country feel of their town being ruined by our big dern Murphy's coming in to do business. But one wonders as well whether there was perhaps a little bit of well, we've got to protect the smaller operators who are already in Dalsford from the competition of an outfit like Dan Murphy's, which will of course necessarily come in with lower prices than the businesses
that are already there. So who cares. Let's run a protection racket for the dog the consumers.
What's wrong with either of those two things? I mean, if you want to live in Melbourne, to live in Melbourne. But I presume if you move to Dalsford it's because you don't want maccas and KFC and Dan Murphy's. You want your picturesque, sort of quaint Victorian town. And second, what's wrong with looking after the local traders? This Dan Murphy's was going to be three times the size of the two existing alcohol outlets put together. So what's wrong
with preserving the pristine nature of your own community? And what's wrong with looking after the locals rather than a major conglomerate.
Well, we're about looking after the locals. What about providing them with some competition to drive prices down exactly?
I'm not sure how many locals would be happy about this.
They're with locals.
As I'm about to get to that. But the population of Dalsford is ten thousand people. So for two hundred people, I.
Think it's only three things scupperr.
No, no, no, I checked it before I came online. For two hundred people to scupper the place, I don't know that that's entirely fair. And also you do wonder how many of those two hundred signatures came from the proprietors of the current bottle os and or wineries in the region, So you do have to wonder. Also what they really
highlighted in their objecting to this was miners drinking. And so you've got these miners that they made it all about the secondary the other I would increase and miners would drink more, and there would be more abuse of alcohol amongst miners. But the bottom line is if miners want to drink, if miners want to get their hands on alcohol, they are going to get their hands on out.
I've got to pull you up on something.
The twenty twenty one census, the population of Dallasford was two thousand, seven hundred and eighty one, which means just under.
Twenty four population.
Was it exploded by seven thousand people in it.
It is just under.
Dalesford is a growing place. It is a very popular place.
And just about to host the block.
Yeah, and let's be honest here, Like you open a Dan Murphy's in Dalesford. It's not simply exclusively for the people of Dalesford. It's for the people of the surrounds as well. Right, So people might come half an hour down the road.
Dan Murphy's.
Yeah, well, okay, should go there. Okay, So you're telling the good people of Dalesford that they have to govern Balerte and if they want to get.
Good people at Dalesford have told Dan Murphy's.
We don't want two hundred of them.
Twenty twenty one census, ten percent of the town.
Oh for good. But this is how it always works, right, This is this is NIMBYism at work. You get a small group of people who ban together and fight like hell and make a lot of noise, the vocal minority, we might call them, who fight tooth and nail against development. And I've seen this when I was when I was a local government reporter. I saw it all the time. It happened all the time. A small group of very noisy people fight against in some cases bad development, but
often quite sensible development. Now, Dan Murphy's is a shrewd and astute business. It will not seek to open up a store in a place where it does not think it is going to do good business. It's run all those numbers before it makes any applications. It knows that Dalsford is a good market and people will go there.
If there Murphy's opened up a shop in Dalesford and no one went there because the good people of Dalsford have decided they don't like Dan Murphy's, then that would be even more funny because they would drum dan Murphy's out of town. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and they won't get to eat the pudding because they've gone and scup at it before they had the chance.
And this ruling really is a landmark one because, to quote the article, it's the first time this new definition of harm under the Liquor Control Reform Act has been used to refuse a license. So if we're going to say alcoholism equals harm, well, not even alcoholism, but use
of alcohol in smaller communities, et cetera. If you're going to follow that line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, no Dan murphy should exist, because nobody's arguing, oh well, the existence of this Dan Murphy's isn't going to lend itself to alcoholism in this community. So it really this landmark ruling for me personally, has so many question marks around it because it's like, well, if it's not okay
in Dalesford, why is it okay anywhere? Because if you're going to sell alcohol, people are going to drink it, people are going to abuse it, Miners are going to get their hands on it. The last time I remember Dan Murphy's being knocked back of an application was back in twenty twenty one and that was in the Northern Territory. So to this day, there is no dan Murphy's in the Northern Territory because after five years, which included court battles,
they were just like, okay, we give up. And obviously there was a much stronger case in.
Case.
It was where they wanted to build, it was surrounded by dry towns and towns that it had a lot of problems in the past with alcoholism. So that one everyone can pay that case, everyone can go okay. Not in the Northern Territory fair deuce, but this one just seems to be no free market. And now the Bottlows and other people in the area, the pubs who do sell alcohol can keep their prices as high as they like because the people of Dalsford have no other option.
One of the things that made me laugh was in the ABC report they quoted the owner of a quote boutique distillery in Dlsford who said this was a very good result of good for the young people.
For the young people.
Oh, I'm sure he was one of those two hundred signatures.
It's a town with at least two pubs. I've been to both of them. I mean, maybe they need to shut one of the pubs down because it's causy harm. You know, it's harmful.
The pub is harmful, please, all right, aside from drinking, that's one of Caleb's great enjoyment pleasures. But we also love AFL and there's nothing better than just watching a great broadcast on the Telly watching the AFL. But the AFL are determined to ruin it by insisting on diversity and inclusion. Their new broadcasting rights deal with radio stations and television stations, including Fox tells stipulates that the commentary
teams must provide representation from minority groups. So three AW Radio asked the AFL boss Andrew Dillon, what exactly does it mean to have diversity on a commentary team? And the amazing thing was that Andrew Dillon couldn't really answer the question as to what diversity really means.
Have a listen, you mean fewer middle aged white men like Brian Taylor and James Brayshaw and more, I don't know, more indigenous commentators, more female commentators, more gay commentators.
What do you actually I don't think it's less of anything. I think it's just more of but it will.
Be not necessarily. I continue, here we have we have about eight middle aged white men who comment on the football here hello, Bruce Ever and Tim Lane and Shane mcinneses and Matt Gronland and and they do a great job. But if we have to have some more diverse commentators, we'll have to get rid of half of them. We can't afford to just keep employing more people.
Well, I think that's you know, that's a call obviously that AW would make.
We just pick the best commentator. I mean, I don't think especially on radio. No one cares what they look like or what their background is. They just want to know that they're the most interesting and well informed football people around.
That's right, But I think you get that time when you have a diversity of thought and a diversity of background.
It's almost like the AFL boss doesn't understand his audience. He doesn't understand corporate realities, and he doesn't understand football. The audience don't care whether it's a gay person, an indigenous person, or a stale, pale male calling the game as long as they call it well. And in terms of commercial realities, if you're going to employ more minority groups than by necess you have to get rid of some of the white guys who are already in jobs.
And third, in terms of understanding football, Caleb, just because you're gay, or just because you're indigenous, or just because you're white, doesn't mean you are able to call football. It's your experience, not your diversity group that you belong to.
Exactly. It's like thinking that because you're a thirty six year old academic that you can be a break dancer. I mean, for heaven's sake, that there is a reason that the majority of footy commentators in this country are aging, white, straight males. It's because predominantly the people who have played football in the past who have gone on to now have commentary careers, were straight white males. Now, over time, that will change. You now have the AFLW and there
are female commentators, and some of them quite excellent. You have great diversity of race moving into the game. There's obviously great representation of Indigenous people within the game Eddie Bett's works on Fox Footy. There is now great representation of African players within the game. These things will naturally change as there is more representation in the game and
those people go on to have commentary careers. What the AFL is trying to do is reverse engineer it and say, okay, we understand that there haven't been that many people of those backgrounds in the game yet, but you've got to force them into commentary positions now. No, they will naturally move into those positions over time if they can string a few words together. That's just how it works. And the point that Tom Elliott is making there is so right.
And by the way, he might have noticed his Hawaiian shirt that he always wears a Hawaiian shirt. I take issue with it, Tom, I like your radio program, I don't like your dress since But what he's saying is, look,
we can't just keep adding more and more commentators. And he goes on to say in that interview that all of the straight white aging males at three AW are really worried now that they're going to lose their jobs because they're going to have to be sacked so that the broadcaster can comply with these rules and go and find some gay black person to sit in the chair
for them. Well, I don't want a gay black person telling me about the football if they haven't played football or they don't know about football.
Well I want to know when we're going to have a gay or a black AFL CEO book. But that's where you Andrew Dillon's not going intoutly by example.
And of course Gillan McLaughlin before him was a straight white male. And Andrew Demitriu straight well actually Demitriu, but he was a.
North Melbourne manager.
But still, the other hypocrisy here is we're always taught, you know, about how important representation is. Parliament should represent the community. You know, this group should represent that group. And so if the commentary team are going to represent the players. Well, nine of AFL players are white, and so you know, if you want representation in the commentary box, well, I reckon, we've about got it.
Well, I want to know what this means now that it's written into their broadcast rights agreement. Broadcasting rights be taken off you if there's not enough diversity in your commentary team. I mean Australian sports journalist Tom Morris put it really well. He's like, basically, this means you can't just have white men sitting behind a desk for every
single broadcast that you do. You need to diversify. But as we've already thoroughly covered off on those other guys that play the sport, those are the guys who have been doing it their entire lives. Those are the guys who grew up dreaming about it, did it, and are now on the sidelines because their bodies can't keep it up forever, and therefore they're the best to commentate on it. I like your point, Caleb that if we just gave it enough time it'll have we would see those DEI
hires coming in actually on merit. But what we're talking about now is further the death of meritocracy at the hands of DEI hires and like the people watching aren't going to notice that a certain commentator isn't as up
to scre with the other ones. When they have someone sitting at the desk who knows they're underqualified to be there, who knows that they're years behind in experience and knowledge of the bloats flanking them, and they're just there because well, it's signed into our broadcast rights that you have to be here.
And conversely, when next year we all watch the football and we've got, oh, we've got a new commentator, they've got a woman on the team, and we'll all sit here and think she's only there because the broadcasting.
This is what you're dis service to her.
This is what really irks me about it, right because I don't think there's anyone who wouldn't be happy to see a great female commentator, a great black commentator, a great gay commentator. I don't really care. I just want
you to be good at your job. And by trying to shoehorn people into these positions who may not be the best at their job, it creates a perception that if there is a female commentator then they must be rubbish, right, People automatically go, oh, well, they're only there because they're there to fill some diversity spot, right, And you have And I'm going to go to cricket here. And I remember maybe six seven years ago hearing Isha Goa commentate the cricket on Triple M when Triple M first got
the cricket rights in Australia. And I'm listening to this woman in the car one day, never heard of her in my life, going, my goodness, she is running rings around the blokes here. She is now a major part of the Fox cricket coverage. She is, you know, pound for pound, one of the best cricket commentators in the world. She just happens to be an English woman of Indian heritage, right. She hasn't got the job because she is a woman of Indian heritage. She's got the job because she is
so darn good at it. And if we just naturally allow these people to be found without shoehorning them in, then no one will question them being there. But when you force them into these roles, people will go I don't want to listen to this woman commentating the cricket
or the footy what do they know? And I think, as you say, it does a real disservice to people who actually have skill and talent and could get these jobs on that basis, and they probably miss out because someone else just got put in there.
And on that issue, you know, if you're listening to a sports broadcast and it's male sport and you've got a female commentator, your ears probably do prick up and you think, oh, they've got a woman commentating. But you're not once think oh, I wonder what color skin that commentator's got, or I wonder what their sexual preference is while they're calling, you know, a great specky at C and a half back in the quarter final of the AFL. You're not thinking about those things. It's weird that the
AFL are thinking about those things. I get that they're trying to broaden the appeal of the game and they're trying to get more people involved, but you don't do it by lowering the.
Standard, because how is that going to broaden the appeal.
Someone's going to be like, I watch the AFL now because they've got a gay commentator and I'm gay, or I'm a supporter of the LGBTI trus humanity. Please, we already know we have several out AFL players on the field, nowaday.
We don't. He's actually there's never been an out in.
Community football, but not in the.
Topler now okay, well, I don't want to name names.
Now, I don't want to out anyone AFLW that's a different.
Story, correct, but in news that is in fact news to no one. A whistleblower has recently told us all that China is trying to interfere in debate in Australia. Gasps, I know, we can't believe this. A network of some five thousand AI run accounts on social media site x otherwise known as Twitter, is just one part of an all out information war China is waging against Australia. According to this intelligence insider, who's also a counter interference expert.
He says they use a network of private companies just like Wagner's are technically killers for hire, but really under the Russian control, these are CCP proxies under Beijing's thumb. China's goal is to subjugate Australia cognitively, to control the narrative and control the way Australians think. I don't think this comes as a surprise to anyone. We all remember last year when the heads of Five Eyes got together and we're like, China is the biggest danger to the
Western world. Yes, it's true, and they'd never been that upfront about it, although they in their own countries obviously that is a narrative that they run with. And we all understand that China's capabilities in this area are unprecedented. I would say the amount of times we get told, oh, almost on a daily basis, we're fighting off cyber attacks
from Chinese hackers, etc. And so on. So I don't think it comes as a surprise, but it's always good to be reminded that not everything you see, yes, even on sites like Elon Musk's Twitter, are actually real. They have these centers where they set up AI bots that are commenting, liking, stirring up descent, planting little narratives of their own into the Australian and in other countries as well, into the Australian social psyche. It's quite fascinating.
I think what's interesting about this story is you've got Chinese Communist Party accounts or linked accounts trying to sew division and discord in Western nations. But they're not creating the division. They are simply taking advantage of the division that we ourselves as societies have allowed. And I think the wake up call. You can say, oh, we need
to crack down on all these Chinese bot accounts. Well, that's true, but the bigger issue is that our political and civic and religious leaders need to come together and say, we've got a major problem in the West where we have done away with all of our greed values, all of our greed traditions. We've got rid of all of them. So now we're at war with each other. We saw today, and we won't get time to talk about it, I guess. But how one side of politics is demonizing the other side.
You're all a bunch of racists because you want to have a conversation about immigration. We've created division in our own cultures by getting rid of all of the things that we traditionally agreed on. We've got nothing left that we agree on other than Raygun performed really badly in Paris, and so the Chinese and our enemies are now taking advantage of it. But we have given the enemy a foothold, and it's one thing to shut down Twitter and TikTok accounts.
But the bigger issue is we've got to find out what are our common values and what are we actually building our society on.
And it's interesting some of the topics that these CCP run accounts have been tweeting about. The CFMEU of all things, they've been tweeting about nuclear energy and tweeting about immigration. And immigration is such an important one because the greatest example of the danger of all of this is happening in the UK right now because we saw the riots.
We've seen in the riots that broke out in the UK, which was started on the basis of misinformation that was spread online that the seventeen year old who is alleged to have stabbed and killed three girls was a refugee. He's not a refugee. He was the son of Rwandan migrants. He was born in the UK. But there were posts put online saying that he was a refugee. And it's believed that these posts were posted and promulgated by foreign
AI run accounts. What they've done, whether that be China or Russia or any other country, they can see so clearly the divisions that we have in our own countries, and with something as simple as a post like that, they can create civil unrests on the civil unrest, sorry, on the streets of Western nations. That's one example, and
there'll be so much more of it to come. And unfortunately, the problem here is that because we have freedom, and we believe in freedom and freedom of speech and freedom of information, we have a system whereby foreign nations that don't have freedom of speech and freedom of information are
able to readily attack us and target those divisions. And we can't do the same thing because we can't just go on you know, Chinese versions of social media and try to do the same thing because the CCP controls the flow of information, so the Chinese people see exactly what the CCP want them to see, and people in Australia, in the UK and the US are also seeing exactly what the CCP wants them to see. You can't undo that because the alternative would be to take away freedom,
and that would be even worse than this situation. But we have opened the door to countries like China to further divide us, which of course only helps their ins.
And when Elon first purchase Twitter, one of the big things that he said he wanted to do was get rid of all the bots, because there is hundreds of thousands of bots run by You can just be a hacker actually just doing your own thing in your basement,
if you like. They literally have hundreds of phones that they're tapping away out programming on their computers, and those phones are unique individuals who again are posting this kind of content, sowing descent regarding any number of issues that you can name, and then getting a lot of traffic
on Twitter. So one of the things that he said he wanted to do was to ensure that people had to have an ID And this is where my ears pricked up, because we all know how much Liz Stoa loves the idea of digital ID not but that is one of the things that he was saying. We have to have something like that, which means that every x account user, everyone using Twitter, is a verified human being.
And that's when we can then pull out these hundreds of thousands, it may even be millions, given how many millions of people use Twitter, and then they'll just be taken out of the public discourse and this kind of hacking and usage of the system will no longer be possible.
Yeah, well, I mean the CCP are bad, but some Western nations are becoming more and more like the CCP.
Including the UK government.
Caleb mentioned the riots that have been happening there, and of course many people have been commenting on social media, not just in the UK we'll get to that in the moment, but people overseas have been commenting. Elon Musk has made comments about immigration policy in the UK and
what they're allowing, so this headline is absolutely astonishing. The UK Police Commissioner has threatened to extradet and jail US citizens over online posts, saying we'll come after you if you violate our rules about online speech, no matter where you are. Liz, I'm just trying to work out how
this would actually operate. So if I'm sitting in Castle Hill on Twitter and i write something about how ridiculous the UK immigration and policy is and two tiered policing and it's stupid and kiss Starmer is an idiot, the UK Police Commissioner says, I could be on their radar.
Well, this is not to be taken all that lightly, because as much as it sounds utterly ridiculous, these aren't even citizens of the UK, you're talking about now that you want to tap into their social media accounts and go They said this, They said that it's been happening
across the UK now for months and months. I've said plenty of times that just last year alone, there was over three thy three hundred arrests in the UK four things that people had posted online, just jumping onto their social media accounts and posting something that the government disagreed with. And most recently there has been a litany of these
offenses for which people are going to jail. Here's a judge, straight faced saying to someone who had posted something the government didn't approve of online, sentencing a woman to twenty months in jail. Check it out.
Went on to say that you did not want your money going to immigrants who quote, rape our kids and get priority end quote. This offense is so serious that an immediate custodial sentence is unavoidable. Would you stand please? The sentence that I pass has been reduced by one third to reflect your guilty plea. The sentence is one of twenty months imprisonment.
Twenty months in prison for expressing that you were sick of the crime rates in the UK due to illegal immigration, illegal immigrants that the UK people are forking out millions of pounds a week to house and feed and keep them there. Check out this headline. This woman is fifty three years of age. She has been sent to jail for fifteen months for another post on Facebook. She is the sole career of her disabled husband. But there has been no compassion. This tyrannical government has locked her up
for fifteen months. Who would not say that that is excessive. She's never been in trouble with the law before she deleted the post. Not good enough, says the government. We're locking you up. Who knows who's going to look after her disabled husband. Check Out this guy. He's a man from Sutton. He's sixty one years old and he chanted a chant that you may have seen online. Crowds of people in the UK have taken to chanting in unison Allah allah who the f is allah? Now they chant
it hundreds at a time. But this guy has now been locked up for this egregious crime. Now that wasn't a post on faith book. But I don't know how you would single someone out in a crowd, because I've seen them chant one hundreds strong. This chant in the UK. They've had enough of this, and their own citizens living in the UK are no longer able to even express the fact that they are frustrated. They are sick and tied of like that judge said, these immigrants being shown preference over the natives.
What happened to the whole Oh, we've got to protect the indigenous from the colonialist This seems to be like an inverse colonialism happening here when you consider that the indigenous in England are the English.
Indeed, very well said, we're going to go to a break. When we come back, we'll look at what's making news tomorrow, including a Melbourne council's radical plan to lower the cost of electricity that's coming up in a moment.
All right, welcome back.
Let's take a look at what's making news in tomorrow's papers.
Kleb. You've got the queen Land career Mail.
Indeed, I do. I didn't know there was another state with the courier mail. But we'll go to the Queensland version anyway, and you know James.
Helping people in the case. I don't know where the career mail is.
It's in queens Well, I would have thought that little bit of Queensland that sits between the courier and the mail would have been enough for them.
To help out the visually impaired. Kayla, Oh here we go serious, I should understand.
I forgot. I'm a bigot and I am discriminatory. But I will tell you what. He's on the front of the Courier Mail. Tomorrow says Labor throws cash at mining giant in key seat. Premier goes to Rio. I was going to sing the song. I know Liz can sing the song. Do you want to give it a go?
Liz? I don't know the song?
Whoa where my baby bear? Where my baby miles at me? I go to Riyo dejah naire rule and if he's going.
To go there, Stephen Marles, Ladies and gentlemen, if.
Exactly I could beat reygun Stephen Marles, If you're going to go to Rio, don't come back it, says Tomorrow. Premier Stephen Marles has thrown taxpayer money at multi billion dollar mining company Rio Tinto to keep it operating in the labor stronghold of Gladstone, but has come under fire for refusing to say how much. Now the government is characterizing this as a support package and it's basically a sum of money to keep their smelter and their aluminium
refinery going in Central Queensland. It uses about ten percent of the state's entire power supply and they'll be able to keep going until twenty twenty nine at least. But how can a state government give a sum of money to a private business? And by the way, I'm all on board with the labor waking up to the fact that we actually need mining in this country and how
great it is for the country. But how can you give a sum of money, large sum of money, presumably to a private business, and not reveal to the rate payers of Queensland exactly how much you've given them.
Well, calib as we know, renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy available. Now check the more money the government give you, the cheaper it gets.
So it's outrageous, isn't it.
I mean the government have made the cost of electricity unaffordable for the general public, and then they take even more money from the general public to prop up industry who can't afford power either, so that the government doesn't look bad.
It's just and they won't even tell us how much they spent The state government has been criticized for doing deals in the dark because it refuses to reveal the cost of the arrangement. That's our money. Okay, you worked for us. How much did this cost us? I'm not going to tell us, are you? To the front page of the Daily Telegraph, Don and dumber party bosses turn
on each other as nominations scandal explodes. The two most senior New South Wales Liberal executives Don Harwin and Richard Shields were at war with each other last night over who caused the council nominations saga, engulfing the party. Labeled the worst act of mismanagement in the party's history, the scandal now risks poisoning the coalition's federal election campaign. So this bungle saw forty eight current councilors without seats. Now they won't be able to run in the next election.
And on top of that, one hundred and forty would be candidates who are now no longer. Didn't get your application in time, you're not a candidate. This is unbelievable. These numbers have grown and grown. Last night we didn't know the extent of the damage. Today we do. Someone's head's going to roll and now these guys are basically just having a big biff out over whose head it's going to be.
Well, you've got councils in New South Wales now that will not have a single Liberal candidate, which means that which means and voting is compulsory in council elections in New South Wales, so you'll have to go and vote for people that you may not want anywhere near your council. There are entire councils that will be run by either Labor, the Greens or sort of teal independence and you can only imagine what they'll get up to when they can just do whatever the hell they want because they have
total control of the council. Yes, you had last night Mark Speakman, the opposition leader, the Liberal leader in New South Wales, calling for the head of the state Director Richard shield saying that his position was now untenable. Richard Shilds comes out today and says the talk of my demise has been premature because actually Don Harwin, who is the president of the New South Wales Liberal Party, said that he would take control of the process when it
came to council nominations. It's like that spider Man meme where it's like Spider Man pointing at Spider Man and whose fault is all of this? Right? This is a party that, presumably, in three years time, would ask the people of New South Wales to elect them to government. It is a party that in less than a year's time will be asking for the support of people in New South Wales to install them as the federal government. And they cannot get something so simple as putting in
one hundred and forty council nominations before the deadline. They can't do that, and then they can't work out who who's folded actually was? How is this a real political party?
So they've just made a bad situation worse there was the stuff up with nominations. Now you've got the front page of the Telegraph an internal spat. Meanwhile, Peter Dutton's giving his all being lableed to racist because he's trying to get some policies on border issue in immigration. He must be tearing. I was going to say, Peter doesn't be tearing.
He did that a long time ago.
By the way that the Spider Man meme that I was referencing, I think we've got to flash up on the screen hit that is currently the new South Wales Liberal Party. I mean, you thought things were bad down in Victoria with Don Persudo being Don I got Don on the brain. Now John Persudo the opposition leader, being sued by former members of his own and all this sort of stuff going on. I mean, I just can't believe it that the Liberal Party just needs to be
blown up and started again. I think at this point.
Let's go to the front page of Caleb the Melbourne Herald Suns. It's in Melbourne, that paper, the front.
Melbourne being in Victoria's Victoria being in Australia.
The headline in the Lord Mayor reveals radical plan to take hundreds of dollars off energy bills for a million small businesses and residents.
Power place as the headline. All right, here's the story.
Up to a million residents and small businesses across Melbourne's inner suburbs could have their power bills slashed under an ambitious renewable energy plan unveiled by Lord Mayor Nick Reese. Now, the idea is that the council will bulk purchase renewable energy and then sell it to local businesses and local residents. So I guess at a reduced price. So the Melbourne City Council are going to become I'm looking at you because I think the Sydney Council did something similar. They
effectively they become the middle person in this. You've got the renewable energy companies, you've got the consumers, and now councils are inserting themselves in the middle of that, buying from one and on selling.
To the other.
They essentially become like a power wholesaler. Right, And once upon a time energy generation was a nationalized thing in Australia, and then slowly we sold off the poles and wires, and we sold off the qulified power plants, et cetera to big companies. Everything old is new again. But let's not forget that. When Peter Dutton said that he wanted a nationalized nuclear power system in this country, labor was going, oh,
you can't nationalize power again. We privatized all that. I Meanwhile, the councils are running around saying, yeah, let's nationalize all privatizing it.
Speaking of councils, after the break, council parking permits are being sold on the black market.
Also Facebook, that's coming up in just a moment.
Well, last night we talked about parking permits and parking five but Caleb, people in the Northern Beaches in Sydney have come up with a way to get around council issues.
I think this is a great bit of ossie ingenuity. On the Northern Beaches in Sydney. If you're a rate payer, you get issued a permit that you've put on your windscreen. That means you can park by the beach without having to pay for it. And these are prized pieces of real estate because it costs upwards of ten dollars to
park at Manly Beach per hour for instance. Yeah, you go down there for the day, Say it's like five hours you spend there, that's five fifty dollars and fifty cents, which isn't you know It's a lot of money for
one day. So there's this Facebook group has popped up called and I'd love to know how they came up with the name Northern Beaches Fancy Pen Sales and anything else where people go on and post photos of these parking permits, very valuable as they are, whether fancy or not so fancy pen over the top of them and then say look, you sling me one hundred bucks. One hundred and thirty bucks. You can have this very valuable permit to stick on your windscreen and go to the
beach anytime you want. Now the residents are up in arms because they're like, oh, we got all these out of towners coming in to flood our beaches and they're parking at our parking spots. How dare they get out of the northern beaches. What's the problem? I mean, the permits are either going to be used by a ratepayer or someone someone that has been sold to. It's still only one car with the permit on it given to someone else. I love the problem here. This is people
saying you can't come into my territory. Well, you know what, the beaches are ours there every once. Let us have them here.
All right, very quickly.
It's the pressing the level of political discourse, and in the United.
States it's really bad.
Here's the latest Trump attack ad with the Democrats saying, you wouldn't leave your kids with someone like Trump? Would you, which begs the question would you leave your kids with Biden?
But here's the anti Trump ad and then.
You dictator and would there will have to be some form of punishment women. Robuss Wade was terminated by your fury, bloodbad. I'll get in here.
You know what, honey, I'm gonna drive you today. Besides can convicted fellas, you can drive school buses.
If you wouldn't trust him with your kid, why would you trust him with your country?
And yet they trusted the US with Joe Biden for four years. That's it from US stick around coming up against the readA Pennehey Show