Lately.
Welcome to the Late Debate. Well, thanks for joining us on the Late Debate.
I'm James Macpherson with Caleb Bond and freyer Leitch coming up tonight. Remember Pamela Anderson from Baywatch Days, Well, who says Hollywood is agus She's back on the big screen. We'll show you a preview from her upcoming movie a little later. That'll excite the teenage boys that we're talking about. Plus, when we look at what's making news tomorrow, pressure on Anthony Albinezi to lift defense spending after he missed his scheduled meeting with Donald Trump at the G.
Seven, and Israel takes out Iran's.
Military chief on the fifth day of fighting with Iran.
We'll get to all of that.
Shortly, but first, you know, I remember growing up and being able to easily recognize all the cars on the road. You had Ford's, Holden's, Toyotas, Mazdas, Mitsubishi's. But these days I hardly recognize any of them, and it feels like there's a new brand pretty much every other week.
Now. If you feel the same as I do, you're not imagining it.
Australian roads are increasingly dominated by Chinese vehicles. In fact, one in every six cars sold in this country is now a Chinese vehicle. In fact, in the past twelve months, ten new brands from China have been introduced to our market. Consider the pace of change when it comes to cars in this country. Back in nineteen seventy we had a population of twelve and a half million people. We manufactured in our own factories four hundred and seventy five thousand cars.
We exported cars to other countries. But in the space of just fifty years we've gone from manufacturing and exporting vehicles to importing every single car on our roads, and increasingly from China.
So here's the question. Is that a problem and if it is, Caleb, what do we do about it?
Well, at this point there's not much we can do about it. I mean, it's an interesting point you raise about the loss of manufacturing in this country, which, of course you know we all know quite acutely, particularly when Holden shut down in the great state of South Australia. I mean, there are people who lost their jobs at Olden who never got a job afterwards because they'd spent their whole career working in a car manufacturing plant. They're in their mid to late fifties. What hope did they
ever have of getting another job afterwards. We used to make everything in Australia. Refrigerators, washing machines, Kelvinator, Westinghouse were all manufacturing here. In fact, if you go to the National Motor Museum in Birdwood in South Australia, you can see a car built by a washing machine company. Yes, we used to do these sorts of things in Australia and then it all disappeared. And of course we had the introduction of Japanese cars in the eighties and.
Everyone said, oh, want this jap crap. But of course it turned.
Out that Japanese cars were quite reliable. But of course the biggest Japanese manufacturer, Toyota, built cars here in Australia. Ford, of course, was an American company, but they built cars here in Australia.
Holden was an Australian company.
Brought out by GM, which is an American company, but they still built cars in Australia. What we're talking about now is total imports. Every car in this country is imported. We have given so much manufacturing to China specifically, I don't mind so much a car that's imported from Japan or Germany or elsewhere in Europe or Korea, countries that we're pretty sure we're not going to have any sort of military conflicts.
With these days.
But China is a country that we might have military conflict with.
And we have a.
Situation where nearly everything now, including cars, comes from China. What happens on the day that war comes and our supplies are totally reliant on China, they can turn the tap off like that, and then we are stuffed. We have become too reliant on China, and I think that is the greatest danger of this, and I think there's.
A deeper issue here as well.
Yes, the future potential for conflict is concerning for our supply chains, but the danger has already arrived with the thousands of Chinese cars that are already on Australian streets. Biden banned Chinese and Russian cars from going into the US. If Biden, if Joe Biden is banning something and actually taking action.
You know, it's really bad.
And part of the problem with these cars is the amount of data harvesting they can do.
They can see your location.
They have cameras, so they can see you while you're driving, they can see where you're driving, and under Chinese law, Chinese companies are legally obligated to pass that data back onto the CCP. So we are hopelessly exposed. But it's even more concerning because our Minister for cyber Security, Tony Burke, himself drives a Chinese car and he's been questioned on this, what if you're going to sensitive sites, how much data are they getting from you? What steps are you taking
to mitigate the national security risk of this? And the typical answer will take that on notice, no answer, And this is happening from our ministers down and we are so exposed.
And that's the issue with automobiles now because they're not like they were, but they're basically computers on wheels now, hence the national security risk that was not a factor twenty years ago.
We wouldn't have been even thinking these thoughts.
But now suddenly it's not just about our manufacturing base that's been lost, it's not just about supply chain being interrupted. It's about national security and it's a big problem. But whether anything will be done about it, if Tony Burke won't change his habits because of this you can't expect anybody else in there.
Yeah, And Chris Bowen's also been flogging Chinese cars on his social media because of course the EV tax credit is one of Labour's proudest achievements, so he's literally flogging byd Chinese cars as the minister for the Australian government.
And imagine as well, because of course data is collected centrally, and we know it's being collected centrally because you've had car manufacturing companies actually selling data to insurance companies so they can track how you drive your vehicle.
When you go through anew your insurance.
You know, imagine if mister Jijinping wakes up one day and says, can you just go and hackle those cars we've sent out there and make them go one hundred mile an hour? I mean, these are the things that they could conceivably do. And as for being watched with the cameras Tesla was doing that, we know of a
case where they had had footage. They'd taken footage from the camera on someone's car where they'd approached their car in the nutty and this footage had been shared around in chat groups inside of Tesla and that got out and they had to deal with that. So if they're doing it at Tesla, don't think that they're not doing it over in China. While we're talking about the Chinese infiltration of the West.
Of course, TikTok, you'll remember, that's another.
Thing that Biden wanted to ban in the United States that was meant to come into effect on January the nineteenth. It did come into effect for just a few days, and of course President Trump came to power and he put a stop to all of that. I mean, it was the worst twenty four odd hours that I think many people had ever experienced in their lives. Normally, when something happens, I would get on TikTok AND's are complaining and I can't even do that.
We learned so much about things we didn't know about, opportunities, places to eat, movies to watch, books to read.
I just seen the video of the girl that made the Renegade dance, and I'm curing because I read a comment that was like the algorithm saying good biteers, Okay, this app was literally supposed to be my way out. So sad.
Now, of course, the deal was that if TikTok wanted to avoid a bite Dance Switch is parent company of TikTok. TikTok wanted to avoid being banned in the United States, they had to divest to top that was being used in the United States, so therefore it wouldn't be linked to China and then data wouldn't be sent back to the CCP. Trump said, look, we'll put a three month stay on this and we'll try to come to an agreement where fifty percent of TikTok is owned by.
The United States.
That came up in March, and he then extended it again, and so it will come up on June the nineteenth, in just two days. There still has been no sale of any part of TikTok.
Now.
Donald Trump has said tonight that he thinks he will probably extend the deal again so they can.
Try to find a buyer.
But as far as I'm concerned, TikTok has had far more time that it was originally offered to get this done.
They have not been able to sell it off. I don't think they have any interest in selling it off because China thinks it's far more valuable to own a service like TikTok because it gives us all this data on the people who are using it, gives them access to the mobile phones with the people who are using it, and more importantly, it gives them influence in the West because they get to control the algorithms and decide what people in the West are looking at. They don't want
to sell it. They are playing Trump for a fool here. And he ought to turn around and say, if you haven't been able to sell it by now, too bloody bad.
Your banned until you've done it.
So what hope do we have dealing with Chinese cars if we can't even deal with a Chinese social media app. And this is the test for Donald Trump, who of course made a big song and dance about the dangers and the evils of TikTok, only to then change his mind when of the Pido might be helping him with younger voters. Have he extended the deadline a couple of times? If he extends it a third time, does anyone really believe he's serious?
But he should be.
Remember this clip from US sixty minutes talking about the fact that the Chinese produce one version of TikTok spinach if you like, for their own children, and yet leave us with a version of TikTok, which is like a drug that's messing with our kids' minds.
If you're under fourteen years old. They show you science experiments you can do at home. Is exhibits patriotism videos and educational videos, and they also limit it to only forty minutes per day. Now, they don't ship that version of TikTok to the rest of the world, so it's almost like they recognize that technology is influencing kids development and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they've shipped the opium version to the rest.
Of the world.
When you've got a social media app that is so obviously being used to influence Western young people for bad, why wouldn't you just get rid of it rather than carry on this.
Yeah, not of the deal.
Well, it is a bit of a charade because realistically there is about a zero percent chance that TikTok will actually manage to find a buyer. The first issue is it is so expensive, So the app is valued at around between one hundred and two hundred billion dollars.
To put that into.
Perspective, Elon Musk bought the whole of Twitter for forty five four billion dollars, so you're talking about something that is double the size. The other problem is that algorithms to the CCP are actually considered a core national asset.
So algorithms have even.
Been put on a list of restricted technology, which would require the CCP to consent to the sale of it to any Western buyer, which naturally they're not going to do because, as you've pointed out, they have so much power and influence in the Western world through these algorithms. And then you have the other factor of that there are simply no Western companies technologically able to run TikTok.
Microsoft has tried and back down.
Oracle thought about it but couldn't. Meta would or would have a monopoly on social media if they did take it on, so it probably wouldn't be allowed to I think the best bet for someone to buy TikTok would be Elon Musk, but I don't think he's going to be doing Trump any favors anymore, and that was probably the only option.
I have to ask though, as someone who uses chickens compied into it, do you worry about the data that the CCP is harvesting on you?
Yes, I need to get a bernafhone. I think that's the solution. And because my approach has always been TikTok is such a powerful app in that you can go viral very quickly, you can reach a lot of people. My TikTok's during the Voice referendum got over four million views and similarly during the last federal election, so it is very powerful.
As long as young people are there, we have to use it. But I should take some more precautions.
But your Twitter feed was spinach for Australian young Yes, yes, I was.
Up there upholding the quality of TikTok. But of course the other impact of social media on kids is mental health, and mental health is an issue that seems to be exploding.
In our country.
Fifteen percent of six year old boys are now on the NDIS, with issues mostly around autism and being neurodivergent. But a pre eminent psychologist, Pat McGrory wrote an interesting opinion piece today where he essentially says what we're seeing is the rise of unmet need and met unneed in our mental health system. So what he means by that the unmet need, people with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia are not experiencing not having the same access to support
that they did when things like institutional care existed. Those were obviously dismantled in the nineties and nothing similar has replaced them. So people who really do need structured environments aren't getting that support. But on the flip side, people with low levels of mental illness like autism or depression and anxiety are getting a lot of support through the
bloated NDIS. So what he points out is there is a really unfair mismatch in need versus support provided by our system, and it's the most vulnerable again that are paying the price. And now, he says, our mental health system is like an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. There is no support to stop them jumping off that.
And what he's called out is that there are people in the system now who really shouldn't be in the system. He writes in the column, rates of diagnosis of ADHD are also surging, driven in part by a welcome catch up for historical underdiagnosis, but equally by a wave of misdiagnosis, which includes substantial met and need. At the same time, severely disabled older adults with severe mental health illnesses are
locked out of vital health and psychosocial care. And basically what he's saying is that the divide between these people has actually grown. And of course we talk about, oh, mental health is such a big issue now and we're spending more mo on mental health. Well, he points out that the proportion of health funding that is spent hasn't really changed in thirty years.
The numbers of.
People committing suicide in this country are not really moving because you have all these people coming into the system, and he points out largely come from wealthier parts of the country who can afford to access mental health care, but in the process of clogging up the mental health system because they think they have anxiety, or they think they have ADHD, or they think they have depression or whatever, because they've been told that everything that they experience in
their life has to be medicalized in some way, as opposed to it being just, you know, sometimes part of life.
Those who need real care and.
Could be a danger to themselves and to others cannot get it. What he is saying, and he's been on this case for a very long time. Of course, was Australian of the Year in twenty ten, is that we are just not up to scratch. We say we care about mental health. We don't care about mental health.
We care about.
Mental health being fashionable, and we have you know, are you Okay? Day and they give out some cupcakes in the workplace and say, oh, if you're feeling depressed, go and talk to someone. But if you have a real mental health problem and you want to get help in this country, it's nigh on impossible. Try to take yourself to a public hospital and get help for mental health. It is impossible. I know from personal experience, not me going to a hospital, I.
Know people who have like they have gone to a hospital.
Desperate for help, and they cannot get it because we cannot provide it because we have too many people clogging up the system, and we don't spend the money where it's need to be spent.
I think it is an absolute disgrace.
Well, if you want to know how bad it is, I mean the conversation about what are we doing for people with schizophrenia. That conversation really didn't exist much until the Bondai a Junction stabbing, and then when it came to pass that we realize this is a guy who's slipped through the system multiple times, all of a sudden, there's a conversation. It took something like that to get people talking about this issue, and the labor government haven't helped.
They cut by half the number of Medicare subsidized mental health appointments you can make from twenty to ten. And I was talking to a psychologists recently who said the number.
Of people requiring.
Psychology appointments since the pandemic just exploded. But the frustration, she said was you get just a few sessions with people, it's enough, she said, to put a band aid on it.
But then you send them.
Back out and you just know they're going to have ongoing problems, either with themselves or with other people.
But that's it. There's no more funding, and they just move on to the next one. So it's frustration all.
Around because it's much easier to do that are you okay day everyone feels good about themselves than to deal with the really hard pressing issues.
Yeah, exactly.
And the other problem that I've heard from psychologists about the increased subsidies is the challenges It drains resources from the psychology and psychiatrist profession, but it's not necessarily going to the most vulnerable And the interesting point that was raised in this article is that when they were called asylum centers mental asylums, but really structured institutional care for people with severe mental illness.
When those were disbanded in the nineties.
Everyone promised that some new revolutionary model of integrated community care would happen. But it just hasn't, and so they've broken that promise and now the people who are most in need have been left with nothing.
Indeed, let's go to the Middle East, where everybody is on tetorhooks.
At the moment.
The Israeli Defense Forces and her Masterol eagerly waiting the outcome of tonight's Northern Beaches Council meeting, where our councilors here in Sydney will debate whether or not they should call for a ceasefire in Gaza. The motion been moved by a Greens counselor you're not surprised at all by that, are you, Ethan Henjik, who is just twenty one years old. So I'm not sure Cayleb whether this is because he's
twenty one or because he's a Green. Maybe you put those two things together and you get ridiculous motions or he's a bit thick, or it could be that a combination of all three no doubts. So this Greens Council at twenty one years old, as I said, he's having the Northern Beaches Council debate tonight to call for a ceasefire, to boycott Israel companies and get this to formally commend activists aligned with the anti Israel movement.
Now, he says, this vote is very important.
Because there's one other thing on the agenda tonight in the Northern Beaches Council, and that's a twenty five percent rate rise. Now those two things are connected. I'll let the Greens councilor explain. In his own words, he says, considering we may be asking residents for an increase in rates, this meeting is the perfect time to put our community at ease. That counts is not complicit what in this
complex international issue. Because of course, if you're living on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, you don't want.
To copp a twenty five percent rate rise.
But if you know that your council members are calling for a ceasefire in gas, I tell you it helps you deal with that twenty five percent rise. Far more easily caleber. Everybody knows this to be the case.
I'm gone, I'd take a twenty five percent increase in my council rates any day to know that my council really cares about geopolitics. I mean, how dumbed do you have to be? And by the way, how slow do you have to be? How slow are they in the Northern Beaches. I think we're up to twenty twenty months since since the war started October twenty twenty three, and now we get.
A motion at the council to talk about it. Please stick to your knitting. This is none of your business.
Roads rates rubbish, like I know why they do it because councils populated and you can you know, he's twenty one, he's a member of the Greens, so clearly he has political ambition and he can't quite hack the fact that in order to work up to where he wants to get, which is state or federal politics, is to do his dues in local.
Government for a while.
He's really care about the issues of local government. He's just doing it so that when he goes for pre selection one day, it'll look good on the piece when he gives it to the members to say, pre select me. He doesn't actually care about the roads or the rape or the rubbish. He cares about other stuff, So he's trying to insert his pet politics into the council.
Go away, say if the Liberal Party cared enough about the people of the Northern Beaches, they would have got their nominations on time and we probably wouldn't have this Greens guy whose previous work experience.
According to other council members.
I'm not sure if this is in jest or if it's true, but Vincent de Lusa, an independent councilor there with the Green, said this immature twenty one year old whose highest experience is working at conducting fried chicken, and nothing wrong with using the Northern Beaches Council to climb the Green.
Political No, but you will laugh at this motion.
And while I'm not one for pro Palestine motions, especially ones that don't mention Hamas or bringing the hostages home, I will say there is one aspect of this that I particularly like, and that's where he says the Northern Beaches Council needs to offer targeted support to Palestinian refugees
on the beaches. One I would like to know how many Palestinian refugees are there on the beaches and if there are none, could we take this as an offer to host the three thousand gardens who've just been granted tourist visas, because I think the Northern Beaches would.
Be a perfect place to put them.
And if after receiving three thousand gardens, the Northern Beaches still wants to vote in the Greens councilor I will be very shocked.
Well, I tell you, if you think the Northern Beaches Council is bad, it could be worse. You could be living in Melbourne, where the Merybeck Council has just realized twelve years after the fact they overcharged two hundred and forty eight thousand motorists by twelve million dollars on parking fines. Now, I think the reason why it's taken them so long to realize they've overcharged locals twelve million dollars for parking fines is they were otherwise occupied occupied on things like well,
they changed the name of their council area. They changed it from Morland to Mirriback. Spent half a million dollars doing that because Morland was associated with a Jamaican slave trader. Back in April, they spent forty five thousand dollars on Pride crossings. They in twenty twenty three came up with an eleven point resolution on the conflict in Gaza, so little wonder it's taken them so long to realize. Back in twenty thirteen, they overcharged residents by twelve million dollars.
They've promised to repay the money, but get this calib it's an opt in refund system. So rather than them going to residents who have been over charged, they are waiting to see residents come to them, what twelve years after the event, for a refund on the money that they were not supposed to have paid.
This is a scam and mary Beck, by the way, is not a real term when they came up with that. I was at the Herald Soun in Melbourne at the time and one local Indigenous elder said that he'd scoured through the local language and he could not find the word beck anywhere, that the closest translation was probably actually big bb ik, and that the word they come up with, mary Beck, which Brent me rocky country, is not.
Grammatically correct in the language. So there you go.
They did a great job when they went out to be culturally sensitive.
But this is a scam.
The idea that a council or any level of government for that matter, can find you more than they are allowed to and they think it was about fifty dollars per fine above what they should have been charging for twelve years, twelve odd.
Million dollars more than they we're allowed to ask for.
And then they say it's all good because we've set up a bit on our website where you can go and apply to get.
Your money back.
I mean they should be compelled by law to give this money back to people. How can you take more money from people than they owe to you and then say well, you've got twelve months to claim it back.
That's theft and.
No one's going to do it.
Who on earth is monitoring the council website in Merrieback and will happen to assemble across the fact that, oh, maybe that one time I was fined a decade ago, I may have been overcharged.
Let me just apply and with that receipt.
But it gets worse than that.
Let's imagine they do pay back the twelve million, right, what council these days, has got twelve million dollars down the back of the couch. Where will they get the money from?
Caleb? I reckon they'll probably add a little bit more to.
The rates, you know what.
They should be banned from doing so they should have to pay for this quite literally in all the money, and then have to deal with the fact that they don't have the money to make up for him and parsulably, they've already spent that twelve million dollars, So good luck to them. If you didn't overcharge people, you wouldn't have a problem. Speaking of overcharging overseas in Europe, they're going tropo at the moment about all the tourists who are
coming over. Of course, it's summer in Europe now and tourists are flocking there to soak up some of the warm weather. Made de Mands just done two weeks in Morocco and then arrived in Spain the other day, and he's thoroughly enjoying that.
Spoke to him.
I think it was last night at about ten am local time. It was already over thirty degrees. He was about to jump into pool, which sounded quite pleasant. As I was driving into work here in Chile, Sydney, but they're angry. Would you believe you can see it on the screen here with all these tourists. They've been protesting in Spain, in Barcelona, They've been protesting over in Milan, in Venice, Lisbon, Naples, on and on it goes because there are too many tourists, the locals say.
They say they've been over by.
Tourists and everything is now far too expensive. They can't afford coffee, apparently, they can't afford to go out to eat, they can't afford to buy an alcoholic drink because of course they're jacking up all the prices in the restaurants and the cafes to cater to the cashed up tourists have come in with all their money from the UK and Australia, etc. And I can kind of understand bother they were shooting tourists with water pistols, which is actually
quite funny. I can kind of understand where they're coming from, because I get it. If you're a local and all of a sudden you're essentially priced out of your own city because the city is now overrun with tourists who are awash with money, you would go well, what the hell this is my town.
I've lived here my whole life. I should be able to afford to live here.
And Barcelona had twenty six million tourists last year. It's a city of one point six million people, so that these are sizeable numbers of people. But are they not biting the hand it feeds them to some degree? Because to tourism is huge business for Europe. So you can say, look, it's become too expensive to live here, and I don't like that.
But if you took the.
Tourists away, what underpins the economy, particularly this time of year for these countries, they'd find themselves in recession, would they not?
Exactly?
And in those Mediterranean states where they were protesting Spain, Portugal, Italy, tourism makes up to twenty percent of their GDP twenty percent, millions and millions of jobs. If tourism was taken away, if those cashed up Aussies and Brits didn't get to go to Spain, then they would also suffer. So, yes, things are more expensive, but you're also making more money. And tourism is also critical for Europe because they have
barely any innovation. Their productivity is lagging they're extremely overregulated. It's hard to do business in any other sector other than tourism and agriculture and a lot of these Mediterranean countries. So if they don't have that, what else do they have? Do these protesters want to get out onto the farm?
I doubt it.
I've got a lot of sympathy for these guys.
You mentioned the stats, right, So Barcelona one point six million people living there, twenty six million tourists a year. Santorini fifteen thousand people living there, three point four million tourists a year, Lisbon half a million people living there, six million tourists a year, compared to Sydney five and a half million people living here three point five million tourists a year.
So I can understand why they'd be upset.
So they're trying to take some measures to counter this, right, So they're not anti tourists, they're just anti mass tourism that is unregulated and unchecked. In Venice, they've introduced a tourism tax to try and mitigate some of the lifestyle factors that are impacted by huge numbers of people in Barcelona, that put regulations on airbnbs to try and mitigate the
housing crisis caused by mass tourism. I like in Santorini, they've actually regulated who can and can't ride on donkeys because they had so many people arriving and needing to go up the hill on donkeys. There were complaints from locals that donkeys' spinal injuries were through the roof, and.
So now it's actually a regulation.
Tourists who weigh one hundred killing rounds are not allowed to ride on donkeys.
No Yanks allowed.
Yeah, so they're put in sub mitigating strategy. But I understand, and the villain here is not the tourists.
The villain is the socialist governments who have stripped manufacturing, gotten rid of all the jobs. They've created a massive welfare state and the only way to pay for it now is to show off the ruins of their culture.
What about modern day now? What's happening now?
The villain is the socialist governments who've left these people with not much option now to make abut them to wait tables.
Yeah, exactly right, And in that respect, I do feel bad for them.
Their city has basically become a theme park rather.
Than while they're mad it is.
Yeah, here's another interesting story also coming out of Europe. Could sunlight become the next whapon and in global warfare? Well, A leaked memos headed for Downing Street thinks it may. Technology is designed to combat global warming, mainly where you reflect sunlight back.
Into the atmosphere could potentially.
Be used by hostile powers in a form of geo re engineering to disrupt climate crops and cause mass catastrophic weather events. Essentially, it sounds pretty dire, but the UK government is taking this so seriously that they're spending about fifty seven million pounds on a research study into the potential for geore engineering through sunlight by hostile foreign powers.
Yeah, we don't.
Want to do soular geoengineering, but we're worried that others might do it, so we're going to research and learn how to do.
It ourselves, just so we know what our enemies might get up to. But this is ridiculous.
Really, Russia is going to destroy the UK by producing an actual summer.
That's their strategy. And what will the UK do if Russia are successful.
They'll issue everyone with hats, so it'll be like the Iron Dome for people in Britain.
They'll get a hat and they'll be fine.
To attack the UK with sun, you have to have somen in the first instance.
Even Doctor Evil wouldn't go with a plan this stupid.
No, you'd attack the UK or any other part of the world by making it rain all the time, because you can destroy the crops by doing that.
It's already raining in the UK all the time.
I know. Well, they actually over the last couple of years, they've had significant rainfall in the UK, to the point where it's like been the worst farming conditions that they've experienced in a century. Farmers saying we just can't do this anymore because we can't plant anything, we can't pull crops out of the ground, nothing is growing properly. So
they've had serious problems in the last few years. So my worry would not be so much that they were going to allow you to have sun, because it would be rather pleasant. But if you can find a way to manipulate the weather to cause lots and lots and lots and lots of rainfall, you can harm food security
quite significantly. If you cut off the supply of foods from other parts of the world and then make it rain three hundred and sixty five days a year in the United Kingdom, they won't be able to sow seeds in the ground, and they won't be able to go they do this, that's what they want to do.
I think you'd see the Russian plane flying across London, you know, spraying aerosol into the atmosphere, or well, seedy cloud.
Who knows what technology we might have in ten, twenty, thirty, forty fifty years time. I just want to say though, I mean, the idea of weather modification we were told was a conseriracy theory, right, it must be, you know, column A for the conspiracy theorists one hundred, column B for the people who say it's all.
Conspiracy theory zero at this point.
Because every time there's a conspiracy theory like weather.
Modification, it seems to come true.
It's true. Let's go to Melbourne.
Now, we're never glad about a business going out of business.
That's never a good thing.
But there has been a bakery in Melbourne that's just shut their doors and it's a rather curious. The bakery is called All Are Welcome. There's three locations around Melbourne. This bakery came to our attention in the first instance because they used to advertise that they would be open on Australia Days. That they never called it Australia Day. They advertised will be open on Invasion Day, and they would put a little note on their Instagram adding sovereignty never seeded.
So this bakery was very.
Keen to be seen to be on the right side of these sort of progressive issues. Well, now, sadly they've gone out of business. But what's interesting is they've left their approximately sixty staff almost four hundred thousand dollars out of pocket. According to a report by the ABC, this very woke bakery owes two hundred and forty three thousand dollars in superannuation payments and about one hundred and twenty
five thousand dollars in leave entitlements to their staff. So again not rejoicing they've gone out of business, Freyer, But it's a little interesting when you're signaling how virtual you are in terms of what happened in this country two hundred years ago, but can't pay your staff the superannuation they're owed today.
It's a little bit hypocritical.
Well, it was definitely all a marketing ploy.
If you look on their Instagram where that graphic was posted, that had over three hundred likes, whereas their typical post only has one to two hundred. So clearly the people of Inner Melbourne love that stuff and so the progressive issues they drive business, whether or not they're actually committed to being virtuous in their own management of the business.
WHI seems like people like the Instagram posts. They just didn't go there and buy the product, otherwise that you'll be in business.
I guess it's the old case of go work, go broke, isn't it.
But my advice would.
Be, if you want to signal your virtue, perhaps make sure you have some virtue in the first place.
We're going to go to a break.
When we come back, we look at what's making headlines tomorrow, including Anthony Albanesi under real pressure now to increase our defense spending after he missed that meeting with Donald Trump at the G seven.
That and more in just a moment, welcome back.
Let's take a look at what's making headlines tomorrow, and of course, Freyer, most of the papers are talking about that G seven meeting and Anthony Albanese's missed schedule with Donald Trump.
It's pretty huge.
The headline in the Australian says rock Starmer locks in subs as PM MISSUS gig Anthony Albanezi will face extreme pressure to ramp up Australia's defense spending following Donald Trump's decision to cancel their long awaited meeting in Canada shortly after delivering British Prime Minister Keir Starmer tariff exemptions and assurances on the future of the three hundred and sixty eight billion dollar or Casteele on the last day of
his one week overseas trip. Geared around his first in person meeting with the US President, The Prime Minister was blindsided when the White House revealed mister Trump would leave the G seven summit too early to deal with the escalating.
Israel Iran war.
Now can't blame Trump for leaving early to deal with what could potentially turn into a global conflict, but it does underscore how low on the list of priorities for the US we in Australia are like. The meeting initially was only supposed to be twenty minutes, which is pretty embarrassing. In the first place, it was at the back of the agenda. Now we're not even getting that well.
Anthony Albanizi has been reduced to trying to pick up clues from Kios Starmer's meeting with Trump as to what's going to happen with Australia. Keir Starmer says that Orcus is going to be okay, So Albanezi is taking that as a hint that Trump believes that's where our relationship with the US is at.
It's ridiculous.
Penny Wong defended the Prime Minister as you would expect her to do, saying, well, you know, the fact he's missed this meeting is not a big deal. Trump missed meetings with other world leaders. But Anthony Albanzi has had three quote constructive phone calls with the US present. Well, if they were that constructive, why do we still not have anyemption on tariffs? Why are we're still not sure on the orcst submarine deal.
They're the issues.
We don't know what's happening, So they can't have been that constructive.
Yeah, and also, you know, while I acknowledge, I understand why Trump left, and he didn't have to like get up from his dinner seat and.
Bugger off back to the United States straight away.
It did he could have you know, organized twenty minutes with Albanzi on the way out, but that clearly was not at the.
Top of his mind.
And we should also note as well that Albanze has gone to the G seven, of which we are not a member, to be on the sidelines, so he can have twenty minutes with Trump. He's not gone to the White House like basically everyone else had. I mean even Cyril Ramaposa went to the White House for heaven's sake, and Albanesi has gone then now, of course.
He's still in the region.
Albaniese is in Canada at the moment, so he should be getting on the phone or his people should be getting on the phone to organize a meeting at the White House in the next few days if possible.
And if we can't pull that off, we should be asking why not.
If we had a decent relationship with our major Ally, Trump could have said, hey, it's a what three hour flight, jump on Air Force one, come for Arrival'll have a chat on the way and then I'll be off in my office dealing with things.
Part of me does think this is a negotiating tactic by Trump string Albanesi along to increase the pressure in Australia to actually.
Come to the table and defense spending, so we'll see.
I don't think Trump will even consider meeting with him unless he actually changes the stance on lifting defense spending.
Well, the next schedule is a UN meeting in September, So in vain, Anthony Alberizi is going to be pacing the corridors hoping for a chance meeting with the leader of the free world.
It's embarrassing for Australia, but also in the Australian. On a similar note, Israel takes out Iran's military chief. Israel says it's killed Iran's top military commander as the nation's escalating war prompted Donald Trump to leave the g seventh Summon early, ordered a second carrier strike group to the
Middle East and call for Tehran's evacuation. As Israel and Iran exchanged missile fire for a fifth consecutive day, there were growing fears the conflict could spiral out of control, with Tehran warning the US of unfathomable consequences if it joined the Jewish States attack. I mean, this is the difficult position Trump is in. Internally, within the MAGA movement,
they're divided between the neocons, and the isolationists. But this really is the Western world's one chance to take out the head of the octopus of terror.
If they don't do it now, when are they going to do it.
They're upset right because Trump promised not to drag America back into a foreign war. I think this is very different. He's not talking about putting troops on the ground. He's talking about using some specialized bombs. They have to once and for all eliminate the nuclear threat that Iran boses, not only to Israel but also to the United States. I don't see why Mega people are upset about it.
And I think we should be cleaned. Trump is not in isolations. There may be people in the Mega movement who are Trump is not an isolation think he's an anti interventionist. He doesn't want boots on the ground under any circumstances, and I think he's right from that perspective.
But I think it was very interesting to see his post on Truth today, of course, saying evacuate Tehran now, and all the people who got in their cars and in the middle of the night drove out of Tehran at the mere thought that the US might do something over there, and.
We should note Israel taking out the military leader of Iran. That's the second time they've done that in just five days.
And that's the other thing.
Just quickly on this note, the MAGA camp doesn't want to be dragged into an unwinnable war. But this is one of the longest wars Israel's ever been in. Normally there wars last around six days, so it's very different to going into Afghanistan or Iraq.
Inde.
Let's go to the front page of the Adelaide Advertiser. Ozempick use in kids skyrockets. The number of children injecting prescription drug ozempeck to manage diabetes has risen nine hundred percent in three years in South Australia, prompting alarmed gps
to warn families to tackle diet before drugs. The startling jump in children as young as twelve being prescribed the anti diabetes JAB is revealed in data obtained by the Advertiser, showing an increase from eleven to one hundred and eleven over a three year period.
That's where statistics get you.
A little bit, isn't it that you read You think nine hundred percent, Well, it's gone from eleven to one hundred and eleven. Doctors, to be fair, are still worried.
I'm just not sure.
Is the worry that so many more children have been diagnosed with diabetes or is the worry that they're being prescribed as particular drug rather than being put on a diet to try and alleviate some of the It's probably both.
Because the story goes on to say that, you know, there's concerned that they're using other similar drugs, including off label, which means they're not being used for diabeteses there being used for weight loss, and so you know, the numbers might have jumped from eleven to one hundred and eleven in.
A few years.
But you look at the use of a zempic now across adults, I mean it has increased exponentially in the last twelve months, and these are the numbers from twenty twenty four, So you would just expect that these would keep increasing, increasing, increasing. If you're starting kids on a zim pick now, if you want to maintain that weight loss forever, you've basically got to stay on a zimpic for the rest of your life.
Is that really the merry ground we want to put kids on?
Yeah?
But trying to get kids to stick to a diet as well would be virtually impossible, so maybe this is the best option.
Well, you know that's a bit of parenting.
I think let's go to the Cans Post where it says a common user facility in Dowd ahead of budget off the cuff, the Far North will miss the boat on major defense contracts and thousands of new jobs if the state government fails to commit to building critical marine infrastructure in the region. The Member for Cans Michael Healey in set says, I think it's the inset really that.
Is the point of this story.
I mean, they haven't just put this photo on the front page of the Cans Post for nothing, because you can see Michael Learly there has rocked up to a pressa in his shorts.
Now.
I know it gets pretty warm up per in Cans, but we're in winter at the moment, and you know, you sort of get to mid sometimes high twenties up in Queensland at this time of year.
It's a bit rich to be rocking up in your bodies to a press conference, isn't it.
I think he's expecting to do a radio interview, not a television interview, and the podium is standing behind did not provide anywhere near as much cover caliber as this desk provided.
Exactly the sorts you wear on the show.
Hey, what are you talking about? I've got Chino's on under ear, Thank.
You very much.
He clearly just thought he was still working from home. He had the business up top, party down the bottom. But just finally, in the Canbra Times, Summer NATS is too noisy. Noisy events at Summer NAT's, the annual car event that attracts more than one hundred thousand people to Canberra, cannot practicably comply with im post sound limits, an independent assessment has found. I mean, perhaps the solution is they all just jump in their Chinese electric vehicle and whoosh around a memory silence.
That will be a very unpopular event.
But could you get any more Canberra than overpaid public servants complaining about people coming along to enjoy themselves at Samminets.
It's Australia, goddamn it.
Let us enjoy our noisy cars for as long as they continue to exist.
Absolutely, we're going to go to a break when we come back. Hollywood, A just no, not a bit. Pamela Anderson is in a brand new movie. We'll show you a clip in just a moment. Politicians are usually very careful to appear polished and in control, but I want to show you something that happened at the G seven meeting when Trump signed a trade deal with Kirstarma from the UK.
It wasn't Trump's best moment. He said he'd signed a trade deal with the EU.
Of course it's the UK and the UK are part of the EU. And then to make matters worse, Trump um the freshly signed agreement all over the ground. But worse was for Kirs Starmer. You know how reluctant Western leaders are to be seen kow towing to the US president.
We all know the great Prime Minister of the UK, and we just signed a document.
This is about that.
This is it very important document.
A little.
We just saying it and it's done, and so we have our trade agreement with the European Union.
Well immediately images of that interaction went viral online from KOs Starmer's opponents, accusing him of bowing down to Donald Trump, kow towing to the US leader.
And doing whatever Trump wanted.
I suspect those images will haunt Kirs Starmer for quite some time, though kind he was just being polite.
Well, that's right, he was just picking up the papers.
I mean, you know he's a conscientious man, is sir Ki is starmer who doesn't want the world.
I don't think you can blame him for that.
While we're talking about Donald Trump, we know that he's a big businessman. But while he's president, he's handed it over to his sons, Don Junior and Eric to carry on the Trump business. And they see all sorts of stuff picking off the back of mister Trump. Of course watches all sorts of Now they're doing mobile phones, a gold mobile phone. No less, you will be able to buy the Donald Trump gold iPhone with the big T on the back. I'm sure they'll be flying off the shelves.
They're also going to start a mobile phone service, Trump Mobile lo'ks like it was all predicted on Saturday Night Live ten years ago.
Guys getting in on this. You used to call me on the cell phone, name call me on the cell phone.
Now, look, you know, I like Donald Trump, but you have to be a bit tragic. Don't you to run out and buy a gold Trump iPhone.
That's even if it is physically possible. To fully manufacture an iPhone in the US, which experts seem to say it's absolutely not.
But never let reality.
Get in the way of a good business idea, especially when you're a Trump. In other news, Hollywood Bombshell, Pamela Anderson is back on the big screen in the sequel to the Naked Gun series.
Check out this trailer over here.
The tenant, I think someone murdered my brother. Please take your share, thank you, I'll find them.
This is tway too.
So as you serve twenty years for man's laughter, you mean manslaughter must have been.
Quite the joke, pretty good. So whoever says Hollywood is ages. She's in her late fifties and still going strong.
Fifty seven years old, and why are you smiling?
As you said earlier, she was about seven, so you know this was before the show. I'm just glad they're remaking The Naked Gun. I mean, you know, the days of Leslie Nielsen, etc. They were fabulous films. So it's good to see a proper comedy film coming back again.
Indeed, that's all we've got time for tonight. Stick around coming up is to read a Pennty show.
Good Night,