Lately.
Welcome to the Late Debase.
Thanks for joining us on the Late Debate. I'm James Macpherson with Free Leitch and Caleb Vond coming up tonight. Former Prime Minister John Howard reveals his greatest regret, and it's not being beaten in an election by Kevin Rudd at something far more embarrassing than that. Plus, when we get to the papers, Jim Chalmers sets his sights on tax reform, which we all know means tax increases. The
Australian covers that well tomorrow. Plus good news for childless couples with one state offering two thousand dollars towards IVF treatment. All of that shortly, but first, Anthony Albanezi is fast becoming that klingy X who mysteriously always shows up at your favorite cafe just accidentally muttering about how it's good to bump into each other. Except the object of the Prime Minister's affection is not an old flame. No, it's
US President Donald Trump. Having been ghosted at the G seven when Trump had to cancel a scheduled twenty minute coffee meeting, Anthony Albanese is now planning to deliberately bump into Donald Trump at the Hague when NATO meets next week.
The decision that he made that meant that the meetings that were scheduled not just with myself but with India, Ukraine, including President Zelenski, Mexico and other countries didn't go ahead.
Today it's happening.
Well, Alyes potentionally zero.
Yes, that's been considered now. Of course, if Albaneze can't catch Donald Trump's eye at the Hague, he'll try again in September at the United Nations meeting. And if that doesn't work, I suspect Albaneze will take two hiding in the bushes at mary Lago and whispering Donald Donald. It's me Anthony from the G seven, Caleb. I wouldn't have thought that stalking is really an appropriate alliance strategy, but that's what it's starting to look like. He's like a groupie.
He's looking at the two dates, trying to catch up with his favorite people.
Well, with the specificity with which you described the situation of running into the X in the cafe, I'm wondering whether you've had one of these encounters yourself, James.
Or whether in fact you were the stalker. Would you care to tell.
Us nothing in comparison to Anti Albanesi.
Well done, any country, he dodged that one. He dodged that one. I mean, for goodness sake, he's already in the region. He's in Canada, where, of course he was hoping to meet Donald Trump. So why can't he get on the blower and organize a meeting at the White House while he's over there, Like, you know, Donald Trump's not going anywhere at the moment. He's not about fly
it's about the fly planes himself into Iran. He is in the United States, so why can't he just pop over the border down south, go and say hello to the president, unless, of course the President doesn't want to host him at the White House, which would be unusual because he's had everyone at the White House basically, or he is too scared to go to the White House because he doesn't want to be in Donald Trump's quarters where Donald Trump can control the conversation and of course
can control the media conversation as he has done previously, particularly with President Zelenski and Silramoposa, etc. And this business you see there he's saying, oh, well, you know, he missed other meetings as well, and he cites specifically the Mexican president. Trump picked up the phone to the Mexican president. He also picked up the phone to a narentromoting from India.
So he has taken the time to talk to other world leaders that he was meant to meet at the G seven and he didn't meet because he left early.
And he hasn't done that for Anthony Albanesi. Part of it, I think is he's stringing it along as long as he can, as much as he can to scare Albanezi a little bit and make him feel like the bloke doesn't want to talk to him, so that when they're finally in a room together, maybe Alba will just fall over him, cave on stuff like military spending, et cetera, because you'll be so trepidacious about how this meeting is going to go because he's blown him off for so long.
Exactly.
No, this is totally a negotiating tactic by Trump draw out the length of time till they can have their meeting. I mean, it's already been nine months that Albanezi has not had a meeting, and so it is pretty shocking. But what is interesting is the different treatment that the UK is getting versus Australia at the G seven summit, even though Trump was there for barely twenty four hours, they still managed to sign a trade agreement which gave them tariff.
Exemptions on some things.
Yet Australia has experienced none of that, and part of that is because the UK has consistently met their defense spend targets two percent of GDP now Kis Starmer says they're going up to three percent, whereas in Australia, since Labor came into government, we haven't even spent.
Two percent of GDP on defense.
We haven't even reached that target, let alone the three point five percent that hag Seth wants a kiss.
Darman did go to the White House too, kiss the ring, as it were.
Chase.
Something else from the G seven meeting that not many people picked up on, but there was this little exchange between Italian Prime Minister Georgio Mlani and Emanuel Macron. I'm not sure what's going on here, See if you can work it out. Nothing official yet.
They haven't turned on the microphones, and sometimes you can pick something up in the side conversations, but.
It looks a little bit like Macron's told her a joke or something like they talk about someone else and she's rolled her eyes or she's rolling her eyes at the French president.
No, as woman's a woman, I know. That is the eye roll of a gossip session. They are definitely sitting there gossiping about someone else around that table, I mean, And to be honest, that's exactly how I would react if I were Trump and Albanezi rocked up at the White House, big eye roll.
I wouldn't find a gossip session with Georgia Maloney to be perfect.
She seems like a lot of fun.
Apart from the fact that she's a good right wing leader over in Europe and cares about all the things that we hear about immigration, etc. The most recent polling shows that her party has increased its vote from when she won in twenty twenty two. Apart from all that, she just seems like the sort of person you'd want to hang out with. She's previously repudiated Joe Biden as well when he rocked up to a meeting late. And
that's the kind of straight shooter I like. While we're talking about immigration staying in Europe in the United Kingdom three years ago or four years ago, three years ago, actually, sorry, in twenty twenty two, they had a review into, of course, the grooming gangs, which we've talked about many times here on this program that we're operating for decades in the United Kingdom, mostly made up of Pakistani men who were systematically grooming young girls in the United Kingdom for sexual abuse.
And one of the major recommendations of this report in twenty twenty two was that there should be a central database that has data on the ages, sexes, and ethnicities of both victims and perpetrators of child sexual abuse. It seems fair, particularly when you've had to deal with these grooming gangs, which, as I said, consisted mostly of Pakistani men.
Clearly there was an issue in that community, and so the review says, we need a clear picture of who is perpetrating these crimes in this country and upon whom they are perpetrating them. Well, would you believe it the numbers that are being collected when they have a case of someone who is convicted of child sexual abuse, the numbers of them with which they actually have the ethnicity recorded,
is declining. Funny about that, isn't it. Back in twenty seventeen, when they first started recording these numbers, there were only two hundred and forty eight cases where they did not take the ethnicity. Now twenty twenty four, which is the latest numbers you can see on the screen there, it's risen to more than one thousand. The number of cases for offenses on people under the age of sixteen where they don't record the ethnicity has gone from eighteen percent
to thirty two percent. For the offensive sexual assault of a female child under thirteen, the number of offenders whose ethnicity was not recorded increased from twenty one percent to thirty four percent.
And the ethnicity of.
Criminals committing rape of a female child under thirteen recorded in twenty seventeen was twenty four percent and increased to thirty five percent last year. Now, you might recall in the last year or so the issue of grooming gang's has come back up again because of course the Prime Minister is Serkis Stamer, and he was a prosecutor at the time, the chief prosecutor at the time that many of these cases were being run. So it came back
into the spotlight. And concurrently, it would seem they're running a mile from the idea of actually recording the ethnicities the major recommendation out of the report into these grooming gangs, and the only reason you can think of that they would be doing that is because they are worried of being called racist.
And it's absolutely outrageous. First, it shows they've learned nothing from the inquiries into the grooming gangs, and I mean the thousands of young girls who were abused and at the time, no one wanted to talk about race, and so that empowered those men to carry on. So they've learned nothing and they're clearly avoiding ethnicity out of a
misplaced sense of fairness. Kimmi Badnock told a story about how one mother complained that her child had been taken by Asian men, and the police immediately zeroed in on the mother's language, the use of Asian, and the conversation was all about her racism rather than about the fact her child was missing. So they've learned nothing. And of course these statistics colored just show that the public confidence is shattered, because why would you believe anything But it's
a deliberate cover up. It makes the mistakes of the past more likely to be repeated, because you need that the ethnicity of offenders is relevant. It's relevant to see whether there are patterns where the public policy should be adjusted, where you should allocate resources and dare I say it
might be relevant for immigration policy. But the thing that really caught my attention was they said the three reasons why they believe police were so reluctant to record ethnicity was they didn't want to be accused of racism, They didn't want to raise tensions, and they didn't want to upset community cohesion. If the community cohesion is so fragile that you can't list the ethnicity of a child abuser, then I would suggest you've got bigger problems even than
the raping gangs. You've got a massive civil problem with cohesion exactly.
And in two thirds of the grooming gang cases, the ethnicity of the perpetrators were not recorded and it meant it took them longer to actually establish what was happening, which is an absolute tragedy. You think about the thousands of lives that were wind and just because a few police didn't want to be accused of being racist, it's an abomination. But here in Australia we also don't record the ethnicity of criminals, which I think is also outrageous.
We need to start recording that here in Australia because, as you mentioned, it is relevant for immigration policy. For example, Denmark in the early nineties took in about three hundred and twenty Palestinian refugees. Within thirty years, twenty two percent of them had received prison sentences. Meanwhile, we've just accepted three thousand Gazans on tourist.
Visas with minimal vetting.
If those trends are replicated, we've got a huge community crime problem that is going to occur here as well.
It is relevant.
It's not racist to point out the obvious, and it's not racist to say, hey, let's accept people into our country who share our values. That's about protecting all of us rather than protecting your feelings, and.
They can inflating.
I think in many cases race with culture, because it's not necessarily the race of someone that may dictate whether or not they are more predisposed to commit these kinds of crimes.
It's culture.
And we cannot get away from the fact that there are parts of the world where things like child marriages, child brides are accepted. There are parts of the world where female genital mutilation is accepted. It's not caused by their race. It's caused by their culture, the part of the world that they come from. Of course, of course
ethnicity often informs that. And if we sit around and say, oh, well, you know, it's their culture, so we can't possibly discuss whether or not that's good or bad or not, we do a disservice to people in Western countries. We cannot get away from the fact that there are other cultures that unfortunately have facets of them that are not compatible with us.
Well, another area that seems to be having a few culture issues is the highly unionized train drivers of London. A train driver in London has been sacked after he was caught watching videos and knitting while driving a train. Keep in mind these drivers are paid seventy two thousand pounds a year. That's one hundred and fifty thousand Australian dollars.
Check this out.
Half of a train driver.
Knit watching TV a couple of busay back to the year going drag whenever. Well, he's getting paid one hundred and fifty grand a year to press a couple buttons while watching a video and doing his knitting.
How is that fair?
Yeah, Well, his colleagues needled him apparently over that, but as you expect, the union defended him because they're close enough.
Bunch well done. I mean, look, if it's that, if it's.
That easy to drive a train, I don't know why we're not all signing up for it. Because because when they were talking about the train drivers going on strike here in New South Wales, in Sydney, well, I mean some of them are on more than the equivalent that they're on one hundred and fifty odd k a year, even better than one hundred and fifty odd k a year.
Forty three days of leave. So that's eight and.
A half weeks of annual leave, which is extraordinary.
Now.
I don't know if they have deals where they work through public holidays like I do. I even had a public holiday for years and so I get a few extra weeks of leave for that, but even then I only get an extra two weeks.
I don't get extra four and a half weeks for it.
There's also a case that came up today here in Australia of a train driver in Brisbane who went through a red light and their excuse for that was that they had a sneezing fit. So it seems it's all going on with the trains at the moment. And if you thought that was bad, how about Bill Shorten? Of course, you know he's left federal politics now after failing to
do anything about the NDAs. He's gone off to run Australian National University and as the vice chancellor he seems to be well sacking staff and then making videos for Instagram.
University of Canberra.
I should say, not an you, what on earth is he doing? Like? Okay, we see this so often and Bill Shorten's not the first time. Bill Shortens started Remember during the twenty nineteen election campaign when he decided it would be a good look to seem as though he were exercising more, and so he donned his gear and
started going for runs. I think there was one particularly, I remember along near the Opera House there and he's got the man boobs bobbing up and down and it's like, mate, you are trying too hard.
What on earth is he He's on.
Nearly a million dollars a year and he's making nonsensical Instagram videos.
He went from doing nothing on four hundred thousand dollars in parliament to doing nothing on eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars at the University of Canberra, But the joke is on academics because of course typically academics all vote labor. Bill Shortens, the new vice chancellor, has got rid of what one hundred and fifty staff to save thirty million dollars while he makes TikTok videos and.
Look, I am not anti fun TikTok. I must say that it can be done well. During the federal election, the Liberal Party did create some great social media content.
But it has to be good like you can't do it.
I did say that wasn't good.
No, it's so embarrassing. And also no one knows what it means. I am a gen z, I am a digital native and I don't.
Even know what that means.
It's incomprehensible. The caption was unlocked.
A new character. Who's the character? Maybe Bill Shortens the character.
The irony is as bad as that video from Bill Shorton was. It's not his worst performance on video. Have a look at this. Some of you will remember it.
So I haven't seen what she said, but let me say I support what it is that she said.
Hang on, you haven't seen what she said, but I.
Support what my Prime minister said, so well, what's your view?
Well, my view is what the Prime minister's view is.
A stick to TikTok videos. I reckon. Here's the irony. While Bill Shorten is earning eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars a year as the vice chancellor at the University of Canberra, the survey out today shows that nine million Australians or more have less than one thousand dollars savings in the bank. Of those nine million people, the average saving is about two hundred and fifteen dollars, which incidentally
is about the average grocery shop in this country. All of which means it's about nine million ossies who if they get an unexpected bill or God forbid a parking fine in the Northern Beaches, then they literally would be in serious trouble, an incredibly precarious situation. This represents the massive disconnect between people like Bill Shorten, people like the Reserve Bank governor who's on over a million dollars making decisions about how Australians will live their lives, far removed
from the struggles of ordinary people. And then you've got people like Jim Chalmers at the Press club today talking about how the government's done a great job. Remember they came to office promising to address cost of living, to raise living standards, and he was patting himself on the back at the Press Club, believing he had done a great job when in actual fact, nine million Aussies less than a thousand bucks in the bank.
Yeah, I mean, it is obvious that most Australians are doing it tough. The average savings, and of course average takes you from the zero right through to the top end of the tree. The average actually comes out to forty three thousand dollars that people have in the bank. That clearly means there are lots of people with nothing in the bank and quite a few people with a lot of money in the bank. To draw that average up,
it's the medians. Normally in these cases that will be far more valuable, which will be much lower than forty three thousand dollars. But notwithstanding the fact that we've had a cost of living crisis, and clearly there are a lot of people who are living hand to mouth week to week, struggling to get by, I think it also proves that we have a crisis of financial literacy in this country. I mean, even if you are earning minimal money, you can find a way to save a little bit
of money, and you have to. I would argue you absolutely have to, because I know how hard it can be. But you're doing yourself a disservice if you're not saving. Even if it's ten dollars a week, just putting that money aside for a rainy day is a very valuable thing to do, and it would seem clear to me that we're either not teaching people about that or we've lost the idea, the value of the idea of saving. I mean, when I started as a cadet, and you know you don't earn a lot a lot of money
as a cadet. As you well know, James, that you would have been earning much lest when you started as a cadet than when I started ten years ago. But I told myself I needed to have at least ten grand in savings and at least two grand in my spending account at all times.
And if I get below.
That number, as I have once or twice, I get genuinely anxious about it because I do think, what.
If something happens now, how am I going to be able to deal with I don't know how people are living like this.
Well, I think it's not just even people who are saving. Everyone is experiencing the cost of living crisis. We've had the worst decline in living standards in Australia's recorded history, the worst decline in the OECD. Well, the rest of the world is going forward, Australia is moving backwards. And the only reason we're not seeing mass outrage about this is because the government has decided to import a whole
bunch of migrants to artificially prop up our economy. Meanwhile, the per capita rate of economic growth, which is what's actually happening on an individual basis, has been going backwards, when backwards for twenty one months. Briefly in the last quarter of last year we saw a tiny bit of growth in GDP bo capita, and now again in the first quarter of this year it's back into negative territory. This is simply unsustainable for Australians, but hey, that's the
price of a labor government. Another person who's going to ruin an entire economy is one of the potential candidates.
For the New York marialty.
His name is Zorhan Mumdani, and he is a radical progressive. He calls himself a democratic socialist, and like any good lefty, he has no life experience. His entire policy platform consists of wanting to tax billionaires and somehow create a utopia. And he is extremely anti Israel so according to this article, in his whole time since graduating college he graduated in twenty fourteen.
And was elected to the New York State Assembly in.
Twenty twenty, he was only actually employed for three years, and basically his whole life he's lived in subsidized housing. Some of the careers he's chosen have been rather interesting. One was his failed attempt to become a rapper.
Check this out.
For you.
I'm go ahead, make a rap for your nanni.
I'll get.
Through.
We'll give adapt to your nanny if you. Villain has been a track.
For your nanny.
He is only a couple points behind Andrew Como. He was the former governor of New York and he's the Democratic Party's establishment pick for the mayor. But in the primaries he's only a couple points behind. And it's pretty remarkable because within a couple of months, thanks to the endorsement of Alexandria Occasio Cortez, another one of these really radical Democrats. He search from polling just one percent to
now potentially being able to win the primary. Obviously, if you win the endorsement of the Democrats, you're going to win the mayalty, and so New York could potentially have a failed rapper with zero life experience. He wants to tax everyone and hates Israel as their mayor.
I'm not sure what you're complaining about this.
This bloke was employed for four years, and by my count, the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Alberizi, has only been employed outside of politics for two years in his entire life. So this bloke has twice as much experience in the private sector as our prime minister does. He seems eminently qualified to me. I mean, to be perfectly honest. This is pretty typical of almost everyone in politics these days. Obviously in the United States it's often slightly different because
they get paid a lot less. Over the often have people who've spent a life in business or whatever before they go into politics, simply because you can't really afford to go into politics without having some money behind you already.
But in Australia.
This is the pipeline to politics for most people is you go to university, you get involved in student politics. Paris, if you have been involved in student policy, you'll be banned from being involved in politics. As there are some accepting people are there are some exceptions, but you end up with people who are more interested in the politics of politics than the results of politics.
They do that.
They leave Uni, they go and work in a staffing job in someone's office, then they get into a ministerial office, and then they run for politics. They've never had any real life experience. This guy.
In the five years he's been in local government in New York, he's missed fifty percent of the votes that council has taken. He's got just three bills up, one of which was free busses, which is one of his policies. See if these sound familiar. He's going for free childcare, free busses, government run grow ghost three stores. And how's he going to pay for all this? He's going to make ten billion dollars by you guessed, at taxing the rich.
He's never run anything before, a little alone, a city of eight million people, and yet this is how the New York Times described him. They said, he's a charismatic thirty three year old running a joyful campaign full of viral videos. He offers the kind of fresh political style for which many are hungry during the angry era of President Trump. That's quite the glowing endorsement. The New York Times, I should say, then went on to say, don't vote for again.
Be a disaster.
But as he said, Frey, he's coming second, which is absolutely incredible. Tell you something else that is incredible, and that is Martina Navradlova's memory. Remember Martina, brilliant tennis player in the seventies and eighties. She's lived in America since she was eighteen years old, having sought asylum there when she was eighteen. During the nineteen seventy five seventy six US Open she defected because, of course, who would want to live in our homeland of Czechoslovakia, which was then
run by the Soviets. It was a place where your phones were tapped, your mail was read. You required a permit just go from one part of the country to another part of the country. So she's done quite well for herself in the United States. But she's told media today that she wouldn't have left Czechoslovakia had she known Donald Trump was going to be the president. She said,
I'm not loyal to Donald Trump. If I were now still in that same position as in nineteen seventy five in Czechoslovakia and I had to go live somewhere, it would not be America because it's not a democracy at the moment. I mean, people are getting chucked out by Homeland Security. Who would those people be. They'd be illegal aliens. They're getting chucked out because they're not on board completely with Donald Trump's agender or have a valid visa because
they're not kissing the ring. She said, I reckon when you say that a former TV are making nasty tweets is worse than a Soviet backed regime where they crushed the scent, jailed dissidents, turned neighbour against neighbor. I'd say, she's not just good at tennise. He's pretty good at gymnastics. I would have thought that's quite the mental maneuver.
I think she's rather lost sight of what she left and why she moved to the United States. I mean, the election of Donald Trump, the existence of Donald Trump as president is proof of why she moved to the United States.
It is democracy in action.
People chose Donald Trump, and they chose the policies he stands for, including.
Getting rid of illegal immigrants.
I mean, the US welcomed Martine and avrattlover with open arms, and they continue to welcome with open arms people who want to move.
Legally to the United States. And I wish I'd thought of this here.
I don't know whether either of you saw the clip of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the View overnight where they tried to stitch him up on this issue of people being deported, and he went on a long spiel about how he's a margaret and he thinks that if you're a migrant in the United States, you should be grateful for what you've been given and you should pay it back. Now, Ratlov should be doing exactly the same thing. She is
biting the hand that has fed her. She is partially right about people not being allowed into the United States, potentially because they've disagreed with Donald Trump. There have been reports of people having their phones gone through when they've tried to go for holidays and stuff and being sent back whence they came, So that is kind of legitimate. But to say that, oh, I couldn't go to the United States now because it's not a democracy.
I mean, what does she think a democracy is?
The very fact that she's able to get into the media and openly criticize Donald Trump is proof that America is not a totalitarian state. If she tried criticizing the communist regime in the seventies in Czechoslovakia, I don't think she would have been so free to do so. In fact, when she affected to the US, her family that was still in the Czech Republic or the Soviet controlled Czechoslovakia were unable to even speak about her publicly.
Like that was the level of censorship.
I think it's rather insulting to the millions of victims of communist repression that she's now trying to draw a parallel between the two.
Yeah. I read those comments and thought she has strung her racket a little too tight.
I think exactly right.
Look, there is a really controversial Christmas Day party that happens every year. Last year, fifteen thousand backpackers descended onto Bronti Beach for a Christmas of Orphans, as they like to call it. It was all happy and fun as
you can imagine, fifteen thousand young backpackers would be. But the only problem was when they went to clean up, they caused about sixty thousand dollars worth of cleaning up and there were a whole bunch of issues with disturb Locals were naturally rather unhappy about the whole affair, so Waverley Council was petitioned by locals to crack down on the revelers and the party goers, either by banning it, by making it a ticketed event, or somehow doing something
to mitigate the damage. Waverley Council has decided to let the party proceed.
Oh they're not going to listen to rappayers, No.
They want those European backpack is trashing their beach and they will, however, add bins and extra police. I personally think Sydney's nightlife has been destroyed.
It's a very unfun city.
A lot of councils are literally the bastion of the anti fun police.
So good on the Waverley Council.
Those images on the screen that was not fun, That was anarchy, and it's not nightlife. That was Christmas Day and it's not in the CBD where no one lives. This is in people's local area, and what are the council done? We have more toilets, Well you should have had that last year when fifteen thousand people turned up. We'll have security. Might have been a good idea to have that last year. We'll put on more transport. So fifteen thousand people last year without transport, there'll be more
people this year. And the classic part of it was Mayor will Nemesh said, we're not sure whether these changes will make any difference. I guess we'll wait and find out. Well, there's a council that loves the local ratepayers.
But what are you proposing we put up for the event we go all Donald Trump and put up a great big wall and say you.
Not, that's bad idea you would that wouldn't show and people ten dollars entry at least that might cover the sixty.
Ten dollars sorry, ten dollars entry, ten dollars entry to go to a public beach.
I'm sorry. This is a sacred right in Australia. This is a sacred right in Australia.
No, no sort of sacred right to trash the joint I agree with that, but it is a sacred right in Australia to use public beaches. Public beaches are there for the benefit of the public. Don't fence them off and start telling people they can't go.
They fence it off, charge and entry fee to cover the cost of cleaning up the absolute garbage that is left there, that you yourself fed. It's an absolute like war zone. Someone's got a why should locals pay for it? I did verbal you a little bit better.
You did a little bit.
But if you start doing that at Bronzy, guess what, They're just going to move to Clavelli or up the road to Bundai. And the reality is the backpackers are here. Backpackers contribute a lot to our economy and they need somewhere to go On Christmas Day, something tells me it's not going to be church. If it's not that it's good, they're still celebrating by hitting the.
Beach and the local furious.
It's no coincidence that James lives in Castle Hill, because I think that's exactly what he would like to do.
He would like to build a car rawbridge up.
There'd be crocodiles in the moat and everything would be.
Bus goodness sake, anyway, before we get to the break, and we'll talk a little more about this after the breakers, we haven't got much time.
We'll expand upon.
But of course you would have seen the movements overnight speaking of war zones in Iran. The latest, of course now that the United States is talking about sending their buster, their bunker busting So it's a terrible thing to try to get your tenge around.
Bunker busting bombs into Iran.
They have to go naeti meters underground to destroy the most hidden parts of their nuclear armory over there. That has been the greatest impediment to stopping them at the moment from building a nuclear bomb. Of course, we know Israel has been attacking what they can get to above ground, but the serious stuff is underground.
The United States holds the key to that.
It would seem that Trump is now willing to send that over there so Israel will be able to use it to Another story that came out overnight was that Mossad, of course, the intelligence agency in Israel, had been gathering intelligence that they thought it was building up, the likelihood was building up that Iran was about to create an atomic bomb.
They were worried the United States.
Sorry, disagreed with that in the first instance, and was not sure that they were that far along. It doesn't seem to matter that United States have come along anyway. And the tweets and whatever that were put out overnight by the Iranian military and we haven't seen yet what they're referring to, but saying that they're about to do something that will be remembered for generations.
Where is this going.
I think what they're about to do is they're about to have their nuclear facilities exploded, because Trump is hinting that the US will get involved, not with boots on the ground, but they've got the only bombs that are capable of once and for all dealing with Iran's nuclear program because if they don't do it now, they will be back here in five years, in ten years. So
now's the opportunity you might as well do it. And Trump's giving every indication he will supply whatever the Israelis need, perhaps even the planes and the bombs to do the final job.
One of the frustrating things watching this conflict unfold have been the Kooki Maga supporters like Taker Carlson and Candiso and saying, oh see Natanya, who's been saying Iran was developing a nuclear bomb for like the last twenty years, and see US intelligence didn't believe.
It, blah blah blah.
But they don't realize Israel has been actively preventing Iran from developing a nuclear bomb through covert operations for the last twenty years, hacking into their internal systems, doing stealth attacks on nuclear facilities. And this is their one opportunity to destroy the Iotoler regime once and for all and cut off the head of Tara.
Yep, there's more about that in tomorrow's papers. We'll take a look at them in just a moment. Well, the queens And newspapers wasted no time. Their front pages are already available celebrating their torific Origin win in Perth tonight. The Courier Males headline reads Morons triumph in Origin classic Cam's Heroes, referring of course, to Cameron Munster, who was in his first game as captain tonight, leading Queensland to a twenty six twenty four victory against New South Wales.
The Cam's post, similarly celebrating Moron magic Mighty Morons claims stunning origin win that makes the series one all, Caleb, I know you love your AFL, but you'd be into the rugby league as well. So the final I think is played in Brisbane. I think at lang Park.
You are asking a wrong person.
Go the Queenslanders.
Yeah, you would say that, would you would say that?
I reckon they should bring back AFIL state of origin. I've said this and written about it many times because he says go Queensland. He did live up there, but he's originally from Victoria. Story, what hell you doing calling yourself at Queensland and anyway, but I'd like to see AFL state of origin back so you and I can go out and have a night at the footy South Australia versus Victoria. That'd be some real stuff, wouldn't it.
Let's go to the front of the odds tomorrow where it says Charmers moment of truth, the charmer being Jim Charmers, of course, not an actual charmer. Jim Charmers has declared tax reform is needed to fund growing spending on defense and the care economy, while warning that traditional revenue streams will be threatened.
By the net zero transition.
As he left the door open to raising the gst, increasing levies on resources, and charging electric car drivers for using roads. But his call for a new era of consensus is not extending to the proposed tax on unrealized capital gains on high value superannuation funds, as he bound to push ahead with the policy Labour took to the
election despite it being widely panned by economists and business leaders. Now, as much as it sounds awful to hear the words higher taxes, I should note he is talking about chain ringing the tax base, broadening the tax base, so it's not necessarily just lack taxes up and everyone pays more tax.
What he's aiming for, and I think this is a.
Noble goal, is to eventually reduce the reliance on income tax and find other ways of raising tax revenue. There's not been any genuine tax reform in this country for a very long time. Whether or not his idea of tax reform turns out to be the best one, who knows. But I'm at least glad to see someone for the first time in a long time talking about tax reform.
A love of the fact he's talking about. You know, where we're going to get consensus. We've got plenty of courage. We just need consensus to make all these changes. And then he's asked, of course, about the most controversial tax, the unrealized capital gains tax, which everybody has panned, and he says, no, no, that's definitely happening. So he says, consensus is really important, but he's got consensus, that's a bad tax, and he's ignoring the consensus and doing what he wants.
We also know whenever a politician says we're going to build consensus, that's code for we're not going to demonstrate any leadership. Because leadership often requires making the hard decisions. The hard decisions rarely have consensus or widespread support. Initially, think about when the GSD did come in, it was incredibly difficult to build consensus around that. Obviously, twenty five
years later we all think it's great. But whenever a politician says consensus, always be a little bit skeptical.
Indeed, another story on the front of the Olds tomorrow, as we were talking about before the break, I tooler Reddy's for a violent end the war in around Risks sorry spiraling into a devastating regional conflict now for the country. Supreme Leader issued a rallying call to his people, and Donald Trump edged closer to green lighting direct US strikes
to destroy Teyran's nuclear program once, end for all. And this is the other part of it as well, is that Trump has said, you know, we're going to sassinate you if we wanted to, but we're not going to do it just yet. One wonders whether the time comes that he does.
Pull the pin.
But the other interesting thing in this article that refers to a tweet that was put out by the Iatola referencing or referring to himself essentially as a personification of the successor to Mohammed And it's just a reminder that Penny one was all about, we need to de escalate, we need to dialogue. For the Iranians, the destructure of Israel is a divine mission. This is not about simply politics.
It's not about land. Essentially, it's a religious mission that they have themselves on and you can't negotiate with people like that. And looks like Trump and the Israelis have decided that is indeed the case, and that's.
Why diplomacy will never work, because you're not dealing with rational actors.
It's actually part of their religious worldview.
The graphic he posted of was in reference to the Kaibar massacre of Jews, and he's essentially saying, we're going to repeat this. That was when hundreds of Jews were slaughtered. So it's really distressing and this is the one chance they have to take out the regime. I personally think they shouldn't assassinate the Ayatola. They should let him watch his regime crumble before his eyes and then put him on trial and lock him away for the rest of his life.
And of course the other thing is well is if you take a leader out, you've got to know what your next move is.
It is extreme.
We see precisely how many times have we interfeed in the Middle East and just basically given it all back to the maninsa IE, Afghanistan and the Taliban. So if you're going to make those serious moves, you've got to know what's going to happen.
And that's the thing though. The Iranian people on the whole do not support the regime and so it could be interesting to see whether the Shah will come back. He's made a lot of moves on social media him think he might if he gets support, so stay tuned for that.
Moving on to the Herald Sun.
Now, a shocking, shocking case drive through madness. A brazen car thief was last night on the run after putting shoppers' lives at risks by barreling through Northland Shopping Center in a stolen four wheeled four wheel drive in a bid.
To evade pursuing police.
A mother and a child were forced to jump out of the way of the speeding vehicle, which came within meters of the other terrified shoppers. So this car to evade police literally drove straight through this center of the shopping center. Now, interestingly, this happened at Northland Shopping Center. This is also where the machette incident happened a couple
of weeks ago. I mean, one, what is going on in Victoria, but specifically Northland Shopping Center seems to be a bit of a hotbed at the moment.
I think we know what will happen after the machete incident at that shopping center. Just into Ellen banned machetes, I expect to morroshe'll announced a ban on cruises.
Land cruisers driving through shopping centers in particular.
Well, well, now it has to be all Land cruises because of because it wasn't a ban on machetes at Northland. This was a band on machetes entirely because of course, that stops crying. But what goes through your head, like it's one thing, Okay, I've stolen the car.
That was a bit dumb.
The coppers are on mbum new out. Okay, I'm in a bit of trouble.
But at what point do you go.
I'm now going to risk life and limb and other people's life and limb, which will get me into far more trouble than I ever will for being picked up for stealing a car. What possesses you to drive through what could have been a packed shopping center to evade police, You're asking for trouble.
Yeah, And it's a bit of a culture in Victoria of do what you want and damn the consequences, because oftentimes there are no consequences. Let's go to the front page of Hobart's Mercury newspaper, two thousand dollars help towards
IVF reads the headline. Women seeking help to have a child will be given greater financial support under an election promise to be announced on Thursday by the Liberals, the state government will pay two thousand dollars towards the cost of in vitro fertilization if we elected at next month's state election. A similar grant is already available to women in New South Wales. Anything that helps and encourages people
to have more children is a great idea. I wish they put money towards families are trying to adopt kids. That'll be a worthy cause as well. But anyway, for people trying for IVF an incredibly expensive process. Two thousand dollars, as I understand, is a drop in the bucket, but it's something, and I guess all helpers appreciates.
It's a good point. They could also do another baby bonus. I suppose.
I suppose they figured this is a way to do it without spending as much money, because if they had a baby bonus, they may have to paid a lot more. Now, the story on the front of the advertiser, it's our interesting one. This housing fix that's out of the box, and I keel like solution to the housing crisis is being pushed by Premier Peter Malanowskis as he unveils a plan to roll out prefabricated homes in essay announcing a tender for one hundred and twenty properties in a pilot projects.
Mister melanowskis so.
It was an innovative way to deliver more houses faster amid a chronic shortage of homes and tradees falls. Walls, roof panels and other key components will be manufactured off site before being assembled at locations across the state in a scheme expected to launch in July. I know we have a housing crisis and people are desperate for homes, and this may well be an easy fix. But as I often ask, when we talk about these things, we slap up here, there and everywhere, who actually wants to
live in these? I know that you need somewhere to live, and so you'll take anywhere to live, But long term, who really wants to live in this?
And that's basically a kid home. We've seen these before. We're going to go to a break when we come back. John Howard reveals his most embarrassing his worst moment as Prime minister. It's probably not what you think will show you. In just a segment we former Prime Minister John Howard was speaking at the Intercontinental in Sydney before business leaders when he was asked what was his biggest regret all
of his years in politics? And I suppose that long in politics you'd have a few and people expected him to probably say, you know, maybe being involved in the Iraq War, or work choices policy, or maybe losing to Kevin Rudd. But none of that was anywhere near as embarrassing as his biggest regret, and that is bowling a couple of medium paced deliveries when he was in Pakistan.
Everyone remembers when he was convinced to bowl a ball at a willing batsman there, and that is an absolute time that he has a bowl and that's is his biggest regret in all those politics. That was the moment he wishes he could have back.
I can fully understand why that is his biggest regret, because what could be more embarrassing than lining up for a good bowl and you just absolutely spray it like that. I mean, it reminds if someone filmed me when I gave cricket a go year four, that's something what it would look like. I mean, that was the point when I decided, now I'm just going to go and watch the cricket and drink beer. I'm not going to give it a go playing it. But you know, I don't know what's what's your sporting prowess?
Like James, I was all right with a cricket ball, but better with a tennis ball. Used to take half of it and get the Yeah, I was lethal with that.
Yeah, well you could always use sandpaper, couldn't you.
We won't go Lily now. Very strange story.
I don't know why she's decided to come out and tell this now because it all happened back in the nineties, But anyway, it's a warning to people not to go
and marry people in Kenya on a whim. Essentially, this woman, who at thirty four years old in nineteen ninety four, was already onto her second husband, took a package holiday to Kenya and fell in love with a Massi warrior who was ten years her junior while she was over there, so she ditched the second husband, shacked up with this fella, took him back to the Isle of Wight where she was living. They got married, and she now says, all these years later that I felt like I was just
a meal ticket. I made a huge mistake and I have a lot of regrets. Their marriage only lasted four years. Clearly she's been carrying this for some time, because she's now decided to tell the Daily Mail about her great regret in life was to choose a third husband on a package holiday in Kenya. If that's the base she did in mud Hut with the dude by the way, I mean, look, if you're making decisions like that, you got problems.
It is so so bizarre.
So viewers be warned, watch out next time you're in don't ma, don't marry a Kenyan toy boy. Look, in tragedies, oftentimes heroes, chivalrous people, they come to the rescue. In Israel, they're obviously going through a very difficult time at the moment, and the heartthrob of the Holy Land was there to save the day. He is a very well built six foot two Israeli man who was, as you can see on the left there in shorts, with a gun strapped
to his belt and absolutely nothing else. He ran up to this couple's apartment that was about about to collapse because it had been bombed by Iran in there, and he kicked down the bolted door with his I can't take this.
Story what's wrong.
It's almost like you want to go to Israel. You can be caught up in the war and be rescued by this guy. It's time tomorrow.
There's rarey women with big knockers.
That's all from us stick around. Coming up is the Reader Penny Show. We'll take care of fray I go, She'll be all right.