Lately.
Welcome to the Late Debase.
Well, good evening and thanks for joining us on the Late Debate. James Macpherson with Lucy's Alec and Caleb Bond coming up tonight. The New Zealand tourism campaign that sounds more like a clearance sale. We'll show you that a little later. I'm not sure it's going to work. Plus when we look at what's making news tomorrow, the asy O boss warns of foreign state sponsored murder plots here on Australian soil, journalists, politicians and activists targeted.
By foreign states.
Plus big news on the train strike that has hounded commuters in Sydney over the last couple of days. We'll get to all of that shortly. But first here's a question I've been asking. Are they keeping our young people
safe or are they promoting drug use? That's a good question to ask of the New South Wales government after it announced and gave advanced notice that pill testing will be conducted and trialed at the Woongong Music Festival in March now, the Health Minister Ryan Park announced that the government would provide free testing of illicit drugs at the Yours and Ols Festival on March first. It's the first time pill testing will be offered in New South Wales.
The government would decide next year whether or not to make it permanent. Now we've heard the arguments before because the Victorian government has been through this process. On the one hand, they argue that young people are going to take drugs anyway, so we might as well test them to make sure the dangerous drugs are not completely dangerous
before they take them. On the other hand, if we're going to say that drugs are illegal, how can we then say the state will test your illegal drugs to make sure they're not dangerous before handing you back your illegal drugs so you can illegally take them. It doesn't really make sense, does it. What strikes me about this event in New South Wales is that the New South
Wales state government is effectively advertising, giving advanced notice. If you go to the Yours and the Owls Music Festival in Wollongong on March first, there'll be pill testing, which means police will have been instructed to turn a blind eye to people with drugs, because how else will trust be built for the young people to go to the pill testing center. Now this has been trialed in Victoria. The most recent trial in the last week of December.
They tested six hundred pills, mostly cocaine, MDMA and keeptamine and they found no highly dangerous substances. So that's at least six hundred illegal pills that were tested and then handed back to young people so they could take them as police turned a blind eye. They said it was a resounding success, and here was their proof. They said because forty percent of the young people at the pill testing center told officials they would probably use less drugs
in the future. Well of course they're going to say that, aren't they. And that's despite the fact that one person overdosed on the first day of the pill testing regime. I think that this is simply advertising to young people.
If you want to take a list.
At drugs at the music festival, I tell you there's one in Wollongong on March the first. Police will be going easy because pill testing will be available.
Isn't this encouraging drugs listening?
It's normalizing drug use. Come one, come all, here's the perfect destination for you to avoid taking dodgy drugs from your dealer who you just met on the street. Corner one night and decided, Hey, this is going to be a perfect score for me. Cheap drugs and I can get them tested and make sure that I can get away from this safely. There are so many myths and so much propaganda when it comes to this. You know they're arguing effectively that number one. This came from the
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. They came out a year ago and said the pill testing could have prevented sixty four festival deaths. How do we know that for sure? When not only are the testing curate themselves right, they're not actually able to identify all of the strains of chemicals that are being tested in this instance. But how can they prove that?
To me?
That sounds like propaganda? You know what would prevent sixty four festival deaths and overdoses. Don't take illegal drugs, don't do it. And what we're effectively saying to these youths is come on, we've got a safe environment for you where we can test them and we can normalize drug use. But once you leave this area, there's the double standard.
Once you leave this area, if we catch you with these drugs, they are effectively illegal and we're gonna lock you up for it, and we're gonna charge you with some kind of offense. It's outrageous.
Well, I think we need to talk about what the real problem here is, and that is that the music at these festivals is so bad that they had to take drugs in order to be able to.
Come with it.
Have you? I mean, look, I'm gonna break your heart here. No, I've never been in too funny and funny about that, isn't it.
But if you listen to the songs, clearly the musicians were on drugs.
Correct, correct it all?
It all makes sense right, But I've always wondered how this actually works because you have the premier standing up and saying, you know, illegal drugs are still illegal in New South Wales. Everyone else's illegal drugs are still illegal in New South Wales. But you're saying there's a place where you can take your drugs, and presumably you are taking to have your drugs tested on the basis that
you're not going to be arrested for doing so. Otherwise, who the hell would take their drugs to be tested. I mean it's basically saying, copper, go over there, that's where you go and arrest the people.
Right, So they've.
Said there will be a quote unquote amnesty zone at the site of the testing and around the side of the testing. So you have effectively created a place in New South Wales on this particular weekend in Woongong where illegal drugs are legal, because presumably the police have agreed that they will not be arresting anyone in that particular zone.
So that's ten square meters or twenty square meters or whatever it is, whatever that square footage is that they're taking up for this pill testing venue is effectively place where illegal drugs are legal. So they're not actually illegal drugs anymore if you're standing on that piece of land, So how does the law stand.
Many of them are actually also going to this festival for the music now, right, because that's to me, it's kind of defeating the purpose. It's like, oh, well, this is a music festival. If you're going to come, bring your drugs, But how many young kids out there, who, by the way, shouldn't be taking these drugs in the
first place. How many of them are going to say, hey, let's just use as an excuse to go there and to have them tested, and it be in a safe environment where we know that yeah, we're going to get some counselor that will come over and tell us, hey, don't take the drugs. It's not good for you, but go on, go and take them. The thing I took the greatest issue with was when they said in the statement, people will never be advised that a drug is safe
to use. I'llould come and let us test it for you and then confirm yes, it is safe to use. I mean, it's just the hypocrisy and the idiocy of it all. It's ridiculous.
Well, here's an example of the mixed messages.
Right, So the event organizer put out a statement on Instagram and said, I quote, we have a zero tolerance policy towards legal drugs. Then next breath said, however, we see an abstinence only approach as unhelpful, so you won't be judged.
And you won't get into trouble. Well, how can you have a zero tolerance.
Approach if you're saying however, abstinence is unhelpful, We won't judge you if you're taking drugs.
Zero tolerance, zero tolerance accept Inside this team, they wonder why where the compan.
Where the Copplers won't come for you.
And I mean, I take drugs to understand the policy.
I know, and the music and the whole lot.
And I bang this drum all the time about tobacco, as I was doing last night.
But it's the same with alcohol. There is a lot of the reason I think.
The kids are taking drugs is because they're so much cheaper than the legal products available. I mean, who's going to go to a music festival and drink beers all day or drink spirits all day because it's hideously expensive. But they'll find someone in there who'll sell them a pill for thirty dollars and that'll be their day's worth of entertainment. And a lot of that comes down to the government who says, well, we must have pill testing
to keep the kids safe. Well, if you didn't tax up the wazoo, the product that you've deemed to be safe enough for them to legally use in the first place, maybe they wouldn't be taking the illegal one. While we're talking about pill testing, which of course now happening in New South Wales that started as a proposition in Victoria.
Things go from bad to worse for.
The Victorian government when it comes to their spending and project planning. Now you would know if you live in Melbourne about the Metro tunnel. They're trying to build a metro like they did in New South Wales. The one in New South Wales works quite well, i have to say, in Sydney, so Melbourne said, oh, oh, we better do that as well. And you would think this thing's meant open later.
In the year that it would all be hungy dory.
The new ticketing system would be ready to go because the state government has spent one point seven billion dollars rebuilding the Miqi system, so you can use a credit
card or your mobile phone to tap on. But no, when they open up the wiz bang new Metro later this year, you won't be able to tap on with your mobile phone, which means that they're going to put in brand spanking new ticketing scanners for the old system, which this time next year they will rip out to replace with brand spanking new scanners for the new system. Isn't it great what happens when government departments talk together
and work so well. Matthew Guy, who's the shadow a Minister for Public Transport in Victoria, former leader of course of the Liberal Party, down there.
And I am told a train enthusiast.
Said, it's a special link of incompetence to stuff up a ticketing system before the new tunnel is even open. It's hard to believe that the most expensive rail project in Victoria's history wasn't built for twenty first century ticketing. Yes, nothing lines up in Victoria, and that is why all of their big projects have in just one year blown out by eleven point six billion dollars. Yes, eleven billion, whither be dollars? No wonder this state is effectively broke.
Now there's a story we'll get to in the papers. On the front of the Herald Sound a bit later, Jacinta Allen's coming up with a plan to try and clause some of this money back, which is quite brave, as Sir Humphrey, Well, then we d say for a labor government. But how do you blow projects out by eleven point six billion dollars in one year?
Well, I think you described in your opening they invented this brand new ticketing system. I mean you and I went home last night on the Metro here in Sydney and we.
Got out our credit card. Bang, we tapped on and we tapped off.
It works perfectly in Sydney, so you would have thought the Victorian government didn't need to reinvent the wheel. They could have just looked to another state like New South Wales and copied the system that works perfectly here. But no, they had to start from scratch and taxpayers and now paying. You know, most businesses have a motto do something once and do it right. In Victoria they do something three
times at ten times. And that's how Victoria has gotten into the state it's in with what a forecast one hundred and eighty eight billion dollars worth of debt by twenty twenty eight. The Victorian treasurer I love this Jacqueline Sime, who I'm not sure that she's that good with money, very good with optimism and trying to ourage she.
She's no good with understanding her job because we did the Sory couple weeks have actually told the Treasury staff not to talk to her in economic terms, but we didn't understand them.
Perhaps that explains her statement today She said, and I quote, the Victorian economy is going.
From strength to strength.
Having said that, I'm very conscious it's not translating to households and families well, if it's not translating to households and families, who's it going from strength to strength fallwards?
Eyes Again, they're pushing their own propaganda to try and convince everybody that this government hasn't totally destroyed this once great state. That's what they have to do. Consider everything that's going on down there in Victoria, right, escalating crime, cops on strike, the levees that they introduced right before Christmas, right with punished businesses, people, farmers, all of these great people who were suffering already under the strain of the
cost of living crisis. Then the AIRB and B tax, right, remember that only a few days ago a story emerged where that is really impacting victims of domestic violence, right, And how they're unable to act actually access these spaces because of the taxes that they've introduced here and now it's just it's almost as if it's become a running joke, the amount of debt that they have invested in them
in the state themselves. And it's all because of the labor government, because the labor government, and I have to but I have to say this, the worst part about the whole Nikey drama, right, is this point the NTT data right, they're the technology company that used to have it. Had they retained their particular contract with respect to this, they could have grandfathered the old technology, which would have
saved tax pays millions of dollars. The conduit who's taken over it don't actually have the certification to be able to do that. So now it's just cost upon cost, poor planning. They can't manage the state, it's clear. And the Allen government just they are as I said, they're a running joke. How much longer did Victorians have to suffer through this? What do we where? We now? We're February twenty thirty five, twenty six November next year.
They still mentioned Allen government and maybe that's a key to how why things are so bad, because just into Allen before she was the premier, she was the Minister for the Commonwealth Games, remember the Commonwealth Games, Williams to not hold. She was also the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure.
We know what's happening with infrastructure costs. She was also the Minister for the suburban rail loop and she was the Minister for major projects which as we said, have blown out by eleven billion dollars in the last twelve months. Talk about failing upwards. Now she's the premier of the state. With a resume like that, there is no way you would get at any job in the public sector. You wouldn't be allowed to make coffee at my local cafe
with that kind of resume. And yet she's running the state. And we wonder why it goes from bad to worse. Speaking of money being wasted, Elon Musk continues his crusade in the United States with DOEGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, trying to root out waste and fraud, and he's moved on to the Social Security Department. He tweeted today that the Social Security Administration in the United States might be the biggest source of fraud in all of human history.
Now, Michelle King, who's been.
At the Social Security Department for thirty years and is in charge, she has resigned on Sunday in protest that Elon Musk would dare to look through what's happening in her department.
It's in protest because she's running for cover already.
I think she's running for cover because Elon Musk found get this, there are five hundred and thirty one million unique social security numbers in circulation, which is interesting, five hundred and thirty one million unique social security numbers, there's only three hundred and fifty million Americans.
They found eighteen point nine.
Million people listed on the Social Security database as being over one hundred years old.
There's only eighty six thousand.
According to the last census, six point five million people were listed on the database as being older than one hundred and twelve. But I'm pretty sure the last record says there we're only thirty five across the entire earth, and one person on the Social Security database was listed alive with the social security number three hundred.
And sixty years old.
Methuselah is claiming welfare benefits in the United States.
Now.
The media have been careful to say, no, no, no, no, This doesn't mean that fraud is happening. It just means the database is, you know, a little old and a little messy. Time Magazine mounted a defense.
They said things.
Aren't that bad because between twenty fifteen and twenty twenty two they paid out eight point six trillion dollars worth of Social Security benefits and only seventy one billion dollars had been found to be improperly paid only so only one billion dollars.
It's not that bad.
They said, it's less than one percent of overpayments, and they actually added.
And it was to living people, so that's a good thing.
In the month of January, the Social Security Department, perhaps fearing what Donald Trump was going to do, clawed back thirty one million dollars that went to dead people. Even if it's only thirty one million as opposed to historic level fraud that Elon Musk claims, it's still a hell of a lot of money being wasted because they can't keep a database up to speed. Here Elon Musk describing why this is so important for the American public to let the Trump administration do.
The overall goal is to try to get trillion dollars out of the deficit, and if the deficit is not brought under control, America will go bankrupt. This is a very important thing for people to understand. A country is not different from an individual in that an individual overspends, an individual can go bankrupt, and so kind of country. The massive wasteport and abuse that has been going on, which is leading to a two trillion dollar a year deficit.
That's what the president was handed on Jane twenty of a two trillion dollar deficit. Since seeing.
Caleb Trump reckons you can find a trillion dollars in waste, fraud, just sloppy accounting. That's an astonishingly large amount of money, of.
Course it is.
But when you consider the size of the US government, and that is the main problem here. You know, a bit of money over here, a bit of money over there, trillion dollars adds up very quickly, and that's the problem. What Mask is talking about there is that when you run your budget, or business runs its budget, it's monitoring the dollar right down to the last cent, because every
single cent matters. But of course, when you're dealing with other people's money, as government does, they don't particularly care. Was it the Department of Defense or the Department of State. We did a story about a couple of months ago where they went through their books to their books and they literally could not account for billions of dollars of their budget, like they actually didn't know where they did that's it.
They was Defense.
They did not know where they had spent that money when they talied it all up. How can you not know you've spent your money, right, well.
That spent that money.
Somebody is marketing that money very clear.
But this is how government works. Right.
If there's no real oversight, money just goes missing into the ether. And that is what Trump is trying to stop. People are literally dying it would seem to get their hands on taxpayers money in the US, and it has to stop.
But you know what, this is not just happening in the US.
I'm sure it's happening everywhere because government systems, for whatever reason, don't talk to each other. I know of someone in Australia recently who got their hands on a check from the ATO that had been signed out to their dead mother. Now, of course that the ATO seemingly didn't know that the mother was dead and called up the ex husband's accountant and said, oh, we've got this check here, where do we send it?
Right?
I mean, how do these systems not talk to each other so that they know where things go? But it's government, so nothing talks to each other, and that's how people get to raught it.
The thing that was interesting as well is that so Trump also sat in that interview with Elon Musk with Sean Hammity on Fox and he said that this just represents this is a scary part. This represents just one percent of the alleged fraud and the tip of the iceberg of what they're expecting to uncover in all of this.
So it just goes to show you why people are resigning in this situation and why are people so concerned and scared because they know that this is going to uncover what we should anticipate would be immense corruption and the bureaucracy that has been occurring in the US and the crooks effectively that have been running away with all
of this money. They can argue until they're black and blue that they don't know where this particular money is going, but someone is pocketing from this and it's quite clear. And who better to run all of this, by the way than Elon Musk. Know, when he took over the then Twitter came in and you know, he basically cut eighty percent of the workforce. Six thousand staff members lost
their jobs. Six thousand. If you can deem six thousand people are really not that productive to your business model, Imagine now what they're going to be able to uncover across the US government.
Well, just on that you know that Time magazine said that they decided not to spend nine million dollars tidying up the database because they didn't want to waste nine million dollars. They found thirty one million dollars that went to dead people just in the month of January. So it goes to your point that they're very careful on spending certain money if it's going to clean things up, of course, very happy to let things go. You wander up,
is it really just a mistake? And also going and someone coffee to you.
Know, test the impact of certain alcohols on birds? Right, remember when that story came out. I was like, this is where some of your government money, where tax phase money, is going to test the impact of a certain alcoholic beverage on a bird. These people are nuts and they should all be running scared.
Why didn't they test how the alcoholic beverage has an effect on me?
I would have been quite happy.
To drunk, Caleb, It's not much idea.
I'll see up by that one for free.
Now, how about this?
The BBC Public Broadcast of course in the UK put to air this week a quote unquote documentary entitled Gaza How to Survive a war zone. Now that sounds more like an instruction manual than it does a documentary, and that may well actually be the case, because an independent journalist by the name of David Collier has done some digging into this documentary and namely the English speaking child,
fourteen year old boy who does the narration of this documentary. Now, the idea is that they are showing you through what Gaza has been like since the war started on October the seventh, and how people have been trying to live there and cope and survive, et cetera, et cetera.
But the fourteen year old boy who narrates.
This documentary, who was identified in the the film as Abdullah, they then later showing the credits his full name, which is listed.
As Abdullah al Yazuri.
Well, mister Collier has looked into who exactly Abdullah is and it would appear that he's actually the son of a Hamas minister, the deputy Minister for Agriculture in Gaza. Now, this doco billed itself as looking at life in Gaza through the eyes of ordinary Gazans, and yet it would seem the boy who was narrating the documentary is actually the son of a minister, which kind of begs the question is that what they are saying the ordinary Gazan is is someone who is connected to Hamas.
Or did they just get.
Absolutely duped by Hamas in their effort to put together what they thought.
Was a compassionate look at what's going on in Gaza.
Whatever the answer to those questions, Caleb, none of it is good.
The BBC either did not do their due diligence.
And God knows they get enough money provided by taxpayers to do their due diligence, or they knew exactly who this young boy was, they knew exactly who his father was, and they just decided to go ahead with it anyway. So effectively you've got the BBC as a propaganda arm for Hermas.
And the really frustrating part in all of this is that the BBC just a reminder, it happens to stand for the British Broadcasting Corporation, which, by the way, in the UK, her Musa recognized their military wings are recognized as a terrorist organization. So who are you acting on
behalf of who are you representing here? And it begs the question, no wonder the trust in the media is so low why do you think that happens to be at this point in time when you are acting as a propagandist and not really representing the situation in a way that is the truth, right, in a way that people deserve to know. So either they didn't know, in which case, as you said and rightly pointed out, Jane, it's bad either way whichever way you slice and dice it.
So you didn't bother to invest into some research to discover exactly who this child is, what connections does he have, and is he this so called ordinary Palestinian? And if you did find out and then completely ignored that and tried to sweep it under the rug, well, then that
calls your own credibility into question. And as I said, no wonder the trust in the media and legacy media is so low at this point in time, because who can you trust at this point in time to give you an honest and accurate depiction of what's actually going on.
Well, David Collier, the blok who worked it out, literally just did some searching on Facebook. That's how he worked it out.
He found an old.
Video video from about a year ago of this kid who was in an interview with Channel four in the UK with a bloke who was claiming to be his father, and he worked out that it wasn't actually his father. So he started going through various Facebook pages of people who were connected to this child and then managed to work out who the family was and then through all of that connected his father was. So all he's done is use publicly available information to work this out.
So why could the BBC have not done And in.
Addition, the BBC would have had Palestinians on the ground helping them create this one hour long documentary. You can't tell me that the child of such a prominent Hamas official wasn't known to the Palestinians helping.
The BBC crew.
But if you want another example of why we can't trust the media when it comes to what's happening in the Gaza conflict, check out this tweet from American ABC. Now Hamas have announced that tomorrow they will be what's the word, returning the bodies of four hostages, including a mother and her two beautiful children, a four year old and a nine month old, when they were taken from their homes by Palestinians back to Gaza, kept underground and used as.
Held for ransom. CBS have tweeted, have we got the tweet there? They've tweeted.
King how Mus will release the bodies of four deceased hostages on Thursday and six living hostages on Saturday. How Mus in Israel confirmed. I want to drain your attention to the word deceased. They're going to release the bodies of four deceased hostages. I'm just wondering, Lucy, how did these hostages die?
Was it?
Did they die in their sleep? Did they suffer a stroker? I just can't imagine what happened. These journalists at the ABC are paid a pretty penny to be precise when it comes to words. That's the role of a journalist, and so the word deceased rather than murdered is a very deliberate choice of words. And here again we have another media organization carrying water for terrorists.
Of course, and mischaracter like misrepresenting and mischaracterizing the actual truth.
In all of this.
This is a story that is so devastating. I mean, for me as a mother, just the unfolding scenes since October seventh, and when this news emerged that these young children had been taken with their mother, I just couldn't help but think what must be going through these poor children's minds, their father, their families, extended families back in Israel, thinking if they will survive, will we ever see them again?
How are they being treated? And I know that I mean and this is based upon recent information that Israel haven't actually been able to confirm that you know, that they will be receiving these children, that they will know. There's so much kind of you know, confusion around whether or not they can accurately identify them, etc.
All of this.
But it's so heartbreaking that at a time like this, right when so many lives have been needlessly lost, beautiful children across both sides, right, but in this particular situation, ripped out of their homes and taken and terrified, that we can't just accurately report out of respect to these people and their families on what's happened to them. It's disgrace.
Can I just show you one more media headline that really got my attention today?
This is from the New York Times. Get a load of this sentence in the New York Time.
For many Israelis, the story of the Babas family has become a symbol of the brutality of the Hamas led October seven attack. The Babas family is the mother and her two children who were being murdered by hermas. The thing that got my attention for many Israelis, the story has become a similar prete for Israelis.
Hello, it should be for the whole damn world this thing.
I'm not an Israeli, I'm a Christian woman and a mother, and this was something that really it was just gut wrenching and devastating to see this. It's not just for Israelis. I think everybody around the world watching a fold in the Middle East and rightfully should be so disturbed by these scenes, right and the needless, as I said, loss of lives. Had they just had this never happened, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Have they not hung on to the hostages for as long as they have, we
wouldn't be having these conversations. So the fact that people can't just look at this and say, well, hang on a minute, why haven't they returned these hostages, Why is it taken so long for them to take these steps, and why are they continuing to parade themselves as the victims in all of this when they came and crossed the battle lines and decided to take these families and these babies and these mothers and innocent people away and out of their lives at home.
And don't forget that this is the return of dead people in exchange for living people in prison.
Currently in Israeli.
Right, so say, oh, sorry, we didn't take care of the hostages we took from your country. You can have them back in a body bag, but thank you very much, we'd like our people, criminals back in a live state.
Thing.
What I don't understand is why did Penny Wong and other world leaders not say on October the eighth, there is no discussion, no negotiation. We will not even speak to us until at the minimum, those children are returned to their family in Israel.
Until then, we have nothing to say.
To you, because what do the kids have to do with this conflict?
Right?
What do they have to do with this and the innocent lives that have been lost Exactly because of the absolutely barbaric decisions made this military wing, which we also in Australia by the way, recognize as a terrorist organization. I think people very sadly, consistently have to be reminded of that. And as I said, parading themselves as the victims in all of this when we know right the atrocities that have been committed by them and the lives that have been lost is just beyond devastating.
When the bodies of those children are returned, I can't left of their family tomorrow, it will not be just a sad day for many Israelis New York Times, It'll be a shameful day for the entire.
World that that was allowed to happen.
Lucy, let's move on to a different topic, because there's something I know that you're really stirred up there.
Yeah, let's switch gears. And this one is something that I have been very stirred up about purely because of the fact that it does also involve children. And this is something that has taken not just Australia by storm in recent weeks, but we've seen that already in the UK. The UK government has made very explicit strides with respect
to puberty blockers and the regulations surrounding them. When the UK Secretary of Health, Where Streeting, made the decision in December of last year to put an indefinite ban on them because they've obviously discovered that they have unacceptable risks and pose serious threats to the safety and well being
of children. Well, we've just seen this story emerge now out of Queensland because, of course, so many of us were very disturbed by the fact that there were revelations emerging from some of these gender clinics where a child as young as twelve had been prescribed at puberty blockers without the parental consent. Now, if this isn't enough to make the skin on the back of your neck and on your arms and everywhere else stand up, I'm not
sure what else it will elicit. But guess what. People are very upset by this in Queensland because what they're suggesting now is that this may bring on at least at a bare minimum AE hundred court cases. And this is effectively a breach of human rights. And we've seen Professor Patrick McGorry who was quoted as saying government should not be intruding into an area which requires expert clinical
decision making based on the best available scientific evidence. Well, i'll tell you what some of that scientific evidence has already suggested. Not only can you find it in the kas Review right, which determined that the evidence surrounding puberty
blockers was remarkably weak. But when when Streeting addressed the House of Commons, he stood up and said, and I quote, after thoroughly examining all of the available evidence, they have concluded that prescribing puberty blockers to children for the purposes of gender dysphoria in the current prescribing environment represents and
he quoted, an unacceptable safety risk end quote. Of particulate concern to the Commission was whether these children and their families were provided with enough time and information to give their full and informed consent.
Right.
So when it comes to cross sex hormones in particular, right, we're already seeing there's not enough longitude, long term studies to prove that these are safe and effective, particularly for children minus who by the way, we will not allow to vote, to drive, to smoke, and to do all of these things, and to drink. But we will say to them, you know what, you think you're a boy or you think you're a girl, We're going to put you on puberty blockers where we don't have enough long
term evidence to determine how it's going to impact you. Because, by the way, studies have also been conducted in Nordic countries where they determined that most of these children experiencing so called gender dysphoria. By the way, no child is born in the wrong body, let's make that very clear. They determine that once these children who experienced these feelings reach the age of roughly say, twenty four to twenty five, they realized, I actually don't have these problems anymore, and
this was just a phase. And when they're treating these kids, they're not also addressing the fact, both to James and Caleb and all of our viewers, that many of these children are suffering from existing comorbidities, right. Many of them autistic, some of them have suffered serious sexual abuse, and they're experiencing real difficulties in trying to communicate that.
Right.
Some of them also just grow up to be either gay or lesbian. And then I'm not saying to them, right, we need to explore these other issues. They're saying, let's put you on puberty blockers. What a great idea.
So for all those reasons, the Queensland government, to their credit, have said we're going to hit pause on this. No sex changes for kids for at least the next eighteen months while we investigate. And in response to that, as you pointed out, one hundred prominent Australians have written a letter to the Queensland government saying this is a breach.
Of the Human Rights Act.
Children have a right, I would say, Caleb, when the Human Rights Act which says kids are too young to get a tattoo on their arm, but are old enough to ask for their breasts to be chopped off, will you ditch the Human Rights Act?
Well, this is the problem within training rights in law is that one person's rights always impinge upon someone else's rights. If you everything is a right, you can do it until it's ilegal. So once you start putting things in law and saying oh, well this is a right and this is not a right, that's how you end up in a position where a government can say, oh, actually, we should probably stop doing this until we've got a
bit more evidence, and then someone else is No. It actually says in law here that I can do whatever the hell I want because you're not able to intervene in medical treatment. Now they're saying there will be court cases because of this, will bring on the court cases. As far as i'm concerned because they if the government loses those court cases and it means that treatment has to go ahead again, it might actually prompt them to
do something about this leaky legislation. But to your point earlier, Lucy, about the fact that often these kids have other conditions going on. There are two very distinct types of children who present with gender dysphoria. There are children who it is obvious they've had a problem since they were tiny, right The parents can come in and say, I've always known there's something going on here, and generally they don't have any other history.
But generally they don't have any other history of mental conditions.
Then you have children who somewhere around the onset of adolescents or puberty, start to say I have gender confusion, and often they do have other mental conditions.
And the way we.
Treat it at the moment in Australia in particular, but the rest of the world has been waking up this except for us, is to say, okay, we'll put you on the puberty blockers, which barses some time to work out what's going on. But what they then do is spend all their time focusing on the gender issue and not all the other things around it, and often when you treat the underlying causes, it all goes away.
Avain, you're also forgetting the propaganda that's being pushed in the education system, basically telling them you can be a boy if you like, you can be a girl, and hey, we're not going to tell your parents either that you feel this way. Gavin Newsom over there in California signed into legislation that basically will come, the government will come and take your child off you if you disagree with them wanting to transition or identify something else that's madness.
Young girls are the most susceptible to this type of ideology, and again, as I said, the propaganda that's being pushed on them also needs to be factored into that question.
The thing that astonished me about this story is one of the signatures to this letter criticizing the Queensland government for pausing sex changes for kids is the co director of anglic Care and the Wesley Mission.
You're going to wonder what on earth is happened.
To the Anglican sick people, people sick.
You've senior person is supporting this kind of stuff. Unbelievable. We're going to go to a break.
When we come back, look at what's making news tomorrow.
Including a shocking warning from the Director of ASIO about foreign murder plots on Australian soil that's coming.
Up in this moment. Welcome back.
Well, let's take a look at what's making news tomorrow. A big day of news on the Australian front page with the head of ASIO Caleb making some pretty sobering warnings.
Indeed, state sponsored murder plots is the headline. As your chief, Mark Burgess has issued a pre election warning that the country phases its most complex and challenging security environment on record, revealing that foreign states have plotted to kill Australian based critics and steal state defense Secretsnti Semitic attacks will escalate, and terrorists are being radicalized online at a younger age than ever. Here was mister Burgess talking about this election interference.
We have established specialist teams and operations to work with the Electoral Commission and our other partners to protect the integrity of our phole. We will be watching if a foreign regime tries to meddle in the election by pressuring diasper groups, directing foreign language newspapers, spreading disinformation on social media or using any other tactics. Sometimes seems overseas, we will know and we will act.
He also talked about the escalation of rhetoric around Hamas and the war in Palestine. Here he is talking about the escalation of anti Semitism, which he says will only get worse.
The normalization of violent protests and intimidating behaviors lowered the threshold for provocative and potentially violent acts. Narratives a originally centered on free and Palestine expanded to incitements to kill the Jews. These threats transitioned from harassment and intimidation to specific targeting of Jewish communities, places of worship, and prominent figures. I'm concerned these attacks have not yet plateaued.
Now on these state spotted murder plots. The story in the OS goes on to say that in one case, which was thwarted, a foreign intelligence service tried to silent to human rights activists by getting them to go to a third party country where they were set to be killed or there would be an accident quote unquote stage. And more recently, there was one where asio intelligence indicated that a different government.
This is another of.
Foreign hostile intelligence service entirely wanted to harm and possibly kill one or more individuals on Australian soil. And if you go to the Canberra Times tomorrow they have more reporting on this where they say Zo Boss reveals Bagabid, a foreign intelligence service hid surveillance devices in gifts given to Australian defense personnel by members of a foreign foreign military that he, the Director General of Asia, Mark Burgess,
has disclosed. I mean, no one is letting up in their effort to try and get information from US, but more concerningly to actually kill Australians by any means possible, whether that be on Australian soil or by luring them overseas with the hope of being able to kill them.
Well, it seemed to be two key things here. One is our signing of the Orchis Agreement. The Camera Times story, I note Mike Burgess says that is a major reason why Australian defense personnel are being targeted by foreign adversaries. And of course, as you heard him say, there the continuous protests regarding Palestine.
Which have gotten increasingly more raucous.
But I got to say lucy and not disparaging the head of Asia at all, but he didn't say anything then about what we're seeing with regards anti Semitism that you wouldn't have heard people on Sky News saying for the past six, seven, eight, nine, ten months. We all know that things have been getting worse. We all know that they haven't plateaued yet, and people have been warning for fifteen months now that things are out of control.
It's good to see that our intelligence services are finally coming out and saying it.
It's only taken them that long to come around and to actually get on board with it, right. And this also, it must be said, and for a lot of people at home from wherever you're watching, it's not just in Sydney that this is occurring. So I was recently speaking to a friend of mine. I'm a born and raised Camber girl, and I said, what are you up to today? And she said, I've just come back there in construction.
I've just come back from our job site scrubbing off anti Semitic slurs and all of these really nasty things directed at Israelis off of our job sites. And I said, wow. I said, I haven't heard much of this being reported, and she said, because the sad reality is is that we've just gotten so used to it now that it's not only costing us a lot of money, but she said, depending on which particular surface, it becomes even more difficult
to remove it. And we don't want any of our Israeli friends and people in our neighborhoods et cetera to be exposed to this. So we're having to dedicate so many of our efforts into going back repeatedly and trying to scrub all of this off. This isn't just a
problem in Sydney, it's a problem Australia wide. And the fact that it's taking them this long to recognize that by people chanting things like from the River to the Sea, that that's not an incitement to hatred and that you're not calling for the death of Jews is pretty insane.
Right.
Why is it that you, particularly the head of ASIO right our intelligence agencies, who should know what these types of militia groups and what these terrorist groups, how they operate, and the chance and slogans that they're using. How has it taken you this long to come around to the fact that this is an incitement to hatred and violence and that you are calling for their death and destruction.
And he also mentioned Burgess mentioned when he was talking about election interference that they would be monitoring the heavies being put on ds as in Australia, and he expanded on this further and said that foreign governments are coming after activist journalists and ordinary citizens and in some cases had actually been putting the heavies on diaspora in Australia and trying to tell them that they had to go home and answer questions for things that were going on
in the country Australia that they had moved to. So clearly you have countries and that they haven't said which ones they are, but I think you and I can read between the lines and guess which ones they might be. Are telling people who've migrated here no no, no, no, Noah, you've got to come back and tell us what's going on. That is the level they will go to to undermine us, and we always need to remember that.
And can I also broaden the scope just a little bit here and people watching this may feel like, well, I'm not in ISRAELI I'm not Jewish. I don't feel like I have any dog in this fight. And I've said it already before. I'm a Christian woman. If this was occurring in churches, right, if this was the Catholic Church being attacked and people of the Catholic faith being attacked, Christians being person acuted, I would feel just as concerned, and so should every Australian about this.
Right.
We are a multicultural country. We're incredibly diverse. One of the things that we celebrate in our nation is is the fact that we are able to all coexist peacefully and respect one another from diverse cultural backgrounds. You know, everyone should be concerned by what's happening with this rise in antisemitism, regardless of which faith and which God you pray to.
Absolutely, let's go to the front page of tomorrow's Herald Sun.
Interesting story exclusive blood Sorry, budget bloodbath looms with plan to cut thousands of government jobs Allen.
That's the premiere wields the acts.
The Allen government is working on plans to slash several thousands of jobs from the state's public service in an expected budget blood bath. It comes after its wages bills soared by three billion dollars in one year, and as a report reveals major projects have blown out by eleven point seven billion dollars. Well, I think everybody knows that the public service in Victoria is completely out of control, both in terms of the number of staff and the
wages being paid. And you know things are bad when the head of Victorian labor says we might have.
To cut a few public service jobs.
They are hurrowing for cass their paws out.
I don't think I've ever heard of a labor government ever say we need to get rid of public service.
This never happens. That is just how in the crap they are in Victoria.
Yesperate, and what a beautiful city. That place was right, and I say was past tense because pre COVID times that was the place you wanted to be right. The culture, the coffee, the people.
It'll be restored.
They're going to build a Dan Andrews' statue.
Just before we go to a break, Lucy, quickly, you've got the Daily Telegraph with news on the train strike.
I do.
And finally the headline is we are back on track, but Dunton wants Elbow to end the strikes for good. This discussion about, obviously whether or not Prime Minister Albani you will intervene in what has been an absolute disaster where the citizens of Sydney have been held to ransom by this union that have acted completely out of control. They're anarchists. It's absolute madness. But this is only going on until July one, right, so we can celebrate this
reprieve all we like. But they don't have much time.
Yep.
The New Southwest Government had a win at the Fair Work Commission, So, as Lucy said, there's been a reprieve for Sydney commuters.
You can get your train tomorrow.
We're going to go to a break when we come back. The New Zealand tourism campaign that sounds like a clearance sale will show you.
That in a minute, you can tell us where you reckon.
It will get people who encourage people who visit New Zealand that's coming up in seven Welcome back now. I've got to admit I love New Zealand. I've been there many times. It's a great place to holiday. But they might want to rethink their latest tourism campaign, which is running on radio and social media in Australia. Spec a fortune for this campaign. I've got the campaign advertisement. It
reads sale now on. Everyone must go even you don't miss out now The problem, of course, is that the number of people leaving New Zealand to come and live in Australia is a record numbers. So when you see an adversement for New Zealand saying everyone must go, it doesn't make you think, yeah, I should go there. It just reminds you they're all leaving New Zealand to come to Australia.
Will of course they are, well would they?
They also need to point out how many bloody sheep there.
That's why they need to get so many people to move in, because how many sheep is that they have per person in New Zealand.
It's through the roof.
They don't have a good rip with those sheep, bather not a minute though.
I don't know why they're feing here to come to I mean, look, we may have a change in government. We never know. We're hoping certainly for it. But they've got a conservative government over in New Zealand.
That's true things lately.
Yeah, indeed, I'll tell you where things haven't gone better. That's a casey council in Melbourne. They've been in administration since twenty twenty. There was an IBAC investigation into money changing hands between counselors and developers, et cetera. They've had their first public meeting in five years this week, and this is how it went.
The council meeting.
We'll resume at seven point thirty five. We'll all councilors and staff vacate the council chamber for ten minutes under Clause seventy nine of the City of Casey Governance Rules.
I'm adjourneying this meeting tonight and it will resume at a date to be determined.
We'll all counselors and staff vacate the council chamber.
I mean, as far as.
I'm concerned, that is democracy and action. The people say we don't want you, and they shut down the meeting exactly as it should be. They had to call in a police escort because they were so worried that the rap bays were going to come after them. And among the issues that the residents were complaining about on the night was that a family collection of hot rods and jet skis had been impounded by the council.
Under new local.
Rule, we've got to pay fees hundreds of dollars to have a caravan or a car that you're storing or a mini bike on your property, No wonder. Rate payers are outraged and the police should be there to take the councils away.
That's it from us. Coming up in just a moment, it's the Rena Pennahey Show. A good night