Late General, Welcome to the Late Base.
Well, good evening and thanks for joining us on the Late Debate. I'm James Macpherson with Liz Storer and Caleb Bond. Coming up tonight, the New Zealand Parliament is set to grant a mountain the same rights as human beings. You think we've got problems here in Australia not being able to tell the difference between a man and a woman. Well across the ditch, they don't know the difference between a pile of rocks and a person.
We'll get to that a bit later.
Plus, when we look at the papers, the number of businesses going out of business in Victoria reaches record levels. And an interesting story on the front page of Tomorrow's Australian, a violent former immigration detainee claims he's not a threat to the public right after being released from prison having been convicted of fighting in public.
We'll get to that one.
Shortly, but you know, on the Late Debate we love to make fun and have a laugh at local councils doing dumb things, and to be honest with you, every week we are spoilt for choice.
Normally it's fun stuff.
You know, they fly the pan sexual flag over town Hall, or install the kid's playground with no kids play equipment in it. But we want to draw your attention tonight to the City of Melbourne where they used ten million dollars of pandemic recovery money to bankroll forty kilometers of bike lanes through the CBD. Now you should immediately be
able to see the problem with this. The money, partly provided by the state government, was meant to help small businesses by kickstarting the city economy that was dilapidated by the pandemic lockdowns. Well what did the city councilors do? They thought, you know what, nothing will help inner city retailers more than removing cars from the city and replacing them with barely used bike lanes that serve no practical purpose aside from scratching an ideological itch in town Hall.
The Herald Sun got hold of freedom of information documents that revealed the recovery fund there was one hundred million dollars in total, but they used well over ten million dollars for things like street projects and the bike lane rollout. There was also a two point six million dollar program for streetscape improvements at the southern end of Elizabeth Street.
The biggest spend, of course, from the fund was ten million dollars for as I said, that ideological fetish that so many councils have for bike lanes, Liz, bike lanes are not going to help revive the city center.
That's what the money was for.
If you're a Victorian business person, it's just one hit after another.
Oh, this adds insult to injury.
Not only are you against the wall, many of them did not survive as we well know. Not only are you against the wall because of the tyranny of this state government, but now you find out councils have also got their fingers in the pie of what is supposed to be government money to help you get back on your feet revitalize the CBD. Bike lanes do the exact opposite,
and the council admits in this report. Or because it was pandemic and everything, we didn't have time to liaise with the public as to whether they actually wanted them or not. The fact that in any CBD here in Australia bike lanes are given precedents over cars is absolutely nuts.
Unless you are let's say.
Between fifteen and forty five years of age, you're able bodied, the weather's nice, you don't have much luggage to take to work, and you live close by.
Because you're not going to cycle.
What twenty k's either way, then you're going to need a car.
Or public transport.
Those should be the two priorities in any CBD. The amount of times I'm in Sydney CBD because I'm blessed enough to live not too.
Far away, I never see anyone in the bike lanes. Where are the bikes? This isn't Holland.
Okay, So City of Melbourne that have tracked out forty k's of this stuff to the tune of ten million dollars, I bet even the cyclist in Melbourne is like, what a flip and waste of money.
Well, see, it's not really about the cyclist. It's more about the hatred of cars. And then they know they are not actually going to be any cyclists on.
These biplanes a gender.
It's put the bike lane there so that it's difficult for you to then drive your car through the Melbourne CBD and then you crack it and say, well I'm not going to do that again. But of course, in order for the Melbourne CBD to operate, cafes, restaurants, shops, etc. I mean, all the things in these places they get there somehow, and I'll give you a tip. They don't come on the back of a bike. Actually, well, that's
not entirely true. There are such things as by couriers, but most things get delivered in a van or a truck, and the vans in the trucks have to get around the CBD in order for the CBD to operate, and they need somewhere to park as well. They had quite large vehicles, and it's almost impossible to do that in most capital cities now because they either can't get a park because all the parking space has been taken up
by by lanes. All the by plane takes out an entire lane of traffic, which means that it's now essentially one lane of traffic and then one lane of parking.
And so when a.
Truck decides it needs to reverse parallel park, everyone's backed up to Wilson's Promontory in Victoria waiting for this track to be able to park because you cannot get past them. And I want to know two point six million dollars spent on quote unquote beautifying improving the streetscape of the southern end of Elizabeth Street. Now I know you were in Melbourne over Christmas. I don't know whether you went
to that end of Elizabeth Street. But I lived in Melbourne at this time, and I looked at that end of Elizabeth Street almost every day. I would walk from South Bank through the underpass, you know, over the river, through Flint of Street Station and there would be Elizabeth Street. And I don't remember doing anything to beautify it. I just remember it being full of more homeless people and drug users than it was when I arrived in the city.
Well you know what they did there.
They closed off one side of Elizabeth's and.
They put down fake turf.
Yes, but then it and it became a gathering point for drug addicts.
Yes, I was almost anti social behavior. So I thought, they can't do that. So the council came back.
They took away the plants, they took away the park benches, they ripped up the artificial turf. They left that section of street block to traffic, which goes to your point. This isn't about bikes or any other things, about time to remove cars from the city, which does the exact opposite.
And yet the Council.
The coun still keep saying this was quote as people change their travel habits during the pandemic, You mean as you forced them to change their travel habits because it's more of a nightmare than ever to have a vehicle, whether a car or a truck in Melbourne.
CBD, thank you very much.
They always all always put across their agendas as oh no, this is what the people want. That was written in the same report where they admitted with in liaise with the community regarding this, and it makes just out and out lying, and it.
Makes even less sense considering the city that Melbourne has now become what the CBD has now become, which is an entertainment place on the weekend.
People don't go there to work during the week.
The numbers of people in Melbourne during the week are below what they were before the pandemic. On the weekend they're much higher than they were during the pandemic because people are at home working during the week, and then on the weekend they decide, well, we're going to go into the city and have some fun. Then you can maybe justify riding your bike to work during the week because you're just going to go there and then come
home at the end of the day. But you're not going to get on your bike with the kids, go into the city, have six pints over lunch and then ride the bike back home, are you.
It just does not make any seat.
Speaking of things that don't make any sense, unless, of course, you have the lefty hive mind, the woke mind virus. As Elon Musk likes to talk about the Australian Classification Board.
This is the mob that looks at books and movies and video games and cassettes.
Well, actually we don't have cassets. How did I come up with cassetts? I don't know where that came from.
Look you're too young to rememberchanic, no, no no.
I had cassettes in the boomboxer record songs off of FM radio and whatever. When I was a kid classic FM. I was recording music off.
Of it should be. I don't know how I came up with casseets.
I mean, I haven't used a cassette v years nor a CD mind you, but I do have lots of old radios. Maybe that's where my mind was going. But anyway, they look at the cash hets if anyone still makes them. The CDs the albums that get released and put a rating on them. You know, you go to the movies, it's G or it's PG, or it's M, or it's M A fifteen or.
It's R or whatever.
That mob now wants to take their responsibilities even further. They want to go into the past and reclassify movies.
And books, et cetera.
Because, wait for it, there might be something in a movie or a book that was made written fifty sixty, seventy eighty years ago.
Wait for it, it reflects the time it was written.
Who would have known, I mean, imasion making a movie about the eighteen hundreds or the seventeen hundred, it's got.
Slavery in it.
Well, we must now go back and reclassify that movie so that you know before you watch it that it has slavery in it. I mean, for goodness sake, what we are talking about here is not the classification board. It's the trigger warning board. They have to now, They want the power now to go back and look at everything that has ever been made to say, oh, well, you know, the standards have changed, so we must now
apply to dose standards to the old product. As if you didn't already know when you were watching Gone with the Wind that it wasn't made yesterday. This is from the Australian. The federal government agency that is the Classification Board wants to reclassify publications every ten years. It's told her view of Australia's classification scheme. They cite the British Sensor's reclassification of classic children's film Mary Popp'in's For Heaven's
Sake last year. The Australian Senser needs says that it needs new powers to proactively reclassify our cake and out of step movies. I'll repeat that our cake and out of step.
Movies, books and TV shows.
That no longer a line with the current guidelines or community standards, as if we don't already know that when we're watching it or reading it. We know that slavery is bad, We know that many things that happened in the past are no longer the standards of today.
Do they really think people are that dense that they.
Put on an old movie or pick up a Dickens book and they're.
Like, heavens, that's how life should we live now? I can't believe it. Like we know, we.
Don't need to be told I mean, the next thing they want is the power to hold public book burnings. But we've s where this goes because they've done this in the UK, whether it's in Enlightened Doctor Seuss, whether it's Role Dal. They've put warnings on those books. Some of them have been withdrawn from shelves, episodes of Friends have been changed, trigger warnings outed because people have been upset by modern sensibilities. Mary Poppins, when it was released
in nineteen sixty four was rated universal. That rating was repeated in twenty thirteen, but last year it was reclassified as PG because it uses the word hottentots I've never heard of before, but apparently that refers to an African person, but they used it for chimney sweeps whose faces were
covered in soot, and of course that's very racist. There's a fatal flaw with what the Australian Classification Board is doing here, and that is the assumption that our morality is improving, that somehow we are more enlightened than our grandparents' generation.
I would argue that that is a big call.
We are the generation that can't differentiate between a man and a woman, and we suppose that sense of morality is superior to our grandparents. I think the world was a much more moral place when my grandparents were alive than it is these days. So the arrogance of the Censorship Board to believe that somehow they are superior to previous generations and should go back and reclassify and mop up the mess of our grandparents, for instance, is just astonishing.
Well, thankfully this doesn't have a snowflake's chance in the hell of getting up.
Let's all be angry that they tried.
Sure, but given we are currently in the environment just off a few months after the comprehensive defeat of the Combating Misinformation Disinformation Bill, I was watching Minister O'Neill on Sunrise just this morning and she was shooting this down the woman best known as she who would fail finger painting in Albanesi's cabinet. Even she was like, no, no, this is a terrible.
Idea, not going to happen.
Barnaby Joyce was saying, there's no way the Communications Minister Michelle Roland would allow this. I'm thinking I still remember how purple in the face jug yellar veins sticking out that woman was frothing over her amazing Combating Misinformation Disinformation Bill. But I take Barnaby's point, even she would have learnt her lessons. So I don't think this is going to get up by any stretch of the imagination. But I always encourage everyone every time.
Stuff cut like this comes up.
Remember what they tried on that bill that we're talking about, perfect example. Imagine if they got their way. What these guys are trying to do is edit history, which is indeed straight out of nineteen eighty four, the famous quote, who controls the pass controls the future, Who controls the
present controls the past. So those who are in power today are trying to make out like, oh, slavery never existed, Blacks were never subservient to white Oh, and men were never really really masculine, and women were never really really feminine and actually really liked men being really masculine. Now we just pump out movies where it's always.
A strong female lead. All the guys are pathetic.
Have you noticed that every single male in your average Hollywood film is just an absolute loser. He's down on his luck, he doesn't earn as much money as her, he's not as good looking as her, he's got a really bad self esteem. They have cast men for decades now as complete losers. Hollywood didn't about face and made all the women the strong, you know, kick down the door, real ball buster types, and people look at that and
admire that and think it's something so something else. You can be sure these people would be editing out of history is a time of the John Waynes, the type of man who slapped women's butt sheets, who were like ultra ultra like masculine, really rough and something, and all.
The chicks loved it.
But they want to reach classify movies that are quote out of step with current standards.
What is out of stepman?
And I hate.
Hypocrisy from the Australian Classification Board who while they want to go back and put trigger warnings on Mary Poppins and Gone with the Wind, just last year they approved a novel that depicted pedophiles gang raping children and a comic book that had basically violent pornography. They approved those works because of their literary, artistic and educational merits. These same people want to go back and edit versions of Friends and books by land Blab.
They're out of step.
James, the fox trot wrong?
Didn't you know that but you took me about you know, John Wayne slapping women on the barmers.
What happened to Benny Hill? Right?
This is something I don't know what they did with the classification of Benny Hill, but I remember as a kid watching Benny Hill on Channel seven on a Saturday nightgel I loved it.
I mean most of it went.
Over my head, the sexual innuendos, but I thought Benny Hill was the best thing ever. They don't show Benny Hill anywhere anymore.
That's what's wrong with the I wouldn't be able to watch the Pull Home.
I mean imagine all that.
You could not make a lot of the films and comedies of the sixties, seventies, eighties, particularly the UK ones. You know on the buses. Are you being served? I mean I think of Missus Slocum walking in on a cold morning saying that her puts it was frozen solid, right, and as a kid, that straight over the top of my head. But you couldn't make that stuff anymore, And they reckon, we haven't got new Puritanism.
Get and they don't.
They won't let us show it either, because then people would wake up to the fact that we are being robbed and TV was actually way better back in the day.
We haven't progressed, we've regressed.
Moving on now, President Trump is about to get a whole lot more popular with the younger demographic in America. You may recall TikTok was set to be banned in America. One hundred and twenty million American TikTok users, especially the left, were, of course, completely losing their mind.
Normally, when something happens, I would get on TikTok.
It's a complaining and I can't even do that. We learned so much about things we didn't know about, opportunities, places to eat, movies to watch, books to read.
I just seen the video of the girl that made the renegade dance and crag because I read a comment that was like the algorithm saying good bye?
Does this app was literally supposed to be my way out?
Well after and in executive order, Trump has managed to extend not it's the band's not completely off the table.
He wants to do a deal with TikTok.
So earlier this weekend, TikTok users melted down when they saw this on their screen.
Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now. A law banning.
TikTok has been enacted in the US. Unfortunately, that means you can't use it now.
We are fortunate that President Trump has.
Indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate.
TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned. Well this was true.
It turns out TikTok early ended up going dark for just twelve hours in the United States of America, and then Trump announces this is his idea for reinstating it. How do you like this?
As of today, TikTok is back. I said, I'll approve, but let the United States of America own fifty percent of TikTok.
So, whether you like TikTok or not, we're.
Going to make a lot of money.
We're gonna have TikTok's availing our people.
We want to avail them. True, we want all that data on them. China can't have it by themselves. We won in on this, Thanks very much. That's my read on this. It's quite hilarious. But the lefties don't care.
They're drying their tears because next time they logged into TikTok, they saw this wondrous message welcome back, Thanks for your patients and support.
As a result of President Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the US.
You can continue to create, to share, and discover all of the things you love on TikTok while we harvest your data like you wouldn't believe good thing or bad thing.
Well, look, I am troubled by the idea that TikTok and Elon Musk was pointing this out yesterday, that Twitter cand or x as it now is, can't operate in China because of course China wouldn't allow any sort of Western outfit to go and set up shop over there, but we do allow a company that has inextricable links to the CCPs all companies in China do to.
Set up shop in the US.
And then we say it's a free speech argument, Well, how far does your free speech go when you literally just hand opportunities to foreign powers to come over and start inserting things that are so discord et cetera.
And we know from the way that TikTok.
Is presented in the US and Australia and the UK the Western world, compared to the version of TikTok that's handed up in China, to kids. I mean over there are chosen science experiments, very homework stuff, and what they can only use it for forty minutes a day, et cetera. They're using TikTok to fill their kids' minds with things that actually matter. Over here, of course, the algorithm just fills kids' minds with brain rot. But that's what China wants.
If you can make weak Chinese sorry we Western children and strong Chinese children, that's exactly what China wants. So it makes total sense that you would want to go for a band. What Trump has done here is sort of taken what was the original proposition, which was that Byte Dance, the owner of TikTok, would have to divest its US version essentially to someone else want a continue operating. He said, well, why don't we come to an agreement
where we have fifty percent of the bargain. Now, whether or not they can actually do that remains to be seen, but he's shown his card and said, look, we'll let you operate, but you've got to play by our rules.
I don't see a problem with that.
It's a good business decision.
TikTok is worth an absolute fortune. I mean, it's eighteen billion dollars in advertising revenue last year. It's a good political decision because, of course Republicans have never exactly been popular with the younger demographic, although Kamala Harris failed miserably in that regard at the last election, attracting only about fifty four percent of young voters compared to well I was sixty percent by.
Previous Democrat candidates. But Trump now is the hero. We saw all those lefties having meltdowns.
They'll wake up today thinking thank God for our Lord and Savior Donald Trump, which is the first time I left he has ever said that. So politically it's good for him. But as you say, TikTok is like it's like cultural cancer. And Congress had agreed to ban this, the ban had been enacted. I know Trump is pro free speech, but is there a point at which you say this is a malignant force that is destroying our younger generation.
Added to that, there's the security concerns, let's ditch it.
Sure it's a political when sure he can say he really is the free speech, but are their bigger concerns?
Right?
But you see, is it about free speech because obviously there's a lot of other social media platforms. You've got Instagram, you've got all metas, you've got X.
There are other places that.
These same people can go that aren't CCP owned and controlled. We know that byte dancy is, as he pointed out, Caleb, So is it actually a freedom of speech issue?
That is my big question?
Like you say, X can't operate in China because they do not want that influence on the Chinese people.
They know what's good for them, and they're making sure.
That happens the way simply hasn't done the same by their own kids. And if I'm taking something off you that's actually quite damaging the vast majority of an impure brain. Rot Am I really limiting your freedom of speech? Or am I ensuring that you're going to spend your time doing a lot more intelligent things in the future.
And sure you may stick with what you're.
Doing, but go onto those other platforms and use those to do the exact same thing. Anyway, So I don't know that it is restrictive of freedom of speech. But something else Trump has promised to do, and I am beyond ampt for this, is release the files on the rfk jfk MLK assassinations check it out.
As the first step toward restoring transparency and accountability to government. We will also reverse the overclassification of government documents, and in the coming days, we're going to make public remaining records relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, as well as doctor Martin Luther King Junior, and other topics of great public and Jesse do it.
I never get tired of being right about absolutely everything. If he genuinely does this, and we don't get a redacted pile of crap. If he actually does this, this is going to change the game in terms of how massive sways of particularly the Western world, relate to their government, particularly the CIA.
This is going to do. This is why they haven't released it. They're all like all national security concerns. Yeah, of your own.
Concern You guys are the ones that are going to look absolutely terrible if and when this is revealed.
I mean, I can't tell you how excited I am.
Well will you suppose that?
I mean, look, none of us have read it, so I don't know what's actually in it will be the case we have.
Outside of these files, the stuff that we have put together in the succeeding decades. I mean, the proof is just mountainous at this point.
This will just be a final nail in the coffee.
The question was whether or not he goes through with it, because last time he said he was going to do this and then he backed off.
Exactly, which is why I keep saying if.
So, we'll wait and see if he follows through.
But it would be a huge step in rebuilding trust between the public and the government, which is completely eroded, especially after the COVID.
Stuff fixing estimate all that. I love this.
This is what Trump can do, right because he's an outsider, So no one's expecting someone like Trump to come in and suddenly say, you know what, let's open the windows, open the doors, let the.
Light shine in.
But of course, this is just one of about two hundred things he's planning to do on day one. It'll take the news media a week to cover just the things he's going to do in the first twenty four hours after inauguration. If he follows through, particularly on this one, you might even find out about the moon landing.
I already know about the moon landing. I already know about Well done, you guys, to I know that you're not literally taking this apart. He's by piece. Why isn't the flag moving? They've taken a part of the pot the photo.
I'm sorry you'll miss James.
The amount of chime the winders, I know it's pretty easy.
But the amount of time that has passed since these events occurred, there's very little reason now to say that we shouldn't be able to see those dogs. And the difference in terms of him last time not releasing it, and the difference to this time, I think is it last time he came to the with no political experience whatsoever. He walked in completely green, and then of course people got in his ear and told him what he could
and couldn't do, or should or shouldn't do. Forereas this time he comes in with total knowledge of how to do the job, how the system of government works, how the cogs work within the wheel, and so he will be much more confident to be able to make more decisions and other decisions and whatever that will allow him to do this, if he doesn't have to be scared anymore. I mean, this is literally his last throw of the dice.
He can't run again after this, so hell if he wants to get anything done, now is the time to.
Do it now.
I don't know whether you've been watching the tennis that's been going on, of course in Melbourne, the Australian Open. If you're watching US, of course that's much better. Don't go changing any channels.
Watch the late debate, but we will give you the process of.
What has been going on in the tennis, not necessarily the game going on on the court, but some of the going goings on around it. I don't know whether you've ever seen Tony Jones over on Channel nine TJ.
As they call him, Chompers, they call him.
He's on the Sunday Footy show during the al season, fills in all over the shop, he reads news, he fills in on the three a W Mornings, which he's doing at the moment, and he is one of their sports broadcasters, so he has been reading the sport at.
Night on Channel nine. He's also been involved in some of the coverage. Well.
On Friday there were Serbian supporters behind him when he crossed in to do his sports segment on nine News in Melbourne and they were charting away and having a good time and well this is how TJ took it.
The Novak Djokovic fan's there in full voice. Yeah, the chances are quite a surety Novak, he's overrated Novaksa has the Novack kick him in.
Boy, I'm glad they can't hear me.
Boy, I'm glad they can't hear me.
Oh, forgot about the TV camera in front of me going out to all of Melbourne Live. That will then get put on social media and go around the world, which it did, which is why this happened. Novak Djokovic, to winning a match, went to do the normal interview, so you win the game, the interview the winner, except he didn't do the interview.
He walked off.
He took the microphone and he said thanks for the fans, thanks to the fans, sorry, and handed the microphone Matt. He was like, hang on, why did Jokovic not do the interview? Well, he explained that old Mat TJ had insulted his country and his fans and until old Mate TJ and his Channel nine apologizes for it, he won't be given no interviews.
Well, I was hoping he's going to apologize in public, which he hasn't done yet.
Native into the Channel nine so That's.
The only reason why I didn't do the interview.
It was, of course not a great feeling for me, and it was quite awkward on the court.
Now. Of course, Jones in that early eclip mentioned you know, no kick him out, which is a reference to a national disgrace, which was the deportation of Novak Djokovic in twenty two twenty two when he came out to play in the Australian Open. It is a stain on this country that we kicked him out. But he just had to bring it up, just to rub the salt into
the wound a little bit more. Not forgetting, of course, the fact that Djokovic came back the year later in twenty twenty three and won the Australian.
Open, just to prove the point. But TJ rolled over and gave his apology. Well apology, I don't know you ever. Listen.
The comments were made on the news on the Friday night, which I considered to be banter. I considered it to be humor, which is consistent with most things I do. That the Jokovic camp was not happy at all with those comments.
Now.
As such, I immediately contacted the Djokovic camp and issued an apology to them. So this is forty eight hours ago for any disrespect that Novak felt that I had caused. And as I stand here now, I stand by that apology to Novak.
So here we are twenty days is it's the twentieth of January. They were twenty days into twenty twenty five. I did not have on my twenty twenty five bingo card an international diplomatic incident caused by chompers on Channel nine.
Jack.
There's so many problems with his First of all, I mean, he says it was banned it was a bit of humor because that's what he does. Well, he needs to find a different job, because it was so funny, it was cringe worthy. Beyond that, it was just stupid. You pointed out his comment. You know, lucky they can't hear. He's on television. That's his job.
Of course, it's going to go not just locally but internationally.
And of course, if you're going to make a joke, don't make a joke of Novak Dokovich, the man who was persecuted by our government for the crime of standing up for bodily autonomy during the COVID pandemic, and then the apology. It's the first apology I've ever seen where someone says, I stand by my apology.
Is that you know why apology?
It was forty eight hours ago, and to be honest, I've reconsidered you might.
Want to reissue it. He should have said, you know what, it was a stupid thing to say.
I wasn't thinking. It wasn't funny. It was a dumb thing to say. I apologize unreservedly. Dokovic is an absolute champion, and I'm really sorry for you.
He completely wasn't sorry, though, he was completely not sorry.
That apology had all the charm of a colossomy bag hitting a windshield. This guy just stood there making excuses, going, oh, I just I thought it was being funny, insinuating the team Djokovic were actually just precious little souls. They couldn't take it.
He was cracking a joke, and.
They've cracked the UNO once because they don't have thick enough skin. That is genuinely, he just piled on the insult in that apology. It wasn't an apology at all. They of course have taken the apology. They want to get on with the game. Good on them, But the fact that Channel nine would have written that out word for word and thought, oh yeah, this sad excuse of an apology with all the genuine of a vanity license plate.
Let's go live on it. This will really, you know, get rid of the international stink.
This is caused because once again Australia we are in international headlines for treating this guy like dirt, for doing absolutely nothing wrong. Every year he rocks up nearly every year, he wins ten times the Australian Open, and this time we've got the official partner of the Australian Open, the official network covering it. Their guy decides to call him has been a loser, Kick him out the thing.
There's no excuse for this whatsoever.
The other weird thing about that apology is instead of looking straight down the camera and saying you know what, I regret what I said or whatever, they filmed the apology where he's being much sort of like talking about and we just kind of are listening in, which is a really odd way, I would.
Say, genuine way.
But can I just say, master stroke of Djokovic just taking to Twitter. That video that you saw of him just there has over sixty six million views.
So Channel nine could get stuffed. Beat that fat cats.
He just bypassed the nasty media posted by himself filming himself onto his own Twitter account and the world was watching. So who needs these nasty media types anyway? It's just like, you know what, you want to insult me after I've come all this way. Novak has already talked at length about the fact that he's genuinely traumatized coming back.
Into Melbourne because he was locked up like.
A criminal in Chrisportation at Christmas sent home. He said, even the food apparently got some sort of lead poisoning from it. We did so atrociously in terms of looking after him, not looking after him at all.
And this guy's joking about it for shame.
All right, before we go to a break, I want to get your opinion on a coalition policy. Peter Dutton has come out and said that if elected, he will legislate mandatory sentences for people who commit terror offenses and
for people who display terrorist symbols. Now, this is an interesting move because Anthony Alberenezi appointed a special Envoy for Anti Semitism to advise him and the government on what they should do will She advised that they should implement mandatory sentences, and Anthony Alberanzi said no to his specially appointed envoy, but Peter Dutton is saying yes to Anthony Albanese specially appointed envoice.
So Dutton is proposing.
One to five year minimum mandatory sentences for anyone who displays a terrorist flag, has bala Hamas or a terrorist symbol including the Nazi symbol Caleb good move or bad move.
I'm going to have to pull the splinters out of my ass on this one because I am in two minds, because part of me says that anyone who has any sympathy for a terror organization ought to be deported fly.
The flag even more so.
The one thing I worry about, though, is that when you ban or outlaw certain ways of thinking, as a borring as they might be, they don't disappear. They just go underground, and it then potentially becomes even harder to idea.
What type of mandatory min sentences are you saying it shouldn't even be illegal to waiver has bluff?
The idea troubles me to some degree because I just worry that the ideology doesn't go away. And if you tell someone that the way they think is bad, they actually have less reason than to do anything about it.
You don't deradicalize that.
Their organization is to kill certain people. Isn't waving the flag incitement to violence?
Quite illegal?
Quite quite possibly.
I mean, I just worry that if you cannot identify clearly idea.
I mean, you look, if you feel like you come out.
Way there's a black blake, we know the bloke to keep an eye out, or we know the bloke you need it ought to be in a deradicalization program. But they're not going to stop saying these things. That's the only thing that worries me is they will do it. They will just do it in places where you don't know they're doing it, which I think makes it more difficult to identify them and potentially do something.
Yeah, I'm on that as a as a free speech absolutist, as a free expression absolutist, even if I think you hold the most abhorrent views in the world, I want you to express them so the authorities know your name, know your address. It actually helps them out exponentially. And I think there's a lot to be said. I just do not like banning things, period. And as we discussed last week. Mandatory sentencing. Minimum mandatory sentencing.
That is an absolute can of worms.
Because it does away with the situations in which people might.
Be when they commit these acts.
Also, I do think this is quite a bit of window dressing by the Libs here, because the vast majority of flags flown at the rallies that we've seen are not Hamas or Hezbla flags. They are the Palestinian flag, period, So it sounds great. They're probably trying to get votes from certain people in the community. Makes sense coming up to an election, but I think that's all that is.
Essentially.
I'm going to disagree.
If you're waving a terrorist flag, you're inciting violence against a particular grip in the community.
Not only that, but you're harassing, bullying and threatening them. It should be bad.
We're going to go to a break when we come back. Look at the papers in just a moment, welcome back to the late debate. Let's take a look at what's making news in tomorrow's papers and Liz Donald Trump is dominating tomorrow.
In more ways than one. Check out these headlines The Courier, Mail and New Dawn get It instead of Dawn It says Donald Trump has promised the blitz of executive orders he will sign after taking the oath of office as US President for a historic second time today, will fix every single crisis. This is a direct quote, fix every single crisis facing our country end quote and Herald.
In a new golden age for America.
Talk about talk and beg but if there's one guy who can deliver on it to the advertiser. Now, Don goes for woke, kicking it all out, ready to launch his conservative revolution. Newcastle Herald They've all got this picture of him doing that iconic YMC hag dance Don's Party, the headline reads.
And lastly the Herald's.
Son Maachroman Trump back as president.
Tail to the chief. Love that also on the front page of The Herald's son.
Business sick in Vic, Victorian businesses are collapsing at a nation leading rate. A soaring operating expenses, coupled with cost of living pressures and an aggressive taxation offers crackdown on unpaid debt force.
An alarming number to close.
It says. The state had a seventy one percent increase in insolvency appointments in the six months to December.
My goodness, these numbers.
Are eye watering, but oh well, Melboyne, at least you've got ten forty kilometers of bi planes.
In your CBD.
Any minute now, they're going to lift these businesses from the dust. Being the ten million that should have been spent on keeping these guys in business.
The city just decided now by Clanes instead. I'm sure.
I mean, you know it all comes out in the Welsh at the end of the day.
Not We really surprised. So many businesses are going bust in Victoria, and today simple Hellen announced her big plan to revive the state was to force the state's fifteen hundred petrol stations to lock in their prices for twenty four hours each day. That's going to save some pennies, but people really need pounds in Victoria and property taxes.
You're not allowed to drill for gas, which means the price of energy is through the roof.
We could go on and on the cost of security because of crime. There's a million things she could do that would make a difference. She's tinkering with fuel prices so.
They may not need pounds because they've certainly taken a pounding in Victoria and it says here that this has made up a lot of these numbers by the hospitality sector, which it says he had a sharp increase on this time last year in terms of insolvencies, because of course, you know, in a cost of living crisis, what's one of the first things that you say, okay, well i've got a four go that it might be takeaway or going out for dinner, or buying a coffee in the morning, etcetera.
They're the things that you cut back on, and so that's.
Good for you.
It means you've got some more money in your pocket. But more than likely the person running that place where you went for dinner was a small business owner and now they have no business at all.
They've gone to the wall.
Their business may well have been attached to their house mortgages collateral, they may have lost the house. I mean, the follow on effects of all of this are really serious when we talk about businesses going under. Let's go to the Australian Now interesting story here says seeds of
positivity for Albanezi Trump relationship X envoy. Former Australian Ambassador to Washington, Dennis Richardson says the early signs are positive for the establishment of a good working relationship between Anthony Albanizi and incoming US President Donald Trump. He made the comments as former form she is current. That was wishful thinking. I'm just hoping later in the year she will be
former Foreign Minister Benny Wong. She touched down in Washington to attend the inauguration, and of course she'll be going there with Kevin Rudd, and she flagged a meeting with the incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio, noting his recent endorsement of the Orcist Security Agreement. But as you read on in this story, I didn't come across anything that told me why we should have any positivity about the relations.
Dallas. What are we basing this positivity on? Because I'm genuinely confused.
Well, I think he says seeds of positivity. Pennywong touched down in the US, so that's the positive for.
She made it.
She was not more than she's done that.
So whether those seeds will actually bear any fruit.
Can't see anything. Yeah, yeah, Germany.
I thinks Dennis good to know the seeds.
If only if wishful thinking underground, then we wouldn't have to listen to it.
For heaven's sake. Oh the seeds are there. She's touchdown.
It means that her visa hasn't been canceled.
So I suppose that's a positive, right. How is this three yard where no threat?
Violent former detainee? Sears a violent former immigration detainee convicted of kidnapping and breaking into and freed under the High Court in did y Q ruling has been quote unquote set up for failure and claims most detainees are not even threats to the public. Well, if there is anyone I'm going to take that advice from, it's definitely going to be here.
My favorite part of what he says is he says, you know, the money is spent on you know, electronic surveillance and tags and ankle bracelets and that.
Sort of thing. It should have been spent on rehabilitating me.
Oh better that I need rehabilitating.
Game, But you know, you could have done some rehabilitation. What's rehabilitation these days?
About these detainees, And it turns out we were wrong all along.
They're completely harmless. To worry according to one of them. Wow, yeah, compelling and rich Right.
I'm ons from prison having been convinced it's got out fighting in public.
I kidnapped. There's no problems, all right, Let's go.
To the Northern Territory News.
The headline reads defense dollars experts call for mega spending boost.
As Australia's top strategists.
Brainstorm how to improve national security. Well, we could have a military or a navy or something like that might help. A submarine or.
Two would be good.
A group of experts is calling on the government to lift defense spending to three percent of gross domestic product by twenty twenty eight twenty nine. Our current defense spending is just slightly under two percent. I think of gd REPEA, which is virtually nothing, and you would think, the way the world is now, with the geopolitical situation, that three percent of gdp G you might have to cut back on or I don't know, flagpoles on the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
Maybe cut back on a referendum here or there. That would divide the nation.
Some things like that. Some bike lanes, not.
The bike lanes, where are the.
That's just not three don't you know that the soldiers rolled in on the bike.
Maybe that's what it is.
If we've just got bike lanes everywhere, no one's going to want to invade.
That's a very good point, though.
They can just remove the barriers and turn them into nice little roads when the Chinese rock up. But because if you want to go right back to the start, you've actually got to create a country that people want to sign up to the defense force to defend. But were we not last year talking about somewhere up in fan North Queensland, at a military base where you couldn't even have multiple people going to the toilet because it
climbed up the sewerage system. If that's the military bases we've got in this country, and we've got strategists, top strategist sitting around, Oh, what can we do to improve the national security? Have toilets for maybe give soldiers working toilets.
As a good basis.
We're sitting, Oh God help us, we're going to go to a break when we come back. The New Zealand Parliament is about to give a mountain the same rights as if it were a person.
Talk about that.
Well, if you think things are weird here in Australia, get a load of what they're doing in New Zealand. The Parliament is about to grant the rights to a mountain as if it were a human being. Mount Taneraki on the North Island of New Zealand will be classified legally as a person, which means tourists who quote mistreat the mountain whatever that means, will be liable as if they have mistreated an actual person. Clearly they don't do science in New Zealand, but they do do Maori spirituality.
The mountain is regarded as an ancestral mountain, which means on that basis it can be classified as a human I have questions Calebin this. If someone dies on the mountains due to the negligence of the mountain, the mountain charged with murder. All the mountain used male or female toilets? Will this New Zealand mountain answer if you call him bro? And how long before this mountain is on welfare?
Well, the mountain may not identify with Bro. The mountain may well be gender fluid, James or gender neutral.
For all we know.
I think it puts a new spin on having rocks in your head, doesn't it.
Now?
This is the Union of the year. I mean we've been waiting for this.
You've been waiting for this like I have four years like literally since Donald Trump started playing YMCA, I have wanted to see it, and finally it has happened. The Village people Donald Trump together on his victory lap in Washington, DC, performing as they will again tonight in the morning. If you're awake for it, that is inauguration here it is.
It's fine to stay. I mean, how good is this stuff?
Right? I mean, who would have thought you would ever get Donald Trump and YMCA together. That man has led such a massive boost in their royalties.
They owe it to him to rock up and from Florida they do.
Who would have thought Donald Trump would be the best thing to happen to the village people or vice versa. I'll tell you what, the inauguration is going to be something to watch it live on Sky News three am tomorrow morning and just a few hours. It will be well worth watching, a historic moment. And who knows whether village people going to be part of that again?
Yes, yeah, the village village people.
If I think Snoop Dogg performing as well as I've seen that, I mean, you know, she Trump struggled a bit to get before. He struggled to get people to perform, because of course, you know, most artists are lefties, et cetera.
But I think he's got Snoop dogg. He's got the village. But what more do you want? Seriously, the d O double G.
Well, we'll all be watching at three a m. Maybe you will be too. But stick about courture right now is read The Pendent