Welcome, Wait bad.
Thanks for joining us. I'm James Macpherson with Liz Storer and Caleb Bond coming up tonight. Former NRL star John Hoppowate avoids jail for driving offenses. But wait until you hear what the court did dish out as a punishment, and when we get to the papers, the Albanesi government's plan to curry favor with the Trump administration over defense, and people racing to rearrange their finances ahead of an
anticipated Labor Greens alliance after the election. Speaking of the Labor Party, they're under fire today for failing to disendorse a candidate who accused the Pope of supporting pedophilia. Helen Medel, who's running for the Labor seat for Labor in the Queensland seat of Flynn, made the comment on Twitter five years ago. Was in response to someone else's tweet about Pope Francis visiting Iraq to promote justice. She tweeted in response,
don't know how he can promote common values. I hope no one else embraces the value of ongoing support of pedos. Now the Coalition have demanded senior Labour MPs condemn the comments and disindorse the candidate, but Claire O'Neil, among others, has refused to do so. Here she is speaking on television this morning.
She made some intemperate comments five years ago, and I think if we're counting out anyone who's ever said anything intemperate, then most people in Australia are probably never going to be eligible to sit for parliament.
Indeed, now the comments were slanderous. Helen Medel, for her part, has conceded she could have chosen her words more carefully, which is something of a concession. But the question remains, should she be condemned and disindorsed or is this trawling through people's social media history and a kind of weird archaeological dig something that should stop. Calebin Lie.
Of course it has to stop.
I mean, for heaven's sake, if we're going to judge everyone on something they've said in the past, as Clara O'Neill says, everyone would not meet the standard to get
into politics. And I think that's part of the problem now is you have a lot of people who don't even make it to the preselection stage of politics because you know, the party's gone back and dug up something and said, Ah, you know, it'll come out that when you were twenty four years old you slept with someone who was with someone else, and it'll all like it is ridiculous now that the level of puritanism that has seeped into politics, which means we miss out on what
could be genuinely good people, and the kind of people who might be inclined to go into politics are the kind of people who are also inclined to have strong opinions. And sometimes those opinions you will agree with, and sometimes those opinions you will disagree with. Sometimes those opinions you will disagree with viscerally, and you will think that what they have said is awful or repugnant or disgusting, but it doesn't change the fact that they ought to have
the right to say it. And I have to say good on the Labor Party for standing by their candidate and saying no, actually, we're not going to be puritans one hundred percent at the time and say that everyone has to be cast out because they said something that was a little bit below the belt. If only the Liberal Party had taken the same position on Ben Britton a couple of weeks ago, who they got rid of because he, as a former soldier, said that he didn't
think women should be on the front line. So the Liberal Party turfed him the next day when this came back from a podcast that was recorded a year ago, they dumped him.
And now they're trying to tell.
It was Jane Hume was taking this up this morning on Sunrise. Now the Liberal Party is trying to tell the Labor Party how they should be conducting their affairs with their candidates. Get over it. If you don't like what she said about the Pope, don't vote for her, as simple as that.
Indeed, although in this case she was just downright wrong, like Pope Francis for all his faults. And you all know I haven't been a massive fan of the last pope. It would be very difficult, I think near impossible to name a pope who.
Did more in this space.
He genuinely invited victims to the Vatican begged for their forgiveness. He changed the laws within Vatican City which meant that anyone found guilty of child sexual abuse, the definition of which he expanded, would get twelve years in the clink. That became the maximum sentence. He abolished the rule of pontifical secrecy, so that could no longer be exploited as a loophole to cover up pedophiles that were found within
the church. And in twenty twenty one, after he convened this massive get together of bishops and cardinals, over two hundred of them at the Vaticans sitting down just to address this one issue and how can we root this out? Their code of canon law underwent the most extensive revision in four decades, again just on this particular issue. That's how passionate he was about addressing this issue within the church. He certainly wasn't a denier. He certainly wasn't someone who
defended anything or covered it up. That isn't to say there are people in the church who have been found guilty of that.
But she certainly went after the wrong guy here.
I just have to point that out in fairness to the now departed Pope.
I do have one question about this, and I agree with what both of you have said, But she made a comment about the pope and pedophilia. Would the Labor Party have stood by her if she'd made a comment about Islam and pedophilia?
Do you think it's a very good point I highly doubted, and that's.
Too many votes in that.
But then that's the problem is there is a double standard. There's no denial of that. I think every religion should be up for debate and ridicule and anything else. I mean, you know, you can put the Life of Brian on television during Christmas or Eastern and no one sort of bats an eyelid. But can you imagine trying to put something critical of Islam or lampooning Islam on during Ramadan
for instance? You know you'd have your broadcast license taken away from you probably, Or you try to draw Mohammad in a cartoon and we know what happens to you. Then if you work for Charlie Hebdo in France, you get killed. I mean people get killed over.
The Labour candidate was lucky that she had.
Correct But on principle, I think you should be able to say anything you want. Good on the Labor Party for not buckling to pressure. I'll tell you what though, when we're talking about the Labor Party in buckling to pressure, good old Anthony Albanezi faced a little bit today, but he pretended none of it existed. Because it turns out in his electorate of Graindler, which I used to live in. By the way, I was redistributed into Sydney. So I now have to deal with voting for tenure plipusik or not.
I don't know whether that's a good thing or not. I could have cast a vote against the Prime Minister, but never mind. But on his how to vote card he has put all the Labor Party at that anyway, has put the Greens second in this particular candidate Hannah Thomas has carried on about how you know Israel's conducting genocide etc. And she's even said that if you vote with the Greens you are voting with Palestine. I mean,
you know. She couldn't make it any clearer that she's essentially a one issue candidate who's saying if you vote in Australia for an Australian party is somehow voting overseas. We know what her jigg is.
Well.
The Australian pointed out today that despite Albo carrying on about how we won't do any deals with the Greens of course if they end up in minority after the election, he's put the Greens second in his own electorate. So he was asked about this at his presser this morning, and he claimed that he didn't even know the name of the candidate.
I wouldn't have been able to tell you if you'd have asked me. He the canate was last time an in this seat. I wan on primaries. I won on primaries. That's why the system works. I got more than fifty percent of the vote. I look forward to people voting at number one for me and then filling in all the numbers just as they do to make sure it's a formal vote.
And I don't intend to.
Promote the name or the candidate of the Greene Party candidate.
You don't know the names of the candidates that you're up against. I mean, could you make it any clearer that you take the electors of Graindler for granted by saying, ah, well, last time I won by fifty percent of the primary vote anyway, so it doesn't bloody matter. I mean, I'm just standing here because well, I clipped the ticket, and I get to take the money and hopefully it'll be
PM again come May three. He doesn't care about the people if he's electric because he hasn't even looked at the ballot paper to see who he is running against, and it in bizarrely had a crack at The Australian for pointing out that the Labor Party had preferenced the Green second Ingraindler saying, I can't believe that the Australian is giving so much promotion to the Greens candidate.
I mean, please.
Mate, what is he does he take us? Well, clearly does take us for mugs if a he expects us to believe that he doesn't know the name of the opposition in his electorate. And you know clearly he is backing in a candidate that he's a one issue candidate. I mean she's made it very clear. Also she moved here as a foreign student and claims that she lives on unseeded lands. So I mean, I don't know, go back to where you came from, love, You didn't have to come and sit on someone else's land that you
think doesn't belong to you, was stolen from them. But he's backing a one issue candidate, which is on Palestine. And we'll have some more on that in tomorrow's OS a little bit later as well, because it turns out her relationship with Anthony Albanezi is a little bit frosty, which makes it even weirder that he's backing her in here. But imagine trying to say, oh, don't even.
There's only two options here, right, Either the Prime Minister is lying or he has no clue at all what's going on, which is pretty much the way he's run the country for the past three years. His claim that well, I get voted in on primary votes anyway, I don't
need preferences begs the question. So if you don't need preferences, why put the Greens number two, especially when you made such a big deal at the debate just the other night about the fact that you would not do any deals with the Greens and he could always at the last minute change his how to vote card and amend it if it's an honest mistake. This just goes to show what most Australians believe about the Prime Minister, that he's duplicious.
No, I honestly don't think he's lying.
He is safe as houses Greenler has been in a labor seats. It's nineteen forty six. The guy doesn't need to know their names. I find it strange that you then extrapolate that with him just oh, he doesn't give us stuff about people in his constituency. No, if my seat was that safe of houses, the names of my opponents are entirely inconsequential. And of course he's going to put the Greens second, because when you look at everybody else running in his seat, it is absolutely out of
the question. He's got a One Nation candidate, he's got a Trumpets of Patriots candidate, he's gotten Independent, and then he's.
Got the Libs.
So naturally he's going to choose his closest bedfellow, which is the Greens, which again poses no problem because she's never gonna get up in his seat, which he holds by a whopping seventeen point three percent.
Certainly that while he's got policy differences with Trumpet of the Patriots and One Nation, he stood in Parliament and he's accused the Greens of stoking social division. He's had the most serious charges to make against the Greens, so to put them second in his electric and I don't buy the idea.
No, he is more in common with them than any of the above.
Fact, he's accused them of creating social division, which is a very serious accusation, far more than we disagree on tax policy, or we've got different ideas about the housing cristis.
And I think it brings up the point that he keeps saying, we will, under no circumstances do a deal with the Greens. But if the how to the Vote card has the Greens second, I mean what you are saying is that if I don't get the electorate, I would prefer the Greens to be the next mob to get the electric But yeah, but it doesn't it doesn't make, It doesn't matter.
It was making in a storm and a deep I think it was either.
Twenty ten or twenty thirteen that there was a serious threat of the Greens taking Graindler and the Daily Telegraph had on the front page Save our Elbow, because it.
Was a serious thing.
So it's not out of the question that one day someone can come and take a seat like that. I mean, it's an inner city lefty seat. It's the kind of place where the Greens would eventually like to try to take it, I would think. But if he's saying I'd never do a deal with this mob, and then number two on your how to vote card, I mean you're not really making it. You've given up the game as to who you would prefer to be in power if you weren't in power.
And you can't tell me you wouldn't pay attention even if you were going to win by a landslide, that you wouldn't pay attention or to your opponent we ought to.
I genuinely wouldn't if you had that big a margin. And he's got other things to take up his brain space as PM, don't we know that?
Well? On Sunday we learned that Daniel Andrews COVID curfew.
Was not based on any expert health advice whatsoever. It wasn't even their idea, much less their recommendation. We found this out, of course, thanks to emails obtained by the Victorian opposition, thanks to a FOI.
Now we know that it.
Was Dan Andrews in his cabinet who decided to lock up five million Victorians during the hours of eight pm to five am, four goodness knows. I mean this was in twenty twenty as well as twenty twenty one. If you're in Victoria, I'm sure you remember it well. Now the only person left serving in the Labor Party that was on that cabinet is a woman by the name of now premiere just sent to Allan.
So when the press got to talk to her.
Today, they weren't going to miss out on the opportunity to ask her. What the heck were you guys thinking, Lady Hardy kurfew was introduced in twenty twenty wasn't based on poligizing.
Instead the decision of a state by cabinet. Why do cabinet make that decision to.
Be introduced with her?
Well, let's reflecting back on that period of time, and I know it was a tough time for so many Victorians.
So who made the decision? Was it Daniel Agris who made a decisions?
He's a curfew as part of that process working with public health officials on this particular map, The advice from the public health officials, from the then Chief Health Officer was look at doing what needed to be done to limit movement.
Except that they never recommended that by limiting movement you would introduce a curfew that required people to have a permit to leave their own homes for crying out loud.
Woman, of course, that was just more obfiscation.
She didn't actually make herself accountable.
For the decision that was made that affected.
Millions of Victorians over the course of two years, it's just more of nothing from this woman.
Can we fast forward to the election.
Because I'm sure that we are finally going to see the back of Labour's rule and reign in the state of Victory.
I wouldn't be too sure about that, because depending on how things go in the federal election, they'll circle on Jacinta Allen and hunt her and put Ben Carroll in the seat in the hope that that'll save them. And something tells her it may well, it may it may well actually do it, which would be a disgrace. But Jacinta Allen, being that the last person left and there were seven of them on this crisis cabinet, six of them, including the former premier Daniel Andrews, are no longer in politics.
What does that tell you about how they feel about how things went down and the fact that they could see the writing on the wall. So you've only got one left in Cina Allen and she refuses to front up. I mean this came out on Sunday in the Sunday Herald's Son and the work that David Davis did. I mean, he's been fighting for four and a half years to get hold of these documents through the courts, the tribunals, whatever.
The government has tried their darndas to stop this stuff coming out, but he was like a dog with a bone, and thank God for that. He's done excellent work on this count. But this came out on Sunday. Today is Wednesday. It's the first time that Cinta Allen has fronted the cameras since this story came out, so she's had plenty of time to come up with an answer to tell the press. And she could not give a straight answer as to who made the decision or why the decision
was made. I mean, she should fall on her sword. She's the only one left. She should be able to tell us exactly what happened in that room. There's a reason she doesn't want to tell us exactly what happened in that room, because if we knew how the sausage was made, we would be outraged. Some people certainly already are, but they're trying to protect their own bums.
It's as simple as ever.
And this is why a royal commission into what happened during the pandemic is so essential. So that people like to sen to Allan and Dan Andrews, who's left politics, as Caleb pointed out, and others are compelled to answer these questions rather than obfuscate. For her to respond as you saw there by saying, well, let's reflect, there was a tough time for Victorians. That was exactly the of the questions you created, the tough times, Why and why did you lie about it? Trying to brush it off
as well. You know, we were advised to limit movement, as you said, Liz, there's a big difference between you know, maybe some social distancing and a curfew that required people to have government permission to leave their own homes.
The experts were like, this wasn't even our idea. We didn't even float this. They made it up.
And when we talk about tough times for Victorians, I'll never forget this piece.
Of research that came out.
These researchers did a massive poll in Victoria in September twenty twenty in which they found that nine point five that's almost one in ten Victorians said that they had seriously considered taking their own lives in the last thirty days prior to this survey that they were now undergoing.
That's how bad it was.
Over twelve percent of Victorians said that they'd either started or increased relying on substance abuse in order to deal with this emotions that they were going through being locked up like animals in their own state. When we talk about tough times for Victorian's premier just center Allan, you weren't one of them, but you were making the rules that everyone suffered under, and for some it ended for good.
I just find that this cast off comment today utterly vile in the face of the very real suffering that is not even five years old yet that many people would be living with the scars of to this day, having even lost loved ones.
More research was done.
About the first sixty people that did take their lives in the state of Victoria during that first year of lockdown, et cetera, et cetera, and so on. And you want to face the press today, after days of prepping your response to this question that you knew you would be asked just to be like.
Oh, we were just doing the best we could. It was such tough times.
Oh my goodness, it's a little bit pointed out. She's spent four and a half years of taxpayer money to add insult Stoffid injury, trying to never have to answer this question because it never was to be revealed.
And that's not to mention the eight hundred people who died because they bungled hotel quarantine system, of course.
And I went through one.
Of those lockdowns in Melbourne. I only had to do one, thank god. But it started in August twenty twenty one
went through to October. I think it was about seventy eight days and I just moved to Melbourne and it was I have to say, one of the worst periods of my life in terms of I felt depressed and I had a few sessions with a psych in that time, because it is just so anathema to being a human to be locked away, particularly the circumstance I was where, you know, I went to work in a new workplace and I'd go into the office and I'd be lucky to have ten people there on a good day. So
I didn't know anyone. I couldn't make any friends, I couldn't make any contacts or do anything. You know, it was dead set awful. And of course, if you've had any troubles with mental health yourself, the numbers on the bottom of the screen for Lifeline. But you know, what was done to people in that period of time was genuinely awful, and I know a lot of people don't want to think about it because it was that bad,
but they have serious questions to answer. Well, just into ours the only one, but she has serious.
Quest and not just just into Allen. When we get to the papers a little later, the front page of tomorrow's Herald's Son deals with more hypocrisy that took place during the pandemic. Let's go to the UK now, where transactivists have taken to the streets of London to protest the Supreme Court's decision to define a woman according to biology rather than self selection, which means that trans women
are not women after all. Now we're told that we have to support trans ideology because it's polite, it's respectful, it's loving, and of course trans people are vulnerable people. But check out some of the signs on display in this march in London. Activists held signs saying things like the only good turf that's a trans exclusionally exclusionary radical feminist or someone who opposes trans ideology. A good turf
is a dead turf. Other signs had bullet holes in them, saying I will make you listen, and another sign said are your transphobe? Why not try a do it yourself lobotomy. So these signs are being waived about on the street. Obviously some people were upset and reported them to police because clearly those signs are inciting violence against people who
don't believe trans women are women. As the UK Supreme Court ruled, Well, the police initially said they would not be investigating because well, you know, for a variety of reasons, until the UK Telegraph got hold of the story, and now the met will investigate. A couple of questions, Caleb and Liz, could you imagine if the situation was reversed. Instead of holding a sign saying the only good only good turf is a dead turf, imagine if someone will a signed saying the only good trans person is a
dead trans person. The police would be there so fast. Well, we know exactly what would happen, because there's a woman in prison at the moment. Lucy Connelly who dared to tweet that a hotel containing migrants should be burned to the ground. She was promptly arrested and as I said, she's serving two and a half years in prison, but police took the media to get onto their case before that, even bother investigating these signs inciting violence. And of course,
as JK. Rowling can well attest in the UK, and as people like Curile Smith, Rachel Wong and Sell Grover here in Australia can testify, this level of hatred was not something recent posts the UK Supreme Court decision. People who've taken up the issue of trans ideology and defense of women's rights have had to put up with this nonsense for years now and it.
Doesn't seem to be going away.
What's so well, So until we see a strong response like this, they've got no reason to back down.
And the fact is what people need to be.
Worried about is these people feel genuinely validated in these views. It's just like the whack jobs that we've seen in America saying the same about Trump. Oh they're only good. Fascist is a dead fascist. I want to see him strung up by his legs. We've shown you footage of countless people now wishing that guy dead.
And when you see someone talk like that, they genuinely believe it.
And one wonders if it's just a matter of time before they decide to take matters into their own hands. But I certainly hope that the Supreme Court in the UK has some very good security because they are the ones who have made this decision. And it's not like people like this are just going to be targeting turfs willy nilly. But the people who have made this decision according to the law in the UK, imagine how much the hatred is that is being fermented in their direction at the moment.
How is this not incitement to violence? And if you're waving around a sign that says, you know, a certain group of people ought to be dead, surely that is encouraging people to make that so unlike you say, if you had a sign that said the only good trans person is a dead trans person, they'd be on you
like that. You had a sign that said the only good black person is a dead black person, they be on you like that, and as well they should, because you're waving around a sign that is encouraging other people to go and kill other people. You were saying that is the right thing to do. And for the coppers in the UK to say in the first instance that they thought these signs were from another event that wasn't in London and so that they weren't going to do
anything about it. And it took the Telegraph actually showing them the time stamps and saying no, this photo was taken on the weekend. Oh okay, well will review it now. I mean if it was any other group, there'd be no review. They would have been arrested on the spot. It is pathetic to know, oh, we'll review those. What is there to review? I mean, surely that is an open and shutcase. And I know we've had discussions about hate speech here in this country, but if that's not
hate speech in the UK that you get arrested. If you post a fruity meme on social media, or you pray silently five doors down from an abortion clinic, you'll have the roses on you. But your way of a sign around saying someone should be dead and you don't, it just seems extraordinary, quite the opposite to being dead, though, Berts, we don't have enough of them anymore. The birth rate across the world is falling. Here in Australia now one point five is the fertility rate.
That means for.
Every woman there are one point five children. So of course the replacement rate just to maintain the population as it is is two, because if two people having a child, you need two children in order to replace both of them. But we can't make that anymore. It's one and a half children per woman. I feel sorry for the half a child that keeps being born. Of course, that's not how statistics were, but in the US it is now
one point six, and that is an historic low. So there was reporting on the weekend that the White House was looking at ways to incentivize people to have more children. And Donald Trump was asked about this yesterday and.
He indeed said it sounded.
Like a good idea. It sounds like a good idea to me, was the direct quote. Now, a couple of the ideas that the White House has been looking at is a baby bonus, which, of course you will remember John Howard did as Prime Minister and Petti Costello as Treasurer in this country during their term, and that started out as a tax break and then eventually went up to a five thousand dollars cash in hand payment for
having a child. And the suggestion in the US is that it would be a five thousand US dollar payment so that's more like ten thousand Australian dollars. Other ideas is that they would give out to Fulbright scholarships to women who are married and have children, and that's a scholarship to go overseas and work overseas and study overseas, etc. The US does that to maintain relations with other nations.
There could be other things, such as educating women on when they're ovulating so they know when they're more likely to have a child. I suspect the one that would get more people over the line is a baby bonus, because when we did it here in Australia, there was a gradual increase in the fertility rate and the peak it hit was almost back to the replacement rate. We nearly hit the replacement rate here in Australia thanks to the baby bonus that was then later dismantled by the
rad government. So they're saying in the US, what can we possibly do to bring this back? And of course we know how close Elon Musk has been with Donald Trump. He's one man who's sort of taken things into his own hands. He's got fourteen children now by I think seven or eight women, so he's doing his bit to populate the world, but he has spoken extensively about this before.
The birth rate is very low in almost every country and something unless that changes, civilization will disappear. America had the lowest birth rate I believe, ever, that was last year. Places like Korea the birth rate is one third replacement rate. That means in three generations, career will be three or four percent of its current size. Humanity is dying, and it's just not something we evolved to react to.
Now it says humanity is dying. That's not entirely true. Sub Saharan African countries is still having lots of children. But this is part of the problem, is that if you look across the western world, or not even the Western world, the developed world, where of course the pendulum I think has swung too far away from the ability to have a family because the economy doesn't serve the
people anymore. The people serve the economy, so people work for much longer, and you have to have both the couple, you know, both people in couple at work in order to sustain themselves, let alone children. So the circumstances in which people feel comfortable to have a child have slowly been slipping away, so governments say we'll give you an incentive to have a child, And yes, there is evidence that it worked in Australia, but I still think it's
a band aid measure. If you really want people to have children, you have to create a society in which they want to have children, and I think we've done too much to go past that point. I'm not sure we'll ever actually get that to it.
Mark Stein wrote a brilliant book on this about fifteen years ago called America Alone, and then the follow up after America, arguing that demography is destiny and if you want to know what the world will be like fifty years from now, we'll just look at who's having children today. And the problem, of course in the West, as you said, Caleb, is that in Western nations we're not replacing ourselves. So a baby bonus is a right idea. You have to
wonder whether it goes far enough. Nations like Hungry, which we talked about on the program recently, have offered Liz, I think it's tax free for the rest of your life to women who have three or more children. So there's other things that can be done, and leavers that can be pulled. But even if nothing is done, just the conversation that creates the message children are welcome and having children is a good thing, not just for yourself but for society at large. Is a valuable thing in
and of itself. So just for Western nations to be having the conversation, I'm not saying that's all that's needed, but that's a step in the right direction, because so many people having children are demonized because it's inconvenient, it's economically not viable. You're fled out affording ourselves these days without anybody else. The irony is that we're telling women they've got to get back to work to help the economy. But of course if women are working rather than having children,
then ultimately you get economic decline. Anyway, Well, I.
Think so much of this has to do with the fact that Western societies stopped celebrating children. If you even watch our advertisements from decades ago, there were families in them. There were kids running around in the backyard. Marriage was either the butt of the joke in the ad movies, married people plenty of kids running around. We see this even in the subliminal messaging all around us on a daily basis. Everything's about singles and potentially looking for love.
Women are not finding men who want to get married and.
Who want to have children.
You do wonder what has happened to us as a society, because healthy, thriving people naturally want to couple up, naturally want to reproduce, and that has either been beaten out of people ideologically through all sorts of whether it's radical feminists or guys have been raised to see a family as a noose around their neck.
I'll leave that off for as long as I can, might hit forty.
Then think about it, at which point all the women in their age bracket are like, well.
What are we supposed to do?
This is something that I've spoken to so.
Many men and women about.
Even the ones who genuinely want to get married, who genuinely want to have a family, they can't find the right person to do it with. And that's where we see countries like Japan starting their own dating apps because
they're another country that has a massive birth deficit. One of the most interesting workshops that I saw when I went to ARC in London earlier this year big Conservative get together, was this fellow who's sorry, Matt, I don't remember your name, but I do remember your workshop, and
I think you'd prefer that anyway. He was specifically talking about the birth rate in Western countries and how every single one of them is a massive birth and we can rich and moan about immigration all we like, but we are not having babies.
And until you address that root cause, then nothing's going to change.
Particularly, I loved about this idea that the Trump administration is floating, as it includes the National Medal of Motherhood for women with six kids or more.
So, my mom, you would qualify for this. But this is part of what I'm talking about.
Society that honors motherhood like that is an incredible achievement.
Thank you for doing this. That is wonderful.
That is a society that is going to see more of that happening. But we don't do this in the West anymore. The alban Easy government, the closest they come to encouraging motherhood is free mother care. We want universal free daycare rather not mother care.
So you can get back to.
Work and work for the man and earn us some more tax dollars and we the state will raise your children for free.
If that is your idea of.
Supporting families and women having babies in your nation. You've just signed its death warrant right there, and then it's disgusting.
Well, just before we go to a break, we were talking about Elon Musk, who's doing his best to repopulate the world. He's also going to do his best to get Tesla back on track, telling investors this week that he will start focusing again on his car company, ending most of the work he's doing with the Donald Trump administration, hanging up doze finding savings in government departments. He said that as of May, he will only do one or two days a week and in the doze role and focus
the rest of his time back on Teesla. This comes after they've released their first quarter trading results, which do not show a pretty picture. There's a lot of red there, including their net income as you can see, down by seventy one percent in the first quarter of this year. Obviously, there's a lot of things happening here. Caleb Evs aren't
as popular as they were, there's competition for China. Tariffs from the Trump administration ironically have affected Musk's company, and also there's been the personal backlash because of his association with Trump. What do you think of this, Can he rescue Tesla? It's still worth seven hundred and fifty billion dollars US, so it's not like the thing is falling apack.
Yeah, I think rescuing it's going to be a task. Though part of it is, of course, the personal brand of Elon Musk that has hit it in recent times. But the reality is now that anyone who wants an EV already has an EV. And the kind of people who were early into the market bought those Tesla's, they've already got their EV. So it's just the rest of the market to fiddling around based on subsidies basically. And those people are buying cheap evs out of China. They're
not buying expensive vehicles like Tesla. So unless Tesla can compete with the Chinese market and produce cheap evs, I think they've run their race.
We're going to go to a break. When we come back, we'll look at what's making news tomorrow, including the Albanezi government's idea too, the Trump administration in a deal on defense that's coming up in just a moment. Welcome back. Let's take a look at tomorrow's newspaper. Front pages will start colored with the Australian newspaper.
Indeed, we will Elbow's mate that he doesn't know the name of the Greens candidate in Graindler makes another appearance here and says Anthony Alberize has claimed was we told you before that he's not responsible for his own how to vote cards and has never heard the name of his Greens challenger. As it emerged the anti Israel candidate preference by the Prime Minister was part of a blockade
of his Graindler electorate office. Green's hopeful Hannah Thomas on Wednesday said the Prime Minister was quote unquote arrogant for claiming he wouldn't be able to tell you who she was, adding mister alberizi had failed to act on the cost of living, climate and gaza. She also said Graindler voters had hoped for a Whitlamesque prime minister but had been
let down by mister Alberze's performance as a leader. I mean you can even blockade out the front of his office, which kept his electoral office closed for months and threatened the safety of his staff, and you still get his number two on the how to vote card. I mean it must be hard to get on his bedside.
You can't tell me. No one in his electric office knows who this candidate is and her involvement in blockading the office. Oh the staffers word well, and they don't talk to the PM at all.
But once again, given his other options, he was always going to choose the Green. She could set his car on fire, she'd still be number two because he was never going to make it one nation.
He was never going to make it the Independent. He certainly wasn't going to make the Libs.
Can you imagine the Libs being preferenced by the Prime Minister number two on his And it wasn't going to be trumpets of patriots either. So naturally, I just like I said before, I think we're making a storm out of a teacup here.
It had to be her.
He certainly knows who she is.
But if it doesn't matter.
He could have made one nation his second preference. It wouldn't have changed anything. If that's the argument, is that it doesn't really have it and just put anyone there.
Another story on the front of the Ods tomorrow, Anthony Alberinezi will move to make Australia a key supplier of critical minerals and rear earths to help like minded nations make weapons without relying on China through a one billion dollar plus strategic reserve to be used by re elected labor government as a bargaining chip to win an exemption
from Donald Trump's tariffs. The Prime Minister on Wednesday unveiled plans for an initial one point two billion dollar investment or I think they mean on Thursday, because of course today is Wednesday in national reserve that will stockpile critical minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt so they are available for Australian manufacturers and select nations such as Japan,
Japan Sorry, and South Korea and fair enough. I think if Donald Trump has taught us one thing and much of the world one thing is that much like he is America first, we should all be Australia first, and Japan first, and Korea first and West first as well. So he has some way or another actually encouraged us to take a little more self reliance, which of course is need good for the US and the rest of
the Western world. More broadly, the question is, though, will it be enough to get an exemption on tariffs?
Who would know what it is enough though, to do is to remove whatever advantage the Coalition may have had on defense, which they pretty much squandered by leaving their big announcement to the last week and a half of the campaign. And then Labor have come up with this, which, as you said, seems like a perfectly sensible solution stands
us in good stead helps with the Trump administration. So whatever advantage or bounce Dutton was hoping for from his defense policy announcement, it's sort of gone from the front pages and Labor back on the front foot.
Overshadowed so soon.
It does make you wonder, given this ticks a lot of boxes, why it took them so long to come up with. I mean, that's such a good bargaining chip. Everyone needs these and a we've found out great way to use them as a bargaining chair.
Is it any coincidence that Labor put this out what the day after? Of course, the Coalition announced their defense policy so immediately nullified it.
I feel like that's been a large part of this campaign though, is why has it taken so long for so many policies to be announced? I mean, in this world now where you don't just have election day, you essentially have an election period. I mean people went to the polls on Tuesday, so people voted on Tuesday, and we still haven't had the full suite of policies released yet. I mean they're expecting record numbers of people to prepole.
Half the bloody country is going to pre poll before we get to election day, and there will be policies trickling out in the next week or so. It kind of makes a mockery of the whole idea of having an election day, I think. But also what's the strategy from the parties to leave things so late when they know that people are voting.
Now, That's exactly what I said last night when the front headline was oh, twenty one billion, extra one hundreds the limbs are gone.
Why on earth would you wait this late?
An excellent policy, something people are passionate to get behind. Yay national security. We haven't done enough. Everybody knows this. It's such an obvious, strong and clear policy. Why would you wait until what ten days out to the election?
Greg greg Sheridan's got an answer to that on the front page of Tomorrow's Australian. He reckons the coalition were waiting to see what money was left over to spend on defense, which is he points out, is exactly the wrong way to do defense. You defend the country first, then you work out what money you've got left to spend on social welfare things. No point having social welfare if the Chinese invague something else.
I think that the coalition has just not really had to go lay before at all. Which I don't understand
is the tax on unrealized capital gains. It is insane, but it says in the front of the ODZ tomorrow super tax plan risks twenty five billion dollar exodus after twenty five billion dollars could be withdrawn from self mana superannuation funds this year as people race to reduce their account balances below a two million dollar threshold that the Greens were require sorry in exchange for supporting Labour's new
tax on unrealized capital gains. Jeff Wilson, the architect of a successful attack on Labour's franking credits policy before the twenty nineteen election, said he'd been fielding calls from clients about shifting money out of self managed funds and said the opposition was now missing a golden opportunity to unseat a first term government by not attacking Labour's unrealized capital gains. He goes on to say, I think there has been a misunderstanding by the coalition of how brutal this unrealized
capital gains tax policy will be on the economy. Labour should be losing the election on this issue. Shareholders are calling me very concerned about the taxing of unrealized gains and I mean the idea that you would tax something that doesn't yet exist. He's fundamentally insane. I mean, the government is going to take money from you when you haven't actually made the profit yet, and yet no one is talking about it.
But did you see the explanation in tomorrow's paper from a Liberal Party spokesperson as to why they haven't made an issue of this. They said, well, most of the people who have got more than two million in their super funder in teal seats and they've not mentioned it to us as being a problem. So for that reason they're not bothering.
And of course the other thing as well as if they pull all their money out of the stock market and go property, we'll go property.
What do you think that does to property prices?
For goodness, let's go to.
The front page of tomorrow's herald Son. We were talking about just center Allen dodging questions as to the curfew during the pandemic. Well, there's some more news about what occurred during the pandemic In tomorrow's paper. Ambos above Law reads the headline Inquiry uncovers a legal funeral sanctioned by bosses in COVID. The story reads that a secret send off for an ambulance Victoria paramedic, in breach of strict COVID rules but allegedly approved by bosses, been exposed as
part of an ongoing inquiry into the beleagued agency. Now, this is a parliamentary inquiry into the ambulance service that was opposed by the Allen government. They tried to prevent this inquiry. The inquiry has heard about the poor performance of the service as well as cultural problems. But this is the latest revelation from this inquiry. At a time when funerals who were restricted to just ten people in attendance, I read one story about a woman who died. She
had twelve siblings. They applied for an exemption so that all the siblings could attend. They were denied, and now it turns out that members of the ambulance service were holding funerals with more than more people than were permitted, in violation of laws that everybody else had to abide by. We're going to go to a break when we come back. The NRL star who avoided jail over driving offenses. But wait until you hear the punishment that the court did
give out to him. That's coming up in just a moment. Welcome back. Well, if you follow NRL, John Happawa is quite an infamous former NRL player. Caleb like, what did he do?
He stuck his finger out people's jacksies. I believe was his modus operanda, and it seemed to work every now and again. And he's been in trouble a few times through his life. He's been charged with assault multiple times. He was charting, I think it was in twenty thirteen with intimidating a parking inspector. He's had numerous driving indiscretions. His latest one that was that he was caught driving
wild disqualified. So of course he's serving a sentence after a previous discretion and he gets behind the wheel of the car again and he gets caught doing that. So once again he gets trundled off to court and they let him off with a suspended sentence. He had to do one hundred hours of community service. So this repeat offender, John Hoppawate, what does he do for.
His one hundred hours of community service? Is learning to knit?
And then once you've learned that and you're doing that, I can teach you her as he was.
Casting on already.
Didn't do is get a long row of ditches.
I mean, he is this rugby enforcer finger up the bummer, you know, built like a brick you know what house, and he's like, I know what I'll do.
I've been caught yet again.
The court will let me go and learn how to knit beanies for poor kids. You know, it's quite funny on one level, but how many times do you have to be caught before they say, well, chuck in the slammer for a little while and not seeing you to do knitting lessons with granny.
Well, he himself was making a joke out of it, telling journalists he was putting his fingers to better use now, So there you go. But I'm not sure how many people have been victims of you know, bad drivers would be happy to see that sort of punishment dissed doubt to someone with multiple driving offenses.
Indeed, you wonder if he wasn't who he is, if the sentence had been any different, not that it should be before the law. But before we go tonight, the Great Barrier Reef maybe the unexpected recipient of a United Nations award. It's called the Prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award, which
is normally given to people like Sir David Attenborough. But tourism Tropical North Queensland has adopted a unique version of their understanding of what would make eligible nominee and they've decided to nominate the Great Barrier Reef as opposed to a person. As far as I concerned, we here in Australia don't want anything from the United Nations.
Well, but it don't at.
Least prove once and for all that the thing's still alive and not did as we keep them.
There you go, That's all we've got time for stick arounds. Coming up is the reader Pennehy show. Good Night,