Lately. Welcome to the Late Debase.
Great to have your company on the Late Debate. I'm James Macpherson with Liz Storer and Caleb Bond. Coming up one of the most unusual drug busts you'll ever see. You won't believe where the smuggler hid his cocaine. We'll show you that a little later. Plus, when we look at the papers speaking of drugs, Victoria's safe drug injecting rooms. Is there such a thing? Having problems? What a surprise.
Plus story in tomorrow's Australian newspaper about a very unusual court case in New South Wales where the prosecutor began by admitting he wouldn't win the case, which of course begged the question why were they there. We'll talk to you about that when we get to what's making news tomorrow, But first, you know, we've done a lot of nanny state shows over the past couple of years, but this, this would have to be the silliest example of government
over each I have heard in a long time. For the last nine years people have been able to go down to North Bondi Beach go for a surf on a surfboard provided for free by the Shared Board initiative Now it's a group of locals who provide refurbished surfboards for anyone to use free of charge. They just leave them on the foreshore of the beach in a particular spot and the only condition is when you've finished having a surf just bring it back and put it where
you found it. And it's a great idea. I mean for people who get to the beach and think, you know, I got my son's screen, I got my hat, I got my boards, I forgot my board, doesn't matter. There's a board that you can borrow for free. Or if you live at Penrith, for instance, and you don't want to lug your board on public transport, you don't have to. You can leave your surfboard in Penrith Rock up at North Bondai and just borrowed one of these shared boards.
Or if you like Caleb and you've never been on a surfboard in your life, but you think never been on a beach, that is a bit unfair.
I will say I have started going to the beach, Yes, I started this year.
Does this happen just this year?
I've started going to the Who are you and what have you?
Done with Caleb bon Have you ever serfed?
No?
I haven't.
Okay, so you could rock up at North BONDI and think, you know what, I wouldn't mind trying this out, but I don't want to put out the coin to buy a board. I might not enjoy it or be any good at it, which is highly likely to be the case. But Caleb could just borrow one of these shared boards, have a try, and if you don't like it, you just put the board back. No harm done. It's a great initiative, or at least it was until the kill Joys at Waverley Council shut it down of concerns from
surf life savers about safety and public liability. Local Cam Scott said the program's been so popular with locals and visitors and we've never had any issues in the past. Other forms of surfing are still allowed, including private board hire, so I'm not sure why shared boards are being singled
out as a safety risk. I understand lifeguards want to reduce the risk and that not everyone is an experienced surfer, but I've tried to minimize rescue as much as possible, including reducing the number of boards that can be used and making sure all the boards have leg ropes now. Waverley Mayor Will Nemesh said that he is committed to working out a process to address concerns regarding safety. I'm not sure what the concerns are. If someone rocks up
with their own board, there's no concerns. If someone hires a board, there's no concerns. So why are there concerns over the situation where someone shares a board? Lizit that makes no sense whatsoever?
Do you wanna be safe or do you wanna be free?
It's the same old chestnut every single time.
It doesn't matter what we're talking about.
It boils down to that when you've got government intervention saying we're doing something utterly ridiculous, which we are telling you is completely necessary in order to keep you safe. We're back at that exaet same square on the chess board. And to be honest, this is one of those ones where you're like, Okay, we follow your reasoning to its logical conclusion. Going into the surf alone is a safety risk and a public liability.
So what on it?
Because you can't.
Guarantee that every single person who enters the surf knows how to swim. Indeed, that's the vast majority of the cases of drowning that we see here in Australia, or people getting caught in rips, et cetera, and so on. They're not seasoned beach goers. They don't know what they're doing. So this is nonsense reasoning. It's for the same reason that we're like, oh, okay, well everybody's got to wear a helmet the second you leave your house then because
anything can happen. And then of course there's the broader question of okay, let's say that the government is responsible for your safety to what degree and at what cost, because that's how we end up with.
Stuff like this.
How much does it boil down to personal responsibility? If you grab a board and go into the surf, let's say that's on you.
I mean, has the Waverly Council got nothing else to do? You know, you've got councils running around Sydney at the moment saying that he just jack up the rates by ninety percent because they can't get their hands on enough money. Like I think councils have got a fair bit going on at the moment. But no, the Waverley Council is going after people who want to go for a surf on a shared surfboard.
I mean, why would.
You try to do any nice things in this country anymore?
A bloke says, you know what I think would be a good thing to.
Do to restore surfboards so people who can't afford a surfboard I don't want to lag it across the city can come and have a surf at the beach. He's trying to do a good turn for people and in comes the party purpose at the council. Oh, you can't do that because there's public liability problems here.
Now.
The only public liability problems I can think of are that the board I don't know snaps in the middle of the ocean or something. And then they try to soothe the bloke and say, well, you gave me an unsafe surfboard.
You can get.
Public liability insurance of that kind of thing. I'm sure the council, if they actually decided they would be helpful instead of inhibiting things, could go and say, look, we'll work it out.
We'll sort all of this out here.
Maybe the council will even sponsor it so you can have a local shed to do some work in Who knows we.
Can make it a community project. No, we couldn't have that.
This is the most UnAustralian example of government overreach I have seen in a long time. If you cannot go to the beach and have a surf in Australia without being interfered with by the government or a council, we have lost the plot.
Seriously, what is going on.
We like to think that we are a country of you know, free spirited Alaricans, and we've still got that convict culture in US. You know, we're sticking it up the pommies because we're free and we're not stuffy like them. But we are We love rules, We love being told what to do. COVID crew exactly, we were all happy.
To line up. We are more.
Brid We weren't and I did.
Not the vast majority of people.
But we are more British than the British in the way that we are happy to follow rules and want to be governed. I mean, when you have a premier like Mark mcgow and in WA who had like dictator like approval ratings of ninety one percent or something because he shut the borders, I think it proves the point we just want to be governed hard.
And there's a time when we're talking about social cohesion and we've got so many problems in society. He as you said, You've got someone trying to do a nice thing to just help people enjoy themselves. It's free, it's a nice thing to do, but no council can't allow it. And when the mayor says we're committed to implementing a process, God help us. Have you ever come across a government process that made anything better?
Can you imagine if someone decided they wanted to have a surf on one of these shared boards and then when they get back on the beach, light up a dart and have a beer like.
That would be all the crime, all the law all.
You can't have a drink on the beach, you can't have a darry on the beach, you can't have yourselvelopment.
You'd of course, it just could be a simple matter of few counselors being really good mates with the people who are heading up the hiring board businesses down at Bondi. That was also a thought I had. But to the UK now, where Prime Minister Kistarma has announced that he is increasing defense spending to two point five percent of GDP by at twenty twenty seven. Now, I reckon Brits have Donald Dre Trump to thank for this little announcement, and I'll.
Explain why in a bit.
But certainly watching Kirs Starmer today you wouldn't have guessed it.
I have long argued that in the face of ongoing and generational challenges, European countries must do more for their own defense. That is in con travertible a completely reasonable point. It is a generational challenge, of course it is, but one we must now take on.
I suppose it's just a coincidence that he is echoing very much the sentiments of Trump, which Trump has shouted from the mountaintops since he ran in twoenty and sixteen.
He's always considered.
NATO these leech countries sucking on the tee to the United States, and he's always said, you flogs have to pull your socks up.
I'm not funding this by myself.
You guys have to spend more on your own defense spending if you want us to come to your aid when you're in trouble.
Here.
He was just last February reminding everyone he still stands exactly the same position on the exact same issue second time round.
It it was busted until I came along. I said, everybody's going to pay. They said, well, if we don't pay, are you still going to protect us? I said absolutely not. They couldn't believe the answer, and everybody you never saw more money pour in.
Trump's actually demanded that NATO countries increase their defense spending to five percent of their economic output. So kirs Dama's basically just announced he's inching closer by twenty twenty seven, but still.
Falling quite short.
But here he is addressing the nation once again saying this is how I'm keeping Britain safe. Now.
Our national security faces a critical moment. That is why we are increasing defense spending to two point five percent of GDP from April twenty to twenty seven, the biggest sustained increase since the Cold War. With my government, Britain will be secure at home and strong abroad.
Secure at home, mate, you had over thirty five thousand illegals cross the channel and make their way into your country last year alone, where they've been living high on the hog on the British taxpayer pound. But what I do love about what he's doing here is he's taking the funds from foreign aid to fit the bill for this increase. And I think that is something that all
Western countries should do. I think foreign aid is completely and utterly blown out and rarely does it ever actually achieve what the giving country has given it for.
What do you think about the foreign aid argument, Well, well, they're spending three billion dollars a year housing illegal asylunce again through their foreign foreign aid is very low.
There's an argument to be made that you have to pay a certain level of foreign aid to try and back off countries like China that spend shed loads around the Pacific nations, the Australian example. There's an argument that you have to do that to try and repel them, but then you kind of end up in a bidding war because China has infinite money. Basically we're doing in the Pacific exactly, so they say, well, we'll give them more money. So we say we've got to give them
more money. I mean, you could go on and on and on and on forever when it comes to that circumstance, and perhaps when we come to those circumstances, we should be calling in the favors.
Of some of our allies.
But our foreign aid spend in Australia is about five billion dollars, right, I think that's what it was in.
The last this financial year.
But five billion dollars.
Our military spending last financial year was fifty three point three billion dollars, which was two percent of GDP. So if you took that five billion away from foreign aid and added it to the defense budget, you know, that's ten percent you're adding on top, which is not an insignificant sum of money to add to it. Now, it's already forecast that we will reach two point four percent of GDP by twenty twenty seven, twenty eight, So we're all sort of heading in the same direction. But we
have to be heading in that direction. I mean, we have never been in a more precara will say never is not wrong. In the last forty fifty years, we have not been in a more precarious position GOEO politically, and all the predictions from the US are that we could end up in some sort of conflict with China next decade.
Right, that's not far away.
We're in twenty twenty five now, twenty thirty is in five years time. Meanwhile, we're talking about having submarines and defense capability ready to go by twenty forty, which will be extremely useful. Like we should have been doing this teen years ago. It's all good and will to say, yes, we're picking up the pace now, and good, we need to do it, but let's be real, this should have happened a long time ago.
And that's my criticism of Starmer's announcement. He says, you know, this is a generational challenge and we must act. So we're going to increase defense spending by two percent. Not this year, not next year, but in twenty twenty seven. It's an absolute Russia are spending five percent of their GDP on defense. Middle Eastern countries are spending five percent. We don't know what China are spending, but it's probably
a lot more than five percent. And as for foreign aid, one of the best things that Western liberal democracies can do for the entire planet is to be strong so they can repel authoritarian to talitarian regimes and keep the flag of freedom flying. But the other thing I would ask Kirstama when he speaks about you know, we're going to defend Britain, tell us what is Britain these days. I mean, you're making such a mess of it, and with the amount of people you're allowing into the country
and then all of the ghettoization. Is that a word, Caleb, the segregation that they are promoting through their multicultural policies. I'd just love to know what he says. We're going to defend Britain. How do you define Britain.
Well, well, it's the country where the top baby name for boys now is Muhammad. I think that's probably how we define Britain.
Incidentally, one more thing before we move on, said it's about two point one percent of GDP and Australia.
To two percent at the moment two point four. We're heading two in twenty seven twenty.
Eight, which is about what the NDIS will be worth in a couple of years. So, I mean, this is the most geopolitically, you know, risky time we've had since World War Two. And we're committed to spending more money on you know, disabilities, some of which are a little questionable and that argument has been going for some time than we are on defending our borders.
So that's more valuable than foreign aid because we've got genuine Aussies in genuine need.
What really gets my goat is the.
Amount of money that Western countries splurge on foreign aid. In our case, as we continually laugh about, it's a lost cause because China always has deeper pockets. So in comparison, Australia is handing out like five bucks in a snag to all these countries in the Indo Pacific, being like, hey, if something bad happens, please be on our side. Also, hot take news flash. If I have to pay you to be my friend, if I have to pay you to be.
My ally, you're not my ally.
The entire concept of foreign aid, because we know it's never given out of the goodness of anyone's hearts.
It is the form of a bribe.
I am buying your loyalty, which again isn't real loyalty, is it.
It's such a.
Flawed concept and it cannot continue.
If I could be.
Ruler for a day, I would pull all foreign aid because if your country exists due to the forced donations of my country's tax payers, then maybe you shouldn't. Maybe you shouldn't if you just keep on existing at the behest of the wealthier Western countries who are in fact, weakening themselves, like you said, mac by keeping up this system. It's very strange. Pull it all and let the chips fall where they may.
The only thing it's a worry is the reluctance of Western countries to sect refice in order to defend themselves. And Trumps pointed this out in Europe, right. I was really in twenty twenty three, Denmark decided to cancel one public holiday so that the poor Danes were only left with eleven public holidays instead of twelve. But they canceled one public holiday so that they could make an extra six hundred and seventy five million dollars to go towards defense.
And there was uproar, you can't take away one of our public holidays.
Well what do you want?
Do you want a public holiday or do you want your freedom? And in the West that's up for debate right now.
They may take on a laaves, but they will never picked out of public holidays. And I think you actually hit on a good point though, Liz, I reckon the best form of diplomacy we could have is to build bunning stores overseas so they can get the snags and then they've got a real taste of Australian culture.
A while we're.
Talking about defense, the plot thickens on this business of these Chinese warships have been floating down the east coast of Australia. Now we know, we talked about last night that last Friday they were doing live fire drills off the of Australia and we found out about that because a Virgin pilot was flying overhead and he alerted Air Services Australia will today the military has been up at senate estimates and they've corroborated that turn of events. But
there's another little tidbit that has been included. That's that the New Zealand military picked up on it before our military picked up on it, even though it took them quite some time to do it. I'll give you the timeline. It was nine to fifty eight am that a Virgin pilot on Friday realized that these warships were firing about. It was at ten eighteen am that an Emirates pilot realized they were firing. It wasn't until eleven oh one that the New Zealand Army realized that they were firing
and then in turn let us know. But of course we already knew because not because our military had worked it out, but because a Virgin pilot had worked it out. The other thing is that the Prime Minister last week was saying we had received noticeification that this was going to happen. Then the story became, oh well, the notification, you know, didn't come fast enough.
We didn't know in time that it was going to happen.
But now we keep hearing more and more this week from different outfits, the military and Air Services Australia and the New Zealand military that they were the ones who let us know.
Is the Prime Minister.
There were two areas of notification. One was from the New Zealand vessels that were tailing.
We're cooperating.
We've been monitoring the vessels in the area by both sea and by air, so that occurred and at the same time, through the channels that occur when something like this is occurring, air services got notified as well.
When the occurrences are occurring, the people who see occurrences occur to tell us that it's occurred.
What the hell was is he talking about there? But he's lied.
He said that at the same time as the New Zealand military was telling us it was going on Air Service as Australia told us it was going on.
I don't know. Nine to fifty eight am was.
When Virgin phoned it through to Air Services Australia, who then told our military. It was more than an hour later at eleven oh one that the New Zealand military told us that they had seen it. It didn't happen at the same time at all. He's petered up and saying there's questions to be answered.
There are really significant questions that need to be answered here. If there was an incursion across into our warders and Defense didn't know about it, or the Defense Minister didn't know about it, we need to ask those questions and they should be answered, and frankly, the Prime Minister should stand up and explain what is a very significant event and for.
What it's worth.
New Zealand's Defense Minister, due to the Collins it doesn't seem to be terribly perturbed by any of this.
I've talked to the Chief of Defense Force this morning because I've heard that there was some report that there was some delay and we're just going to find out quite what that wash.
Some reporter there might have been at Oh look, I've asked a maybe we'll find out what was going on. I mean, we talk about the fact that we need to boost our defense spending. We just don't seem to take these things with any seriousness. The Prime Minister can't get his story straight. One minute, it was you know, we had warning, Then we find out there was no warning. Then we're told that our allies warned us at the same time as the commercial pilots, which is not true.
The commercial pilot's warned us at least an hour in advance.
Can we not get this stuff right?
I'm not quite sure what's happening here. There seem to be two possibilities. A. Anthony Albanezi is just not across the detail, and he's quite famous for that. The other possibility is Anthony Albanezi is desperate to avoid any sort of confrontation with China at all. He's desperate to avoid any circumstance in which he might have to step up and actually do what Remember Tony Abbott once said he was going to shirt frontront Vladimir Putin. Can you imagine
Anthony Oldenezy's shirt fronting anybody. He's desperate to avoid that and so he just lies. And the problem with that is when you get the prime minister of the country lying to the populace about issues of national security, that's a pretty major breach of trust. And second, it signals to the Chinese keep doing this stuff because no one other than the Prime Minister of Australia itself will run cover for you.
Well, I think China already knows that it can keep doing this stuff.
It has occurred quite regularly.
We have one of these stories at least, let's say, once every three months, and yet they get slapped on the risk for it because our politicians have to do the obligatory.
Please don't do that. That wasn't very nice. And then last time.
We show the Chinese spokesperson giving their version of the story to their people saying no, Australia was the aggressor in international waters.
They fired flairs at us and.
We were just trying to It was utter nonsense, But that is what they do, and if you read their state run media, that is all they do.
And think of it.
If this is the motley crew that we've got now, while China is flexing but not doing anything overtly aggressive, can you imagine if we were actually under attack, even a small attack.
This would be the.
Same motley crew at the helm. Goodness knows what we'd be commentating on. Then we certainly wouldn't be laughing about it, because we wouldn't have the luxury.
We probably wouldn't know that the Chinese had landed in Australia until either the Aboriginal people over in wa worked out whether it be there for four days with their drones or a virgin pilot flying overhead, or maybe the New Zealand military would realize sharing.
It all over X That is how we'd learn.
They'd be filming it on their iPhones and we'd be like all things.
Forget Anthony Albanezi, forget the New Zealand Defense Minister. Someone who's actually making a tiny bit of sense on this is Jackie Lamby.
They're staying their distance.
They're very scared of Tasmanian's mate.
I'll tell you.
Now where we have our own secrecy thing going on down here. They don't want to come anywhere, and as sure as hell doesn't want to come anywhere any of the top one. Jackie Lamby's here. I want to keep everything really calm here. This is nothing new I just want these time of people to know. The Chinese always trying to stick out their chest.
You know, they're like the little boy the co wolf.
They never do the right thing. So if you're going to expect to tell they're doing live firing, you know they're not mates of ours.
This is what they do there, you go. They won't go near Tasmania because they wouldn't want to mess with Jackie Lamby. We just need a few more Jackie Lamby's spread across the top end in Australia. We say Calor was just you're telling.
Me was the first leader of China to actually visit Tasmania.
I think it was not too.
Long ago, so the story might not be correct. Maybe Jackie wasn't in town.
How she talks about it though, like this is nothing new, Like don't worry about it happens all the time. You know, another day and I'm a little something something from China. She said that several times, pretty.
Much the safety of Tasmanians because she is there and on the job.
Could just give him tazzy. It happens all the time.
Let's turn our attention to more serious matters. We talked last week about a documentary aired on the BBC called Gaza How to Survive a War Zone. Now, the documentary was purportedly about how ordinary Palestinians were coping with the conflict in Gaza, and it was told through the eyes of a fourteen year old boy. Well, it was later revealed that fourteen year old boy was not just any boy, is the son of a senior Hamas government official. Remember,
Hamas is a terrorist organization. So it was very difficult for the BBC to claim that this was impartial or this was a fair and balanced look at the lives of Palestinians. As I said, it was the son of a Hamas official. Well, since that revelation, there's been more controversy about this documentary put together by the BBC. It's now been revealed they deliberately and repeatedly edited interviews from Palestinians to make those Palestinians seem I don't know less,
jew Haiti. Let me read to you from an investigation by the Telegraph in the UK. They write, the Telegraph can reveal that on at least five occasions when they were interviewing local Palestinians the words Yahad and Jahadi. I guess that's how you pronounce it. They're Arabic words for Jew or Jews were changed to Israel or Israeli forces,
or were removed from the subtitles all together. So when Palestinians interviewed talked about the Jews, BBC changed it to read Israelis or they just removed references to Jews completely. The article goes on to say an interviewee praising Yahya Sinwa, the Hamas leader for quote jihad against the Jews, was also mistranslated as saying he was fighting Israeli forces. Now a little lesson on the nuances of Hamas speak. There's a massive difference between waging ghard against Jews and fighting
Israeli forces. When you're waging g hard against Jews, it's a holy war to destroy and eradicate the Jews everywhere. So when the BBC make this little editorial decision, they're not just mistranslating somebody. They are deliberately misrepresenting the ideology of Palestinians. Palestinians, they claim, are everyday people. Here's just a little example of how the documentary was manipulated.
We have a simulatum or kenje. Well, have a simulatum or Jehad.
The leader of the Conservative Party, Kemy Badenoch, is now saying that this BBC documentary needs to be fully investigated to find out if any money went to Hamas. Remember BBC as the public broadcaster. Hamas is a terrorist organization. When you've got the son of a senior leader and you've got such obvious edits to misrepresent what is actually going on, it makes you wonder. And she's saying the Anti Terrorism Task Force should probably have a good look at this.
And it wasn't even a good job.
Like that clip we showed there where in the written translation that sees.
Battle instead of g had, you could hear the woman saying she had.
Now, I don't know how many people don't know what the word g had means, but like it is the word example of China run interference for a terrorist organization that I've ever seen, like we saw right through that one BBC. But of course what they're trying to do is remove the religious element of the war and simply say, oh, well, you know, these are two groups of people fighting over a piece of land for no particular reason, and there have been more deaths on one side and therefore that's
a bad thing. It is in so many ways a religious war. That's why they're talking about jihad. It is an ethno religious war. It is in some ways over the land. But you don't just want the land to expand your country for the hell of making your country bigger. It's because there are ancient disagreements over who has the right to that land. That is the point of why this war is going on, and that is what the BBC doesn't want to answer.
I mean, the fact that they had the son of a hamas.
Leader is the Hammas administr I should say, as the narrator of the thing. And they supposedly didn't know that, and then they've gone and fiddled with the translations and I don't know, no one knew that that was happening. I mean, what are we paying a public broadcast for. If I'm watching a doco on the BBC and the BBC has a history of producing excellent documentaries Louis throu etc. This is well below what you would expect of the BBC. But it would seem clear they had an agenda to
run here. And Badnock has a very good point. Was there any money that changed hands? In the production of this documentary. How did you manage to get that sort of access?
How did you manage to end up with the son of a hamas.
Minister fronting the thing without there being some kind of Lincoln.
Just one little thing to what you said. You're right, it's very religious in nature, and you said it's also about land, but the land is actually a religious issue as well. Exactly, you've got the what is it the mosque, what do they call it, the Dome of the whatever, the Dome of the Rock mosque built on top of where the ancient Jewish temple was. The whole thing is religious and as you said, they've tried to whitewash that.
Denny Cohen, the BBC's former television chief, said to the Telegraph that there's clearly deep rooted prejudice within the BBC, and he accuses the BBC of seeding antisemitism in the UK with this kind of rubbish, that they're actually making things even worse and they're promoting antisemitism for a public broadcast and to be doing this is just quite outrageous.
Well, when you look at the makeup of the UK now you do wander. We always bash on about how our politicians are shilling for the Muslim vote. Here in Australia, you can bet your bottom dollar they're doing the same over there.
There are a massive.
Muslim contingent in the UK right now and it's only growing.
So you do wonder how many of those now work.
For the BBC, Because when we're talking about a documentary like this, you know that this has gone through level after level of editing. How many people were involved in the production of this, How many people would have been aware of these edits, How many people would have been aware that this was the son of a, like you said, a Hamas minister, not just your average Palestinian boy running around.
But I got to say, these stories, when they make it into the media and it's pretty rare, are some of my favorites because I hope that it serves to remind people that this is what the media does.
This isn't a once off.
This is the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg, Beryl. I mean it was just last year we found out our own national broadcaster had literally deliberately edited footage that they put to air in order to make it look like our soldiers had committed war crimes overseas.
Wrap your head around that.
I find that incredibly offensive and you should too. And do you think that's just oh, two examples plucked out of the ethor these are just the ones that we end up finding out about. Can you imagine how much of this goes on.
It was just a few weeks.
Ago we were talking about the fact that USAID had been busted for funding over six two hundred journals across seven hundred and seven media outlets, seven of which are they eight media outlets in Ukraine.
These guys have.
Fingers in so many pies and they are stewing information.
All over the world like this.
This happens so regularly and people are just kept in the dark. The amount of power the media has is incredible.
The misrepresentation of what's happening in Gaza by the BBC is becoming almost a joke. It's that frequent. I mean recently I heard them describe the you know that you've got the exchange right, so Hamasa giving up the hostages and in exchange, there's hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, most of
whom have been convicted of terrorism offenses, being released. And yet the BBC described the Palestinian prisoners as hostages, and so this just goes on and on and on, to the point that you just would not trust the BBC on anything regarding the Gazan paper, and it.
Seems to be a lot of the British media in general at the moment. I think it was Channel four Good Morning Britain recently had a special on, you know, the liberation of Alschwitz, the eightieth anniversary of and they failed in the story to mention that any Jews were at our Schwitz. I mean, how on earth do you manage to do that. Some good news though, back in the US, Donald Trump has somehow managed to take a lot more questions in his first month as president then Joe Biden.
Did I know you've.
Fallen off your seat, you dropped your cup of tea? You can't believe it's real, but it is a sorry one thousand and nine questions to be precise, Trump has asked from journals since he came to the top job, compared to one hundred and forty one from Joe Biden. We remember how those Biden press conferences used to go. It was something like this, Just when you thought it would end, it didn't. In fact, I think that one went on forever because Joe Biden forgot what was actually
going on in that circumstance. But now we have Donald Trump just riffing with report as, having fun, answering their questions, no holds bard because he knows how to talk to an audience, in this instance, talking about some hats a fan had seen.
You give me all of them.
Look see that.
Trump was right about everything.
Just came in.
Somebody said, I said, this was sent in by a fan.
I said, I think we should make.
Some of them right, but we were pretty much.
You want one?
Are you allowed to take away?
Because he'll consider And I know him well, I'm a sort of a stiff, I said, Brian, you're not a sy He'll take other things, but not a pretty hand.
All making jokes about the Gulf of Mexico being renamed the Gulf of America.
I'm just admiring it. As I look at it, I'm getting terry. But I don't want you to say. Trump broke down.
And started cry, how beautiful is that? Look at the shoreline, Look at that.
So for all the talk of Donald Trump is an enemy of democracy. Donald Trump hates the media. Donald Trump hates journalists.
He clearly has.
A lot more respect and time for journalists than the previous president did because he can actually answer the questions that they have to usk.
He said.
Joe Biden only answered one hundred and forty one questions in his first month. That surprises me. I thought that was for his entire term. But you've got to understand one hundred and forty one questions in a month for Joe Biden, one hundred and eleven of those questions were regarding what flavored ice cream he was eating at the time.
Very easy.
I've always said about politicians facing the press is not hard if you are the genuine article, and Trump is someone who knows himself to be the genuine article.
Whether you like him or not is irrelevant. He's standing there, it's like, ask me anything. He's fearless.
He just he'll come up with something or he knows the answer. So it makes sense that he's blown previous presidents, including Obama, who only took one hundred and sixty one in their inquiries over his first month in office.
So it's not just the ailing.
Biden that he blew out of the water. Even the great orator of Obama has also just been dwarfed in Trump shadow.
The other interesting part of this is there's been a lot less White House press briefings under Trump in the first month, I think four compared to about sixteen under Biden, which just demonstrates the fact that Trump is incredibly capable and considers himself to be the best spokesperson for his administration. Biden, of course, they just tried to keep him hidden. So there you go. The enemy of democracy turns out to be the most transparent, open president that we've had in
quite some time. We're going to go to a break. When we come back, we'll look at what's making news tomorrow, including a very unusual court case in the District Court of New South Wales where the prosecution begins by adminning they can't win. All of that in a moment, Welcome back. Let's take a look at what's making headlines tomorrow. We'll start with Victoria's Herald Sun newspaper, where the headline reads
three sorry, violent drug addicts force government agency to move. Now, the Dan Andrews government opened a drug clinic in North Richmond back in twenty eighteen, and they had a four year trial, after which they decided to make it permanent. The problem, of course, was it was right next to
a primary school. Well, get a look at what's happened, it says, in a major embarrassment for the Allen government, a state agency is moving out of its Richmond office after repeated cases of staff being subjected to physical assaults and verbal abuse from users of the nearby drug injecting room. So, of course parents at the local school, which is just thirty meters from the drug injecting room, are saying, we've been banging on about this since twenty eighteen. Why would
you put this near a school? Here, you've got government workers saying they can't put up with the drug addicts and the rubbish that's going on nearby. Back in twenty twenty one, there was a dead body found near the school after somebody overdosed. There's constant drug paraphernalia left all over the place. This would seem to confirm everything that those Richmond residents were worried about. If it's not good enough for government workers, how on earth is it good enough for primary school kids.
Well, and you know it's all good for the public servants who can just up and go somewhere else. Through In a bit of trouble if you're the school right and to think that it wasn't Allen, it was Daniel Andrews. But this government wanted to put another injecting room on Flinders Street in the city, opposite Flinders Street Station. What do they think would have happened then? I mean that
end of Elizabeth Street. That the intersection of Elizabeth Street and Flinders Street is bad enough as it is, with drunkards and dragged up people and whatever, homeless people hanging around, walking around, shouting, abusing people.
And carrying on.
That is bad enough as it is without saying, oh, We're going to put another injecting room up the road. If these public servants can't hack it in Richmond, how do you reckon? The workers of the Melbourne CBD.
Would have been able to hack it if the government got their way.
Indeed, seriously, let's go to the St Alien tomorrow where it doesn't get much better.
This is a bizarre story. Why are we here, judge asked prosecutor.
Who admits he can't win a new South Wales Crown Prosecutor told the District Court in an opening address that the case had no prospect of success. In an extraordinary admission that prompted the judge to offer the prosecutor the chance to seek advice from the private bar before proceeding. In a devastating blow to the state's prosecution office, the prosecutor said the prosecution could not exclude the possibility.
That there was a reasonable excuse for the.
Alleged crime, and therefore there was no hope for a conviction. Asked by District Court Judge Andrew Golfax, how do you win the matter.
The prosecutor replied, we don't.
Judge went on to ask, then why are we here? I mean, there is enough real crime going on in the world without the DPP off to court to run cases where the prosecutor can see they don't have.
A chance of conviction.
This is public money being spent running cases that will come to nought.
Why are we doing this?
Is there almost a case for the defendant to then sue the DPP or so, I don't know, harassment through all of this trouble and landing him in court when they acknowledge they haven't got a hope in hell of winning. Although the punishment maybe exactly, I reckon the defendant will be a little upset if you wouldn't want to have paid your defense lawyer a whole lot of money only to find the prosecution are going to defend me. I should never have engaged the defense.
But the prosecutor opened by saying that the defendant was a man of good character.
I mean, this is not the way to start a cases.
It's money well spent by the taxpayer.
If more money well spent, it.
Could have just been the prosecutors con used thought for a second he was the defense.
Because I've been doing a review into all this stuff. They found eleven cases where prosecution guidelines had not been adhere to.
Seriously, it is an absolute joke.
They call it a justice system. It's not a justice system. If this is the way they are behaving, speaking of justice, someone wants some sacrificial LAMB said to le Sue law firm. We talked about this last night, but there's been an
update over at Slater and Gordon. The executive who says she was falsely accused of sending a malicious quote unquote email to Slater and Gordon's staff is expected to take legal action against the top tier law firm after it allowed the crisis to escalate despite clear early indications the
email had been manipulated. This was the former interim Chief People Officer, Mari Ruitz Matheson, who was implicated in having sent out this email that included everyone's review details and pays, so that went out over the weekends to everyone at Slade and Gordon could look at everyone else's pay.
She says she didn't do it.
Now she's thinking of suing a law firm because it's all gone to crap.
I mean, this just gets better and better.
Who would have thought that the goings on of a law firm in Sydney could beat almost any other story going around at the moment for entertainment.
This is true entertainment.
It sounds like it's got a few more twists and turns to go before that story runs out of gas. It's going to be interesting to watch it.
They need to make an episode of Suits where this happens.
There's some swanky law firm.
Then everyone gets an email and finds out what everyone's learning before we go to a break to the Voice of Tasmania. The Mercury plug in two fifty thousand dollars. Grants of up to fifty thousand are now available to businesses, community groups and local government agencies for the installation of public electric vehicle charging infrastructure as the Tasmanian government seeks to accommodate growing demand for evs. Really, really, is the
demand really growing for evs? Can you show us the numbers on that, because they're not getting back to us.
But how do you like this? Fifty grand?
So they would still have to fork out for the actual charger, but the installation, one assumes would be.
Covered off by this. I looked up how much it.
Is to install a public EV charger in Australia and the interweb says somewhere between forty thousand and one hundred thousand dollars.
And that's just the installation.
That is extraordinary.
To put in a charger for an electric car cost that amount of money. We wonder why people aren't buying these things. Oh, it's the panacea, it'll save the planet, but it'll seem you broke in the meantime. I just cannot get over that it would cost that much money to put a plug in the ground, and.
When you consider how inefficient they are. I mean, you can charge one car for what does it take to charge a vehicle twenty minutes twenty thirty minutes. Yeah, it's not a good use of money. We're going to go to break. When we come back. The most unusual drug bust that we've come across for quite a while, we'll show you out went down in just a moment. Okay, I think we've found the most unusual drug bust of the year already. It's only February, but I'm calling it, Caleb.
This is it might be the most unusual in a long time. Remember cocaine.
Cassie, another great Adelaidian who tried to smuggle all that cocaine out of Columbia stuffed into headphones. She said, we're going to be gifts at her wedding party. Well, this bloke has given her a serious run for her money.
Take a look.
He was caught by Columbian authorities with cocaine. You can see they're packed up into small bags in a two pay attached to his head.
Quite clearly.
He has walked through the scanner and they've gone, hmmm, something strange going on here, and they found that the forty year old man had two hundred and twenty grams of cocaine stuffed into his hair. That would be worth upwards of fifty five thousand dollars here in Australia. But the authorities have actually deemed that this is a specific kind of device. They described it as a Naco wig, So it is.
Now a thing.
There is now a thing stuffing cocaine in your hair and putting it on. And I would have thought, James, you would be a prime candidate for that kind of job with your hairline.
I thought that comment might come kind of interestingly watching that vision, I reckon he was more concerned about being exposed a hairline on the drugs, because the moment they took the wig off and got the drugs, he mediately put his cap back on. That was the thing he was worried about.
To cover my shame.
Before we leave you tonight, if you're a fan of fantasy weddings, have we got one for the history books. This couple decided that they would have a Lord of the Rings wedding, but it got the groom off to a terrible start with his in laws.
Oh direct directly quote him.
He said, I decided that as the groom, I would fully commit to the role of a midie for Lord Shakespearean style Old English for the entire day. Her mom pulled me aside mid reception, her mom being the mother of the bride, and asked me to just talk normal. He recounted, I told her verily, I know not of what thou doth speak. At the end of the night, my new father in law came up to me, said I had embarrassed the family and made a.
Joke out of the wedding.
Right after the guy though, if you're gonna pick a themed wedding, you've got to commit to it. This guy just wasn't letting a letting up.
Absolutely, that's all we've got time for, but stick around. Coming up is the Reader Penney Show. Good Night,