Lately, Zan gentle manner, welcome to the Late de Bay. Yes, indeed, good evening and welcome to the late Debate. Nice to have your company. Thank you for joining us. I'm Kel Richards with me on the desk, Sky News contributor Evelyn Ray and Will Kingston of the Fire at Will website. Nice to have you a company and a lot of interesting things for us to talk about tonight. For example, Donald Trump keeps talking about tariff's but if there is a tariff war, will Australia be hit by the crossfire?
And what about those ugly anti semitism remarks? Do we need to do something like surrender a bit of free speech to get rid of those those in a moment? But firstly, our future is in the hands of young people, young Australians. What will they do with it? Will they drag us in a sort of green hard left direction or will they do something else? Well, there are some figures which are just out now suggesting that young voters in fact are not as left, not as green voting
as they once were. Take a look at this pie chart which shows how voters in US aged en to thirty four are likely to vote now at the moment is showing that Greens getting twenty three percent of their vote if you just look down three points, but they used to have twenty seven percent of their vote. The Greens are slowly losing that young vote. Now that young voter is divided at the moment pretty much equally two percent going to Labor and two percent of the Coalition.
But the fact that the Greens are losing that vote is quite possibly significant. Will you come used for most of the year in London. Is there any sign of a movement in the younger generation to change where they stand politically?
Yes, there is, And I think that's interesting you picked up on that because it is a global trend. You see Nigel Faraj having millions of followers on TikTok, you see Trump gaining a huge amount of support with the young vote in the last selection in the US. And the reason is because the left have become the joyless authoritarians in our modern age and the right are suddenly
countercultural thereby in compari Grrison the cool ones. My question for us is are there those types of Farage or Trumpian figures in Australia who can actually bring the cool factor to the right on the liberal and conservative side of politics.
Do we need figures like that? I mean, Farage actually got forty sorry, Trump got forty six percent of the youth vote in America, which is not a big figure. Now do we need a charismatic figure like that? Or will young people just say not happy with the left? This is where I'm going.
That's a good question. I don't think it would hurt, would be the thing that I would say. And yeah, I don't think it would hurt at all. What would you say of them?
Yeah, I definitely think that regardless of who's sort of at the forefront or the face of more right wing politics, I still think regardless of that that the young voters are going to start voting more right. The pendulum has swung politically.
But I do.
Think that having somebody that is charismatic, some with the essence of Trump or Farage, somebody that can kind of pull big crowds, will definitely get that happening a lot quicker than if it was say somebody that we've all seen for decades before in Australian politics like Dutton. I think Dutton will serve a purpose. I think that he's
definitely probably the best we have so far. But I think moving forward long term, I definitely think that we need somebody who's going to appeal to the younger crowds.
Twenty twenty five, we've got either Dutton or Albanesi. That's right, that's really quick true. Peter Dutton, ex policeman. Is he down to worth enough? Is he realistic enough for young people to vote for? Look?
I think he definitely is somebody a politician who cuts the fat straight off the meat, and I think young people like that. I think that young people like that he's not afraid to give it to the mainstream media like you've seen him in interviews. But to be honest, yeah, I think that there is still a gap between politicians and young graz you're laughing then at you.
It's TikTok test evil and can we really see a little you know, Donald Trump's style dance from Peter Dunton, Peter Dutton and who.
Did that awkward hug on TV the other day that, yeah.
It's not quite the Trump dance actually became a craze it did.
This is important. This matters in modern politics, in the age where people don't watch long debates as much as they watch short little bite sized segments. Those things matter. But the other thing I would say is is this actually time for the left to have a good long look in the mirror and actually wonder why they're losing support amongst cause.
To be honest, I think the left do what the left do, and the right do what the right do.
The problem is partly that as far as the left just con as far as the right is concerned, the left is wrong, They're just mistaken. But as far as the left is concerned, the right is evil. You know, they are morally superior. It's very hard for them to back down from a position like that.
Yeah, I don't think that's always been the case, though. I think that's an inversion in the last twenty years, which is accelerated in the last ten and it's now unfortunately so ingrained to cross all the institutions that you see young people going. We are traditionally anti authoritarian, we're traditionally countercultural, and that is now the place of the right. One of my favorite quotes comes from Nick Kay, a great Australian artist, and he was asked how do you
be countercultural? In twenty twenty three When he was asked and he said, you be a conservative, You go to churches, you praise God, you have a family, you do all the things that used to be boring and lame, and now that's the thing that makes you countercultural in twenty.
Twenty three, or with the drawing power of those things, or is it that the young people are turning away from something they no longer like this? There's a famous saying it's been around in politics for decades of governments oppositions to win elections, governments lose them. So is it the case of what we've got is an opposition a government that is so unattractive it's losing people, rather than having a charismatic opposition that's winning them.
I think it's I think it's bigger than politicians and government. I think it's in terms of it what the government.
Yeah, I do.
I really believe that progressivism has absolutely you know, killed the left, the moderate left, the centrists. And I think because progressivism has been shoved so down people's throats, this is an inevitable result. People are going to rebel against that.
You know.
I think one of the greatest things that I saw come out of COVID was what it did to the young kids and I remember seeing a scene in Victoria where there was a skate park that was cordoned off by crime scene tape, and you saw these young kids out there ripping it down and fanging around with their skateboards, and I remember thinking, yes, there is hope for the future because it is tyrannical governments and arbitrary laws that young kids are even smart enough to recognize five year
olds can go that doesn't make logical sense. And that's exactly what happened. And you will radicalize a group of people when you cut off information to them and you say you can't do ABC or D and it makes no sense.
And that's what the young voters are going to do. But the good news is we older voters, in fact, are a vast majority of the public, and we are swinging towards the Coalition in much larger numbers according to the most recent surveys. There are still things, however, in our society that worries, and one of them is ugly
anti Semitism. There's an academic at Macquarie University, Runda Abdulphatar, and she has posted that for this coming year, for twenty twenty five, she wants it to be the year which is the end of Israel as a nation and the end of what she calls the death cult of Zionism. May twenty twenty five be the end of Israel, she wrote on Instagram. May be the end of the US
Israeli imperial scourge on humanity. May we see the abolition of the death cult of Zionism and the end of US Empire and finally a world where the slaughter, annihilation, and torture of Palestinians is no longer daily routine. And to achieve this is to snowball collective liberation, because the tedacles of Western imperialism oppressed and dehumanize as all. Now, you know, there is a degree of delusion about what is actually going on there, but she clearly that is
a very ugly sort of anti Semitism. And we've seen so much of this will what is driving it.
Two things. Number one, it is the world's oldest prejudice that has taken on a new form. And the second is that, unfortunately the modern left now just has this very basic view of the world, which is an oppressor oppressed paradigm.
And it's the Marxist view. Mark said, there are only two groups of people in society, the oppressed and the oppressors. And if you're not, if you're not in the oppressed, you must be one of the If you're not in the oppress, you're want of the oppressed. But it's just it's very simplistic role analysis.
But also, the Jews have been the most historically oppressed group of people in history. But just because they are now well sure debatable, but they've been oppressed throughout history and now just because Israel is a successful, thriving state, they are now seen to be the bad guys. And that is the basic reality for the modern left. Now.
Part of the problem with this particular woman run to abdul Fatar is she's on the staff of Macquarie University. She's paid there as an academic, and she is in receipt of an eight hundred thousand dollars grant research grant from this Roadian Research Council. So she's getting a lot of taxpayer dollars there at the university and in this research grant. What is going on? Why are we paying someone who's anti Semitic. Rents are pretty horrible? Why are we paying her that much money?
It's very, very very simple answer to this multiculturalism. We are a nation who prides ourselves on being multicultural. We always have been, that is apart from our first foundations. But this is an inevitable consequence of the multicultural dream or dystopian nightmare, to be honest, because that.
Follows if someone is making what a clearly aggress anti Jewish comments, and they're fairly horrifying comments and some of the things that you This is the same woman who brought a group of children along to an anti Semitic demonstration at Sydney University and had little kids chanting for tar and andie Israelis statements. Now, if she's doing that sort of thing, why should she get taxed by a dollars?
There's no because our country has said that she's allowed to. I'm happy to elaborate because you know, she's Palestinian. So what did we expect. We have somebody of Palestinian descent and ethnicity here in Australia, and we've told we have literally told pretty much our politicians have told every Australian that we're a very pluralistic nation, being that every culture, every religion, every ideology is equal. It all comes under equality.
Everybody gets this, and until we address the elephant in the room, which is first and foremost, not all cultures are equal, and not our ideas are equal or should be good. Until we address that, this is going to happen everywhere where we allow this type of culture dream to take over.
I think there are two issues here. I think there is multiculturalism and cultural relativism. I don't think this is necessarily a byproduct of multiculturalism, but well, because there are a lot of white Anglo Saxon academics who think and are saying the exact same thing. This is an ideology, and I think the point is this is about cultural relativism, which says that all cultures are somehow equal, and to.
That our politicians have boon fedter.
And on that point I absolutely agree with you. I think that ideology is absolutely wrong. But I think the other point which we need to make is what is the response here to this? And I think there's a right response and a wrong response. The wrong response is to limit speech further, and unfortunately that's been the instinct on the left for some time, I think is actually
the instinct on the right increasingly. The real answer here is how do we reform our education sector, which has been so corroded by this type of ideology.
Well, let's take a look at that. Because the coalition's spokesman on education is Senator Sarah Henderson. This is what she had to say about how we should respond.
This is frankly a disgrace, and even worse is that the other and easy government is doing nothing to stamp out this sort of anti semitism.
So the question is should Macuarie University Sacker as an academic. Is she entitled to be there is this part of academic freedom or has she stepped across the line.
No, they shouldn't sack her because I don't think this meant the threshold of incitement to violence. But what they should be thinking about, which is what I didn't here there, is how do we reform the education sector. How do we get more conservatives in as academics, How do we get institutions that actually support liberal Western civilization as opposed to whatever that is? How do we build new institutions.
They're the conversations on the right that we should be having, not just these boiler plate kind of answers that we heard from Henderson.
There. We have had the problem for a while in city, and in fact there were some really ugly things happen in the eastern suburbs. For example, there were really dreadful slogans painted up on walls that we saw which were anti Jewish. They would kill Israel. Those kinds of slogans you remember those, you saw them on the news. These kinds of things. Now, when that happened, the New South Wales Premier Chris Mens obviously was under a lot of
pressure to react. You can't let that happen. You can't have the cars burn and such horrible kill Israel signs being painted up. So what should we do, well, Chris Mins said, we need to toughen our laws and we need to restrict what people can say and do when it comes to expressing these kinds of opinions. Here's Chris Mins.
If we need to change laws in the state when it comes to hate speech, that's what we will do.
And I don't do that lightly. It is impinging on people's rights, Is he right? Is that an appropriate way to go?
One of the worst things that Australians do is and every single time something bad happens, they look to Daddy government to make them feel safe. Again. And unfortunately with that, it's such a double edged because we are constantly looking for these short term comforts and short term security, we're missing out on these long term freedoms which are going to.
Keep us with antisemitism. Government should do nothing.
There's already laws in place. Kel. This is the thing. I'm happy to read you, the laws that we have on incitement. There are countless laws that we have in the Crimes Acts that we have under all different acts of terrorism and everything you can imagine. We have so many arbitrary, useless laws at our fingertips. We do not need anymore. We have laws for incitement, we have laws for harassment, we have laws for threatening violence, we have
laws for arson, we have laws for graffiti. We do not need to add any of the only time you should ever add laws to or enact laws into your nation is if something is lacking, if there is a whole that needs to be plugged. It doesn't we have laws for actual crimes. What we're doing here is we're trying to police speech, and we're trying to that whole leftist way of saying words equal harm, and that's a very very dangerous slippery slope. And we don't need to go.
But in the case of anti Semitism, it's a little bit more than being rude or taking offense, because centuries of anti Semitism led to the murder of six million Jews, So there is something more behind anti Semitism.
Communism has also led to millions of people being like, we could.
Like that doesn't That doesn't really tell us anything about the Holocaust. The Holocaust happened. We have to be a weird, isn't.
That's the kind of place there are here to deal with crimes, actual crimes.
So so what's happening is the government is simply not acting on the laws. It's good.
I'm not a police officer investigating it, but I guarantee you if they found the person who put the graffiti on the cars or the glass, one hundred percent they'd be taken a court and tried.
This is very simple, and this is something which the right has forgotten in this country, and that there is a different between something being morally reprehensible and legally wrong.
And for over two thousand years now, Western civilization has come to a conclusion that it is better to have morally reprehensible views out in the public domain so you can discuss them, so you can debate them as opposed to putting them into the shadows, because that's where you start to get this sort of toxic behavior for men in a way which eventually leads to Nazism. And beyond that, as you well know, we know, it gets to a point where there is a subjective lens where people say
that something is good and something is bad. We can't afford to have that. I hate it. How Chris Men's just blanketly says, oh, well, we don't have American style free speech in this country.
Why not.
It's a threat as well, because what he was basically saying is I know it.
Something is complex as that in five minutes, So you keep thinking about it because there's more for us to discuss. Our Australian economy is worth discussing because our Australian economy is a bit sluggish, in fact, it's very sluggish, and our productivity is extremely poor. Hence, if there was a global trade war, we may well be collateral damage. And former Prime Minister John Howard and former Treasurer of Peter Costello have both challenged Anthony Albanesi on Donald Trump's possible
illegal tariffs. They're saying the tariffs that Donald Trump keeps talking about ten to twenty percent, which he says he will apply to everyone regardless, including perhaps allies such as Australia, would be illegal under the two thousand and four a free trade agreement which John Howard negotiated with the Americans. It's been in place for twenty years. We have a free trade agreement in place. Would that be violated if tariffs are introduced by Donald Trump in the way that
he's saying you will. Is that something we need to be worried about.
No, I don't think so. I'm very hesitant to call out the goat on national television, and Johnny is, of course the goat.
But I think that can I just explain for old viewers he's using goat the way young people do to mean greatest of all time. Yeah, so he's using it very politely. It's a nice thing to say about John Howard. Great God. I thought I should make that thank you, not not the animals that mountains.
But when I think he has misread this slightly and that this is not really an economic policy from Trump as much as is a bargaining chip, I don't think he will ever put tariffs on Australia. My question is why aren't our politicians bargaining in the same way that someone like Trump does. We have bargaining chips that we
can throw at America. We're the most geopolitically strategically important position in the fight against China, which will become more and more explosive, I would argue in the next five years. That's something the US needs. My question is why and our politicians arguing for us in the same way Trump is obviously arguing for America's interests.
Because we don't have a Trump. That's why I think for too long we haven't put Australia first. Like Trump's entire election promise was America for the Americans, you know, in America first, And this is exactly that and that sort of spine and that sort of passion, and that's sort of I don't care what the rest of the world thinks. If this is best for my country, this is what I'm going to do. That's the sort of you know, card that our Australian politicians should be reading from.
And I think, you know, I think that when it comes to tariffs and it comes to this, if he has to do that to make his country first. Good on him, and I think we should be doing that. And sure it might suck for us, but like you said, well like why aren't our politicians doing the same for us? I think that you know, charity and goodwill and things
come as a result of prosperity. And if your country isn't prosperous and your country is, you know, going through really hard times, if you have to do this to get yourself out of there for your nation, then good for you.
But at the same time, if he brings them in, he brings them in, and we need to work out whether they go to hurt Australia. The good news is that economists due to Sloan had a piece in The Australian this morning which was excellent on this topic, and basically her argument was don't panic, don't panic too soon. Part of what she had to say was this, She said,
tariffs are only one instrument of industry protection. Many countries engage in supporting local industries through direct and indirect subsidies as well as through regulation. In other words, don't worry too much about tariffs. Everyone's fiddling the book, everyone's playing this game and if they are protecting their industries, we can protect our industries. We can find a way to do it.
Yeah, I think that's I think that's right. And look, Judith is the best on this sort of analysis. I think it's just an interesting broader look at the old kind of pre Trumpy in view on the right, which is hard and costello and probably, to be honest, it's more of a view that I would hold, and the new right which is emerging under Trump, which is protectionist, which is very much not the type of free market economics that we as I grew up with under the
Howard era. My question, which I think is interesting, is will the right revert back in a post Trump age to what we saw or is the right now basically defined by isolationism, by protectionism, by closed markets.
Well it's nations.
Well that's the.
Going back to nations instead of this idea of globalistic, harmonious dwelling, which is an impossible dream to.
Well, no, we had it for a long time. That's John Howard's point. It was things like the free trade agreen which produced prosperous nations, that kind of open trade. We've had that for twenty years with America and both countries prosperous and the result of it.
But we're not living in those times anymore. We are living in hard times. It's like that whole you know, hard times create good men. Good men create hard times, that pendulum that constantly swings. We are in hard times and this is when we are forging good men who will hopefully get us out of here. But I think, you know, Trump hopefully is the first foot in the
door to make that happen. And I think that back you know, twenty years ago and Howard was doing, is we could afford to do that because we weren't as much in debt. We weren't in a position where we couldn't you know, our own citizens couldn't even afford electricity bills, and you had governments telling you to stock up on firewood for winter. Like we are living in hard times and as a result, you need to make hard decisions. And you know he's done this to Canada as well. Trump,
He's put in some hard things. If you do this, and that I'm going to be putting on similar things to what he's suggested.
But as it will says a lot of what he's doing is part of his bargaining. He's negotiating. He's saying to Canada, look, if you unless you stop the flood of illegal immigrants coming across the border and the flood of fenderdeel, then I'll put on good on it.
Yeah, we do.
I won't put it on yeah. So in other words, it's a bargaining chip, isn't.
It It is? And to be clear, howd and Costello are right. It would be bad for the Australian economy, There's no two ways about that. But that isn't a reason for us to kind of put our hands up in the air and go whoa is us? That's the reason to say, right, how do we actually go to in front of the negotiating table with Trump, say what are our strategic advantages? How do we put those against the US? And then how do we come to a
conclusion where we don't have this happen to us? Well, that is a response.
How I'm sort of living my life now post COVID, like I've sort of had to reevaluate life and go how can I be as most self sufficient as possible? So the government ever decides me to lock me in my home and forces me to get injected with something I don't want to do. How am I going to survive this? I want to be as self sufficient as I can. And I think Australia is a nation it needs to take that mentality on. We haven't been manufacturing.
How we should. We have an amazing country with amazing resources. We could be doing so much here, We could be giving so much oointment to our own citizens. There is so much we could do, and I think Pauline Hanson and One Nation have done a really good job of basically trying to say, let's bring things back.
Because we're about you, Evelyn. You're an idealist. Do you have this idealist's view of where Australia could end up?
And why not?
Days? We might get there, who knows. But in the meantime we have to deal with Donald Trump. Because Donald Trump, in twenty days from now will be inaugurated as the forty seventh president of the United States. He actually gets two numbers. He was the forty fifth, he becomes the forty seventh as well. But already the Democrats in the United States are working very hard to try to break up the Trump machine, and they're big push at the moment appears to be an attempt to drive a wedge
between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Clearly they are the two big brains inside the Trump machine. If they can drive a wedge between them, they think that would be a good thing. We saw it happening when they started saying, oh, well, Musk is really calling all the shots and making jokes about calling him president muk Musk. Do you think will that will? I mean, will Trump fall for that sort of thing? Has he got an ego that's vulnerable? There?
Very possibly? Look, this is smart. We know Trump has the world's biggest ego. We know that this would needle him. We saw it in that debate with Kamala Harris where you could just see she was just baiting him and baiting him, and we knew she would bait him.
And bait him, and he took the bait.
Now, I think it's the question is has Trump evolved as a politician where he can spot this, And I think there is his history which would suggest no. But the one piece of evidence I would say on the contrary is the way that he's managed jade Evance. Jadevans had every opportunity and was the star in my opinion of that campaign, and it feels like Trump has actually utilized him and put him in a position where he's
comfortable working alongside him. So just perhaps maybe the Donald now is wisening up to these sorts of Democrat tactics.
It actually strikes me that that's the case. I think that Donald Trump we're seeing is a more of a statesman, more presidential than we've ever seen it. In fact, I think the turning point, the actual turning point, was the shooting. When he was shot in Butler in Penncil. He was I think this is just kel. I think he was different afterwards. I think he's been calmer, he's more confident. He's a man who knows what he's doing, and I
don't think he can be shaken. Do you think they might get away with driving a wedge in there somewhere evilent?
No.
I think they will try. But I think Trump's been through absolutely everything to helen back and he's come out on top better than his enemies. So I think he's okay. And I think what you said will is true. I think his first term, when he was inaugurated in twenty sixteen, I don't think he had his good men around him. I think the difference now is that he has good men around him that hopefully have a lot of wisdom, a lot of discernment, and give him good advice. I
think JD. Vans is an incredible vice president pick. I think he's even more that's stricking good.
But with his dealings with Elon Musk, the issue came up of skilled immigration. They've got a special rule for skilled immigration in America. The big tech company such as Elon Musk's company want that to happen. A lot of the MAGA group, the heart of the Republican Party, said no, there shouldn't be a skilled immigration program, and Trump came down on Musk's side. Does that make sense to you.
No, it doesn't. Perhaps there's something behind the scenes I'm not aware of, but from the research that I've done, you know, there's been reports that there are over one hundred and fifty thousand people in tech who were laid off from all kinds of places, Tesla, Microsoft, you name it. And so I think that you know, those those particular visas for skilled workers. Perhaps there's a really niche need
for it. But I actually would disagree with the statements that Vivec and Musk have made about it the way that they're throwing it around, that you know, white people are lazy, apathetic, useless, basically, and that because of that we need to bring in people from other nations, other ethnicities, not Americans to fix the job. I think that's a really big red flag, and I actually think that Musk
and vivec are wrong on this. And I can see why there are such a large group of Republicans who were upset by these comments.
Not just Republicans, because MSNBC got on board with this one, and basically the line they took was if you're white, then Elon Musk is coming for your job. Take a look at this.
America is a land of a free home and brave all I did stuff that Elon Mussel was tweeting about. However, please don't come for Americans. And I just I would like, let's be very clad like white Americans and stand up.
This is your colling card.
Where's your manner?
They coming for you?
They said, y'all white and lazy.
That's crazy, Well, y'all would be.
Coming for me. That's the point.
What you have happening here is the very thing that white folks have said about black people. I'm sorry I just want to know if Vick was born in the US for generations. The Veka is now saying about white people and they don't like it for some reason.
Yet another MSNBC pedal which is taking race I think far too seriously. But is there a problem with skilled immigration? And is Trump playing the wrong game? So I think to win on Musk Yes, it's a good idea.
Every country always needs very small, particular amounts of skilled immigration. I think the issue, and I think everyone was getting to this is this is the messaging. And I think it demonstrated the tech bros, which have been awkwardly part of this marga movement, didn't understand that immigration is the fundamental concern of the market base, is the fundamental concern of the right in the UK, it is the fundamental concern of the right in Australia. Increasingly, it will be
the defining issue of politics over the next decade. And I think they kind of thought, well, we're smarter than everyone else. And what they didn't understand is they didn't fundamentally understand the other part of their coalition.
Can I just say what Trump said in twenty eighteen, Trump actually spoke about immigration in Europe, and he said, and I quote, immigration has changed the culture in Europe. It's a shame, he said. It's changed the fabric of Europe, and not in a positive way. So I find it interesting because there is mass immigration in.
Europe, and that's I don't think immigration is a yes or no question. It is about how much, where from, and how quickly. And I think it's not helpful for us to say oh, yes or no to immigration. The problem with places like Europe is it's been too quick, and they've been importing people from the wrong areas and they haven't been able to adjust to it well.
And they also haven't screened them carefully enough because they've accepted them as flooding in as refugees. Therefore, we do know screening, and therefore suddenly we end up we discover we've got terrorists in our midst and people of that sort.
There are plenty of controlled mass migration is a huge problem, but I don't necessarily limit that means no migrations.
So Vivek and Musk have said they're going to take the best and brightest from these countries, right. I actually think that's a real disservice to these impoverished countries. If you take the best and brightest from these countries, you're basically determining their downfall. Why would you like, how can you say?
How can you say America first before and they should do everything they can in their own interests, and then say, oh, suddenly that should be caring about skill worth.
I don't believe that the best is not within America anyway.
The best and brightest are the people who are supposed to be covered by skilled immigration programs. We have a skilled immigration program in Australia, and the point is we are bringing in people we don't have here. Every nation is like that, and on this one it seems as though the margabase has lost and Elon Musk and Donald Trump have won. After the break tomorrow or midnights at nine few hours from now, is the start of a brand new year. What will change in the new year?
How will it affect you? And what will it cost you? Watch the new year coming at midnight? And you know what happened? Nothing? It was exactly the same as the whole year. As a very small boy, I was deeply disappointed that nothing changed. But some things do change. Because at the stroke of midnight, laws that have been passed in the last year become effective in the new year. There's a whole bunch of areas where there are laws.
There's quite a long list of them. But let me put up on the screen just a few of the things that will change. For example, settling payments will change. Senttling payments including youth allowance and OS study and care allowance. They increase. That happens. Medicare Safety Net threshold increases, not by much, five hundred sixty dollars to five hundred and seventy six dollars, so it's a sixteen dollars increase. The Victorian land tax is also going to leap in out
all over the place. It'll apply to properties that have been empty for more than six months in a calendar year. If you're in Victoria, you're just going to apply a lot more tax. There's also more payment for aged care workers. But the one that really leapt out of me was mandatory climate reporting. Every large company from midnight to night will have to make reports on climate related information in their annual financial reports for the financial year beginning on
the first of January. Now it seems to me this is just evilyent. Another impost on companies that are all readily vastly overregulated.
We are one, like our country is one of the most nanny states like I've ever come across, to be honest, and there is red tape everywhere. There are so many hoops to jump through. It's horrible, and I honestly don't think that any first world nation should have to live under conditions. But it's interesting if you look at other countries in the world, you can kind of foresee our future if we as the people don't put a stop
to this sort of I guess trajectory. And one of those things is Sweden, for example, Sweden, Ireland and a few of those other countries. They've started to do CO two checks on grocery bills, so you get a score, you go to the grocery, you pay for things, and it gives you a carbon emission score at the end. Apparently in some countries they say that it's lessened red meat purchasing for some because that's obviously seen as the devil. Oh my goodness, don't let cows go anywherey of the world.
They're the you know, the crux of this problem. And you also have other companies who are putting like labels on their food with a rating, so you get like, you know, you have those five star energy ratings. It's like that on your food. But with climate rating you also have them collecting data so that they data so that can assess situations about things. We've all read George Orwell's nineteen eighty four. We all know where this is headed.
And I know it seems like you know, I'm pulling it straws here, but like I think, we have to come to the harsh reality. If we don't put in check this climate cult it will grow and turn and here in Australia we will start to have our grocery receipts having to be checked. And also in some countries they're also making foods that are deemed higher for carbon emissions more expensive, so unless you eat the crickets, you basically have to take out a mortgage on the answer.
Look, the answer comes from Jeremy Clarkson. Jeremy Carson had the perfect answer. He said, I don't have a carbon footprint. I drive everywhere. That is the answer. But this idea of big companies will coming in with a mandatory climate reporting. I just can't see how every big company, regardless of what business it's in, should be involved in doing this kind of reporting back to the government.
No, well they may, but if their investors want them to do that. This is the problem I have. This is a government that either doesn't understand how a market works, or even worse, willfully disagrees with the concept of a market itself. And this is how market works. If their investors wanted them to put that little section into their investor report about climate, they would ask them to do so.
And if they felt that strongly about it and the company didn't do it, they would then divest from that company.
Could I tell you about a problem we have in Australia because the biggest investor in a lot of these companies are in superannuation companies, and the superannuation funds are owned and run by unions, and in fact they do want these kinds of climate correct policies to be imposed on companies, even if it reduces their profitability.
Yeah, and that's fine. Look, if they want to then go directly to those companies and say do this and do that, I don't have a problem with that. The problem is when the government comes in and says you have to do this and you have to do that. And unfortunately we've completely forgotten the concept of our market economy should work.
And one of the things that's happening all the time now we're all aware of this, is how much government spending is increasing. All of this becomes a cost on the government because the government has to process all of this stuff. In fact, I remember Tony Abbat telling me once that when he was the Prime Minister, if anyone wanted to bring in a new regulation, they had to take out two for every new regulation that they put in. Now New South Wales taxpayers are going to have to
pay for people who are called commissioners. I find this quite interesting. There are commissioners being imported, appointed to specific roles. We have someone who's appointed as a twenty four hour economy commissioner, sometimes called a nighttime commissioner. He's on a salary of six hundred, three hundred and sixty to five hundred thousand dollars. There's a small business commissioner also collecting the same huge salary. There's a rental commissioner. Now the
rental commissioner is a lady named Trina Jones. I'm sure she's a very nice lady. But if your renting, I don't know if she's doing anything for you. That is Trina, that's Trino Joe. She is the rental commissioner. If you're a renter, have you had any interaction with her? She's on a three hundred thousand dollars aralery. There are three Treaty Commissioners to do some sort of preparation meeting with indigenous groups for some sort of treaty which might happen
at some point in the future. Do we really need all of these commissioners.
No, of course we don't. I think my favorite clip from this year was the Argentinian president have a millet in his bombastic type of way up with a whiteboard of every department in the Argentinian administration and just ripping them away, saying I don't need this. I don't need that, DEI the Department for Women, the Department for this, for that, I don't need it. We've just forgotten, basically that there is some basic essentials government to provide and then most
of the stuff is not needed. Like I'll tell you a little anecdote from the other day. I had an interview with SBS which is in it and itself quite extraordinary and I probably won't get another one after telling the story they've worked.
At Who you are now?
Yeah, yeah, But the size of the SBS studio was about five times the size of this Sky studio, and I think the rating for SCO would probably be five times the size of SBS. But this is what happens when you've got a publicly funded department which is not accountable to anyone. This is what happens when people forget that it is other people's money that they are spending, and this is just another example of that.
One of the odd things is this business of appointing commissioners. I'm not even sure I can work out what a commissioner does. I think a commissioner is meant to take responsibility for a particular area and make it work well. But it's a very odd title. Do we really need the commissioners.
I'm not sure the Australian government even know why they're employing these people, to be honest, other than to blow taxpayer dollars. You hit the nail on the head well in that you know, when you're spending somebody else's money. It's very easy to do that, and I think our taxation in our country is pure theft. These days, we literally work half the year for free, and not only that, on top of that then have to pay our local government,
our council rates. It's absolutely insane the amount of tax as a nation that we have to pay and we get no thing in return for that.
But also how divorced from reality of the people who are actually setting these wages, Like I'm looking at this three hundred and sixty five hundred K three in a sixty five hundre k three hundred k plus. Do these people understand in the private sector they are seriously big salaries.
In fact, that's quite the weird thing, is I remember when I was a lot younger and my father worked for the New South Wales Railways as an engineer, and he was explaining to me, now, if you work in the public sector, the salaries are always smaller, but the security of employment. If you want higher salaries you work in the public In the private sector, that doesn't sound base anymore. Now they get both.
Yeah, yeah, it's extraordinary. But again there is just no accountability for a very.
Socialist nation and this is just like a socialism light in that you know, the government delegates everything to everybody instead of people having personal responsibility.
For well, socialism not quite light enough is quite possible. What it is there? You might have noticed and aroma in the air. It's a very topical aroma. It's a popular cologne which is called the scent of deration, and it turns up in an election year when you find governments talking about a medi scare, when they start telling you the Coalitioners are about to destroy Medicare. They did it in twenty sixteen when Bill Shorten was running against
Scott Morrison, and in fact it took away votes. Well. Labor is set to revive the medi Scare campaign in the twenty twenty five election. Jim Chalmers, the Treasurer, has paved the way for a new medi Scare campaign, declaring Peter Dutton would undermine the National Health Insurance Scheme. Will he do that?
Well, God, I hope, so, you know what, I hope instead of maybe not leave Medicare alone, I think that's one thing. But in terms of the NDS, this has become a monster. The amount of money we are spending on it is outrageous. I really hope Dutton comes back and says something along the lines of you know what.
We should be afraid.
We should be absolutely terrified of how big this scheme has got, and we need to actually address spending here. We need to run it back. If he has the courage and if he has the political skills to be able to make that argument, this is almains to be seen.
This is a political battle because everyone cares about Medicare, and if the threat is we're going to take away Medicare, I mean, I don't think people are going to believe it anymore. It's like the Boy who Cried Wolf. They shout this at every election and no one believes them anymore. But if people did believe it, it might frighten them.
Yeah, I think people are getting a lot more clue to fearmongering and things like this. Dates back to two thousand and one with Howard. It days back to two thousand and four. Again with Howard, it dates back to Tony Abbott. It's the same sort of thing. But you know, I kind of, you know, agree with you to a degree, will in that. You know, I think Medicare is a
whole thing. We probably need to address the problem that we have in our country is that we have one foot in the private health sector and one foot in the public health sector. We say that we have public health, but everybody I think sitting at home in their living rooms right now, it knows even if you pay public health, if you need to get some medical assistance, like, for example, like a day surgery or something, you still are paying
thousands upon thousands of dollars out of pocket. So it's like, what are we private or are we public? And I think until we have that discussion.
What should we be. So this is where I actually maybe disagree with Tad and that in the last five years, I've lived in the US, which is mainly private, and I've lived in the UK, which is largely public, and they're both. I was about to swear there on set camera.
They're very very awful systems.
And I think actually the one foot in both camps isn't a bad result for Medicare. I don't think we do it too badly. What I would argue is we need to separate the Medicare conversation with the ndis conversation with das without conversation get load more than it is.
But we will have that conversation one day. Let's keep talking about health and let's talk about how vigorous the mental health of Australians is at the moment. There are some indications that in certain sectors, certain places, certain professions, there are difficulties with mental health. For example, there are supposedly spiraling mental health problems among police officers in Victoria.
They've had to drop out of so many shifts. Two hundred thousand lost shifts have resulted from trauma hits from the mental health. Now, Evelyn, you've been a police officer. Is it mentally straining?
Oh?
Absolutely, you know, I don't think it's natural for human beings to have to deal with that level of evil on a daily basis, you know. And as much as I criticize the police, particularly over the last you know, four or five years, and rightfully so, they do get it really hard. Like the things that I've seen, like would give anybody nightmares. It's you know, I have to live with that for the rest of my life and carry that in my everyday life, which does affect me.
And the sad part about it is, to be honest, the police do a really bad job of helping people.
That's my question. Is it to do with the structure of the police force, and the support that's offered to officers.
I think as a combination of things. I think there are legitimate cases of severe PTSD depression and things like that. And I mean, I serve nearly twelve years in the police. I worked in child sex crime, some horrific things, and after I left, I didn't I haven't heard to this de boot from any single person in the hierarchy that I work for. I think that's pretty appalling considering the
years of service and things. And I'm like, no one compared to the thousands upon thousands of cops who would have to deal with this and who are still working in the job and not getting help. But I will say I think one of the biggest things is the relationship with cops and civilian. I think that over hundreds of years, you know, police have enforced good and moral Christian laws throughout the West. That's what based and formulated
the West. And I think that there was a sense of heroism and a good relationship that was built between police and civilian that's been squandered, and I think the relationship between civilian and law enforcement is totally different. So they go to work, they get harassed a lot more and probably rightfully so, because of these arbitrary laws. But on top of that, there's more evil in the world. You only have to turn on your TV to see the depraved things that are out there.
But I think if it's particularly bad for police officers, and I'm sure what everything you say is absolutely right, is there at the same time a general rise in a level of tension, stress, depression in our society mentally. By the way, if you're someone who struggles with those sort of things, remember you can always talk to Lifelie. They're happy to do that. Their telephone numbers thirteen eleven fourteen.
Call them on thirteen eleven fourteen. If you or someone struggling with that sort of thing, do you think will there is a risk that in this soft twenty first century, the level of mental health generally is deterior reading.
No, I think the way we think about mental health is changing.
In two categories and conversation.
I think our category so look, I think two things can be true at the same time. I think everything that Evelyn said is right. I think it is a very hard job. But I think more broadly, I think the mental health card is real. I think the way that we think about mental health has been expanded to just bad life situations, and I think we now need
to get better as a society. What is real mental health issues and what are instances of just people not having the tenacity to deal with the struggles of life. And I think we're not as good from early childhood onwards at actually making people more resilient. How do we actually separate mental health from dealing with the difficulties of life.
Probably looking at all these kids who are saying, oh my I got a paper cut at school and now I have trauma, cops are probably looking at that and going, wow, look at the system I actually have seen trauma. Perhaps I can now use that. Maybe they're more confident. There is an overdiagnosed.
Earlier generations, even to police officers, may have been tougher. I mean, we can feel really bad about something which our parents and grandparents sort of said, oh, well, that's life. You just got to get on with it and keep going. Have we lost something?
I think we definitely have. There definitely is an over diagnosis. I think that there's two extremes, and I think two things can be true at once. I think once upon a time, coming post World War one, post World War two, there was a lack of understanding of mental health issues and we saw a lot of unfortunate suicides of soldiers coming back from the war. But you know, you fast tracked to now and there's just a way over diagnosis. So we need to find that sweet spot in the middle.
I think Oka and don't forget about Lifeline. If you need to have a chat to someone, they will talk to you whatever the problem is. Thirteen eleven fourteen, after the break? How should chess players dress cardigan's old tweeds? Is that what you think? No, no, no, it's all changed after the break And as twenty twenty four comes to an end, cast your mind back very quickly over the big news headlines of the last twelve months. What for you was the highlight? What was the low light?
Think about that for a moment. We'll come back with our answers in just to tick. But chess players are they downy old people dressed in tweeds and cardigans or well. Magnus Carlson is a world champion chess player and there's a current championship for the Rapid Chess Championships being held in New York and he was kicked out he turned up wearing jeans, blue jeans, and they told him that he violated the There is in his genes and he
doesn't look all that bad in his cheats. Quite frankly, they told him he violated the dress code to play chess, and so he was told to he said, I'm pulling out entirely. I won't take part because he is such a big champion in a sectual draw cut in the chess competition. Suddenly they discovered they were a bit flexible about the dress code and if he's wearing smart dreens and they match his top, well it's okay. He can take part. And he's back on deck now that Magnus
Culton is playing again. So we maybe have to change the mental image we have of chess. The chess players are not as downy as they want work. I've got to tell you, if you've ever seen it, rapid chess is breathtaking and terrifying. So he might be very smart and very clever and also very sharply dressed. Now, the highlights of the year and the low lights. What were the headlines which were the best? What the headlines that
were the worst? Ever? Let's start with you your highlight and your low light for the year.
I'll start with the lowlight. I feel I get that over and done with and then move on to happier things. But I think the low part is not one single headline, but just the cost of living and just seeing the crisis that everyday Australians are suffering right now. And yeah, how I honestly don't believe where a first word nation anymore. So that would be the lowlight. But moving on to the highlight, it would be Moi Redeming and how she won her lawsuit and how she was put back in
the Liberal Party. I think it's so significant she was vindicated, and not only that, I think what that stands for for women, it's huge.
It's good. Okay. My highlight very quickly has got to be the fact that Peter Dutton has said yes to nuclear big tick for that. That's a highlight. The lowlight for me was our Prime Minister Anthony Albanezi deciding that he wanted to take care of the convicted criminals and bring them back to Australia, the Balley nine drug smugglers and Julian Assan and people. That was a low light for me. Will a highlight on a low light.
The low light is the election of Kiss Dharma, I think the most dangerous leader of the West has seen in a long time.
The highlights government is close to collapsing very quickly.
Hopefully the quicker the better. The highlight the rise of Jade Vance. He started the year being effectively called a weirdo by the mainstream media. He will end it as I think one of the great modern political talents and now has the inside running for the Republican nomination for president in the next cycle.
And every time we see jd. Vance on television, we're really impressed. We think he's fabulous. And if you haven't read Hillbilly Eenergy you should, Well there you are. That is the last late debate for twenty twenty four. We thank you for your company on behalf of all of the people who are not here tonight. We enjoy your company right throughout the year and look forward to your company again in twenty twenty five. Thanks for tonight. We'll see you tomorrow night