Lately welcome the late base, good evening, thanks for joining us. Son James Macpherson with Liz Staurer and Caleb Bond coming up. A Queensland council worker sacked after threatening a punch on with his boss is reinstated when a tribunal finds that.
Was a disproportionate punishment.
If you threaten to punch up your boss, you should get a warning, not the sack.
We'll talk about that later too. R Plus when we should they should look at the news room. I don't know how this stuff works.
Basically, it's a term of endearments I live.
That's sice'll tell you what anything goes in local government.
We'll get to that a bit later.
Plus when we look at the papers, the new South Wales Transport minister quit's cabinet over a private use of a taxpayer funded chauffeured vehicle. And the front page of Tomorrow's Australian has got a big announcement from our government
about the future of artificial intelligence. We'll bring you that a little but first, if you thought things were already bad in Victoria, well get a load of this headline from today's Herald's Son newspaper The article says staff dealing with the new Victorian Treasurer Jacqueline Symes told to stop
using economic terms. According to government insiders, the woman responsible for one of Australia's largest economies simply doesn't understand economic terms and so has asked staff please don't use words
I don't understand. To be honest, while we're having a bit of a giggle at this, I don't think she should feel that bad because her predecessor, Tim Pallace, who left the state with almost one hundred and eighty billion dollars worth of debt, he didn't understand basic economic terms either, like you know, budget surplus, savings, And it's not as
hard as Jacqueline Simes probably imagines. I think if she just learned three words, she would pretty much have a grasp of victorious, finances, bankrupt's, what's the other three.
James?
And they were to start with Bee's, Caleb, bankrupt, broke and basket case. You understand the situation in Victoria, but honestly it's pretty dire straight when you've got the Treasurer saying please don't use economic terms, I just don't understand them. You know, she had a rough gig from the beginning, because when Tim Pallas resigned in December last year, nobody
really wanted the job. Ben Carroll, who's now the Deputy Premier, he had formally touted as wanting the treasurer's job, but he said no, no, I don't want to touch it, and so it was given to Jacqueline Simes, who has a background bereft of any economic experience. She's got a law degree, then she went into union management, then went into political staffing, and then became a politician, so she's
got no background at all. But when she was announced as the treasurer, they overcame the problem that she really has no economic experience with this, Liz, she's the first female treasurer.
Yes, so diversity.
Is our strength. You don't have to know economics or economic terms.
She's the first woman. Yes, certain thing, it's going to be okay.
So never mind, Victoria that your state debt is set in twenty twenty eight, just three and a half short years away in June of twenty twenty eight, to exceed one hundred and eighty seven billion dollars, which would make it the largest state debt in our entire nation's history. Don't worry about it. You've got your first female treasurer. Well done, you put that gold star on your wall.
But here's an idea for Jacqueline Sims. Now that your treasurer, how about you learn the terms for crying out loud. If I were to take this poison Chalice, and I were to be so aware of how naturally an ept I am in this particular area, I would be desperately paddling under water. I would be googling every single one of the terms I didn't understand and learning them. How on earth is this woman going to do a presser in the in financial lingo if you don't understand and
how sophisticated are these terms that we're talking about? Are we talking about deficit surplus? Like which one's a good one? Which is the one that we want? Isn't that deficit or the surplus? But this is what exactly as you said, this is what DEEI does you mean to tell me?
In the parliamentary party, the Labor parliamentary Party in Victoria, they didn't have someone with just a bit more of a background in economics, or not even a background in economics, but someone who's familiar with the terms and to be honest. For someone who's been an MP for a decade, I don't think there's an excuse to not be across a bit of economic lingo of the.
Problem is if you had a background in economics, you would know this is not a.
Job that I want right away.
That's a very good point because being the treasurer of Victoria is much like being the health minister in any other state. Right It's like, Okay, we'll put someone in there who we're willing to sacrifice because we know that at some point they're going to come acropper. Much the same with child protection. If you'll made the child protection minister, there is a target on your back because something is going to go wrong at some point and you're going to have to pay the price for it. And so
it is being the treasurer of Victoria. But when you gave us her employment history before, you missed out one vital thing, which was that when she got out of university she didn't do anything with her law degree. She became a career for people with intellectual disabilities. And that's not to make fun of the fact she did the work.
It's very worthy work, but there is at no point in her employment history anything that suggests she's ever a balanced to budget or had to look after a budget, or has looked at after anything to do with the business. To be perfectly frank, as you said, she got the degree, she didn't use it, She went off and became a unionist. Then she became an advisor, first to the Deputy Premier Rob Hulls at the time. And then and this is
where it all went really wrong. Sorry, she became a senior advisor to Daniel Andrews when he was the leader of the old position. So you know she has come from the school of Daniel Andrews and she still doesn't understand economics. That the fact that you can get a position like that in politics with no background, no expertise, no knowledge, to the point where you don't even understand the basic terms that come with the portfolio, and we
don't see anything wrong with that is insane. Like we are in a position where we find probably the most unqualified people to do some of the most difficult and important jobs in the country and we go it's all good, all good, nothing to worry about.
I should have mentioned there two terms that she evidently is very familiar with tax and spend.
Well as the basics down, what are we complaining about? Genuinely, what are Victorians paying for when you've got a treasurer who can't treasury?
Yeah, well I think they paying for someone to sit around and make a lot of money, cause the terms.
And learn the meanings and just be like, well now I'm across the lingo.
I mean, learning on the job is actually genuinely good for a lot of people when they come in university, right, they go, hell, why did I do four years of that degree. I've learned more in my six months on the job than I did in the degree.
But I reckon.
One exception to that is probably being the treasurer of Victoria. And while we're talking about Victoria, you might remember last year the Allen government decided they were going to beef up quote unquote their anti vilification laws. Now, what they actually are going to do is watered down their anti vilification laws. By that, I mean not that they make
it harder for you to be vilified. They make it much easier for you to say that you have been vilified, because the rules as they are at the moment, is that if you are to prove that hatred has been incited that you actually need concrete proof. If you are saying this person has incited hatred against a certain group, you actually have to bring the proof that they have done that. The new laws that the Allen government want to pass get rid of all of that. There's no
burden of proof whatsoever. It is simply that you have incited hatred, serious contempt, revulsion, or serious ridicule of a protected group. And of course the protected group used to be racial, religious. Now they include gender identity, they include transgender people, they include gay people, on and on it goes the laws. If they get their way, it would be expanded significantly to basically everyone, and no proof required to show that you have actually incited any hatred whatsoever.
Heaven's the opposition in Victoria has now said that they will oppose these laws. But never mind. This is how Jacinda Allen says it will actually go.
We're just looking after everybody.
Let's be clear.
This is about sending a very clear message that in Victoria, you can be who you are, you can love who you love, you can pray to who you wish to pray to, and that we will make hate against you a crime.
We will make a hate against you a crime, because of course it is the most important thing for Victoria to be doing right now, to say, oh my god, there might be a gay person down there who's been allowed to marry for the last eight years who could be offended by some form of hate. So we've going to change the laws.
Now.
I'm glad at least that the opposition hasn't taken the bait here that they have said, yes, we are going to oppose it, because of course the concern would have been, and the reason that they've tried to do this is we have an anti semitism problem at the moment, and you use that as the vanguard to push through these laws that are far more expansive than just anti semitism. It includes everything you could possibly find in the grab bag. It makes the burden of proof much lower than it
ever was. So you get all that through and hope no one notices what you've done. The opposition have said no, we're not actually going to let you do that, and good on them.
But the numbers so we're thankful for the opposition, but it's gonna get up well.
Well, it depends on the cross point out though the Victorian premiere, there is a complete liar when she says, in Victoria, you can love who you want to love, marry you want to marry, pray to who you want to pray to.
You can't. They made a.
Law that says if you pray for a gay person to become straight, or if you pray for a gender confused person to you know, come to their senses, if you like, comfortable with their own gender, then.
You can be prosecuted.
So for her to say that in Victoria you can pray to who you want to pray to, well, I guess you can pray to who you want to pray to, but the Victorian government will censor the prayers as you pray them to make sure they are government compliant.
She didn't say you can pray about whatever you want.
Exactly the point. And that's one of the things that governments are doing. They've stopped talking, if you listen to them, about religious freedom. They now talk about the freedom to practice your religion, which is very different. They have redefined religion to something that happens for sixty minutes on a Sunday morning in a mosque or in a synagogue or in a temple but once you're outside of that, now the government controls what you say, what you think, and even the way that you pray.
So always be on guard.
When the government talk about protecting people's rights to practice religion, that's very different to having religious freedom to say what you believe and to think the thoughts that you want to think. Speaking of which, the transgender CEO of Victoria Son Vivian said about these new laws that he hopes they will quote make people consider how their words land and how ideas can cause harm.
And this is the problem with these hate speech laws.
Once you start dictating what people can and can't say, you're effectively dictating what they can and can't think. And so this is where religious freedom goes completely to the toilet, because now you're being legislated as to what you is permissible to think about the big issues of life and what is not permissible. And so these laws are quite pernicious. They're not designed to protect religious freedom. They are designed to give the government more control over which narratives will
be permitted. And one final thing, when you talk about, well, we're going to outlaw hatred, and as you said, these laws over whether something is likely to cause hatred, not whether in fact it actually causes objective harm. Remember the CEO of the Essendon Football Club, Andrew Thorburn, who was sacked as the CEO because they found out he was going to a church that happened to believe two things that Christians believe for two thousand years, abortion is wrong
and marriages between a man and a woman. And the premier at the time, Daniel Andrews, described those beliefs as quote a kind of intolerance that is hateful and wrong. So, according to Dan Andrews, hate speech is saying abortion is wrong and marriage is between a man.
And the woman. That's why these laws make no sense. No one should support them.
And it's not the business of government, this group of people that we elect. You look after a major infrastructure projects, the budget of the state, make sure transport's running well, etc. And so on. Not quite getting together to be like, let's say what people can and can't speak for crying out loud. He's a really really hard pill for some people to swallow. Free speech is hate speech. Hate speech is free speech. They are interconnected in such a way.
You either have both of them or you have neither of them.
That's it. That's the bottom line.
There's no if, butts or maybes. And as a free speech absolutist, the minute government starts telling me, oh, by the way, how do you measure hatred? What equals incitement? Some flog could listen to something that I've said, take it completely out of context. Maybe they're mentally unwell, maybe they've got other underlying issues, take it completely out of context, and say, oh, well, I did what I did because Liz Storer said fill in the gap. Did I say that thing? Yes? Absolutely?
Did it mean what they took it to mean?
No, But somehow I am now responsible for what some whack job has done because they were in earshot of my voice at some particular time and took me out of context. The whole concept of incitement is very, very muddy. The whole concept of hatred is extreme, seemly what even is that?
Nowadays? We know that facts facts are hateful.
Nowadays, if you say a man can't be a woman, well, according to some people, you're an extremely hateful person for saying that very thing. But here's an interesting case for you which happened just today Peter LaLore, which you may be very familiar with. He's a sports commentator but also a journal He's been around the traps for a very long time. He's been dumped by the Sports Entertainment Network in the middle of commentating the cricket because he's been
posting regarding Gaza. Now, I've been on the guy's twitter feed and he posts about all manner of things, all and sundry. He had been told that this wasn't much of an issue, and then all of a sudden, it really really was.
He said, Let's be clear here.
I think the actions of the Israeli government and also Hamasa crimes against humanity. I retweet a lot of the stuff I see on social media because it needs to be seen. I received two calls from senior management at sen on the third day of the test and was informed on the fourth morning that I could no longer work for them. I was told there were accusations I
was anti Semitic, which I strongly objected to. I was asked by station boss Pray Cutchison, who was civil, if I didn't care that my retweeting of events in Gaza made Jewish people in Melbourne feel unsafe. I said, I didn't want anyone to feel unsafe, to which I would simply ask, are you tweeting facts? Peter? If you're tweeting facts, I don't have a problem. I don't have a problem. We do well. We say we have free speech in this country. He's a journo sharing news articles, many of
them from Haretz, Israel's own longest running newspaper. It's been running since nineteen eighteen. Now, Usman Kwawaja, have i Kwaja? I'm not a cricket fan. Can you tell he's a veteran Aussie opener. He's come into bat Do you like that? Very behind Peter Lalo, He said standing up for the people of Gaza is not andy Semitic, nor does it have anything to do with my Jewish brothers and sisters in Australia, but everything to do with the Israeli government
and their deplorable actions. It has everything to do with justice and human rights. Unfortunately, hatred towards the Jewish and Muslim community will always exist. Peter is a good guy with a good heart. He deserves better. I got to say I agree with Kuwaja name I whose name I pronounced properly.
Of course, Usman Kowaja would say that, for one, he's a Musliman for two usman Kouwaja famously had a fight with the Australian Cricket Board over whether or not he could wear the Palestinian flag on his Australian uniform to show support for Palestine.
So it's no surprising.
I think that's a good statement. It's a clear delineation of terms to say. Look, just because you're not a fan of forty seven thousand people being killed in Gaza, now.
You can argue it was necessary.
That's fine. But all Peter LaLore has done is share images, share articles from Israeli papers, and so on and so forth. Nothing he has done because we need to be very clear about what constitutes anti semitism, otherwise it runs the risk of becoming the new racism, the new bigoted, if everything's racist, if everything's bigoted, Like, let's be clear, this guy has done nothing to say he hates.
He's not been sacked for anti semitism. He's been sacked because sen have had so many complaints about his Twitter feed and about his stance on what's happening in the Middle East that people have said, we don't want to listen to you guys anymore because of this person, and
so seen have made a commercial decision. If we've got a presenter who a significant number of listeners are saying, we will not listen to your sports podcast if he's presenting, they've said, you know what, on balance, we're better off getting rid of him and keeping our listeners.
Because in every CLI you guys condemn, cancel culture, but become platform. And then every time it comes to someone to.
No, no, no no. But but let's be clear, I will admit here that ESI in did not do their do their due diligence before they hired Peter Lawler, because you only have to know who the bloke is and have followed his work for some time to know that he is an out and out lefty and has been tweeting this sort of stuff for a very long time on Twitter. This is not a new sorry, new occurrence for him.
He was at News Corp for a very long time as the senior cricket writer at The Australian, most of which he spent on Twitter bagging his News Corp colleagues, particularly conservative ones, and carrying on about that.
I mean, you know, he bit bring that into the.
He bit the he and that fed him for a very long time, and if you're going to live by the sword, you've got to die by the sword. When it came to Israel Falao, he said, if Falao had kept a respectful silence instead of spouting secondhand hate at homosexuals, he would still be playing footy and we could all move on. And of course we know what happened with Israel for Lao is that he got punted from the Wallabies because he dared to talk about his religion and
post Bible tracks online. So he's saying if Falao just kept his mouth shut and didn't talk about his religion openly, then it's fine. He wouldn't have been sacked from playing footy and he'd still have a job. So why did Peter Lawler, as a cricket writer not just go I'll leave my politics at the door and do my job
as a cricket writer. It's the prerogative of the employer to say that he give everything, but he is a highly political person online and if the job, but it's the prerogative of the employer to decide if they Much like we say all the time, we don't want to be lectured by celebrities about it is.
Because they knew that before they hired him, So to turn around now dump him in the middle of the test just to be like, oh, because by the way, none of his tweets say anything. He is just sharing articles, so we'll say that he's spouting this or spouting that.
You are by retweeting things, you are endorsing them. So when you retweet articles saying Israel is committing genocide, you are saying.
Which was also by corrects the Israeli newspaper.
That doesn't make it true.
And clearly it's not true if Israeli committing genocide.
I think people are quite out of touch with the unpopularity of Netnya who in Israel before October seven. It's the case now a great number of people in Israel want him to go to the ICC and face the charge.
For the Harmasa still holding a couple of children hostage more than a year after they were taking and in fact is also.
Eighteen children who will never draw breath again. In Garb, we don't have to lose our humanity.
You can lose humanity. There called moral clarity. Her mass broke us.
Eighteen thousand children. Let's have some moral clarity about that. Here is the villain helpless.
Sure, there's all these children in Gaza who have suffered as a result of this conflict, and the.
Villain is eighteen thousand.
Sure, whatever the number is, children have suffered, and the villain is not Israel.
The villain is Hermas.
And yet Peter Larla Layla never tweets about Harmas, not a single thing.
It's all about Israel.
And for that reason, especially Jewish people in Australia have called it out and said this is reprehensible. This guy has zero moral clarity. We don't want to listen to him commentate on the cricket and said.
You know what, Isse articles, they're just coming up with all the facts and figures of the reality of what's happened on the ground in guns. Who's to blame which is no.
Mac, Who's to blame?
Mac? You're saying it was absolutely necessary that forty I had.
Been taken hostage by terrorists. I would do whatever, I would only show.
Okay, well, let's say you've had eighteen thousand children and they're all say, you're on the other side of this. There is no reason why you can't say I believe it to be absolutely necessary. What happened and I blame it completely on Hermas, but the lack of humanity I have seen around this that people can't even bring themselves to acknowledge that is something to weep over.
But there's also no need for sports broadcasters to start delving into polity.
He's met about every reason, but he's a sports journalist and he's wearing articles written by Israeli, so to say that. I just think that this is being completely misrepresented. And I don't think he should have been dumped.
I don't think he's been misrepresented. I think people know exactly where he stands, and people don't.
Like, you're allowed to stand there. We're just going to.
Fire all the row Palestinians the flight, and I see this as like, oh my god, what are you saying?
A commercial operation shouldn't be allowed to say? You know what, this doesn't fit with what we want. We're losing listeners.
As Caleb has already said, they knew it before they hired here.
I think they miss I think they missed that up. They realized it too late. But still I think they're within their rights to sack him for doing stuff.
That they don't want him to do.
And he was a casual. So it wasn't like he had a long term contract with people.
Are offended by facts them. I did not see him post anything that I found to be untruthful. Then, okay, isn't exactly what we're talking about. If someone is saying facts now in Victoria, there's oh, this is verlification.
It's not effect.
That is in genocide. That's not a fact. It's not a fact. We should move on. Let's go to USA because we're never going to agree on this. If you're tuning into the cricket in Sri Lanka, Peter Lalo is no longer commentator.
I remind you of cricket.
It's about that. Well, I think this is the.
Only thing on television. Are you talking about it?
Yeah, that's on right now. Surely it's not.
They've changed the channel already.
We talked last night about the fact that US AID, which provides a humanitarian relief to people around the world at the expense of taxpayers in the US about forty billion dollars a year, is being gone through with a fine toothed comb by Elon Musk and his doge team. And I tell you what, Trump's administration do not look like they are going to let up despite the cacophony of criticism that was unleashed when Musk went into the officers with his team and demanded access to all of
their records. Elon Musk tweeted today that us AID is a criminal organization, and Caroline Levett, the White House spokesperson, she outlined exactly why US taxpayers should be outraged about what's been allowed to happen with USAID of the Biden administration for so many years have listened.
So if you look at the waste and abuse that has run through USAID over the past several years, these are some of the insane priorities that that organization has been spending money on. One point five million dollars to advance DEI in Serbia's workplaces, seventy thousand for a production of a Dei musical in Ireland, forty seven thousand for a transgender opera in Colombia, thirty two thousand for a
transgender comic book in Peru. I don't know about you, but as an American taxpayer, I don't want my dollars going towards this scrap, and I know the American people don't either.
That's the first time I've ever thought of a transgendered opera as being humanitarian relief.
But there you go.
Maco Rubio, who's now taken control of USA, basically said this has been the problem. They've been a law unto themselves.
They have basically evolved into an agency that believes that they're not even a US government agency, that they are out there a global charity. They take the taxpayer money and they spend it as a global charity, irrespective of whether it is in the national interest or not in the national interest. They are supporting programs that upset the host government for whom we're trying to work with on a broader scale and so forth. So they're completely unresponsible.
They just don't consider that they work for the US.
Donald Trump was far more succinct in his take on US eight.
Here, what, well, it's been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we're getting them out. US AID run by radical lunatics, and we're getting them out, and then we'll make a.
Decision calib It's hard to argue.
I mean, the more you hear about the money that is being wasted thrown around on all manner of lefty fetishes, like transgendered operas in Colombia. Would anyone have ever imagined that was an AID project?
Yes, the people running the show, we will aware that there was a quote unquote AID project. That's why they're so upset that the things be dismantled, because they can't do what they've always been able to do. Like I said last night, the idea that this was an independent body, so it was not controlled by the present, it's crazy, like, here's just a pot of money for you to go and do what you want with, including DEI in Serbi
and transgender operas. Now, I'm actually kind of curious to go to the transgender opera now because I just want to see what they've spent their money on YouTube. Yeah, I reckon, I've got to go and investigate this now. But it's proven what a joke this is, and the idea that there is more oversight is never a bad thing, unless, of course, you're the one who's been trusted with all the money for that time and you've had the rug pulled out from underneath you.
The fact that it's lasted this long, I mean JFK started USAID and it was supposed to be for this very reason. More oversight. It was like, well, what are these guys getting up to. This was back when the CIA was under Alan Dulles, and good lord, you can still see the trailer of destruction that man left, who's in numerous countries. Absolutely, So JFK was like, Okay, I've had enough of this. I want to overhaul this. But here we are decades later and it's gone straight back
to Alan Dulles's style. USAID is a front for the CIA. Technically it has a budget bigger than the State Department.
And let's see other the CIA itself.
So these guys are the money guys, and there she is, and we can laugh about that list of ridiculous sounding projects. You can bet your bottom dollar that's not actually what it's funding. These guys don't hand out AID. They cooperate and coordinate to do all sorts of clandestine stuff in foreign countries to establish American hegemony in regions where they're like, well, we want a stronger foothold here, we want a stronger
foothold there. So it sounds clownish, but you can bet your bottom dollar that's actually not what it's being spent on in those foreign countries at all. We're back home to Australia now where Donald Trump. We know that he was the most popular Republican to win the gong since
nineteen eighty eight. That's how comprehensive his victory was. And yet the Greens have decided no, no, this is the end of the world as we know it, and the little Greens party here in Australia want to make sure as they move this emergency motion that everyone understands this is an emergency and this man must be stopped.
The election of Donald Trump is a threat to Australia and the world. His attacks on human rights, democracy, climate action, the toxic relationship mister Trump has with the tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch, the media billionaire into the Oval Office to help him rule the world.
This is scary stuff. It's terrifying.
Ruberbov has just been promoted apparently he's rule the world now. But she's right. It is terrifying if you're a Green because while he's not a threat to democracy, here is a threat to every single one of that party's ideologies. And because it's so popular now on the other side of the globe, the momentum is growing over here. They say,
America sneezes. The rest of the world catches a cold. Well, I like this sneeze, and these guys are afraid as this cold catches on here in Australia and Trump fever seizes everyone, they know that this is the graveyard of their ambition that they are staring down, not just this year, but for many years to come.
Now, our senators don't sit that often, right, and so you would expect when our senators gather together, they would debate the big issues that are of concern to the Australian public. And we could name them pretty quickly, you know, cost of living, cost of living, cost of living, and there's a couple of other things as well.
But Senator Nick McKim from the Greens.
He moved, it's called a matter of urgency, so the Senate will stop and debate this particular issue because it's urgent. And so the matter of urgency was that the election of Donald Trump is a threat to Australia and to the world.
And for that the.
Greens halted discussion on everything affects you and I in our daily lives, so they could promptificate over Donald Trump meeting in his office with Ripert Murdoch to rule the world. What a waste of space the Australian Greens are.
If I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of spring. Sarah Hanson Young would be living in Peaking. If I rule the world, you would think, like they clearly they've realized that they're I can't keep going because the viewers will have there is blending. But you know, they realized they're in trouble, and you'd think, having realized that they are in trouble, that go, okay, maybe we should temper ourselves a little bit now and
just try to hang on. No, no, no, let's just go full blown off the reservation and lean into how crazy we are, which is why people have been turning off them. Oh yes, now we've got the winner.
We've got the winner.
Donald Trump is a threat to the world and he must be stopped because his mates with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerpergen Rupert Murdoch. I mean, you could not get anything crazier, could you, Sarah Hanson Young, South Australian. Unfortunately I have to report so I think I've said this before. I took great pleasure when and I don't know normally talk about how I vote, but when I voted in the twenty nineteen federal election now still in South Australia, vote below the line as I always did in the.
Senate were you old enough to eight?
And I made sure that Sarah Hanson Young was last on the ballot paper.
I took great pleasure in doing that.
Let's talk about someone who's not last on.
The ballot paper.
It would seem that would be Nigel Farage and his party Reform UK. Now just consider this party is less than a year old. He started this party last year, just weeks before the federal election over there, when he said he was going to have a go and put his hat in the ring for Clacton, which of course he won. He has started from zero and now, according to the latest polling, it's the most popular party in the UK. No, it's not a joke because of course
the Starma government has just been so bloody awful. Have look at the numbers here, twenty five percent. Reform UK is now polling the government lay which was elected in a landslide barely seven eight months ago, twenty four percent, the Tories twenty one percent, the lib dims fourteen and the Greens nine. This man is a runaway train. And here he was earlier tonight Nigel Frage talking to Paul Murray about this.
Polly, You know.
What, the consensus we've had for years doesn't work. Ordinary folk get poorer, our borders are open, excess migration changes our communities. People want strong, patriotic, real leadership that actually cares about ordinary people, not just the big corporates.
And don't forget, of course, there was that petition a few months ago calling for another general election. About four months after they just had one.
Million, which is.
Two point seven seven million signatures.
Who of everyday people.
Even know about a petition that someone's lodged on the parliamentary website. That is how much traction that has to set a record four months old. The Prime Minister was in the role, and that many people went out of their way to say, for the love of God, or in their case, the love of country, let's go to
another general election. Please. To be honest, I couldn't believe, given the state of the UK at the end of the Tory government, but before Starmer even got a chance, I couldn't believe that reform didn't romp it in at the last election because the country was in a terrible state. Then it seems to have taken this government to nudge the feeble populace to a level of fury whereby they're like this guy all the way to the top.
I just wonder if our Liberal Party is watching what's happening in the UK and observing that people are sick of Conservatives who talk a right wing game and then govern like a left wing government. They want conservatives to stand for conservative principles and do it boldly for ajs reaping the benefit.
Well, the problem is look here to stand.
That, just like over there, the politicians have to shill for the votes. So once you've got numbers like we have here in Australia, or only a third of us were born here, you have to shill for the other two thirds as votes. So they're never going to be as hardline as any of us would probably like.
To see because it got that.
Many people from other countries. You have to shield you're out there mercy. You can't just come out and be like, oh, actually I'm going to be suddenly very nationalistic and very patriotic. It simply won't work. You'll never get into government.
Ye farajas doing it least twenty five percent. So we'll see where at LANs. Let's go to a break when we come back. Interesting story on the front page of Tomorrow's Australian. A big announcement from the government about the latest Chinese artificial intelligence app that won't be allowed on
any government systems or devices. All that in a month, all right, some big stories on the front page of tomorrow's Australian newspaper, not least of which Liz, the Australian Government's made a big announcement on the future of AI in this country.
They have Indeed, they're not doing another TikTok. They saw how that got out of hand pretty fast.
There's time they're onto it.
Quick security ban for deep Seek artificial intelligence Chinese artificial intelligence app Deep Seek has been banned from Australian government systems and devices following an assessment by intelligence agencies that the software poses an unacceptable risk to national security. The move, set in motion by a Home Affairs Protective Security Order, is similar to the government's ban on TikTok on official devices.
To quote Minister Tony Burke, the Albanezi government is taking swift and decisive action to protect Australia's national security and national interest. AI is a technology full of potential and opportunity, but the government will not hesitate to act when our agencies identify a national security risk. Our approach is country agnostic and focused on the risk to the Australian Government and our assets. Okay, So that last sentence I think we can safely conclude was a bit of bs. I
don't think it's country agnostic at all. If this was an American app, we probably wouldn't be worried about it. But hey, I think they've seen what happened with techtok.
They woke up way too late. There's now eight point five million monthly users in Australia alone of that Chinese app, which we know is a massive data harvesting apparatus for the CCP, And here they are going, hang on a minute, when we're not going to have the Chinese AI, which, by the way, there's plenty of other AIS to choose from, like Elon's Groc and others. So it's not that Ozzie's
will now be bereft of this function. It's simply a big no to this one, and they haven't banned it for all OSSI's they're simply saying we're not using it, and we very strongly advise that you familiarize yourself with how your data can be used, should you choose to use it.
It's nice to see this government showing leadership and getting onto something immediately, rather than allowing events to overtake them before belatedly they try and mop up the mess.
So credit where credit's due.
Good decision from Tony Burke on this one, and as for him calling it a country agnostic decision, you're.
Right, it's bs.
However, they have to play the game.
Oh but and to be fair that.
We probably should have a discussion about whether or not it should be available to use for anyone, because of course we like in China, they're not using rock and they're not using chat GPT because they'd be worried that such things might give them information about the Western world, or perhaps more pertinently, give them information about.
The Chinese world.
Iye, what happened in Tianam and Square, et cetera. We know what Deepseek says about all of these things. You go on there and ask about Tianam and square and says, oh, I don't know what you're talking about. Let's talk about something else, right, So we allow China and its businesses, which are always in some way link to the CCP, to have influence and power in our countries, but of course they don't allow our businesses, Western businesses to have
that level of power and influence in their country. So it is it's an unfair balance. I think in some ways that needs to be addressed.
It's a really good point for a government that keeps banging on about misinformation and disinformation to allow a Chinese Communist Party app to have free reign through the populace.
If they're really that concerned, do something about that.
I mean, of a moral quandary, it would barely trouble a child. So we're glad that the Albanezy government hasn't find this too difficult. Back to the ods now off the sheep's back crisis of the wool industry. Australia's sheep industry is facing a mass exodus, with wool production at its lowest in a century, as farmers increasingly turn away from the shearing shed and to the slaughter house in
the face of rising costs and low prices. The industry that once carried the fortunes of regional Australia on its back is in the midst of a profitability crisis, with farmers last year cutting losses and sending the highest number of adult sheep to the Abatoir since the floor price
was removed three decades ago. The article also talks about how, of course this has been massively influenced by the fact that this government's van on live sheep export, which is set to come into full effect in twenty twenty eight, just has these farmers saying, look, with the costs of running the industry as it is, and us already knowing what's coming down the track, it simply doesn't make sense to keep going anymore.
According to this article, wool production in Australia is the lowest it's been since nineteen three, which is just astonishing. So you've got sheep, you can either sell the meat, you can export them overseas, or u can fleece them and sell the wool, so there are three options. The government's banned live exports, so that's gone. The price of wool has fallen through the floor, so they're not making money there. So our farmers are deserting the sheep farming
industry altogether. And we always prided ourselves on being a nation that rode on the sheep's back. Yeah, and the longer trill in the government actually anything to.
Help production costs have gone through the roof shearers, etc. The wages they have to pay them. And I thought this was extraordinary because I have woolen pieces in my wardrobe at home, Australian maid that were put together in the nineteen seventies, right, and they're as good as the day they were made. You can find them.
They're still fashion Yeah they are.
I'll wear one one night and you know, Australian made, good quality, Australian made woolen stuff. Right. It says here that the Australian wool industry has been trying to market itself overseas to overcome these woes. All but half a billion dollars have been spent on marketing in the last decade, funded by farmer levies. Now, wonder the farmers don't have any money. They're pooning up all this money hoping we'll promote our product overseas.
Like five hundred million.
Dollars they have spent for basically no return. If you're a farmer, you're belivered.
It's just another way in which our farmers have been dudded here in Australia. To the third article on the front of the OS plot thickens on why Prime Minister won't just say when he first learned of that then bomb mate, Why won't you just spit it out? Anthony Albaneze's refusal to reveal when he was told about the planned mass casualty terror attack targeting Jewish Australians in Sydney is undermined by his previous public confirmations regarding terrorism, espionage
and defense national security briefing. So we know that he's obfuscated about this. Well, look, I'm briefed on things all the time, and I don't just face the public and tell them everything I've learned from the police. But this article very smartly outlines when he did tell the public about the synagogue attack, the Adas synagogue attack, the Willara fire bombing, the Wakely church attack, Russian espionage back in twenty twenty four, the RAAF Chinese aircraft incident, and the
post October seven Hamas terror attack. So this guy has form now coming out and telling everyone. Well, I know that's not following protocol. Of course, I'm not just going to spill the beans to everyone as soon as I've been briefed. I mean, who's believing him at this point? And it just makes it more suspicious.
Yeah, this is a pretty damning article. And of course to add to that, Chris Min's, the new Southwest Premier, was very forthright telling people when security agencies had told him that it was a terrorist incident. So Chris Mins didn't have any problem with protocol or you know, breaking confidences. Albanezy looks completely inept here and he looks shifty.
Indeed, and just very quickly. We should note before we go speaking of Chris Mins, that his Transport Minister Joe Halen resigned today after taking that van trip up to the Hunter Valley on the Australia Day weekend. She said the other day, look, you know, I'll repay the money. It's all good and men's back during but someone gave her a little tap on the shoulder as more news came out last night and darlink that's the end of it.
That's the end of that.
Resigned from capin We're going to go to a break when we come back. Apparently in Queensland you're allowed to threaten to punch your boss and sacking is disproportionate punishment.
You keep your job. We'll look at that in just a second. Welcome back.
Well, it seems it takes a lot to get the sack at the Gladstone City Council.
It does, indeed, so get this.
About fifteen months ago, this bloke had been struggling with psiati Kai's feeling flat and anxious. He sends a text to his mate while he thought he was his mate at work, calling the boss the sea word and saying I'm just going to have to punch on with them, but I don't like this guy very much, hence the language.
The guy who.
Received the text thought it was a great idea to show this to the boss. He said it was out of concern for his friend. His friend was then called into the boss's office and stood down on leave initially but then shacked. Apparently he wasn't very happy about being called the SeaWorld. But in a win for everyone who loves using profanity, the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission has said
that the Council's got to rehire this guy. The Industrial Commissioner Roslin McLennan found after a two day hearing in November twenty twenty four that this guy's termination by the council was harsh, unjust and unreasonable. In her finding, she said he was not given twenty four hours notice of that meeting with the boss, he wasn't informed of his right to have a union representative or any other representative president, and he wasn't provided in detail regarding what the meeting
was about and why his attendance was required. So he now gets fifteen months back pay, hasn't been working, now gets refunded in full, and his job is reinstated. Can you imagine how awkward his first day back in the job it's going to be.
But so it should be, because the real villain here is his mate, who ran off and showed private text messages to the bo I was.
Worried about boss's welfare as well.
Come on, seriously, if.
You look at the if you look at.
The message, he doesn't sound like he's actually going to punch on with him. And let's be serious here, if we start sacking everyone who has ever seen a rude message about their boss to a colleague, nearly the whole country will get sacked tomorrow, Like this can't be the.
Standard on not you go on every night about incitement to violence.
This guy's roll incitement Who a sad party felt like they wanted to punch on with their boss is how.
It goes in writing.
I think that the lesson. That's all we've got time for tonight. Thanks for your company, but stick around. Coming up in just a moment, it's the Reader Penny Show.
Good Night,