Lewens.
Welcome to the late pays.
Well, good evening.
I'm James Macpherson with Liz Storer and Caleb Bond coming up tonight. Anthony Albaneze says he loves quiet diplomacy, so how will he react to the Indonesian president releasing a minute long video of their phone call after Saturday's election?
When we'll play you some of that a little later.
Plus when we look at the papers, Tim Wilson becomes the first Liberal to win back a seat from the Teals, and the front page of Tomorrow's Australian has more leaks from Liberal Party campaigners about just how bad the election campaign was.
We'll get to all.
Of that shortly, but you would have heard the expression NIMBYs not in my backyard, locals who want the local area just for locals. Well, there's a bunch of Nimby's in Eastern Sydney who want backpackers band from the iconic Bronte Beach on Christmas Day. And I got to be honest, I don't blame them. Every Christmas backpackers descend on the iconic beach and completely trash the joint. You can have a look at some of the images on your screen
there from Christmas just gone. Garbage ends up being left absolutely everywhere, and of course locals end up paying for the massive cleanup. This has been happening for a number of years now. Last Christmas there were fifteen thousand, mostly overseas backpackers and it took all night for council staff, who of course are paid for with local rates, to get the beach back to its normal, pristine condition. So Waverley Council came to locals last night with a few options.
Option one was we just allow this event to continue without any changes. Locals, as you can imagine, weren't happy about that. Option two was, well, we'll pay for extra police and extra toilets in the hope of cleaning it up. Locals didn't want to pay for that. Another option was more security and more transport. Locals rejected that. The fourth option, the final one, was pretty extreme, a one kilometer fence right around Bronte Beach and tickets being sold for entry
on Christmas Day, and locals rejected that as well. In fact, locals proposed their own solution then that is shut the entire event down. Now, of course they can't legally stop anyone from going to the beach. So locals suggested, We're willing to pay through our rates for police sniffer dogs that'll get rid of.
A whole lot of backpackers.
We're willing to pay for bag checking to make sure people don't bring alcohol.
And why don't we do a little thing.
I think it's called caleb geo blocking, which would prevent ubers from getting closer to the area and make it difficult for backpackers to access the joint. Now I suspect you are going to say live and let live, but I reckon if you're watching your local beach trash year after year, you've got the right to say enough.
But you don't own the beach. I mean, this is the great you live there? Is great you live there.
I mean everyone who gets to live in a beauty exactly areawashed.
Can't visit out visit.
I live in Balmain. Does that mean I should be able to then say that all the lefties should be evicted? I mean, unfortunately, when I look when I looked at the booths.
The way I treat the place.
When I looked at the booth, well, I mean your political position says a lot about how you treat the place. And when I looked at the booth that I voted at on Saturday in bal Main, there were fifty two people out of the thousands who walked in there who put one nation as their first preference.
And I think.
Laybads, you know, one point three or it was ridiculous. Anyway, My point is, even though you live there, you can't dictate who moves in and out of the area. And the great thing about the beaches in Australia is that we all.
Have access to them.
No one owns the beach, no one gets to say that you can and cannot.
Use the beach.
I agree that a bunch of these people are obviously louts, and I hate seeing litter, and they ought to be made to pick up the litter. You know, the council can send people down with the with you know, electric cow prods or something.
As far as I'm.
Concerned, a bloody litter, I wouldn't have a problem with that. But you can't say that you're not allowed to go to the beach and have fun on Christmas Day. And I mean, for Heaven's sake, you can't even take a beer to the beach on Christmas Day. What a bunch
of wowsers. What a nanny state we are. If you can't enjoy a beer or a glass of wine or whatever it is on the beach on Christmas Day and have a bit of fun that sure, sure some people carry on a bit, but you can't let the noisy few ruin it for.
The rest of them here to pick up your litter. Fortun to pick up the litter.
Mag your line of reasoning. Then we'd have to cancel every single Australia Day fireworks because you've seen the absolute mountains of rubbish that goes for miles.
No one capture.
We need drone footage to capture the extent of the damage. Once hundreds of thousands of people have cleared out post the Australia A fireworks, you wouldn't then be like, oh wow, we've got to shut that down. People sadly don't behave as they should, and especially if they're coming to the area, they're not going to be packing their rubbish in a
rubbish bag and taking it back home. The council could do a lot more in putting out way more bins and some of the measures that they propose were actually quite reasonable, but saying no alcohol or trying to reduce the number of people enjoying the beach on a great day like Christmas. That's just downright un Australian. And keep in mind, every single area in Sydney, if it's a beautiful, one has to put up with this to a certain extent.
There's the street in Kurabilly called McDougall Street, and everyone already knows if you live in Sydney what I'm about to say, because it is lined with jackarandas and every spring it turns into a magical wonderland. And every spring thousands of people come.
To McDougall Street.
And I feel so sorry that the people who actually live on that beautiful area in Sydney because they are beset their roads that they'd normally get to park on because it is their road, they are residents there. Those roads are shut down for safety measures and it is literally be set upon. I waddled down there for some coffee and wattle stree, wattled tottled whatever.
You want to say.
Meander down there literally breathing room only.
It's on the water.
It's got a stunning park right there, and people are doing photoshit out there were girls who had brought costume changes so that they could do several shoots.
It was absolute pandemonium.
And this is not just a tree line street, it's a house line street.
So those people end looks.
Do you have so many beautiful areas of Sydney would have to put up with this for different reasons at different times of the year. And if you've chosen to live in the sacred part of stron too, you had absolutely stunning Yes it is You're gonna have to suck.
Up a reflex reaction and response. This has been happening for year after year after.
Year, as does the Carnage Post Australia.
Various things to fix it up.
If you had fifteen thousand people having a massive party in your front yard year after year, not your yard public and.
Who pays for it? They're the ones who pay.
For it a log budget for a single year.
The reality locals paid the same.
We should be So you put a date on the beach and so you can only get to if you show your rate slip. Did you ever see the BBC comedy The League of Gentlemen came out in the nineties. Anyway, it's it's set in this sort of tight knit town. And in the first episode, this out of towner walks into the local general store and they're all up in arms that this out of town has walked in.
They say, this is.
A local shop for local people, and that sounds exactly like what you suggest. This is a local beach for local people, and all you are my imagine you came in from Penrith. How do you come from Penrith? Rate unwashed swive?
When I lived on the Sunshine Coast, at New Year's Eve, they fenced off a.
Major part of the Malulabar Beach and you had to pay.
It was a small fee to get inside, but it enabled them to kick numbers to a reasonable amount so that they didn't get problems. I don't mind the fence off and charging.
In build a wall.
Very Jompian.
I think you lack sympathy and empathy for the locals.
Wait, now you get to enjoy it all year round and again you get to live in a really beautiful part of Sydney. There's gonna be some downsides, boohoo for you will envy you the year round other than Christmas. But one council who's actually doing something pretty awesome.
He is Mornington Peninsula councils.
They're getting together tonight and deciding on whether they are going to redirect front funds that were a ridgely directed at climate action grants and actually put it toward Australia Day celebrations, ANZACs Day celebrations, community services and roads.
So actual local government council things. This is revelatory. We are with you. Let's hope this.
Catches on Mornington Peninsula. We read in the paper today up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars would be invested in local area community capital infrastructure grants, one hundred thousand would be allocated to Biolink support grants and a further fifty thousand set aside for the biosphere.
Road safety, emergency services and.
Lifeguards would be boosted by one hundred and fifteen thousand in community led safety subsidies, and tourism centers across the region would share in eighty thousand dollars.
So if the council adopts.
This, they're going to scrap one hundred and sixty thousand dollars in climate grant which were previously used to pay for all bits and pieces and a group called repower and we're saving the planet when everyone just wants road rates and rubbish done.
It looks like the morning too.
Peninsula is actually returning to its remiss.
You know, I had I had to look up in that quote a bit one hundred grand for biolink support graphs.
What wank is this?
Apparently biolink is where you get like little bits of habitat and sort of build them together so that I don't know, a chlamydia infested koalas can walk from one paddock to another.
Apparently that's what that is in the budget.
Good or good on them.
But one of the things that does annoy me about this is that they're cutting three hundred and fifty grand out of the arts. And I think that's one of the things that you could argue does actually add something to the community as it goes to Of course.
It does, of course, state of the other every time we put up a story about the latest artistic decision by a council, it's a communist I so i'd have believe.
Like we're back in Soviet Agree, I'd have believe give three hundred and fifty k for the local orchestra and an opera group.
That's where I like that that they were giving money to local musos to help them launch launch.
Yeah, I know this should be there should be there should be better overside over that. But eyes on the prize though. They've also asked for five million dollars to be found in wages, and good on them, and five another five million dollars in other service efficiencies elsewhere.
Good on them.
But last month they scrapped and this is this will probably get up and this is the indicator, is that last month they scrapped their climate emergency declaration. And can you believe it, in the last three years, the Mornington Peninsula Council in Victoria had spent eleven point seven million dollars on climate related things. No point seven million dollars on the climate.
This is a council for heaven and that includes four million dollars for wages for to administrate the remaining seven million dollars to somehow change the climate. They've decided that from now on, funding must meet three criteria and these are revelatory. Funding needs to be transparent, it needs to be well considered, and third, it needs to deliver clear public value.
Imagine incredible.
I love this people like to speak.
To your point about climate emergencies. Kingston Council in Victoria they declared a climate and ecological emergency a few years ago. And of course once you declare an emergency, over ninety councils around Australia have done this, then they've got to have a climate emergency plan, and of course the plan then requires funding. So Kingston Council they spent a million dollars out of their rate payer budget on trying to
change the climate. I'm just wondering if any of these staff ever gets sacked when the temperature doesn't change.
Well, it sounds like some of them aregonu, which is they're also like Caleb mentioned, the councilors have directed their bureaucrats run every single council. But there's in particular to gouge millions of dollars out of what they're currently forking out for employees for council employees.
So maybe maybe it's an overall crack.
It sounds like dog to me, do you think they'll be spared or no.
Here we go, they'll have.
All over. I reckon I would make a good climate emergency officer. I reckon I'd be perfectly cut out for the job, because if anyone knows how to squander some money, I'm probably the man to do it. Now, I don't know some of you at home probably follow AFL and others follow NRL. But bear with me if you're an NRL person here because this is about more than just sport. This is about injustice.
Now there's an.
AFL player, he plays over reports, so that's the first strike against his name. I'm an Adelaide Crow's man. Willie Rioli of course comes from the famous AFL family, the Riolis, and anyone who follows Ossie rules will know what.
I'm talking about.
But he was caught up in the weekend in a scuffle in the third quarter against the Bulldogs with one of their players, Bailey Dale, and following the match, he sent him a DM on social media, a direct message in which he issued a pretty serious threat that if he stepped outside of his hotel room, that is Dale, when he is in Darwin this weekend they're playing against the Gold Coast in Darwin on Saturday, that Ril has a lot of family, a lot of mates up in Darwin and they will sort him out.
That is a clear and serious threat, and you would think that would.
Require intervention from not only the clubs but the AFL. I mean, for heaven's sake, if you've got players threatening each other, not just on the field in the heat of the moment, but off the field when they have clarity of mind, this is the kind of thing you have to stop. But when it comes to Willie Rioli, apparently not. He's been counseled sorry by his club, the Port Adelaide Football Club, but the AFL says there's no case to answer here.
There are no.
Suspensions, no finds, nothing to speak of.
And why might that be?
Well, Willy Rioli, he is from the Rioli family, is an Indigenous man, and just a couple of weeks ago he brought up racism. Now you might remember a few years ago there was this bogus report done into supposed racism problems at the Hawthorne Football Club, and Rioli brought this back up again in an Instagram post that he put up referring to the Hawthorne Football Club where he said, play with fire, you're gonna get burnt.
My hatred for this club goes way past last.
Year's antics, and I'll get to them in a moment. What they did to my dad and my brother. Is why I can't stand them, not the players. So just a couple of weeks ago and he took a little bit of time off after that. Again, he wasn't sanctioned for doing this. He brings up racism problems in AFL, and then a few weeks later he issues a full blown threat to another player and for some reason that
gets swept under the carpet. Methinks it's because he's been talking about racism recently and the AFL is going easy on him, because when you consider other people in the people in the AFL who've been sanctioned for far less recently, I mean, this is just ridiculous. You had players during the off season who was sanctioned for rocking up to a private party after the season ended dressed as Osama bin Laden.
Did that hurt anyone? No, it didn't issue a threat though, no problem.
Jeremy Finlayson, who also plays for Port Adelaide last year got three matches. He was suspended for three matches because he used a homophobic slur on the field. He immediately reported that to his team, went to the opposition team and apologized, fronted up to his club and told them what he had done. He was disciplined by his club, but the AFL saw fit for that to give him three matches. The coach of Port Adelaide Football Club last year had a very brief verbal scuffle with Jack Ginovan.
He was given a twenty eight thousand dollar fine for getting a bit lippy after they beat the Hawks in the semi finals.
Who else have you got? Alistair Clarkson, the coach of North Melbourne.
He was fined twenty grand last year for calling an opposition player a soft cock.
On on and on it goes.
Taylor Walker was given six matches for a racist slur he used during a match in which he.
Was not playing.
I mean, we have a very clear precedent here. When reasonably minor things happen, the AFL comes out and gives you either a serious fine or a suspension. But Willie Rioli brings up racism a couple of weeks ago. He then commits an offense and somehow the AFL does nothing about it. You can't tell me that those two events are not linked.
And that's the problem the AFL has because the AFL, as most people would be aware, is the most woke sporting organization in the country. It seems like every other weekend of football, the round is dedicated to some particular cause, whether it's the Rainbow Round or whatever indigenous round. And so whether or not this is about Reoli's indigenous background, that will be the perception. And that's a bad thing
for the AFL to have. If anyone in any normal workplace had issued such a threat to a colleague, you'd imagine they would immediately be sacked at least. And yet, as you said, really in this workplace, the AFL are all about workplace safety, you know, they're all about protecting their heads. So you can't tackle properly or bump properly anymore, but you're allowed to issue a threat of violence, and somehow that is completely overlooked by the AFL.
One more thing on this. I always like to reverse the scenarios in these instances. If it was.
A white player issuing a threat to Willie Rioli.
I'll get my boys on you.
You could imagine the outrage and the AFL would come down like a ton of bricks. So this just smacks of hypocrisy and another reason why so many people who love the sport pretty much given up on the administration and are turning their back on the AFL because it is incredibly hypocritical in.
Woke too right to the States. Now when just when you think Donald Trump.
Has just made too many announcements that maybe don't make that much sense of late, he's doing a great job on many other scores, But yesterday we were talking about his new one hundred percent tariffs on movies that aren't
made in the United States of America. He wants all those production costs to stay in the country, which has everyone scratching their heads, going, movies aren't products, they don't travel through ports, how can you tariff these Well, barely twenty four hours later, he has now decided to announce that he is going to reopen Alcatraz. Yes, that infamous prison located on an island.
Near San Francisco.
It has been closed since nineteen sixty three. It was closed back then because it cost three times more to run than any other prison in the States, and they were just like, hey, this isn't economically sound, let's just shut the thing down. It's been a tourism bonanza ever since.
We know that.
The numbers they see one point six million visitors every year and raise over sixty million annually in revenue. Trump says that's all over. It's gonna be a prison again. And here he is explaining to reporters the gravity and why he's done this.
It's long been a simple Alcadrazo.
Whatever it is, it's a sad symbol, but it's a symbol of law and order.
Mud.
Nobody knows at this point whether he is completely trolling or whether maybe he's lost his marbles, because one would imagine that not too many taxpayers in America are that excited about returning Alcatraz to its former glory as one of the most feared prisons in the world. I don't think it's high up on their priority list when you look at the litany of problems that America is facing.
But of course, what this did.
Immediately was trigger all the lefties. Here is California Senator Scott Wiener.
It's crazy, it's bizarre, it seems unhinged. The idea that it would be turned back into a prison would be so expensive and just so dumb that it's hard to imagine.
And of course Nancy Pelosi, parliamentary dinosaur, weighed in using x She wrote Alcatraz closed as a federal penitentiary more than sixty years ago, so she would have been about sixty at that time. It is now a very popular national park and major tourist attraction. The President's proposal is not a serious one. You might want to check your notes, Nancy Pelosi, because he took to his own social media to double down on what he'd told the reporters.
He wrote, rebuild and open Algatraz.
For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat criminal offenders, the dregs of society who will never contribute anything other than misery and suffering. Today, I'm directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, the FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt Alcatraz to house America's most.
Ruthless and violent offenders.
The reopening of Alcatraz will serve as a symbol of law and order and justice, and we will make America great again. So you've got one of the Democrats, one of the main Democrats in the House, being like, this isn't a serious proposal. He's not being legitimate about this, and Trump screaming in the background, saying yes, I absolutely am.
What do you make of that?
The symbolism is pretty obvious, right.
Trump says that a serious nation used to deal harshly with violent criminals. He committed to the electorate that he would deport violent illegal aliens. But now, of course the courts are saying you can't do that. So there's going to be massive court cases that's going to take forever. And so Trump is simply making the point, we used to deal with extreme measures against violent criminals, and now we've gone soft.
That's the symbolism. I don't think he's serious.
But what he's done, and he's got precedent for this because he did it over Gaza as well, is he's changed the conversation, right, because most of the objection from Democrats about reopening Alcatraz is it's just not economically viable. It's two kilometers off the coast of San Francisco, so it would cost three times as much as any other prison because you've got to get everything there by vote.
It's just not economically feasible. But in that conversation, now you've got the given that yes, we do have to do something about violent criminals.
He did the same with Gaza.
Remember he proposed taking over Gaza and turning it into a beach paradise, and then the conversation became about, well, where will Palestinians go, which are Arab countries will actually take them?
So I think he's.
Not serious about it, but he's got a conversation going about the fact that they do need to do something with dangerous criminals. Okay, if not Alcatraz, what's the suggestion we've got to do something about it.
Well, I think the suggestion from the Dems in the US has been pretty clear over the last couple of weeks that they should be just allowed to roam free in the United States. And you know, I've been talking about this bloke from MS thirteen that they sent back
to El Salvador. His name slips me at the moment, but you know he's a violent gangster, and the Dems have all been running around saying, oh, he didn't get due process when he was deported, and he must be released from prison in El Salvador and brought back to the United States. I mean, they've played their cards pretty clearly. I don't think they have much desire to do anything with violent criminals. But the idea that you would reopen Alcatraz.
Is just ridiculous.
I think Trump needs to lay off the brain farts this week. Yesterday we had the he was going to put one hundred percent tariff on films and television shows made overseas.
We've saw absolutely no.
Detail on how that would work, how you would do it. Now he's saying he's going to have a meeting with the film industry and then he'll come back to us with how this might work. But the film industry is going to say mate, Even the US film industry will say, please, don't do this, because of course the US film industry may will make films overseas, but all of the money that they make on those films then flows back into companies in the US. That this ending on staff who
work in the US. So it will actually hurt people in the US if he does that. And how do you even put a tariff on a film anyway? And now he wants to reopen a prison that hasn't been opened since nineteen.
Sixty three and is a tourist attraction.
I mean, for heaven's sake, look, if he wants to talk about films, and he wants to talk about Alcatraz.
If he's going to reopen the thing, he should get Clint Eastwood to go back there.
No one has ever escaped from no one ever will see you lead.
A man.
World.
In nineteen sixty two, that statement was no longer valid. Clyt Eastwood, he is Frank Morris in Escape from Alcatraz.
I mean, how good is that?
That's what they're going to do, And there'll be one hundred percent tariff if they do so as well? I reckon.
Maybe that's where Trump got the idea from him was considering the movie Tariff, and then thought, there's an idea. I'll tell you what Trump has done, which makes a lot of sense and is getting great support around the world, is he's put a ban on gain of function research in countries that lack sufficient oversights, such as China and of course Iran. Now we all know what gain of function research did to the world. Just in the last
couple of years. The COVID nineteen virus resulted in about twenty million deaths, trillions of dollars worth of economic damage, and has pretty much hobbled a generation who will never be the same because of all the opportunities they missed
out on. So Trump has said gain of function research will be funded, it'll be banned in countries like as I said China and Iran his rfk Jr. Talking about the fact that gain of function research has never never demonstrated any real benefits despite so many scientists Anthony Fauci included demanding that they have the right to do it.
It's a kind of weapon that's always has blowback. There is always bad and it was the justification for this kind of weaponry was and these kind of research was always that we have to do this, develop vaccines to counter a future pandemic. In all of the history of BioWare of gainer function research, we have a point of a single good thing that's come from it.
Gain of function research has always struck me this to be an issue of benefit versus risk, and I think we're all pretty convinced these days the risk just is not worth it. Just because science can do something doesn't mean they should. And this is a good called by the Trump administry.
I think is something that should just be banned outright, Like you say, we've seen the damage that can come of it. They also reckon that it caused the nineteen seventy seven Russian flu if you want to look that up, my goodness. But this is research that involves modifying a virus to make it more infectious among humans, to make it more deadly. Basically, like, why would you want to do that in the first place? RFK just surmise that, oh, well, we do it so that they can research how to
come up with vaccines for things that don't even exist yet. Okay, so why would you even bother doing that? As far as I'm concerned, because a lot of the militaries around the world are involved in this.
In this kind of research, gain of function is a very, very gray area.
But I think when it comes because it's an arms race of a kind, it's like nuclear weapons, it's like, well, I don't want to not have it. If you're having it, and you're having it, and you guys are my enemies, then I want to be doing gain a function research as well, so then we all share this thing that we know it was downright evil, but hey, we can't
not have it if our enemies do have it. So it's more of an arms race than anything else, and that's obviously not something that RFK is going to start talking about but I wish everyone would just outlaw it and get rid of it altogether, because what he just said in a nutshell right there is very true. No good has ever come of it. And while it is a very gray area when it comes to morality, when it comes to moral it's completely black and white. It should just be off the table.
And of course, you know there's never going to be a worldwide ban on it. And the argument is, I understand the argument that if everyone else is doing it, we need to be doing it as well, because of course they could be developing some sort of bioweapon, an illness that they check out in a time of war
and hope that it knocks out lots of people. The only problem with that is that unlike developing a nuclear bomb or whatever, which you can set off in one place and it sort of just does damage in what kills a lot of people, but it only does it in one location. Inevitably, if you release a disease, it will affect people all over the world. I mean, that's
how disease is spread. I mean, look at COVID, for heaven's ake, started in a lab in Wuhan, and it left China pretty quickly and then took over the rest
of the world. So unless you've done your gain of function research to create an illness that will go out and ravage your enemy, and you've also simultaneously in the background developed the vaccine that you have surreptitiously given to all of the people in your country to make sure they don't get it as well, I mean, it's mutually assured destruction.
So I don't think there's.
Any real argument that we should continue to play around with it, because you know, we.
Got off relatively scott free.
With COVID, and I don't mean all the things that governments did to us in those times, but in terms of the illness, of course, if you were over the age of eighty, was deleterious to your life, but for most people under the age of eighty, it wasn't that bad. But you know, they could release something accidentally or otherwise that could wipe out vast sways of the planet. I
don't think we should be playing around with that. Of course, one of the other existential threats we're facing in the world is AI And we talked last night about this robot that was being built in China and went totally tropo and started attacking one of the blokes who was
coding it, and you can see the vision here. Again, this is a bit of a window into what these AI robots may well do in the future if they develop enough intelligence to realize that the people who put them together are a bunch of dials.
Well, it's going one step further. Now.
We now have driverless trucks, properly driverless trucks, because they've been trialing this technology for quite some time now, but they usually have someone on board, you know, in case something goes wrong. And there are driverless taxis sort of have been getting around in the US for a while, but again there is a.
Human being on board of.
Course because it's a taxi, so they could step in and do something if anything goes wrong. But in the US now in Houston, they have put for the first time an entirely driverless truck on the road.
Take a look at this heads.
Up, Texas drivers, something new.
Is hitting I.
Forty five autonomous semi trucks with no humans behind the wheel are set to begin commercial trips between Dallas and Houston. Aurora Innovation is leading the charge, launching its first fully driverless truck on this two hundred mile freight route. This marks a big milestone for the trucking industry, which is facing driver shortages and rising costs. But not everyone's on board. Critics worry about safety, job losses, and the lack of
federal regulation. For now, it's just one truck, but soon you could be sharing the road with a whole fleet. Welcome to the future of freight.
Now, of course, we have a few problems here. One is, well, what if the trucks one day decide to do what that robot did that we showed you last night and use or again before. I mean, you know, something's powering these things. It's got a computer inside of it that has to decide what route to take and when to change lanes, and to look.
Out for other vehicles, et cetera.
What if one of these trucks just decides, will bugger it, I'm going to go hellful weather and take out everything in front of me. A bit of foul play could certainly do that. And I mean we talk about the danger of bio weapons and gain of function research.
These things in order to do.
What they do have to be connected to a network somewhere imagine a foreign power hacking into a network that has control of a fleet of driverless trucks or driverless cars and then programming them to go out and run people over. This is a very real thing that could happen. And of course the other thing we have to consider is how many people get put out of work because of this stuff. And I know people will say, well, you know, people have always been put out of work
when technology advances. Of course, one day they invented the stump jump plow, and then they invented proper machinery, and you know, in factory is now lots of things are done by robots as opposed to actual people. And all of that is true, But we are reaching a critical saturation point now where we're not just talking about robots and machinery that are operated by other people. We're talking about pieces of machinery that can essentially just do the
whole job for themselves. They barely need another person to touch them ever in their lives.
So once we've got all of these.
Things going and AI takes everyone's jobs away, lawyers, whatever else, robots are driving the trucks and all this sort of stuff, who's going to have the money to spend on the products that AI is trying to sell us. Surely we reach a point where the economy just falls over because no one's employed anymore and no one can afford to pay for these AI products.
Question a couple of nights ago, though maybe a couple of weeks ago. So you were going home on the Metro here in Sydney, correct driverless train which is a driverless train.
Did you have a problem with that?
What did the train have a problem or do they have a problem being on the drivers?
Do you have a problem with driverless trains?
Oh, I don't necessarily have a problem with the driverless train, but the union is organized, so there's someone on board.
They have and the unions in California have organized that trucks if they are to be allowed, they want a train driver to be on board just in case.
So there's that.
But my point is you don't have any drama at all with driverless trains.
Here in Sydney.
The Metro operates beautifully, but it's there's a little malfunction. Yeah, a door was left open the other day and that of course made news headlines.
But this is just the way of the future.
You get drivers who are distracted or impaired or tired. There's truck accidents on a regular basis around the country, especially in Australia where you've got long haul routes.
The United States would be similar.
If you've got self driving trucks, you cut out all of those issues.
It lowers the cost and invite a whole pilot well, of.
Course, because nothing is perfect, but it's a pretty good cost saver as well. It's going to lower the cost of goods because your labor costs are so much lower. The only issue is what do you do with the people who are now out of work? But every technology means that people are left without work. That's been the story of the industrial revelu Now, I just.
Think, what's when you look at what it is going to cost humanity at large. I mean, I don't know what it is in America because it would be way bigger than it is here. But we've got two hundred thousand truckers here in Australia. The industry employs about two hundred and sixty thousand people all in all, mainly men. Average asiers is forty three years. Those are men who are putting food on the table. Those are men who
are paying for a roof over their families' heads. That's thousands and thousands of families that would be affected by something like this. In America, it would be far huge or goodness knows how many truckers are in that joint ginormous country. I just don't think it's worth it whatsoever to put that many people out of work who've probably done it their whole lives and would not have foreseen
suddenly having that ripped away from them. For these for these driverless trucks, how is it going to be that much cheaper. It's going to cost the companies through the nose to afford the trucks.
And sure, maybe they'll run t companies.
Do if they didn't get an economics saving.
Yeah, sure, oh we know that they will. But I'm talking about the human cost, and I don't think it's worth it, and I don't think that these corporate companies care whatsoever.
But with the.
Introduction of AI across countless sectors now, it's as if no one's looking to the future and saying this is actually not taking us humanity? Who ought to be priority number one? Why does that even have to be said?
Who it's not taking us in a good direction whatsoever.
Right.
We're going to go to a break on that note. When we come back, we look at what's making news tomorrow, including Tim Wilson becomes the first Liberal to take back ATel held seat.
We'll talk about that in a bit more the moment. Welcome back.
Let's take a look at what's making headlines tomorrow. We'll start with Queensland's Career Mail. I've got a couple of great stories on the front page. The main headline, of course, cops in mental health plea Queensland police tell Bondai inquest laws must change. Queensland police officers have used the inquest into the Bondai massacre to call for changes to what they call confusing laws that dictate when they can and when they cannot legally detain a person for a mental
health assessment. An Inspector of Police said current Queensland laws were too restrictive as they only allowed for police to detain someone if at immediate risk of self harm.
Now. The inquest heard how just a little more than a year.
Before Joel Couci stabbed to death six people at Bondai Junction in twenty twenty four, Joel Kuchi himself called police to his home because his father had taken away his military grade knives, and so he complained to police that his dad had stolen his knives. A couple of young police officers attended the home and they noted that Couchi seemed quite irritated, but not enough that they really felt
they could do anything. And besides, as I read, the law states, they can't detain somebody on mental health grounds unless they're at risk of self harm, and that wasn't the case now since we've found out in the inquest Liz that Couchi was obsessed with weapons. He was searching serial killers online. But there's confusion even if the police knew that whether or not they would be able to detain him, because the law is so narrow. So this
may well be a recommendation. I suspect that it will come out of this inquiry that police need broader powers when dealing with mental health patients.
Yeah.
Well, it still doesn't let the New South Wales cops off the hook, because we've also heard in the inquest that they had been no defied on more than one occasion that this guy was off his meds, that he was a risk, et cetera, and so on, and he still managed and fall through the crack. I mean, good on the Queensland Police to jump on this, to try and get the laws changed so it doesn't happen again
at that end. But here in New South Wales something else needs to change, and I suspect it's going to be a lot more than one stroke of the pen in terms.
Of one law.
They clearly need more needs to happen, Caleb, in order to ensure that can never happen again.
We're just far too cautious when it comes to mental health, clearly, and you know, we just sort of give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I mean, once upon a time we had insane asylums and at some point we said, oh, well, that's not humane to have people locked up in there often because they were a danger to themselves and the rest of the community. So we just sort of let people wander around now and they cause dangers to themselves
and other people. But the law in Couransland says you can only be locked up if you're a danger to yourself, which is exactly and I think of this case a few years ago in Adelaide, where a bloke was detained. He was taken to hospital by the police. He was put in there for a week or two and at the end of the order the police, sorry, the hospital did not notify the police that he was being released,
so he was released into the community. He walked out of hospital, got on a bus or something, went down to a real estate agency, walked in the front door and killed someone.
Right so the left hand doesn't know what.
The right hand is doing. And every now and again we see the real life consequences of that, and in this case it was death.
Well that's a tragic story, but there is a good news story on the front page of tomorrow's career mail,
Green's Dream dead. As count closers, the Greens are staring down the prospect of losing all four of their lower House seats, with party leader Adam Bant last night behind in the count in his seat of Melbourne and Labour not out of the race in the Brisbane in a West electorate of Ryan Redbridge Group director says research has found that most Australians now see the Greens as contributing to quote trauma in the community over the Gars at Israel War and by progressives as in the business of
tearing down labor governments, aiding and a betting the coalition. So that's a good news story, Liz Green.
It is which brings it to more good news on the front of the Australian Teal MP's going postal. After
Wilson strikes Goldstein and Hamous surges in Coujong. Tim Wilson has become the first Liberal to turn back the Teal tide, surging to the lead in Goldstein and defying the national election trend to give his devastated party hope of a future in inner suburban Melbourne, with mister Wilson on the brink of victory over Zoey Daniel colleague emrelya Hayman X door in Coujong is also whittling away to l MP Monique Ryan's margin, raising the prospect of two Liberal claiming
back once blue ribbon territory. So your prayers tonight, ladies and gentlemen. I mean it was a great win to see that in Goldstein today.
Tim Wilson, he's back.
He's one of the original freedom fighters. God blease him.
I just I love that footage that's been shown all night.
You know, Paul had it.
And Sharry had it and whatever of Zoey Buddy dancing around, you know you can't bring me down celebrating when she thought she'd won on Saturday Night. Reality hits you fast, doesn't it. I mean, and we should note this doesn't mean the Teals are over, because of course they've got nearly a dozen other seats around the country that they're not at risk of losing. But any news that they can get a few seats back in Melbourne, I think is a good thing.
Hear hear to the second headline on the OHS Liberals revolt over policy failures.
I think this post mortem is going to be lengthy.
A raft of liberal policy's across environment, health, defense, tax and education were either not released or held back so long that they barely saw the light of day, Insiders has revealed as Susan Leigh emerges as the pragmatic front runner over Angus Taylor in the race to be the
next leader. Coalition insiders said policies on worked on for years that would have laid out how the opposition would have approval times for environmental projects and address the defense forces personal crisis personnel.
I should say personal.
Crisis were spiked by Peter Dutton's office and Liberal HQ, while proposals in portfolios such as education were held up for months until it was almost too late to sprout them to voters. Well, this answers a few of the questions that we asked ad nauseum and the lead up to the election.
One of the main ones being why.
Did you release this policy fill in the blank with whatever policy?
It was so late.
Now we learn they had some solid stuff that never even saw the light of day. And even the insiders to the ones that did get announced, they were like, oh my gosh, that barely got up.
It's been like pulling tea.
Well, I mean, the defense policy was released at the last moment. And the article goes on to explain that Defense spokesperson Andrew Hasty, who of course has dropped out of the leadership race but was very highly rated within the party, was completely shut out of any policy development in his own portfolio.
It just sounds like they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. Of course, Holly Hughes said last night she put forward at least seven fully costed policies and then no one ever sort of got back to her about whether they do it or not.
What I mean, for goodness sake, if you want to win an.
Election, you need to have some vision, and it sounds like there were people who tried to drive some vision but they just couldn't see it. As the case may be. On the front of the Cans Post tomorrow it says it's testing times. The opposition says Cans should be home to a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder testing facility after the region was named the worst for youth crime in Queensland
late last year. But the same government's hit back saying the previous government ignored youth crime for a decade, which is.
Probably a fair point. But what they are talking about.
Here is that the issue of faz D, which is of course you know, mum's been on the grog while the kid was in the womb, could be causing brain injuries that are then causing these kids to have lack of impulse control or whatever that is causing them to go out and commit crimes. It's probably not a bad point that ought to be looked into.
I'm not sure why the Liberal state government would hit back at that idea and get defensive over it, and it makes I.
Mean, it's a fair point that the labor government didn't do much about it, sure, but I mean they've raised it now.
It's worth talking about as.
Good suggestion no matter where it comes from. Let's go to a break. When we come back at the albanesi'st phone call with his Indonesian counterpartner, made Public will play some of that in just a moment. Well, there's a big fashion event in New York over the weekend. Who better to talk about fashion than our own Caleb Bond.
Indeed, the weirdos and wackos they come out every year in the US. You can see some of them here for the met Gala. It's actually probably wasn't as bad this year as it has been in some years. I mean, look, it's a suit. Oh my god, it's a tux sed Okay, oh Sydney Sweeney be still my beating art. But look at that Anthony Pratt there, he takes the cake for me. And if I don't know, I think we might have an image we can show you as well after this
this footage. Year Anthony Pratt rocked up, of course from visy. He rocked up in a suit fully done up there with the recycling symbols on it. As far as I'm concerned that takes the cake because if you look at some of the other stuff they had the Andre three thousand over the Elles.
He's a rapper apparently. I mean, I don't know.
It looks like he's off to Soviet Russia or something. Janelle Money, I'm not really sure what's going on there. Dojah Cat she's a singer. She actually looks half decent. Whoopy Goldberg, well you know she's Whoopy Goldberg. She looks like she's rocked up as the Fat Controller or something. And Sydney Sweeney you saw her before, but I'm going to show her again because she looks good. But the only problem is it was called the theme was super fine tailoring Black style.
That being black people. Isn't that cultural appropriation?
Oh it's always that is tricky.
It's always racial with the Hollywood elite.
Anthony Albanezi is a big fan of quiet diplomacy, and now we know why have listened to his diplomatic skills. When talking to the Indonesian president just after his Saturday election victory.
On your great victory, I was so happy.
I was so happy.
I was so happy.
I have a request for you, Yes, go ahead and I want you is done here?
Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.
I want you to be my first visit.
Great honor, great honor.
I haven't had any fleet.
But now we know why Elbow hasn't been able to remove Trump's tariffs, because he rang Trump and said I've got a request and I want you to say yes, and it didn't go well.
What was that with the maniacal laugh? I've got a request? Did I want you to say yes? What was that all about?
I mean, goodness, we know how Albo just invites himself.
I'm going to ask. I'm coming over to your place.
That's always got time for tonight stick Around. Coming up is the Reader Penny Show.
Good Night