Leighton Smith Podcast #276 - March 19th 2025 - Michael De Percy

Now in last week's podcast, I dropped in a short paragraph at one stage that read, Trump's art of the deal is the most democratic thing we have seen since the experts told us to trust the science. Einstein reportedly said that one fact, rather than a hundred experts, could prove him wrong. Trump has done in less than two months what thousands of experts have failed to do in years. And that is a fact. And that was the final paragraph from an article by Michael de Percy, Trump's Art

of the Deal, Trump's the Science. And that's how we begin the interview and then cover a raft of other interesting and pressing topics, but first a covet of other things that interest me and I believe interests you connected to areas that affect the whole world at the moment, well pretty much certainly us and where this story actually emanates from. I attended Apple's and your meeting. It was a turning point against ESG ANDDI. Keeping in mind that

ESG is Environmental, Social and governance. I attended Apple's annual meetings several weeks ago. I saw many signs of how corporate culture is shifting away from ESG and DEEI now to understand why. Let's briefly discuss the basics of how people actually engage with minor corporations and goes into some detail. I'm going to pass on that and skip to the final paragraph. The activist class that pushes for ESG, DEI and biased corporate policies now has to contend with their

worst nightmares. Shareholders who want businesses to focus on business, not politics. A growing infrastructure is committed to maximizing pro fiduciary influence at America's biggest companies, and the political space is incredibly ripe for this action. Apple is just the beginning, Laten Smith for many across the world. A US Federal Reserves decision to exit the network for greening the financial system is that central banks can refocus on their primary mandates. Well,

who would have thought stabilizing economies, controlling inflation and fostering growth. Currently, ENNGFS membership includes central banks and financial institutions from twenty two countries in Africa, thirty two in Asia Pacific, and twenty in the Americas, which may now be emboldened to reevaluate and abandon whatever priority they have assigned to climates initiatives. It then gets on to another matter, but it's associated.

For instance, Canada's federal government has implemented a plethora of climate policies, leading to higher carbon taxes, more volatility in the energy sector, lower export income, and overall disastrous state of the economy. Aspiring to drive Canada toward more climate idiocy is Mark Karney, recently elected Canada's Prime Minister by the ruling Liberal party. However, other Kannadians have different thoughts. Major banks across North America relieving Mark Carney's international net

zero banking scheme, but some Canadian banks remain members. According to Rebecca Schultz, Alberta Minister of the Environment in protected areas, the remaining Canadian banks must abandon Carne's net zero banking alliance and invest in safe, affordable, reliable Canadian energy again, according to the minister, isn't that an amazing comment in this day and age, how quickly things can turn. By the way, Mark Carney will be a disaster. I think I've said this somewhere else. He will be a disaster

and the Opposition leader would make a damn fine Prime minister. Now, leading from that, with regard to central banks, let's move to our own and Professor McCulloch on the fourth of March, which was about the same time that Adrian Or did his great walk out the door, never to be seen again, and he wrote this, and I don't know whether it's before or after the exit, but either way it's very good, McCulloch says. Over the past six months, interest rates in

Australia had barely changed. Their official cash rate was four point five percent back then and is now four point twenty five. Not so in New Zealand. Our ocr has swung from five point five to three point seventy five,

plummeting nearly two percentage points. How come well, Just over six months ago, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand was doing shock and awe O double ar It was desperately trying to engineer a recession to quell the runaway inflation that was caused by its runaway printing money program known as quantitative easing. Six months later, New Zealand languishes as one of the world's worst performing economies. I'm unaware of whether you know this or not, of course, but I

didn't For some reason, I hadn't picked this up. We repeat, New Zealand languishes is one of the world's worst performing economies, coming in at one eighty one out of one ninety country in terms of the IMS Economic growth numbers one hundred and eighty first out of one hundred and ninety countries. How low can this country slump? So now the RBNZ has a new genius strategy engineer a boom. The proof

is in the Yel curve below. It shows one of the wildest swings of any country that I've looked at six months ago, our short term rates were way above our long rates. Now the situation is reversed. The graph shows how New Zealand has gone from panic tightening to panic loosening. Yes, the Kiwi economy is characterized by a close to zero sloped trend line rate of economic growth, but with wild reserve bank induced booms and busts around that near zero productivity increasing trend the worst way to

run a nation. National's response was to renew the contract of why Cata University Vice Chancellor Neil Quigley last year. The well connected man who has presided over this fiasco as Chairman of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand good one National. He concludes, what can I add to it?

Don't ask me, it's too complicated for my simple mind. But there are some further changes that I now would like to make you aware of. You will get one today if you're on the list. Of course you have to subscribe to It doesn't cost you anything to subscribe. You can just get yourself listed and you get an email, usually on a Wednesday, So there is one today, a normal email. Then on Sunday next to twenty third of March, there's a further selection of episodes from twenty twenty five

so far. Then Wednesday of next week there will be no email. Please keep that in mind, so you simply have to go help yourself to it from Newstalks AB dot co dot nz in the podcast section. Next Wednesday, no email. They're on Friday, the twenty eighth of March. The Wednesday email content will fall into your box. Amazing, isn't it? Anyway? They're doing their best to cover this off, and it's all to do with improvements they're making too well.

I don't know whatever they think Opensteed making too pardon by ignorance, but I don't care. I do care that you're not getting your email, but I don't care why that's just the way that it is now in a moment or two. Michael de Percy, Doctor Michael de Percy is a political scientist and a political commentator. He has

a long list of credits. Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Institute of Logistics and Transport, is a member of the Royal Society of New South Wales, editor in chief of the Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, and a member of the Australian Nuclear Association. He is a graduate of the Royal Military College of Duntrue. He was appointed to the College of Experts which bothers me at the

Australian Research Council in twenty twenty two. He also was a graduate of Australian National University and he is a senior lecturer at the University of Canbra's very good to have you on the podcast. I read your latest piece, Trump's Art of the Deal, Trump's the Science, and I thought got to have you. Thank you, great to be here. What do you mean, Trump's Art of the Deal, Trump's the Science.

effectively undone in the first Trump administration. So I started looking a bit deeper into this idea of achievements and what presidents in particular actually achieved, and when we come to the second Trump administration, it's very interesting that Trump, when he makes a deal, he starts with the worst

case scenario. So you can imagine, you know, basically the strongest man in history at this point in time, and if you're dealing with him, he's going to give you this apocalypse apocalyptic sort of idea of what the future could be like as his starting point. He then uses that to create all of this sort of disruption and puts the person he's negotiating with into this state of disarray. He then sort of dials that back to ultimately achieve

what he's after. And the unfortunate thing I find is that for the leader of the free world, the free world's not supporting him. And we have all of these experts. Each time he tries to or begins making a deal, we have all of these experts. I noted you mentioned my membership of the College of Experts of Istralian Research Council.

But the point that I'm making is that these people Donald Trump, presidents of the US, our own prime ministers and the like, they're actually elected by a majority of people, which is what liberal democracy is all about. And unfortunately, instead of having these people being backed by those experts, effectively the experts are disagreeing with the voters. And Australian Prime Minister John Howard famously said that the voters are always right in a liberal democracy, if you get voted in,

it's the correct solution, that's what the people wanted. Unfortunately, what we're seeing when Trump's trying to make these deals immediately people are jumping on board saying that you know this is this is not how things ought to be done, you know the president's wrong, or you know that this is disastrous for democracy and the ridiculous thing is that in every measure, Donald Trump has been elected with an outright majority across the board, in every measure of electoral success.

He achieved it the most recent US election, And I'm finding it bizarre that as he's making these deals on behalf of the American people, and with that the Anglo liberal democracies, the people just aren't getting on board with it, and they're sort of going off in their own expert opinions, which frankly are great for advice, but they're not representative of the people that voted these people into power.

people have these different views. In the US. Meerscheimer and others have even gone against Trump, which I found quite bizarre because traditionally they're very much about liberal institutionalism, and when we look at liberal institutionalism effective, we were talking about the liberal as in small l liberal, not in the American sense of the word, but as the individual is most capable of making their own decisions for themselves,

which leads to free speech and other ideas about liberal democracy. And in our world order. Traditionally, the United Nations was founded on these liberal democratic principles, which of course have now been captured by smaller, non liberal democratic countries, which means that the UN is effectively moved away from its mandate. It's exhausted, it's been captured by other interests. And of course the US has let this slide by not funding

it as it may once have. And of course Donald Trump is in the business of undoing the world order that effectively is no longer achieving its aim of bringing liberals sort of democratic capitalism to the world.

time it was radical. But one of the things that there was a critique a quality fraternity. And I'm sorry, I should should be able to recall this off the top of my head, but in effect a critic wrote, uh, this this this piece where he argued that liberalism in it or individualism in its extreme, would actually be dangerous

for society. And what we're sort of seeing is that the woke movement was about extreme individualism related with identity politics, but to the point where the individual no longer head for the concept of the common good. And the common good is basically where individuals act in their own self interest, but they also have this sort of tide of the community that enables them to act within their own self interest, but in a way where they're basically looking after themselves

so that nobody else has to look after them. And you can imagine that as a society has more and more people who need the society to look after them, eventually we're going to run out of people who are actually doing the heavy lifting. And so this idea of extreme individualism at the expense of the common good has got to a point where it's so many of us

are carrying those who are not carrying themselves. Now, this originated in the United States, and so it's interesting that, particularly here in Australia, we tend to be years behind the United States. So any trend, even disastrous trends, that start there, we tend to take on years later, even when we're seeing the evidence that it's just you know,

it's a disaster. And so this woke idea of extreme individualism through identity politics is something that's been picked up here, but also in the UK to some extent, New Zealand, and certainly certainly in Canada. And I refer to these countries as the Anglo liberal democracies. And in many ways what we've got at the moment are leftist governments in Canada,

the UK, and certainly in Australia. And these governments have sort of run full bottle with the extreme individualism of identity politics at the expense of the common good, to the point where governments are actually funding all of these initiatives beyond their means. So in the Australian capital territory Victoria, for example, the state government in Australia is well beyond its means carrying the debt that is actually now starting

to affect other citizens in Australia. And of course the Australian government has been spending on subsidizing renewables and other sort of economic policies that aren't necessarily working because the cost of living is just out of control.

which hasn't been commercialized anywhere in the world. There is a German outfit that's trialing it, but it's not commercial it's not standalone at this stage. So Australia has been pursuing these green ideals where effectively it's not commercially viable,

and hydrogen in particular is one of these areas. So we've got all of these subsidies going to the renewable sector, and we've got all this critique about the potential for nuclear to fill this gap to fix the problems we're experiencing our energy sector, but unfortunately we don't know how much this is costing. So we've kind of got this political debate where nuclear is the enemy and it's going

to cost half a trillion dollars or whatever. We actually actually have no idea how much the subsidization of the energy sector is costing us in the meantime. And not only that, it's one of those inner city versus the regions situations where what we have is people in the inner city are quite happy to have renewable energy to feel good about themselves, while people in the regions are actually suffering from the externalities that are caused by this

change in the energy system. And in fact, what we're finding is it's not even cheaper. It's going up again by some nine percent in July this year, so it just keeps going up and up. It's not achieving its original aim.

we import cheap crap coal from Indonesia. It's really quite an extraordinary scenario. And at this particular moment, if we don't get rained very soon, then we're going to go into blackout zone. Now you've i think already suffered in some parts of the country from blackouts, have you.

get work here. All highly qualified at university level, can't get jobs here, and so they're in Australia and the parents are now going over. Also added by the way, and I don't know quite how this fits in that they may return to the US, so possibly they came from there in the host place. I don't know. They may return to the US, but they're waiting to see

how Trump turns out. But that is one example. Three kids all in Australia because they can't get work here, and that is what is inspiring so many to live. Of our mixed family of four We've got two in London and two here. The two here, well, one of the two here would like to would like to go to the States and will probably end up in Australia.

Is it noticeable to you. I know that the numbers are increasing in Canberra, the population is increasing in Canbra some say that it's increasing at the highest highest rate of any parts of Australia. But is there a noticeable increase Do you think of New Zealand as in Australia from your perspective now.

I'm not noticing that sort of influx. But it's interesting too though that in terms of employment opportunities, one of the things that's happening in Australia at the moment is employment is quite unemployment is extremely low, but the reason is because most of the jobs are government jobs, so it's kind of a false economy in that regard. But at the same time, Canberra is certainly growing because the public service has been growing some thirty six thousand additional

public servants in the term of the Albanese government. And of course the problem for the ACT is that the market there is quite tired in terms of housing. It's very expensive and they've got limited room to grow as well, so it's sort of spilling over into the regional New South Wales, creating its own problems for infrastructure and other things.

But it's very shortsighted in terms of basically manipulating all of the economic indicators, including unemployment, through government funding, which is you know, on the ground, it's not really helping people. And if I can give you an example of that, there's a neighbor of mine who is now in his sixties, and he said to me when he was nineteen, he was living week to week and he thought, I've got to do something about this. I can't live like this forever.

And he basically trained himself to budget and to save and to live within his means. And he said to me, here he is now in his sixties and he's living week to week again. But there's nothing he can do about it. It's not a lack of discipline. It's just a simple fact that he can't afford to live as

within his means. It's basically impossible. So you know, on the one hand, we've got these economic indicators which look great, but the reality of living in Australia is extremely different to that picture that's being painted by the government.

mentioned the critique of John Stuart Millan. It's actually James Fitzjames Stephen in his work called Liberty, Equality Fraternity, and it was a really interesting critique of John Stuart Mills's work which effectively outlines what we're seeing in terms that woke identity politics when it comes to the state governments.

When it comes to the state governments, what we're seeing is the state's effectively playing the same electoral game that the federal government is playing, and we're seeing things like, for example, in Queensland, we saw this idea of fifty cents trips on public transport and it's interesting because that effectively plays to Brisbane because the public transport situation and

the rest of Queensland is abysmal. So in effect, people in the regions are once again subsidizing those people who live in the cities and have all the access to public infrastructure. And we see the same sort of game being played in New South Wales and elsewhere in effect, what they're doing is buying votes and people seem to be going along with it. Now, that wasn't necessarily a case in in Queensland the recent state election there, but it's certainly been the case in Victoria and to some

extent in New South Wales. In New South Wales we see the premiere talking tough on anti Semitism and other things, saying all the right things, but at the same time we're not seeing any action. And this really brings me back to that Trump Trumpian argument that Trump is all

about the action. He's making these deals, he's making things happen, whereas we look at Barack Obama symbolic, you know, really important symbolism in terms of the first African American president of the United States, which in effect shows how our system works. It's about merit as opposed to identity, but then going full swing where it's all about identity now it's not about merit, and then Trump coming along and

trying to turn that on its head. And we're seeing the governments of Canada, the UK and Australia not being real happy about following this is changed. But look at the change that's coming because we can't afford to keep living the way that we have. And like I said, it was James Fitzjames Stephen who actually warned about this in John Stuart Mill's time, which I find extremely interesting.

And political correctness was the beginning of it, and it romped in here. I remember buying in the States some small books of Christmas stories written by satirist. They were send ups of regular stories like Little Red Writing Hood, et cetera, but they were adapted for the appropriate politically correct approach. And we're going back to the late eighties here, and I brought the books back and I read some

stories on radio, and I got abused. One guy I've never forgotten said I'm never listening to you again if you're going to quote that stupid stuff because he didn't get it, he didn't understand, he thought it was he thought it was genuine. So that's an aside. But my question to you is, if it gets here that quickly, why shouldn't it's eradication Once started in America, as it has, why shouldn't that spread here equally as fast?

same time, it's all about your identity. And I think vested interests have become so embedded in these institutions that, look, my research really does focus on institutions, and when we look at institutions, we're talking about the formal and the informal rules of the game. If you like. That can include organizations and so on. But in effect, institutions are very difficult to change because they're meant to be decision

making tools that make things more efficient. You can imagine if you had to vote for which day your garbage would be collected every week. It would be ridiculous. Right, So we have this institution where it just ticks along. It takes care of business and hopefully in the interests

of the common good. But because the common good has become less of a focus, these institutions have started to focus on achieving the aims of identity, politics, and other things, and in doing so, the institutions start to replicate themselves, where they're bringing in people who have these same ideas and on it goes. Now, typically institutions can't change themselves. They have to be disrupted by an exogenist or an

external event. And in many ways I've argued this in teaching leadership that leaders actually can be a force for change. They can be a great disruptor that disrupts the institution, and usually that's through their ideas or approaches to particular things. So basically what we're seeing is Trump is now like the great disruptor, which is disrupting these institutions. But having said that, the institutions within states but also at the

UN system level, these institutions are exhausted. They're no longer achieving the purposes that they were meant to achieve, which means, and again on the theoretical idea, that they can't change themselves otherwise they know. It's kind of like an institution that's designed to keep the status quo. It can't change itself otherwise, it can't keep the status quo, so it

has to be recreated, it has to be disrupted. Wars are a great disruptor, of course, but like I said, Trump is a disruptor as well, So there's a little bit of inertia in institutions as well. And I think sometimes it's easier to even disrupting the institution means that it takes some time to change, whereas that incremental change that occurs over time within the institution tends to be much

more difficult to overturn. It kind of creeps in. And as you said about political correctness, and I remember that exact book that you're talking about from the late eighties. It was almost funny back then, but it was a precursor to things that if we'd been more conscious.

we can see I mean, I'm hoping that JD. Vance will become president in twenty twenty eight, and if that's the case, we might be able to see the continual undoing of this identity politics that is creating all of the problems for us at the moment.

and I teach this overseas in Bhutan and China. Locally, I teach political leadership at an undergraduate level and I also teach one of our subjects, which is called professional orientation, and professional orientation is basically teaching my students how to set up themselves during the time of their degree instead of waiting till getting to the end and then wondering what they're going to do with it. And I sort of see it as my university is very much my students,

very much my people. I'm a Western Sydney boy then grew up in far North Queensland. I live in the regions now. A lot of my students are from similar circumstances, and many of them, like me, are first in family

university graduates. So I work with my students in particular to develop social and cultural capital, which means that instead of going to your parents, who might have just been working class, hard working people who don't understand university or other advanced ideas of careers, you actually have a network of people that can assist you. And that was certainly

the problem. That or not problem, but that was certainly the circumstances that I grew up in, where the people around me had no idea about these sort of high falutant ideas of the academy and being an intellectual or even journalism and things like that. So I try and do my students. But that's currently I've been doing it for some twenty years now, so it's changed over time.

Stanford's Francis Fukuyama is exhibit a of this tendency, having intellectually drifted from supporting democracy to putting a quasi Leninist emphasis on political order. Where did you go wrong?

two thousand and one, that's sort of through. And I don't mean to laugh about that, but it was the situation that he had sort of made this statement that it was the end of history, and then history just came back to bite him and he had to change his ideas and admit that he was wrong. And he then started saying that identity politics was the greatest threat. So I'm not quite sure that he would be exhibit

A in that way. Look, the thing for me is that I'm very much a liberal Democrat in the way that I believe that individuals are sovereign that they can make the best decisions about their own welfare, that they ought to be supported in that the role of government is not to give us a vision, but to create economic and social conditions that enable us to pursue our own visions. So very much about the individual, but also

with a strong sense of the common good. And one of the things that I've noticed, particularly in the academy in the university sector, but they don't represent the ordinary people. They represent their own elite and their own elite ideas. And you know, we can go back to the London School of Economics in the UK, which was established by the Fabians in effect, and so a lot of that sort of intellectual leftism, if you will, stems from that era.

But again it had as its basis looking after the ordinary people, and of course that has since changed and it's now about virtue signaling for the wealthy, inner city elite at the expense of those ordinary Australians what Menzies would have called the forgotten people. But the interesting thing now is the forgotten people are a completely different group. It's the traditional working class that are being left behind

by those who supposedly had their interests at heart. And I guess for me, well not, I guess they know for me. As soon as I sort of had my damascene moment, so to speak, and I started representing and writing for the people in the regions of a region Australia, I found my audience and in many ways found my voice.

And you know, it actually feel like I have a sense of purpose, whereas before it seemed to be this sort of fake intellectualism that had at its roote not looking after ordinary people, but in effect like you say, a closet Leninist designed to create the sort of the dictatorship of the proletariat that would then teach the players

how to think. And we're sort of seeing that in many ways, whereas a liberal Democrat would be looking at learning how to think as opposed to telling people what to think.

in Canberra. And did you know him by the way in Canberra?

well with that university. And our school has prided itself on its diversity of opinion as well, which is quite unusual. So in many ways, aside from some initial reluctance that was later on embraced, and I think that's the case with many people. You basically have to establish yourself and once you've done that, people just have to get on with it because they're not going to change. So I've had that experience, and look, I'm very grateful to my

university for that experience. And it hasn't been what I've seen certainly in other places. And again that's one of the reasons why I've worked there for twenty years. But to be honest, I'm actually finishing up in July. I've been there twenty years. I'm feeling rather stale, and I'm going to move on. And one of the other emeritus professors said that I'm probably the last of the conservative academics. But look again, I think our education system is exhausted.

Artificial intelligence is going to replace so many people, and I'm seeing it already. I'm dabbling in the area at the moment in terms of using it as a personal assistant, using it for conducting literature reviews. And it's not going to replace the intellectual rigor that's needed for research, but it's certainly going to reduce the staffing requirements that traditionally

were very expensive. But also I think that there's going to have to be some sort of change in things because those the old institution that has been captured by the left is not actually producing people who are useful in the economy. You know, we've got business skills that have exclusively focused on gender studies, focusing absolutely Yeah, you know, we've got to give.

support this industry. And this is where it becomes really bizarre, because without the mining and resources sector, Australia be a third world country full stop. And people just don't appreciate that. So, you know, it's all well and good to have these sort of high moral principles, but to forget the fact that you can only have these high moral principles because

of a particular sector of the economy is just ridiculous. So, you know, for me, I think we ought to be focusing more on these major sort of elements of the economy, like transport, telecommunications. There's hardly anywhere that's teaching these things now. Economics is probably one of the most in demand careers. Yet people are moving away from teaching it properly by incorporating mathematics and statistics. So we're like taking the easy path in so many things, and we're not producing the

skills that are needed. So these skills still have to come from somewhere. So I think there's an opportunity for disruption in higher education in particular.

has been proven. And it's again what we're seeing is this sort of the wok araty embracing these concepts, forcing it on others. But really they're not doing anything to you know, fix the problems or the circumstances that are occurring. You know, obviously in indigenous people throughout the world have had a raw deal historically, and you know, there are things that need to be done to improve that. But you know, these having an acknowledgment of country and then

assessing somebody on the passion that they displayed. I mean, this is the most subjective thing I've ever heard of. How do you do that? You know, and people are passionate in different ways. It's like grief. People grieve in different ways. So but again this is just showing how extreme this is becoming. But look that I'm pretty sure we're going to see that that gets undone rather quickly because it's embarrassing and it's certainly it certainly is not

about liberal democracy, is it. I mean, it's effectively telling you what to think and how to behave, which is you know, what we'd usually refer to as a dictatorship.

a particular government. We saw that in Australia. I remember seeing Chris Bowen with the Business Council of Australia in tow wherever he wins. And now we're starting to see, because of the economy and because of the failures of their energy policy, the business community is starting to say, well, hang on a minute. You know you promised all this stuff. It's not working. We supported you, it's not working, and we're seeing that with DEI and other things.

no way you can you can do it? How would you train a machine AI to do the editing on its own, of editing out the bits that weren't that weren't appropriate. How would you train at the start of a certain spot and cities at a certain spot.

with the future. And that's where I mean. Look, it can help in terms of planning, it can help in terms of all sorts of creative solutions to problems, but it's a resource. It's not the be all and the end all, and I think that's part of the issue is that you can't use AI. It's artificial intelligence, it's not false intelligence, so you need a level of human intelligence to be able to use it as a tool. So the thing about AI is that it makes things

more efficient. It could be the case that you could train it to go through footage, and based on that, look, we can already see that if you want to search a photo in your phone, you can put in a topic and or bring up all of your pets or all of your travels or whatever it is. So you know that we can see already that this does work. But that doesn't mean it's going to select the exact photo that you wanted. You'd still have to It basically narrows it down and enables you to then find what

you're looking for. And I dare say, in terms of editing, that would be the case where you'd be presented with less of the raw footage that you could then tweak minorly, as opposed to having to scroll through. So just give you an example in the past, if I was conducting research, So going back to my undergrad degree, where my assignments were handwritten, I'd have to go to the library and read all these books and highlight them and produce cards

and so on. And then, of course, when Google came along, divided that the references were available online, and increasingly they are now through library databases at universities. I could do Google searches or search the catalog and find these resources and draw on them. Now the thing is now I can actually get AI to do that, and I'm finding that a year's worth of work just in finding the sources that I want to look at, a year's worth of work is taking twenty minutes. Now, I mean, you know,

that's an incredible level of efficiency. But it doesn't mean that I can just let AI write what I'm doing. I still have to, you know, I'm still in control of what's happening. But it does all of that sort of grunt work. And traditionally too, I would have employed research assistance to go and do that work. I would then look at what they'd done and sort of narrow it down from there. But what I'm finding with AI is it's replacing those people. They don't need to hire

somebody to do it. Now I can get AI to do that, but you can't take away that, or at least not in our lifetime or my lifetime. I don't think in terms of of I don't think it's going to do everything for us, but it's certainly going to make things more efficient. And I'm finding that already in the most incredible ways.

of access to information. But again, it's not going to it's not going to do the hard work for us, and I think the hard work. It's interesting that there was a book Deep Work came from a professor of computer science in the US, and he was talking about needing to do at least four hours of deep work per day that added value to something, and he was saying that if you didn't do this in the future, what would happen is you'd be replaced by some sort

of machine or program. And in many ways, people who receive emails and then forward that email onto someone else, they're effectively going to be replaced by some sort of routing system, and we're seeing that happening already. So there's still that requirement for deep work, but it's much more creative, it's much more intellectual, and in many ways it's much

more interesting. So look, I just find that it's it's fascinating, but it's also very helpful, and for those who are not sort of getting into it, they're going to be left behind, at least initially. But look, having said that, I realized that in around two thousand and seven, when and Twitter sort of came online. Now X, there was this belief that it was going to democratize the world and democratize the media and all the rest of it. Pretty soon well a few years after, Yeah, the legacy

media effectively redominated all of those new areas. But we're seeing that happening again now, not because of this desire for democratization, but the simple fact is that the old institutions,

the media institutions, are so expensive. Like your podcast, you can do this now more efficiently and better because you're more hands on and involved in it than if you had this sort of team in a legacy environment where you have to pay for officers and studios and all these different things, and the legacy media is finding it too expensive to produce the content that people want.

tend to end up with a labor government. On the left, they tend to all sort of vote as a group, whereas on the right we tend to think for ourselves and therefore we might want to punish a group who's not doing what we expect them to and so on.

So I wrote about that because I was concerned about that, and I looked at some historical processes in terms of primary votes, and traditionally the coalition party, the Liberal and National parties in Australia have to get more than forty one percent of the vote and also beat of the primary vote and also beat the Labor and the Greens primary vote in order to win government. And the only time this hasn't happened is when the left has been

fractured in a similar way. And somebody took what I'd written as saying that I didn't understand the preferential voting system, and I was saying that I had said that if you didn't give your primary vote to the coalition, the candidate couldn't win, which is absolute nonsense. I didn't say that. I said, based on the historical situation, giving your primary vote to anything other than the coalition is a suboptimal way of ensuring that you end up with a conservative government.

And so I was taken to task on Twitter. Mind you, so I don't know who this person was, what they're qualations were, anything like that, but I was taken to task by them, and I requested an apology from the department, and of course I received no such a policy apology, but I was effectively defamed by them, And in their response they basically went from saying that it was disinformation, to then misinformation, to then saying that these statistical possibilities

were so vast that nobody really knew, you know, what the result could be. And I just thought that this was so bizarre that this government department, an anonymous person on social media could effectively defame me and uh and then just doing you know, nothing could possibly happen about it,

and all under the guys of misinformation and disinformation. In effect, what happened to me mirrored the critiques of the misinformation and disinformation laws that effectively people could use these to achieve their own political lends and there'd be nothing that citizens could do about it. So I'm extremely glad that none of that has been approved in terms of legislation.

But what's interesting is that the coalition government that effectively I was suggesting people or to give their primary vote to if they wanted a conservative government, they've been backing some of these moves as well, and so it's a real sort of chicken and egg problem is that if the conservative major parties won't actually stand by their principles, then people are going to vote for conservative minor parties, which means that we're going to end up with a

labor government. But they just can't sort of seem to see this, and that's what concerns me, because nobody can afford another three years of this current government.

has happened in Victoria. Why is it so why did so many Victorians time and time again vote for an idiot?

virtue signaling, has what's been attractive. The other thing, too, is that Victoria has had one of the most ineffective oppositions in its history. So there's a lot there that relates to the conservative parties trying to outlabor the Labor Party, and of course they're no good at this because it's not what they do and their base is not interested

in that. So they move further and further away from their base, which means the base abandons them, which, as I say, it results in a labor government being re elected. And I think this is the tragedy because Mensis, when he established the Liberal Party, brought these groups together. He was able to function in terms of what was a broad church. But Mensi's never envisioned factions within the Liberal Party, and now we have basically formalized factions within the Liberal

Party in Australia, which is a leftist socialist concept. It's rather bizarre. So an ineffective opposition and a labor government that's prepared to spend money that it doesn't have on certain segments of the community is effectively buying those votes. But the reason those votes are for sale is because the conservative major Conservative parties have abandoned their base.

Instead of supporting Trump and trusting in the person that is in charge and that was democratically elected, people start sort of getting their own ideas and complaining and you know,

not sort of seeing what's going on. And I would hope that mister Dutton has this ass or prepared and it's going to be deployed as soon as the campaign begins, because one of the risks in politics particularly is an opposition if you expose all of your tactics and techniques and the approach that you're going to take too early, you're given the incumbent government time to prepare and to counter those arguments. So I'm hoping that that's the case.

But unfortunately, in the meantime, people are sort of jumping to the minor parties, and the minor parties are obviously encouraging this because in Australia at least I think it's three dollars twenty five or something per primary vote if you get more than four percent of the primary vote goes to these political parties. So there's a vested interest in the minor parties to actually get a hold of

that electoral reimbursement funding via the government. So look, in many ways, this competition, particularly on the right, is causing the problems that is enabling the left to keep getting returned into power and that's what concerns me about the upcoming election. And you know, look, the coalition is certainly moving away from its base. I don't think it's looking after its base and the way that it ought to.

But I know for a fact that our economy is going to be much better under a coalition government than it currently is in what, in my view is the worst government Australian history.

in effect what we're seeing in Australia. I heard it referred to as double haters the other day, that people hate both of the major parties and they're looking to the minority minority parties to you know, to capture their base, so to speak. But in effect, it's a suggestion that corporations or some other elites are controlling both parties, so it doesn't matter who you vote for, they're going to

look after their own interests and not yours. So that concept in liberal democracies has been around for a very

long time. But the idea of the UNI party is interesting because there's enough evidence to say that it's a thing, and we can look at that in terms of particularly around energy policy, in the focus on ideas around the climate, we can see that there's sort of this majority rule that fits in with and I don't want to be sound like conspiracy theorists, but you know, it fits in with the ideas of the World Economic Forum and the UN and others, particularly around the climate, and people are

sort of thinking, well, you know, it doesn't matter who I vote for, they've both got the same ideas. Who's actually going to represent my ideas? And that's where we're seeing that sort of fracturing, particularly on the conservative side of politics.

want to address carbon emissions. They just want to have wind and solar as the dominant power source, which of course leads you to think, well, if you follow the money, where does this take me? And I agree with you about net zero. I mean, you've got China and India who don't really seem to care about this concept. Why should Australia and why should New Zealand be so concerned about their outputs when it's not going to make a link of difference? I think too. Trump is going to

undo a lot of that as well. But look, in effect, we just can't afford to sort of take this ideal view, and if it was actually about reducing carbon emissions, then nuclear should be front and center.

If you look at public education in New South Wales in particular, the Henry Parks was one of the champions of primary public education in Australia because of the bush rangers, who were living without the moral influences they needed, thought they could just go off and robin kill people whenever

they felt like it. So you know, we've kind of gone from this establishing a moral base, which is important in our youth, in particular to now actually telling them what to think, which is the complete opposite of the purpose of education. So I think it's going to take

a disruption. It's certainly starting with Donald Trump. Whether that infiltrates in Australia, I think we'll see that if we do have a coalition government return to power, if not another three years of labor, it'll take longer because I think it'll embed more. Having said that, the market always swings things around, because eventually we're going to have people graduating from universities who've had indoctrination rather than education. They're not going to have the skills that they need to

function in industry. Industry is going to need to get those skills from somewhere else, which means those people with their sort of woke education or indoctrination are not going to be in the not going to get the jobs that they need to continue their virtue signaling or whatever.

And it's going to turn around. Now, that's an imperfect way of doing things, but liberal democracies are imperfect because often our economic rights and our political rights sort of butt up against each other, and we have to satisfy us as opposed to satisfy all of those different needs. But again, I think eventually, even with net zero all these other things, it's going to have to correct itself soon otherwise we're not going to be able to afford to keep going as we are.

I think it's interesting. You know, I'm sort of the chapter representative of the RSL here in my small village of Gunning in regional New South Wales, and despite the population only being some eight hundred people, we get at least five hundred people turning up to our ANZAC day service. Is about one hundred in the morning dawn service and at eleven am we get five hundred plus, so and

the skill children involved, it's really important. I don't think that's going to go away anytime soon from our sort of shared history in that space. But I think the biggest problem is not so much the relationship, but it's the lack of the lack of spending on defense. We saw recently the Chinese navy off Sydney, you know, creating all sorts of issues for both Australia and New Zealand, and I think in many ways our response was completely inadequate.

So we've been found wanting in that regard. Trump's calling out other countries. Look even Canada. Canada to remain a member of NATO needs to spend at least two percent of its GDP on defense, and it's spending less than that. I think New Zealand's in a similar boat. Australia is just over two percent, but it's clearly not enough. So this whole sort of focus on defense, which you know, traditionally we've had that problem. Even in the Second World War,

Australia wasn't capable of defending itself. I mean, you know, people forget that without the Americans, Australia would have been invaded. You know, whether they were here for them or ask it really doesn't matter.

but we don't have that capacity. It's almost like we're in that phase of appeasement before the Second World War, where appeasing one's enemies was enough and you'd be fine, and of course that led to the disaster of the Second World War. Whereas I think if we had much more credible capabilities in terms of defense, which is the whole idea of defense in itself, it's the deterrent capability as opposed to its offensive capability and we're just not

building that. And again too, we see even in recruiting, people are just not interested in their own countries. They've been sort of taught that they're global citizens and that, you know, the Nation States are old fashioned. I mean, all of this is late nineteen ninety stuff, which is part and parcel of Fukiyama that's been discredited. But in many ways, I think there's we've kind of got this

two speed cultural understanding of our past. We've got some who are you know, definitely support the memory of the ANZACs, but then we have these others who think we don't need the US as an ally and they just simply forget that the role that the Americans played in Australia's defense.

antihistamine made in Switzerland to the highest quality. So next time you're in need of an effective antihistamine, call into the pharmacy and ask for Leverix l e v r X Leverix and always read the label, take as directed and if symptoms persist, see your health professional. Farmer Broker Auckland. They enter the mail room for two seventy six and missus producer. It's interesting that Muriel Newman and Rodney Hyde both paul commentaries of such enthusiasm that it's extraordinary. Really,

I don't think so. Latent.

antipathy toward naive young Christians with puritanical views. There was a degree of snorting and stickering. The reason this stuck with me is that I had recently become a Christian and it felt quite uncomfortable. Now I say this, he says, not to deride or humiliate Rodney, but as an ironic anecdote on hypocrisy and shallow beliefs. I too, once thought of Patricia Bartbert as a pathetic prude without any introspection.

So I understand the hypocrisy of my own form of views, and when I think about it, it's a personal failing all of us find impossible to eradicate. I loved the honesty of Rodney's stories and views. You really did yourself proud with this extraordinary interview. Now enclosing, our extended family lost a thirty three year old in perfect health within a few days of the infamous jab. The clincher for me of this being medicinal misadventure was evidenced by the

cover up from start to finish. This quote couldn't possibly be vaccine related. No coronial inquiry, no acknowledgment, just a deafening and defiant silence. I'll leave it there, despite my fury at what our leaders did to my former country. God bless from Murray, who is now living in Queensland Layton.

joy it engendered it hearing such common sense. The enlightening exposure of the perverted so called sex education was of course greatly disturbing. Rodney's statement that this is a hill we need to die on is indeed a call to battle that I have been wanting to answer. I have contacted let kids be kids as a start. We must all do what we can to eliminate this generational corruption

of our precious children and grandchildren. Rodney's personal testimony of becoming a follower of Jesus for just one year was spellbinding. It follows on from President Trump's statement that America must return to its Christian founding roots. Rodney spoke so clearly and well for someone only a Christian for such a short time. I'm also aware of the many liberating historical stories of the local tribal ma. They welcomed the treaty and rule of law, oftened by the written Westminster system

that gave them stability, not the infinitely variable Teacunger. I'm also mindful of my grandparents coming to New Zealand from Scotland and Ireland over one hundred years ago to escape the class system and to enjoy the galitarian society. Rodney so eloquently described, My grandparents and parents worked hard to make their way in life, and that is a fine

example to me. It grieves me to see that to Party MARII and Green's creating a false narrative of class systems when the opposite color blind society I grew up and was such a foundational part of all of our lives.

Rodney said, the Jews didn't recognize him. The connection between the two religions is Jesus, who said that I have not come to abolish the law that is the Jewish law or the prophets. I came to fulfill them. Anybody wants to know Matthew Chapter five, verse seventeen. Christ was a Jew but not a Christian. However, he was the founder of the Christian religion. His followers were Jews who became the first Christians. The Catholic Church recognizes that it

has its roots in Judaism, as wishes christ As. We got a lot of feedback, a lot of feedback on last week with Rodney. It's roll again.

They are doing their bet. I do not wish to see us move to an ethno state riven by ethnic and interethnic division. I do not see a need for Mari seats in Parliament or Mari wards in local body elections. The division is not helpful, nor the forced spirituality and suggestion that those with some Mari DNA know more about the water, the environment and families than anyone else. The issue extends to government failure to attend to sorting out the courts and the White Tangi Tribunal. To remind both

that Parliament is sovereign. Enacting necessary legislation to resolve the coast water and the currently oversized public service via the Treatyised Public Services Act twenty twenty is essential and required smartly, they can keep up the good work. That's from Pete.

He provided kind regards, Brodwin. And then about four hours later I got the following Please may I add a PostScript to my earlier email. I have now listened to the following episode, also excellent with Rodney.

in the past from him. The clincher for me was when he said he used to think of his children as clever animals and his marriage as a mere agreement, but now he views his children as gifts from God and can considers his marriage sacred. That speech could only come from a person with new conviction. His involvement in let Kids be Kids proves as convictions Let kids be kids is a good way for parents to realize they are not alone in wanting to protect kids from destructive

gender and sexual ideologies. Family firsts Bob McCroskey warned us three years ago about the Ministry of Education's wicked and insidious Relationships and Sexuality education, which targets primary age kids with confusing and dangerous idea viruses such as sex changes, pronouns, transgenderism,

and other evil gender ideologies. Doctor Muriel Newman recently warned that while National is making good progress on some issues, they are making almost no progress on many of those other issues that motivated New Zealanders to vote for change. In other words, National is not eliminating woke the title of her article. This is in stark contrast to Donald Trump,

who's doing everything in his power to eliminate woke. Muriel Newman suggests that National would be wise to pick up on Winston Peter's Public Service Amendment bill to remove diversity, equity and inclusion regulations from the public service. I agree with her. Either Luxeon kills woke or woke will kill his political ambition. Wake the heck up, Luxom. That's from Jimmy.

what to do each day. Along came COVID and with it vaccine mandates and rules around contact that were at best supposedly designed to save lives, at worst utterly in humane. I began to wonder when the poster of regulation haircuts used in North Korea was going to become mandatory in the workplace. Fortunately, the Empress of that era was finally found to have no clothes and she resigned, with many of us hoping that we would never see her or

her colleagues ever again. One bad pole for National has me seriously doubting the intellectual capacity of my fellow New Zealanders, particularly the MSM mainstream medium. Almost hourly they're foaming at the mouth, bursting to tell us that Luxon will be rolled, while Chippy continues to bark at every parsing opportunity to tell the party deluded that he is back and poised to win in twenty twenty six. Do I think Chris

Luxon is an inspirational prime Minister. No, but he's still better than past notable disasters like Adern, Hipkins and Shipley in that order. Luxon is a businessman who is used to leading working groups of largely like minded individuals who are focused on a common goal that keeps the wheels of commerce turning, which is what we need in our country's economic engine room right now as we navigate the mess that addourns, Hipkins and Robertson and their merry band

of fiscal duncers and idea logs left behind them. Chris Luxon is at his best in front of other business leaders, an impressive, action driven speaker. If we are to avoid another election backflip, his communication style needs to be addressed by an expert with urgency. The people he needs to appeal to, most those that swing at every election, just don't get him. I have no wish to return to the daily handwringing, the murdered vows and the hangdog expressions

from the pulpit of doom style of leadership. I do, however, want someone to help Luxon, save himself and above all, our country before it's too late. Heaven help us if we wake up late in twenty twenty six to a labor to party Mari and Greens led government. Best wishes Liz superbly put together. I hope it was superbly read or at least passes, and I congratulate you. And that's what we need more of. Say it, folks, great letters, put it in writing.

don't know who Amy brook Is. She made her name as a children's book writer. A long time ago, she published a book called one Hundred Days, which is an attempt on her part to persuade us that the Swiss system of governance would suit this country better than anything else that we've adopted. And I don't want to say that she's failed in convincing us, because quite a few people have her book. The one hundred Days is still

available anybody who wanted to get through Amazon. But let me quote you, one of the most unfortunate things that has happened to New Zealand is that we no longer have a quality magazine examining what is happening in this part of the world from a socio political point of view. Given this, fine Australian magazine such as Newsweekly and Quadrant are well worth support. I'm not familiar with Newsweekly, but

Quadrant I certainly am. I checked my backlog of Quadrant magazines prior to recording this, and the oldest ones that I can lay my hands on are from two thousand and three. And as I was waiting for missus producer to come to the mail room, I was looking through to mail and there was a quadrant for today and lo and behold a disappointment called Chris Luxen written by Amy Brook. Given the extraordinary damage done to the economy of this country by the former Labor government, the National

Party's initiatives to attract investment can only be applauded. However, the voting public can be particularly ungrateful, especially when the government's focus, no matter how important in economic terms, is not taking into account issues of considerable importance to the

majority of New Zealanders, and public perception is everything. We all know that what is being taught in our schools is a travesty of a genuine education, as Kevin Donnelly confirms, is likewise the case in Australia, and no one Minister of Education, no matter how well intentioned, has a chance of restoring standards. Given that the Ministry of Education has become an institution where neo Marxist controllers of the curriculum

have long become entrenched. There will be no chance at all for genuine education reform until the Ministry of Education is disbanded and the decisions on what should be taught in schools are left to parents. Decentralizing education so that in every province education is establishments are set up with parents in control, not the bureaucrats nor the left wing teacher unions, would facilitate a return to what needs to

be taught and taught well. This goes on Former Labor leader Chrysipkin's left wing mother will have had considerable influence on the dumbing down of the curriculum. Chief researcher for the New Zealand Council of Educational Research, she is one of the strongest advocates for the new Science curriculum, with its politicized agenda, prioritizing quote matters of concern close quote

over actual facts. Under this last Labor government, Latin, which I later regarded as the most important subject I studied in school, was conveniently removed. It necessitated academic standards high enough to challenge board pupils such as I was, to change their attitudes. In fact, it wasn't so long ago in England that one could pass all other exams but would not get into some top universities if one failed

to pass in Latin. So much was it valued. So from here I will quote only briefly from the remains of the article. Moreover, most parents would not be mandating the celebration in schools of LGBT identification as a source of great pride, and would certainly be in favor of removing from the curriculum the highly graphic sex education which is today encouraging teenagers toward well. We spoke with Rodney

Hyde about this. He went into some detail, and you can duplicate that here parents are going to have to object more strongly, as is now happening overseas, where, for example, strong opposition is now being mounted against drag queens being allowed to perform in front of children in libraries. In spite of the inevitable media frenzy, many New Zealanders will be quietly applauding the protest the Destiny Church has mounted

against this. Moreover, in the next paragraph, Prime Minister Christopher Luxen is now under fire, as the Conservative Party points out, because of his dismissive response to an early childhood educator who raised the alarm over a growing number of preschool children, yes, kindergarteners, requiring they be addressed as they them rather than as

boys and girls. Rather than acknowledge such growing concerns and the effect on vulnerable children of the transgender movement, the Prime Minister dismissed this concern instead instead issuing a generic statement of support for the LGBT community, thus completely ignoring the particular issue at hand. Moreover, a previous government's decision to ban conversion theory from being accessed to help youngsters wanting to free themselves from same sex relationships should never

have been a government decision. And then she refers to the fact that New Zealand is now hundreds of teachers short and no wonder when writing some usback for Ian Wishart's Investigate magazine in relation to the deliberate dumbing down of education in this country. I was contacted by so many teachers and principles and even lecturers and former professors, appalled at what was happening, some writing in the trade

journals to object. I would try to encourage them to write to the mainstream media, where what was happening would then be more widely known, only to be told their articles were always refused publication. And those of us in

the business know that this is essentially true. There has long been a battle for the minds and hearts of young New Zealanders, and indeed their parents and conservative parents have lost because the long march through the institutions by neo Marxists that is basically communist influences, was well underway by the nineteen sixties. At any way, where are the

replacements going to come from? The teacher replacements? No intelligent, academically qualified graduates, even those keen to share enthusiasm for their chosen subjects of physics, chemistry, history, languages, etc. None of them will want to enter a profession which compels them to learn and inflict upon their pupils that almost completely fake language to Rao, which bears little resemblance to the original Marri language that is spoken nowhere else in

the world. Amy has been butting her head against that for as long as I can remember. Anyway, taking all these things into account, is quite obvious why teacher shortage is going to remain. There are so many issues this conservative coalition is failing to address. Both the destructive Jasindra Adirn and Christopher Luxon's governments have set a mission targets so ridiculously high that they would impinge on agricultural productivity. I was on looking ahead and seeing CO two and

omissions and what have you. I was tempted to get into it a bit today, but I've decided not to because I want to do a podcast on it very shortly. What a part of state we have come to? And why is this supposedly conservative government not representing the wishes of the majority of New Zealanders but operating with such blinkers on that it would lose the election if it were to be held tomorrow. Luxon is no longer viewed as a leader with a finely tuned attennae. On the contrary,

he is costing the National Party votes. And no, we do not need a four year parliamentary term. It's this is quite obvious if we reflect upon the further damage that Adern's and Grant Robinson's governments would have done had they been allowed to proceed for a year longer. A three year term is quite sufficient.

for podcast two hundred and seventy six. Now, if you'd like to write to us latent at newstalksb dot co dot z or Carolyn C. A R O. L y n at newstalksb dot co dot z. We do love getting email and we appreciate it, so go for it. We shall return in well a few days for podcast number two hundred and seventy seven. Until then, as always, it's a case of thank you for listening, thank you for your correspondence. This week is really good. Thank you for listening, and we shall talk soon.