Leighton Smith Podcast #280 - April 16th 2025 - Nick Cater

well maybe. Nick Cator discusses the pros and cons of the Lucky Culture, a book that he wrote twelve years ago, and how the outcome of the election will affect the future unless be blunt. The Australian election so far has been described as the most boring, the most tedious, the most useless, the most unimaginative, the most unproductive election ever.

And it makes me think of that great Australian song I still call Australia Home, And I guess how out of date it might be, sing a songwriter who both wrote and performed it, Peter Allen, would be churning in his grave. Now, before we get to Nick Cater himself, let me quote you something that he wrote recently April seven.

It's called beyond parody. In November of nineteen ninety seven, Christopher Pearson speculated in a column in the Australian Financial Review on how long the global warming panic would be last. Two decades earlier, global cooling and the coming ice age had caused similar anxiety, yet had been largely forgotten. Perhaps, having safely negotiated the millennium, which is a major cause of all this anxiety, we may collectively surrender to about

of unqualified optimism. He wrote that he wrote more I doubt it because the appetite for catastrophe is now highly developed and mass media delight in pandering to it. Pearson's pessimism was well placed. The climate change narrative proved to be exceptionally robust despite its weak empirical foundations. Only now a quarter of the way through the twenty first century and more than a decade after Pearson's untimely death, is the global warming paradigm collapsing under the weight of its

own complexity. And after the mail room we shall continue with Well, we'll expand on what I've just quoted with a lot more detail. But note both climate science and medical science have much to answer for, as do some specific individuals in different areas of both.

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have remained good contacts ever since. I want to quote you something A bold and provocative book about Australia's national identity and how it is threatened by the rise of a ruling class. Nick cat, senior editor at The Australian, tracks the seismic changes in Australian culture and outlook since Donald Horn wrote The Lucky Country in nineteen sixty four. His belief is that countries don't get lucky.

in the last twelve years. And it's interesting to note, you know, I looked in the book at the big issues at the time that were dividing the country, and you know, there were things obviously like climate change was a big one, the Iraq War, human rights. In the terms of race relations, there was all that stuff going on back then about the Race Relations Commissioner getting ahead of themselves, et cetera, et cetera.

the next they didn't. Their whole country sort of flipped. So they have these kind of crusades and things which come out of the blue and come from nowhere, and they're always moving on to the next one.

now and a kind of counter revolution against that. You know, people feel people who don't go along with this woke nonsense feel empowered now to say so in a way that they didn't before. Because Trump's sort of paved away, and so it's okay, nothing happens if you just if you state that a man and a woman at two different things.

this country. It was this division and that holds good. That's the way people vote. And you've seen in that seeing politics in Australia evolve to try and adjust to those new lines. So you know, we had this rise of the Teal MPs, which you might have read about the last the last election when there were five seats six in all because they'd lost one of the previous election, six coalition seats, six conservative seats that were just suddenly taken over by this new party. It is a party.

They style themselves as community independents, but in every way they got their justice parties. They operate as parties, but they are how would you describe them political terms? I mean, the first thing to notice that they're funded largely by the renewable energy industry, and that's two huge amounts of money. But that's because they're very pro say, doing something for the climate. But they sort of styled themselves as a

slightly nicer version of the Liberal Party. In fact, there's something quite different than more kinder the Green Party if you look at their voting patterns. But that's that's what's happened, you know. It's it's the old blue collar, solid conservative coalition territory in the inner metropolitan areas has just defected from the mainstream parties, and.

up to the north up right up to Pittwater. There's another Teal seat and so on in Melbourne, the same in you know what was men this blue ribbon seat of tour of Kuyon, you know around Turak and that sort of territory that is now Teal country. And so that exactly the electorates they've got. And it's interesting if you look at the demographics, they are starkly different to the rest of the country, largely because of their wealth.

And you can imagine what we've been through recently with rising interest rates. They've been largely untouched. You know, there's no household recession happening in those parts of Australia. They're completely out of touch. The very people I described in my book, you know, the sort of strangers in their own country in a way, but they don't know that there's things that they are Australia. They think the rest of Australia thinks the way that they do, because it doesn't.

It thinks in a very different way. Well let's get to that well shortly.

Their their homeowners, and Men's has made them homeowners, homeowning. Home ownership went up dramatically under his goal, because under his years, because he saw that as a vital part of a stable society and making families prosperous. So yeah, so he's supporting those people. Well, he's the people that we're talking about who now occupy Kuyong and these suburbs. And not exactly those people for the most part, you know,

they are they are the wealthy ones. Mensis described some, you know, the sort of upper class or the wealthy class in his famous Forgotten People's speech as people that's not what the Liberal Party is for, because they are pretty they can look after themselves. They don't need, you know, a government to to speak to come out and speak and do things on their behalf. They can get on with life, just as the trade unions could.

key to understanding Mensis is really the Christian Gospel. Although he didn't he wasn't a God bother in the sense he didn't talk, you know, shake people believing in God or anything like that. But he was deeply Christian and he believed that everybody was equal before God. And the translation of that in politics is everybody deserves equal respect, everybody deserves a fair go. And that's an expression which

we talked about so much. When I first came to Australia in nineteen eighty nine, knew about what a fair go was. You hardly hear that expression. These days. But that's at the basis of how Australians used to treat one another as just a matter of course, that everybody deserved a fair go, and you didn't judge somebody just simply because they were, you know, they had a lowly job or they were down on their life. You said a low to them and you tried to help them out if you could.

then you also get the sort of working poor. You're in working poor territory. I would imagine that up there, because it's where people, you know, have maybe two jobs, the wife works and they've got a few kids. And they were but they're not getting ahead. In fact, they're getting back. They're going backwards at the moment, particularly because of inflation and mortgage rate rises. So yeah, those places

are quite different. And I've visited similar places in Sydney recently during the election campaign and you go, is this for real? Like how could people live one way here and in a completely different way when you get into Sydney. Yeah, it's striking.

the climate change. Even actually, interestingly in the till seats these days, they've moved on to other things, so that is overwhelmingly the big issue, and both parties have been trying to address this in various ways, neither of them in really adequate ways, I must say. I mean, the Labor Party solution to high energy prices is to subsidize them, so you still pay for them. You just pay for them in your taxes, I guess, or your children end up paying for them by paying off your debt. So

it's very poor policy. And with housing prices, well, you know that both parties have really come out with ways to try to ease the pathway for peace to get into housing by the first time ever under if you get a coalition government under Peter Dunton, they will make your interest rate payments on more is tax deductible for certain people.

about sixty five or sixty six. So that's a bad thing. It's a bad thing for people, and it's a bad thing for the country, and it's a very bad thing for the Liberal Party because they are a party of homeowners and they do very well amongst people who own their own homes, are buying their own homes. They do less well from renters. So you know, in every respect that's a that's a key policy and a key part of the house of living, cost of living equation, and

so yeah, it's the cost of living. Even for the Greens Party incidentally, which you used to be the party that campaigned on saving the planet and climate change. Not hardly a word from them about that this time around. Their two big policies are free dental care.

You end up with the debt, the hex STET, which is a problem in itself because that means that you come out of university, and people come out of university later and later these days, have done more and more degrees. They've lost a few working years when they could have been, you know, putting a bit of savings in the bank, and they've got a massive debt.

That's what's happening in successive elections here. So you can't take the national swing and say well that's how it's.

the next election. But that's where we're heading. The Greens will be pulling the strings and frighteningly, the big thing, I think, in a way, the most fearsome thing of all that the Greens are driving and is coming from some sections of the Labor Party, is an anti Israel policy. So you know, decades, ever since Israel's creation in the forties, the Australia has always been a solid ally of Israel. We are no longer because the Labor Party has changed

our policy and the Greens are even worse. You know, they're really off with the Palestinian extreme line from the.

So I'd put the Australian in the same league as the Wall Street Journal as being a paper that really will give you a reasonably fair and balanced coverage but will not sort of skew wildly to the left as most newspapers do, including yours.

at the moment. I should first all acknowledge the death last week of the former editor, Keith Winshuttle, who was a great man and really got that magazine to where it is now, and the current editor, who is my wife, Rebecca Weier. So I'm deeply conflicted and I should say that. But I think that if you wanted to get an idea of the debate where it's going on crucial issues, Quadrants always a good publication subscribed, is that, And that's probably about it.

modern digital world terribly much. The only exception in that stable is the Australian Financial Review, which interestingly is doing better than any of those once great papers that used to be the rivers of gold. The Financial Review is now the strong one because it's providing some you know, a bit more quality information, particularly on business matters. So that's that's about a lot. But it's we're pretty well off. Really, we were certainly compared to New Zealand.

second edition, the leading of Article Australia. And let's not forget that Spectator now devotes a page to New Zealand pretty much every issue, and I'd like to see more of it anyway. This was from the April second edition. Labor, in cahoots with the Greens and the Teals have introduced mandatory climate reporting laws, where even small businesses and suppliers to larger businesses will be increasingly forced to comply with

onerous carbon emissions reporting. The continuation of these laws was reiterated but largely ignored in Treasurer Jim Chalmers budget, despite the devastating impact it'll have on productivity and profit margins across the nation now, Michael Bohm wrote, carrying severe penalties including prison. The new law is aimed at forcing the private sector to meet the government's net zero climate agenda. At the private sectors and ultimately Australian consumers huge cost.

The fact that you see we've got we've got a problem here. We've got the National Party as the main party in government. The Minister for Climate Matters is a dope. He's pushing net zero at a time when well so is your government. But it's one of the left, at a time when the rest of the world, with any intelligence is letting it go.

So yeah, I mean it's a nonsense and it's it's collapsing all around the world now, not in Australia where we've got a Labor Party which is just so driven by it. It's painful. It's painful for all of us in our electricity bills and that the nutty projects that are getting funded and the amount of Australian countryside that's been ripped up, national parks being ripped up to put windmills and pipelines and everything else.

at any other alternative sources of energy. Power stations of collapsing for lack of maintenance because nobody wants to invest in them. It's not a pretty sight. All that's added to inflation. They spent big so spending. Government spending as a proportion of GDP used to be below twenty five percent for really the whole of the century, really, for instance John Howard's day, around twenty four to twenty five percent.

Now it's now twenty seven and a bit. So they've pushed up government spending with age by huge amount, by a lot, and on rubbish stuff like they're not spending it on defense that'd be a good thing to do right now, but no, it's it's going on things like the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which is everybody knows it's heavily rotted, but nobody knows how to fix it. And these education we're spending so much on education now per pupil, so we're just yeading.

way of doing it. But because government's never worked like that, so yeah, we're stuck with this high spending as in New Zealand would be the biggest challenge for an incoming courlish government to get spending back under control, but while at the same time ramp up our defense spending, which for obvious reasons, has to be done.

forth and policies. But he's done a remarkable job in picking up the party after the collapse at the last election three years ago, unifying the party room in Canberra and remarkably because there haven't been any noticeable splits or leaks, and then getting them into a position where, certainly at the start of this year there were many people that were confident that he would actually win this election. I think I was always doubtful about that because of the numbers,

but he's certainly making a go of it. And if Albanez is forced into minority government and the Liberals and win a substantial number of seats, as I believe they will, particularly in labor areas like in former labor strongholds, then he'll have achieved a gal for the party. Even if he doesn't become Prime Minister this time around and set it up for a win next time. So yeah, I

think he's he's been great. I mean, people have been very sometimes a bit critical of him because he doesn't have the sort of he doesn't have the sort of drive or that Tony Abbott did in the sense that he's not sort of bouncing around the place and speaking, and sometimes he does hold back on issues where people would like him to speak out. They wanted to be

more vocal on some of these issues. But one of the problems for him at the moment is that the Albanezy government keeps wanting to call him Donald Trump for Australia, which isn't of course, but that's now become a slur among some people, although there's certainly people here, myself included, who would like to see a little bit more and more of the Trump's style, if not the substance.

we'll think again. That was the position they came up with, and they did that quite deliberately, because when you looked at the way the country was split on this issue, you had about twenty percent who in you're in my camp here saying this is rubbish, let's get out of it. You know, there's the evidence for climate change doesn't justify this.

And then you've got another twenty percent at the other end, which are the sort of the whole world's about to catch fire, and we've got to hide under our beds and what can we do to save the planet. And then in the middle you've got sixty percent, which is just the ordinary people who think, well, yeah, sounds fair enough. We'll go along with it, we'll recycle our rubbish and yes, we should do what we can, but let's not go

bar me. So that's where the Liberal Party is, and by doing so, it captures that ground, and I think from polling that I've seen, I think it's still that way. I think if you came out and said, oh, we think climate change is crap and we're going to abandon net zero, that would be politically difficult to do right now, certainly in some seats in the city seats. So I think he's playing it safe really, But.

think what we're buying into it in practical ways. I think in his so he's going to stop all these new transmission lines which are costing us a fortune and ripping up, you know, areas of farmland and indeed natural areas of natural beauty, you know, unspoilt native forest.

what is long term? Oh, probably realistically, I guess you'd have to say twenty years from now by the time we get the first one online, by the time we get the regulationary things done. Yeah, it's a bit of a myth that the nuclear takes a long time to build, you know, it's actually, I think the average worldwide is seven and a half years from start to finish. But before that you've got all the regulatory and nonsense to get through. So that's what takes time, and that takes time.

Whatever you're doing, it takes time with solar or pumped tydro So it is a myth in my view to say that it takes too long.

But the other countries are doing it very successfully, but we seem to have an aversion to it in this part of the world.

When I say the letter to Donald Trump, I think it was published in the papers as such, I don't think I don't think it was sent to him on a personal basis. But it was an argument that was laid out about how Trump should treat Australia a little differently because you've got a good supply of these two very important minerals, and there is America has a shortage of them. So, in other words, be kind to your next provider.

their modern economy silicon for instance. So if you want to if you want to build some good, solid trading partnerships that don't enrich China, then yeah, sure we should be doing more with the US. You mentioned you mentioned gold. Incidentally, that's a real boom trade at the moment between Australia and the US because Americans are investing in gold because the economics are so uncertain. But you know, there's much more we should be able to do. Uranium is the

big one. Why aren't Well, you know, we have I think sixteen percent of the world's uranium known uranium reserves, and we only mine about eight percent. We're only contributing about eight percent of the world's uranium market. We should be opening uranium minds in the Albanezer government blocked one, but we should be doing that. I mean, that's the US will need uranium. We're all going to need uranium

as we expand energy generation. Eventually every day I think will have to come round to that, and so we're key to it. We've got that stuff. We could be the Saudi Ira Arabia Iranian, but not really because you can get it in Canada and Kazakhstan and other places. But we've got you know, we could be very helpful trading relationships with the US, secure ones that don't involve the Middle East or China.

hosting the Olympics in Brisbane. And this is leading, of course, as it does around the world, to massive investments in infrastructure, roads, railways, stadiums. So if you're in construction or engineering or any anything related to that, then it's a great town to move to.

stations going for longer. They've already scrapped one of these pumped hydro projects. They should scrap the other, but maybe they'll get round of that.

is doing relatively well. And then you get to Victoria and it's really going downhill, like big time in every respect. It's got the highest debt of any state. It's on on lots of measures. It's losing industry, it's losing employment. The only thing it's not losing is education. Employment. There that a lot of overseas students. The universities are basically

the big earners in Melbourne these days. So it's a very sad and sorry state in many ways, and that's why you know, it's been that way under a labor government out of Dan Andrews of course are sort of the covid ogre. So it's going back to be it's swinging back definitely in the Coalition's direction. In the federal election. That will mean that they will gain possibly as many as five seats there, which is a lot and will

help done a lot. But they're winning seats interestingly in those outer metropolitan places, places like Preston and beyond where people are just sick of it and they've been doing it tough for the last three years, these seats that they've never held, like Carwell is even in play, that's round Melbourne Airport and beyond. So yeah, so yeah, there's big, big change there. There'll be sweets seats go to the Coalition in New South Wales to a similar kind of areas.

But Victoria is going to be the big mover, so that that gets some some gets done in some way towards it. Tasmania, well it's Tasmay who is Tasmania, But it's it's doing okay and reasonably okay as a state. So that's lot of a head place to be either.

And South Australia is always South Australia. It's always about to chance on the next big thing and never actually does you know it's it's it's becoming more and more kind of government town in you know, the government expenditure on public servants and other publicly funded jobs is big. Is the big earner there, and yeah, there's nothing much else in side.

number of times. He doesn't say so too much because that puts him at odds with the federal Labor government and they don't like that. But he would jump on board with nuclear right away, with one of the biggest uranium right mines is in South Australia, so yeah, there's there's great potentially in South Australia. As always, it's always a state of potential. And then WA, which is you know,

the economic engine room of the country. Won't you won't be able to work in WA and but they swung dramatically to Labor at the last election, even though the coalition has much more mining friendly policy is so one of the big issues there at the moment is the Browse Basin, which is its massive offshore gas reserve off the Northwest coast, and that's reaching the end of its life. It needs an extension. It needs legislation to allow it to go for another thirty years and the Labor government

is sitting on that. It has not agreed to give it. It doesn't really want to because there's lots of opposition from greenees for absolutely stupid reasons. Liberals Dunton has committed to do that within thirty days are coming to power, so I think in way Libs will probably pick up a seat or two, but they won't do remarkably well there. So yeah, you can see around the country where we'll pick up some seats and hopefully that's a bit of a guide. Also to the state of the States in a way.

in the Northern Territory. You know, the long history of family violence, murdered, death, horrible things. But she risen from that to become the great champion. I think for for all Australians.

really not capitalist. World is run by the government and government housing and you can't open up anything any kind of business without government permission, and it's really locked into that mindset. But Northern Territory, I believe, watch it go once they open up the Beterloop Basin gas field, which is massive, not just gas but oil. Incidentally, if they want to go there and this, this would transform the

Northern Territory. If we let, if we did the drill baby draw philosophy, that will transform the Northern Territory and die we will be the new Dallas. In my in my in my belief.

not that we don't want them. It's just to we're going, well, this is just nuts. It's bringing in more than a million migrants under the Albanesi government. We're not building you know, three hundred thousand homes. It's probably what we'd need to do to keep up, So they're adding to the housing pressure and that's causing resentment.

you go, oh, great, that'll be a good one. Because the Indians are very into the democratic process and they understand it well and they're largely well, there's you know, a lot of them are small business owners. They certainly want the kids to have an education, and they're conservative. You know, they've got family values. They don't like stuff like same sex marriage and all this stuff. So they

are naturally on our side of politics. And I think this is absolutely true right across even with the Muslim community, which has been for a long time. We thought that was just rusted onto labor. Well they're peeling away from labor now big time. And I was out in the western suburbs with a candidate for the Coalition who is a Muslim. Actually he has about fifteen percent Muslim in his area, and I said to him, well, what's the big issue right now for your Islamic voters and he said,

we'll cost are living. Course, like they're no different, and they're small business owners and they're very doing very well, a lot of them and even set up their own charities, and they're great people. Really, they've just been Our impression of them has been badly skewed by about the ten percent radical minority, so you know who support Hamas and all those extremist things. So but that's really only about

that ten percent. So it's like saying, you don't judge the Islamic community by those nutcases any more than you judge Melbourne by the green MP Adam Banto holds the seat. You know, It's it's just not like that.

their logo. You might remember they had a yellow shield and yellow and green shield and they changed it to this sort of flower and the words BP. They let us BEP shrunk in this logo and went down to lowercase.

bit of their business was dying. And they wouldn't waste money on maintaining it. So oil and gas, so they were going big time into renewables. Well, it was absolute disaster. It was twenty five years of hemorrhaging profits. They should call instead of beyond petroleum, they should have been called beyond profit at that point. But they've turned around. They've now seen the light and they've they've said we're not going to do that anymore, dropping our twenty thirty clean

energy goals and we're getting back to drilling. We're going back to our basic business. And I think that's great. It shows the way a lot of these corporates are going. They're waking up to this nonsense now and just getting on with things. But I just it took twenty five years for them to realize that. Twenty five years with the share price tanking and everybody's saying how badly they're performing, But it took them all that time before they realized

that they had to change course. And I think that as Peace are writing quadrant on this, it shows the strength of this climate change narrative, this sort of almost religious narrative that nobody dares resist, even though in practice it turns out bad but it does show that things change eventually, and I think this is what's happening in

slowly in Australia, certainly in the US and Europe. People are realizing that this green dream isn't working and we're just going to get a bit more grounded in the way we deal with the energy policy and the environment.

this country who I consider to be the best. I'm not going to break them up, but there is a collection of them at the top, not many, but a few and one of them is Anthony Willie, retired judge, and Anthony Willy has penned the piece that it comes from ENZCPR dot com, NZCPR dot com Muriel Newman's website. It's entitled there are none so blind as those who will not see, and it covers a number of areas that are concerning much, if not most, of the country

at the moment. And it is probably the best article I've seen for well some considerable time on this particular area especially. Let me just give you an idea. Here are some subheadings separatist, marianfiltration, public land ownership, coastal marine, title partnership, language, education, the rule of law, democracy, These are all subheadings and political courage. And somewhere in there there is another one that and here it is science.

It's the shortest one of all the others run different lengths. This one Science runs three lines, and properly, that's all that's needed. The legacy of hundreds of years of fact based science is being devalued by attempts to introduce Maori spiritual values and experiences. Scientists are being deplatformed for speaking out. That's it, doesn't it whet your appetite. Now after the mail room, I'm going to extend the discussion on that area of science, not from Anthony Willie, but from elsewhere.

But this article is one that you really must go and find and read NZCPR dot com. Anthony Willie, there are none so blind as those who will not see. I leave it with you, Layton Smith, now business producer. We are here for podcast number two hundred and eighty. We'll get the three hundred mIRC before much longer. Obviously, are you good today?

direct and uncluttered. Oh well, I don't know quite where he's going with this a reflection on the judicial takeover attempts both here in France and the USA. When I was young, opposition groups merely assassinated their undesirables, such as Kennedy.

wisdom to know the difference. Now, I got to go back and say, as far as Matt was concerned, it was a day that I don't think I mentioned this, but there was chaos and we didn't resolve the chaos until two minutes before recording time, like it was two minutes to nine, and at three minutes past nine, this is before I'd actually got to him. Missus producer had a text, are we still on today?

of thought, parental rights, and transparency in public institutions. In many state funded kindergartens, including my son's Maori, panthetic beliefs such as artur that means gods and karaka addressed to them are being taught not as cultural stories, but as spiritual fact. This is embedded into daily routines, often via in viro schools and other EC programming, without parental consent

or even disclosure. This to me, raises important questions. Why is spiritual content being introduced at all secular taxpayer funded ECE. Why are parent's not informed and no opt out of it? Why is only one belief system being normalized while others are excluded? Is this yet another example of creeping ideology

and public institutions, this time reaching our youngest children. I now have a folder of official correspondence and documentation ready to share your Duey or team be interested in pursuing this further for your podcast.

the truth. I was musing over the necessity of your splendidly DEI supporting them, Minister Chris or will it soon be Clarissa Luxen or possibly Fluxen asking coming in for a bit of that these days, asking their Minister for Sport that the next Rugby All team of Colors include at least seven women with a similar proportion on the bench, and guaranteeing it consists of differently abled people with a

proportionate mix of ethnicities reflective of ayetroas diversity. Notwithstanding tityrity rights enabling the chiefs to have a never relinquished sovereign right to also pick the squad. Of course, they should encourage their next opponents to follow suit, and President Macron

may well oblige. But should they disappointingly utter a gallic non then even if diversity fails to deliver the greater number of points on the score, the all team of Colors will have demonstrated to the world that they win the Equality Cup, if not the Bledislow, and show that Ayatiroa leads the planet in replacing privileged merit with equity. Yours in diversity thirteams leyden.

he promised at the election. And then Jine goes on to talk about our own outfit here and he says, if national is going to be in James Allen's words, Gutler's about protecting our nation from unelected bodies like the United Nations, the leftist mainstream media and the co governance cabal. Then we will end up with the diabolical three headed

demon that is Labor, Greens and the Mari Party. And he says, Leighton, We're off to Australia for the next ten days, but I'll still tune in because you're too addictive.

the ambulance officers who attended his accident, Shane. That moved me, it really did, because that was I figured that was around the thirty year ago Mark. I haven't tracked it back, but if mister Smith in Southland is listening, then maybe he can.

higher speed limits is illegal on what planet. Time to shut down unelected activist judges once, and.

science and see where things are at. This is the sort of thing that you won't find anywhere in the mainstream media. Why because they're still blind, Going back to Anthony Willie's title, as unso blind as those who will not see. I think some of them do see and they still deny it, which is a great failing, a great character failing in journalism and editorial staff, et cetera. Anyway, the silencing of scientific curiosity. Mary and Demasi is a

scientific writer. She worked for the ABC in Australia for quite some time, and then she fronted television for a while a scientific program, and then she decided that she couldn't there anymore and she got out and went independent. Now, when she published her first article, I was enraptured by it from memory, and I made contact with her and she declined to come on the podcast, and I understood why she'd only just broken free.

medical journals firsthand. Once forums for open debates and intellectual rigor, they've morphed into gatekeepers more concerned with preserving a narrow orthodoxy than pursuing truth. US work has exposed how journals suppress uncomfortable questions, avoid studies that challenge dominant narratives, and operate under a peer review system distorted by bias and

external influence. But never have I seen a more absurd example of this decay than the retraction of a hypothesis paper, Yes, a hypothesis authored by doctor Sabine Hazan in Frontiers in Microbiology. Her twenty twenty two article hypothesized that ivermectin might mitigate COVID nineteen severity by promoting the growth of Bifidobacterium, reducing inflammation via the gut lung axis. She cited preliminary observations in twenty four hypoxic patients who recovered without hospitalization after

combination therapy including ivermectin. She made no claims of definitive proof. Instead, she proposed a mexia mechanism worth investigating. That's the point of scientific hypothesis. But in May of twenty twenty three, more than a year after the article was peer reviewed and published, the journal retracted the paper following a series of complaints on pub peer that's what it's called pub peer,

offering only a vague explanation about scientific soundness. Seeking clarity, I contacted both the journal's editorial office and the editor who handled the paper, Professor Mohammad Alikhani at Hamerden University. Specifically, I sought an explanation for retracting a hypothesis, but I did not receive a response. This silence is damning. Retraction is a serious step, historically reserved for cases of fraud or clear ethical misconduct, but here no such claim was made,

nor could one be substantiated. The journal simply erased the paper, offering no transparent justification, no engagement with the scientific process, and no accountability in fact, it violated the very guidelines that journals are supposed to follow. The Committee on Publication Ethics advised that publications should only be retracted if they contain seriously flawed or fabricated data or plagiarism that cannot be addressed through a correction. Hassan's paper was transparent about

its speculative nature. In a January twenty twenty three tweet, Hasan challenged her critics, it's a hypothesis. Prove me wrong her capitals. She wrote, After all, that's the essence of science. But the journal's decision to retract sends a message that even theoretical propositions are now intolerable. Now there, I will cease. It goes on for a little bit longer. Well, actually it's not long. It's not too long, so let me carry on. Wasn't my intention, but I will. Having tasted blood,

Hassan's critics kept digging. In January twenty twenty five, Future Microbiology retracted another of her studies, this one examining ivermectin based multi drug therapy. Hazzan her co author Australian immunologist doctor Robert Clancy. This man is top of the class. At the University of Newcastle and others strongly disputed the decision after the journal failed to conduct a meaningful investigation into the alleged data integrity issues. The irony is palpable.

While pundits argued over Ivermectin's efficacy during the pandemic, Haszan was one of the few actually doing the hard work to test its effects, collecting data, proposing mechanisms, engaging with the science, and yet she's the one being silenced, which begs the question why is there professional jealousy in the microbiome space. Are pharmaceutical companies threatened by low cost alternatives

like ivermecton pressuring journals to kill competing narratives. If so, the Securities in Exchange Commission the SEC should investigate suppressing research that could affect investor decisions by inflating the perceived value of anti virals or vaccines could amount to securities fraud. While there's no definitive evidence, the pattern is hard to ignore. Two retractions, no clear misconduct, and a growing campaign to discredit a scientist whose work challenges are profitable status quo.

So if you want to find it for yourself. Mary Anne Demasi, mari Anne mary Ane Demasi is d Emasi.

disturbing breaches of scientific ethics that we've encountered. There are two authors that we've encountered in our academic careers, buried in the peer review process of one of the world's leading vaccination journals in the midst of a global health crisis. Our story begins, as many many things do in science, with a question. A provocative study published in Vaccine, a highly influential medical journal, asked our intelligent people more likely

to get vaccinated. The study, conducted by Zerr and colleagues twenty twenty three, examined soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces during the COVID nineteen pandemic and concluded that quote higher intelligence was the strongest predictor for vaccine adherents. We read the study with growing unease. The conceptual leap was striking the methodological The methodological choices questionable and the ethical implications deeply troubling, especially given the context. These were not civilians

making autonomous medical decisions in ordinary times. These were young conscripts operating within the rigid military hierarchy, subjected to intense social and institutional pressure to vaccinate during a historical moment when a strict COVID nineteen vaccine passport policy was in force. We drafted a brief letter to the editor just five

hundred words, in accordance with the journal submissions guidelines. In this letter, we raised both scientific concerns at ethical red flags, questioning whether what the authors labeled adherents could truly be considered voluntary under the circumstances. We also argued that if the authors genuinely sought to measure medical adherents rather than institutional compliance, they should have focused on the fourth dose

of the vaccine. To the two authors, Yakov Affir O Phi R and Yaffer schir Ras Yaffa s h I R. Dash A Z from Brownstone dot org. Very easy to find and I'd get onto it straight away if you're interested, because it'll be still on the homepage. Now the other area of climate science. Two articles again. Again I'm going to reduce them to the essential first one is very easy. New study finds human CO two impact too weak to

play dominant role. In a new study, geology professor doctor of my guess here Wogiku Stankowski sta Nkowski has summarized some of the reasons why the prevailing narrative that humans can drive climate change by burning more or less fossil

fuels cannot be supported by the evidence. Past natural climate changes, such as Greenland's temperature increases of up to ten degrees centigrade within just fifty years fourteen thousand, seven hundred and eleven thousand, seven hundred years ago, confirm that the modern climate change rate just zero point zero five degree celsius per decade since eighteen sixty falls well into the range

of natural variability. Further, a CO two concentration change from zero point zero three percent to zero point zero four percent is not signal dificant enough to impact temperature change in the global ocean, which covers seventy one percent of the Earth's surface. If carbon dioxide were the main driver of temperature fluctuations, its concentration variations would have to be enormous. Currently, CO two levels around the world four hundred parts per million.

If this entire difference is attributed to human activity, anthropogenic pressure accounts for no more than fifteen to eighteen percent. Natural factors such as tectonics, changes in galactic phenomena, and the Sun's magnetic fluctuations continue to modulate climate changes. Remember how anybody who mentioned the Sun had anything to do with so called climate change or global warming got pilloried from the get go, torn to shreds. Human activity can

only play a non dominant modifying role at most. The overall trends in climate change rhythms will continue to be determined by the complex nature of galactic phenomena, the energy magnetic fluctuations of the Sun, and their interactions with Earth's magnetic field. That article can be found at climate Change Dispatch now. The last article is ten environmentalists Myths by Edward Ring from am greatness dot com. The first Earth Day was organized in nineteen seventy in response to a

growing public concern for the environment. Many of these concerns were entirely justified. In nineteen sixty nine, for example, a slick oil along the industrialized stretch of a river in Ohio caught fire, generating national awareness of the need to reduce water pollution. Similarly, in coastal cities in California, most notably Los Angeles, the exhaust from unleaded gasoline created air pollution so dense you couldn't see the hills of a few miles away. That would be like some of the

cities in China even today. So there are ten issues where environmentalism has been misused with consequences that have either been of no benefit whatsoever to the environment or have even caused harm at our list them for you. We are in a climate crisis, and then the author explains why that's not true. Second, there are too many people, and the author explains why that's not true. Number three,

we're running out of fossil fuel. The author says, while this is technically correct, the situation is nowhere close to what was famously predicted in nineteen fifty six and by American geologist m. Hubbardt, who claimed oil production in the use would peak by nineteen seventy. Number four, biofuel is renewable and sustainable. Nothing could be further from the truth. Number five offshore wind energy is renewable and sustainable, absolutely not.

Number six, renewables are renewable, No, they're not. Number seven renewables can replace fossil fuels, not any time soon. Number eight new housing must be confined to the footprint of existing cities. He then concentrates on California. Really, this is not true for California nor for the United States. Also talks about India and other places. Number nine, mass transit is necessary to achieve sustainability. It's hard to imagine a

claim more at odds with reality. And finally, number ten, wilderness areas are sacred dis mantra has caused more harm than good to the wilderness and as a lengthy piece on why that is the case. The ten myths identified above are some of the fundamental premises of invironmentalism, and they are flawed. They are exploited by special interests for profit and control. Our challenge is to restore environmentalism to its honorable routes. We have to recognize and reject these

flawed premises wherever they are applied. And that article, of course is I think I said that at the beginning of it is from climate change dispatch dot com, and that will take us out for podcasts. Number two hundred and eighty go look up those articles if you're interested, and I'm sure plenty of you are, and you'll find

a much more fulsome explanation than I've led you into. Now, those four articles are only representative of what's available and what's happening that we are kept in the dark about by both politicians and most of the media, and it is getting extremely frustrating and we should not be taught it.

So what have we got. We've got kids in school who are still being misled I'd say lied to, but that might be encompassing too many of the teaching staff, but some certainly are but misled into believing things that simply are not true, and not being taught to think

for themselves or even given the opportunity. So we're also dealing with politicians who don't know what they're talking about, and like previous governments, they repeat the they repeat the talking points that are handed down to them, which is why they won't debate them. And that's been the case for well over a decade, but even longer. So that will take us out for podcasts two hundred and eighty. I've got high hopes for to eighty one will be

interesting to see. So if you would like to correspond with us later at News Talks and be dot co dot zi or Caraln at NEWSTALKSB dot co dot nz. We shall return with two hundred and eighty one in a few days. Until then, thank you for listening and we'll talk soon.