In this episode: a boost in military spending, but what does it mean for funding of other important areas; The Dominion case in the United States is the beginning of the end of News Corporation; And the continuing federal “No-alition”: is it a recipe for success or a disaster in the making? ANZAC Day was held this week and what better way to commemorate this than the federal government announcing an extra $19 billion as part of the review of the Australian Defence Force. The military industry is...
Apr 28, 2023•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: rebooting the National Disability Insurance Scheme; the build-up to the federal Budget; and the latest opinion polls – good news for the Prime Minister; bad news for the Opposition leader. There’s been a build-up to the Budget which will be announced on 9 May, it’s at the final stages of development and still working out what will be palatable at this point of the political cycle, and what’s in the interests of the Australian community and the economy. There’s a wide range of bu...
Apr 21, 2023•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, another resignation in the Liberal Party, and are there more to follow? And the cost blowout in the Inland Rail Project is yet another example of why Barnaby Joyce should leave politics. After a short and sustained period of criticism about his role in the Liberal Party's leadership ‘no’ vote for the Voice to Parliament. Julian Leeser has resigned from Shadow Cabinet and has now said that he will campaign for the ‘yes’ case. This will place more pressure on the leadership of Pet...
Apr 14, 2023•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: the result of the Aston byelection – was it a big Labor victory or a bad loss for the Liberal Party?… and celebrating the life of Yunupingu: he was a great man of Australian political life. The work on the Voice to Parliament will continue, despite the best efforts of the small men of the Liberal and National parties to derail it. The Aston byelection resulted in either a big win for the Labor Party or a big loss for the Liberal Party, depending on which perspective people wish ...
Apr 07, 2023•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: a wrap up of the New South Wales election from last weekend, with the NSW Coalition ending their 12 years in office and the start of a NSW Labor government; the case against whistleblower Richard Boyle continues, but it needs to stop; the federal government social housing policy has stalled in Parliament; a new inquiry into the Freedom of Information system; and predictions for what might happen in the Aston byelection. There was a change of government in New South Wales last we...
Mar 31, 2023•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode: the week in federal politics; the AUKUS deal; the Voice to Parliament; and the safeguard mechanism for emissions control. The anti-trans agitators and Nazis getting an unwelcome reception all across Australia. And a final look at the New South Wales State election. Federal Parliament returned this week: There were the remnants of the AUKUS debate from last week, where after the complete support provider to the deal by the media, there have been more voices calling for more scrut...
Mar 24, 2023•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode, we look at the AUKUS deal and what it means for Australia. It looks like it’s a bad deal, so why did Albanese agree to it? It’s complicated. Paul Keating also attacked this AUKUS deal – and we things he’s right – but instead of looking at the merit of what he had to say, the mainstream media decided that Keating was impolite to journalists. So, he can’t be taken seriously. Wow, these journalists are so upper-class, they don’t know what’s good for them: let them eat cake and we s...
Mar 17, 2023•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode… we look at the week in federal politics: the Liberal Party is in contortions over a tatty flag on top of Australian Parliament House (the important things) and wants to repeal the government’s popular superannuation tax – in the unlikely event it returns to government in the near future. Malcolm Turnbull appears at the Robodebt Royal Commission – with the same level of collective amnesia which afflicted many other witnesses – and there are also calls for Katherine Campbell to be...
Mar 11, 2023•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Superannuation is a boring topic of conversation at the best of times, but the government can see that it can save a substantial sum of money by closing off a loophole and has introduced a higher level of tax on superannuation accounts holding over $3 million. And the opposition can see an opportunity to claim that the Prime Minister has broken an election promise. The Liberal Party does have this great skill in being able to magnify the small issues into large scale calamities. There have been ...
Mar 03, 2023•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Australian Federal Police is in the news again, and this time it’s through a newspaper interview with the former Defence Minister, Senator Linda Reynolds – and this relates to the allegations of a rape that occurred in Parliament House in 2019, just a few weeks before the federal election was announced. And, somehow, the personal diaries of Brittany Higgins were leaked to News Corporation and formed a large part of the story about Linda Reynolds – the diaries were provided to the federal pol...
Feb 24, 2023•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast There was another session of Parliament this week and we found out that the federal government has spent $7.6 million to prosecute whistleblowers – while most of that was expended by the previous Coalition government and although the Labor government did drop the cases against Bernard Collaery and Witness K – the cases against David McBride and Richard Boyle are still continuing and they need to stop. The highlight of the week was the commemoration of the 15th anniversary of the National apology...
Feb 17, 2023•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Parliament has returned for the year, with the government keen to implement its agenda, the Opposition trying to make itself relevant, and everyone else trying to influence all the political outcomes. There’s been a great deal of focus on The Voice To Parliament in the lead up to the first week of parliamentary sittings, but there’s other issues in the spotlight – the Robodebt royal commission, the economy, reform of Medicare, an interest rate rise, the cost of living issues that keep coming up,...
Feb 10, 2023•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s hard to believe how bad and illegal Robodebt was, but when you have the most incompetent government ever, anything’s possible. There was a massive amount of explosive evidence to come out from the Robodebt Royal Commission this week, with ministers, political staffers and public servants all coming in to show how inept, corrupt and deceptive the scheme was – an illegal system that was created and instigated by the previous Coalition government, in the hope that nobody would ever find out. M...
Feb 03, 2023•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Australian media usually stays away from New Zealand politics but News Corporation had a field day when Jacinda Ardern announced her resignation, suggesting all of her instincts were bad, she shut down the engines of economic growth and she was a dreadful Prime Minister who failed. These comments and negative articles were made by male journalists at News Corporation and continues their long tradition of sexism and misogyny. They attacked New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark when she left ...
Jan 27, 2023•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dominic Perrottet claims that he was naïve and didn’t really understand the consequences of his actions of wearing a Nazi costume to his 21st birthday party but, to put this in context, Perrottet is 40 years old, which means his 21st was held in 2003 – and at that time, he was a member of the Young Liberals, he was in his third year of university, and any reasonable person with half a brain would realise that wearing a Nazi costume to their 21st birthday party is probably not the wisest thing to...
Jan 20, 2023•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s still quite early in the year but already, there’s a big focus on The Voice To Parliament – the Prime Minister has started mapping the timeline for when the referendum might take place – and it could be as early as August this year – the Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney has outlined what the Voice to Parliament will look like and how it will work, but that doesn’t seem to be enough for the Coalition – who make all the noises about being supportive of Reconciliation, as long as they ...
Jan 13, 2023•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast For most of this year, it looked like Scott Morrison and the Liberal–National coaltion was going to lose the election, but because the opinion polls got it so wrong in 2019, very few people were prepared to predict the election result in 2022. But it was obvious that Morrison was going to use the same tactics from 2019 to try and win this election – photo and media opportunities, and it was almost like Season Two of At Home With The Morrisons. Scott Morrison was seen as a formidable campaigner, ...
Dec 23, 2022•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast It was a big year in politics and the biggest event was the federal election in May. It wasn't clear who was going to win the election, even though opinion polls were suggesting Labor was going to win. In that first hour after the polls closed on election night, it seemed the Coalition was on track to achieve their second consecutive surprise election victory – didn't quite work out that way though. Labor achieved a narrow victory, there were many seats won by independent candidates, and the Coa...
Dec 16, 2022•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Labor review of the 2022 election has been released, and it’s a much better read than the reviews from the previous three elections which were all lost by the Labor Party. Of course, Labor did win the 2022 election, and while they’ve highlighted all those things that went right for them, they also outlined all the areas they need to improve on if they want to win the next election and the one after that. The report is titled “Election 2022: An opportunity to establish a long-term Labor gover...
Dec 09, 2022•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Victoria election was held last weekend and, contrary to what everyone in the media wanted and predicted, it was another crushing defeat for the Liberal Party. It wasn't even close. For the past three months, many in the mainstream media predicted Daniel Andrews had to lose the election; it was going to be very close; there was a surge for the Liberal Party; Andrews was possibly going to even lose his own seat. While there was a 3 per cent swing against the Victoria government – seat wise, i...
Dec 02, 2022•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Industrial relations are once again in the spotlight, with the mining industry and Qantas joining the Coalition in their attacks on the Labor government’s proposed legislation. And the big sticking points for these large companies is that issue of workers from different companies to collectively negotiate pay rises – but it seems that business just wants everything on its own terms. It’s the weekend of the Victoria election – and we think that it’s one of the most important state elections for s...
Nov 25, 2022•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast There’s been a major breakthrough in the diplomatic relationship between Australia and China, with the Australian Prime Minister and Chinese president holding a meeting at the G20 summit in Indonesia. And this is a process initiated by both Anthony Albanese and Xi Jinping – it follows years of hostility from the previous Coalition government directed towards China, and a great deal of commentary verging on racism from the mainstream media. The low point in the relationship was when the former Pr...
Nov 18, 2022•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast There’s a lot of issues that are starting to build up in federal politics and with just a few more weeks of sitting days before the end of the year, the Labor government is trying to fit in as much as possible before they all go home for Christmas. And major issue that they’re trying to push through as quickly as possible is their industrial relations bill, and the main agenda here is increase wages, especially for low-income workers, improve working conditions and create a better balance betwee...
Nov 11, 2022•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Budget is all over, and just like many of the previous Budgets, it’s almost disappeared from the news cycle, although there’s still some remnants that are being discussed, and the two big issue s are inflation and tax cuts – the Reserve Bank did raise interest rates during the week, and that’s the seventh consecutive interest rate rise – and the Reserve Bank Governor Phillip Lowe said that the rates will keep rising, although we have to remember he also said interest rates wouldn’t rise unti...
Nov 04, 2022•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast The second Budget for 2022 has been released, and it’s Labor’s first budget in nine years – it’s a Budget that’s been prepared in very difficult circumstances – there’s a national government debt of almost a trillion dollars – inflation is now running at 7.3% – and there’s a whole lot of demands about what the government should be doing with taxpayer funds over the next few years. But economics isn’t just about debt and inflation, there’s a wide range of issues to take into account – there’s rev...
Oct 28, 2022•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast The floods in eastern Australia have been the focus of political attention over the past week, with major flooding events in Victoria, southern New South Wales and the northern parts of Tasmania – there are parts of Australia that going through their third once-in-a-hundred year flooding event over the past two years, and some areas are getting their second major flooding event, just after the previous one is receding. In total, that’s eight major floods over the past two years, and as predicted...
Oct 21, 2022•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast There have been calls for a parliamentary inquiry into media diversity in Australia, and generally, the behaviour of the mainstream media – and these calls have been made for about 20 years or so. The independent member for Goldstein, Zoe Daniel – and she used to work as a journalist before entering parliament – she currently has a motion in parliament, and that was introduced in early September, with secondary debates in the final week of the last parliamentary session about whether an inquiry ...
Oct 14, 2022•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Conservative Political Action Conference rolled into Sydney last week, and it’s an extreme libertarian group who are maniacally angry, loud, abrasive, in-your-face, and filled with endless complaints about everything in their sights. A culture of complaint but without any solutions and without any responsibilities. They’re anti-socialist, anti-woke, anti-republic, anti-cancel culture. What are they actually for? Is there anything positive in their agenda? No. It’s destructive, not constructi...
Oct 07, 2022•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast The anti-corruption commission is one step closer to reality – the Labor government tabled its Bill in Parliament this week, despite all the claims from conservative media that the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, was stonewalling the commission and using excuses, such as the death of the British monarch, to withhold the legislation and stymie the commission. It can never be underestimated how far the mainstream media will go to de-legitimise this Labor government, with the Australian Financial...
Sep 30, 2022•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast After a fortnight where most of Anglosphere was preoccupied with the death of a British monarch, life is getting back to normal and to the real things that matter: there’s a Budget coming up soon, and there’s been a hint from the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, of “substantial temporary taxes” to repair the national figures and start managing the trillion dollar government left behind by the Coalition. Already, the media and the Opposition are pushing the idea that Labor is the party of big taxes and s...
Sep 23, 2022•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
