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Episode 408 - Albanese is Morrison Without the Smirk
In this episode we discuss:
- What is the point of Labor Governments?
- Robodebt – 57 recommendations
- Move to double Qld first-homeowner grant to $30,000
- Boomers are spending
- Have Babies
- Indefinite detention
- David McBride
- Optus CEO Quits
- Tuvalu
- Gender Pay Gap
- Uk Rwanda
- Argentina
- Gaza
- Jordan Peterson
- Elon Musk on Gaza
- China Update
- Xi In San Francisco
- America can’t stop China’s rise
- Ukraine
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We have a website. www.ironfistvelvetglove.com.au
You can email us. The address is trevor@ironfistvelvetglove.com.au
Transcript
Suburban Eastern Australia, an environment that has, over time,
Speaker:evolved some extraordinarily unique groups of homosapiens.
Speaker:But today, we observe a small tribe akin to a group of meerkats that
Speaker:gather together atop a small mound to watch, question, and discuss the
Speaker:current events of their city, their country, and their world at large.
Speaker:Let's listen keenly and observe this group fondly known as the
Speaker:Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.
Speaker:Yes, we're back.
Speaker:Episode 408 of the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.
Speaker:We had a week off because I was sick.
Speaker:More about that in a moment.
Speaker:I'm Trevor, aka the Iron Fist, with me as always, Scott the Velvet Glove, calling in
Speaker:loud and clear from Regional Queensland.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:How are you, Trevor?
Speaker:How are you, Joe?
Speaker:How are your listeners?
Speaker:I hope everyone's well.
Speaker:I am a lot better now, thank you.
Speaker:And tech guy and UK correspondent Joe.
Speaker:How are you, Joe?
Speaker:Good morning, all.
Speaker:Joe's with us.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So yes, we missed out last week because I was sick and got a bout of pneumonia.
Speaker:Briefly, I had a virus prior to Melbourne Cup Tuesday.
Speaker:I lingered around for a week, thought I was getting better, and then after doing
Speaker:the podcast Tuesday night, woke up with a terrible cough and feeling awful, and what
Speaker:had basically happened was that my immune system was weakened by the virus, and...
Speaker:Both Joe and myself, with Crohn's disease, take medication.
Speaker:Joe, you're on mesosalazine as well, or not?
Speaker:No, no, no.
Speaker:I'm on a bunch of other drugs, so...
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I'm on one that suppresses my immune system, because Crohn's is, to some
Speaker:extent, sort of a thing where your immune system goes a bit haywire, so
Speaker:they need to tone it down a little bit.
Speaker:So, after the virus and taking the medication for Crohn's, I had a
Speaker:compromised immune system, which allowed a bacteria to get in, and I
Speaker:ended up with pneumonia and was in a shocking state for five days at home.
Speaker:I really should have gone to the hospital a lot earlier.
Speaker:Anyway went on the Monday morning, raised the white flag, went in and spent
Speaker:three nights at the Wesley Hospital.
Speaker:A lovely private room, using some of my private medical cover.
Speaker:I highly recommend the grilled barramundi on the menu, and I was well looked after.
Speaker:And feeling good now, except if I do anything energetic I run out of gas.
Speaker:But sitting here and podcasting is something I can do, uh, I'm podcast fit.
Speaker:At least, so we'll run through the topics of the last two weeks and do
Speaker:our best to sort of describe what's going on and what's been happening.
Speaker:If you're in the chat room, say hello, let me see, is anybody there at the moment?
Speaker:Four people apparently.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Say hello if you're there.
Speaker:John Simmons is there.
Speaker:So, diastrates.
Speaker:Thanks, John.
Speaker:Yes, I'm on the road back, but it's going to take a few weeks to get fully back.
Speaker:Lost a few, lost a bit of weight too.
Speaker:Lost about three kilos.
Speaker:I didn't really need, I was at my fighting weight and after losing three
Speaker:kilos, I looked a little bit like really an old man on, or a bit of a,
Speaker:sort of a concentration camp victim.
Speaker:So I was looking really skinny.
Speaker:So anyway, I'm, I'm trying to beef up, trying to actually put
Speaker:on weight if you can believe it.
Speaker:So, there we go.
Speaker:Get on the bears.
Speaker:Yeah, that's it.
Speaker:Indeed.
Speaker:So, right, we're going to talk about what's the point of this Labor
Speaker:government robo debt Queensland first home owner grant extended, another bash
Speaker:at boomers, The indefinite detention sort of decision out of the High Court,
Speaker:David McBride, Optus CEO, Tuvalu, the gender pay gap, Argentina, Gaza, the
Speaker:China update, maybe a bit of Ukraine.
Speaker:See how we go in the next hour as we run through the topics.
Speaker:But guys, um, a couple of things happened and we'll talk to you about
Speaker:in more detail, but the, the robo debt.
Speaker:Inquiry was a really good one and the commissioner in charge of that
Speaker:came out with 57 recommendations.
Speaker:Ah, but the government's not mentioning that they're not mentioning number 57.
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:The government's being really sneaky and saying actually there
Speaker:were only 56 recommendations.
Speaker:Yeah, they, they mentioned this morning on 7am when I was listening to it,
Speaker:they reckon it wasn't any, they reckon it wasn't a recommendation, it was...
Speaker:It was a talking point or something like that.
Speaker:That's what the government's saying.
Speaker:But immediately after the report was presented, Bill Shorten
Speaker:said, there's 57 recommendations.
Speaker:The report itself says, there's 57 recommendations.
Speaker:It just happened to be that the 57th was in this sort of final thoughts
Speaker:chapter, but it was undoubtedly a recommendation, which was basically...
Speaker:Looking at the way that information is held secret using cabinet
Speaker:secrecy arrangements, and really information is presented to cabinet.
Speaker:Well, you want some certain, you want some secrecy around cabinet deliberations.
Speaker:It's a fair enough thing.
Speaker:People in cabinet need to be able to talk about potential
Speaker:decisions and argue about them.
Speaker:And maybe you might argue we should not do this thing.
Speaker:And other people are arguing, well, we should do it.
Speaker:And at the end of the day, the cabinet decides they're going to do it.
Speaker:You really have this principle of sort of cabinet solidarity and everyone in the
Speaker:cabinet then gets behind the decision.
Speaker:You really don't want that sort of backroom negotiation and discussion
Speaker:to be hashed out in public.
Speaker:And for ministers to be questioned, to be said, Oh, well, you, you
Speaker:were initially against the idea and now you're saying you're for it.
Speaker:Of course, it's all about Covenant solidarity.
Speaker:So there are legitimate reasons why some things should be kept secret.
Speaker:What we've got is sort of information going to Cabinet, factual information,
Speaker:and that then being declared Secret Cabinet business, where really
Speaker:it's just factual information that should be available to everybody.
Speaker:And it's being misused and abused.
Speaker:Well, there was a comment that they've got a trolley that they wheel through the
Speaker:Cabinet room every week with information that they don't want released, so that
Speaker:it's being considered by Cabinet because they wheeled it through once a week.
Speaker:There you go.
Speaker:That was hyperbole, I don't know.
Speaker:Yeah, but that's the sort of, gives you an idea.
Speaker:That's a good description of kind of what's happening.
Speaker:And so this Labor government has basically said, Oh, well, there were
Speaker:only 56 recommendations that that final one wasn't a real recommendation.
Speaker:And everybody knows it was a recommendation.
Speaker:It's Orwellian doublespeak.
Speaker:It's a fucking joke that they're trying to describe it as not a recommendation.
Speaker:Now, if they had a decent, if they had a decent pair on them and that
Speaker:sort of stuff, they'd actually say to you, look, we accept and we'll
Speaker:implement 56 of the 57 recommendations.
Speaker:Number 57 is problematic because it deals with in cabinet incompetence.
Speaker:We agree that the Tories did misuse this.
Speaker:But, you know, we don't want to open the doors and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Because, you know, it's one of those things.
Speaker:It's, I agree with you, Trevor.
Speaker:It's a double edged sword for them.
Speaker:Because if they say that, if they say they're going to accept number
Speaker:57, then you could end up with...
Speaker:Freedom of information requests every other week, and that could actually
Speaker:end up undoing the whole cabinet of incompetence thing, which I know people
Speaker:that are all about transparency and that sort of stuff wouldn't have a
Speaker:problem with, but I agree with you.
Speaker:You've got to be able to have a forthright debate in cabinet.
Speaker:And I think that you wouldn't have that forthright debate if there was
Speaker:any, if there was any chance of it being leaked outside of Cabinet.
Speaker:I'm sure it would be possible to structure the rules such as, such that things that
Speaker:should be kept secret are kept secret, and things that should be open are open.
Speaker:Yeah, so you're going to have to have bureaucrats and that sort of stuff that
Speaker:actually go through it and that type of thing that they can say, well, we've
Speaker:got this, we've got this FOI request, so you've got a bureaucrat that goes
Speaker:through it and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Then they're going to have to take it to the ministers and say, this
Speaker:is why we're going to hand it over.
Speaker:Yeah, but that happens all the time with freedom of information
Speaker:requests, they're assessed.
Speaker:And evaluated.
Speaker:But an FOI request can't actually undo anything that's in cabinet though, can it?
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:So, look, the way this is handled though, I reckon, is exactly how the Morrison
Speaker:government would have handled it.
Speaker:I agree wholeheartedly.
Speaker:Just a really bullshit explanation and a bluff and, and which is precisely why
Speaker:I just said, if they had a decent pair on them and that sort of stuff, they'd
Speaker:actually take it to the public and say...
Speaker:We are accepting the first 56 recommendations.
Speaker:Number 57 is problematic.
Speaker:It's problematic because of ABC.
Speaker:And then you might have it come back and then you might have journalists
Speaker:saying, well, can't you do X, Y, Z?
Speaker:And they say, good question.
Speaker:We will go away and think about it.
Speaker:And they can come back and say, well, you can't do X, Y, Z because of 1, 2, 3.
Speaker:You know, it's just one of those things.
Speaker:If they had a, like I said, if they had a decent pair and that sort of stuff,
Speaker:they might be prepared to argue it.
Speaker:But they clearly don't want to argue with it, and it's one of the things
Speaker:that's most disappointing about the Albanese government, is they, they
Speaker:always want to look for the simple things in life, and they want to go
Speaker:through and tick off the simple things.
Speaker:And then they can say, well, we've done 70 percent of what
Speaker:we promised we were going to do.
Speaker:The other 30 percent is a little bit too complicated, so we're going to hold off.
Speaker:You know, it's one of those things, I honestly believe I'd have a hell
Speaker:of a lot more respect for them if they said, we're going to handle
Speaker:the, the tough 30 percent right now.
Speaker:We're going to actually talk to you about why we're doing what we're doing.
Speaker:And we're going to have, we're going to have a lot of you disagreeing with
Speaker:us, but we've got to actually do this.
Speaker:And it's this.
Speaker:Just treat us like adults, not like idiots.
Speaker:Like Morrison treated us like idiots.
Speaker:And these guys are doing the same thing.
Speaker:This is precisely how Morrison would have handled it.
Speaker:And it's one of those things like, you know, Paul Bongiorno, who turns
Speaker:up every Friday on 7am talking about it and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:He says, look, the Albanese government's got to pull their finger out.
Speaker:He didn't use that language.
Speaker:But he said, he's got to actually, he's got to actually start taking the
Speaker:electorate into his confidence and that type of thing, actually talking
Speaker:through, he's actually got to actually put something on the table and say,
Speaker:this is what we're going to do.
Speaker:Because, you know, you've actually got to look at the reforms and that
Speaker:sort of stuff under Hawke and Keating.
Speaker:They were not classic Labor reforms.
Speaker:They were Liberal Party policies that the Labor Party pinched, you know, and
Speaker:they got up and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Argued them, and they actually put up persuasive arguments for them, and they
Speaker:told the public why they were doing it.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:And these idiots are just saying to us, Oh, there was
Speaker:really only 56 recommendations.
Speaker:Yeah, I know.
Speaker:And do they honestly believe it?
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:You know, it's, it's one of the things the Fourth Estate should really
Speaker:be ashamed of themselves because they're actually swallowing it.
Speaker:They're actually reporting to the public there's only been 56
Speaker:recommendations, which is nonsense.
Speaker:But they know that some of the public is stupid, will accept that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm going to mention that because my old man will be up there watching Sky News
Speaker:saying oh yeah, we're going to accept 56 notes, 56 of the recommendations.
Speaker:So that really struck me as ScoMo esque, the whole approach to that problem.
Speaker:Oh, exactly.
Speaker:We've had David McBride before the court, basically the
Speaker:whistleblower on on war crimes.
Speaker:And, you know, ScoMo would have run that the same way, just
Speaker:kept going with the court case.
Speaker:Whereas you would have hoped a Labor government would have said,
Speaker:great, a whistleblower exposed what had happened here and...
Speaker:Yeah, public interest.
Speaker:He actually, he pleaded guilty didn't he?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:To three charges, yes.
Speaker:Yeah, because apparently public interest wasn't a defence, it turned out.
Speaker:He tried to argue and they said, well no, that's not true.
Speaker:That's bloody ridiculous.
Speaker:So we've got Robodebt shenanigans, we've got David McBride hauled through the court
Speaker:when really he's an honest whistleblower.
Speaker:We've got something like Tuvalu, a little Pacific Island note.
Speaker:Sorry, Dave.
Speaker:I was going to say the whistleblower thing, they were saying that the people...
Speaker:He has alleged committed war crimes, is still out free walking
Speaker:and he's already pled guilty, if not been sentenced what the hell,
Speaker:where, where's the justice in that?
Speaker:It, it'd have been better off committing the war crime.
Speaker:than revealing the war crime.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:The way it's panning out.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:It's one of those things I find that really ridiculous that you've got a
Speaker:situation that the whistleblower is the one, the only one that's going to face
Speaker:any time behind bars, and the guys that pulled the trigger, they're going to
Speaker:get away with it completely scot free.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, as Kamo esque approach, we'll talk about Tuvalu, a
Speaker:little Pacific island nation.
Speaker:We're going to provide them with aid, but in return, we're bullying them
Speaker:into basically handing over their sovereignty for, for their relationships
Speaker:with other countries, and they have to sort of get the okay from us before,
Speaker:beforehand, which is something that the Conservative government would have done.
Speaker:The Slaver government's been reluctant to criticise Israel.
Speaker:Scammer would have come out and praised Israel, but you know, We've got cuts to
Speaker:infrastructure spending have happened now because government's got a budget problem.
Speaker:They're still running through the Stage 3 tax cuts.
Speaker:We've still got orcas happening.
Speaker:And we've got no pro sort of secular things happening at
Speaker:all with this Labor government.
Speaker:There, we'll talk about the indefinite detention changes with, uh, the High
Speaker:Court came out and said, well, all these people you've got on detention,
Speaker:uh, with no hope of actually getting out, you just can't do it.
Speaker:And we've got a lot of chest beating by Labor politicians saying, Well,
Speaker:if we could throw them back in the clink, we would do it immediately.
Speaker:I want them all behind bars, sort of thing.
Speaker:Rather than just saying, you know what?
Speaker:We release into the community rapists and murderers all the time.
Speaker:Exactly, once they've done their time.
Speaker:Yeah, once they've done their time, absolutely.
Speaker:Now these guys, these guys have, these guys I take it have already been convicted
Speaker:in a foreign jurisdiction, have they?
Speaker:Some foreign, some here, combination, but, you know, many of them have done
Speaker:more than the time that would be required for the crime that they committed.
Speaker:And sure, there's some ugly, nasty characters there.
Speaker:But our prisons have been full of ugly, nasty characters who we eventually let
Speaker:out, because you just, as a civilised society, can't lock people up for the
Speaker:rest of their lives, except in the most extraordinary of circumstances.
Speaker:And so we just got chest beating by the Labor again on that front.
Speaker:It all just strikes me as, what would have happened different if Morrison
Speaker:had won that bloody last election?
Speaker:Would much have changed?
Speaker:I think, well, the only thing that would have changed is they would have
Speaker:walked away from the Stage 3 tax cuts.
Speaker:Morrison wouldn't have.
Speaker:Yeah, I really reckon he would have.
Speaker:No, he wouldn't have.
Speaker:No, I reckon he would have.
Speaker:He could see, he could see that that was going to give away far too much money.
Speaker:Oh, there's a theory, Scott.
Speaker:I know it's a theory, but it's a theory.
Speaker:It's an out there theory, but it's one of those things.
Speaker:I think that they, I think they set this up.
Speaker:to make it very difficult for the Labor Party, it was set up right from
Speaker:word go to make it very difficult for the Labor Party to oppose.
Speaker:So they actually, they actually, they voted it through and that sort
Speaker:of stuff, then they went to the election and rather stupidly said,
Speaker:yeah, we're going to allow that.
Speaker:Which I honestly believe he should have actually said, no, we're not
Speaker:going to, if we win this, if we win this government, we will be tearing
Speaker:back the stage three tax cuts.
Speaker:We will be paring them back.
Speaker:They were too gutless.
Speaker:I know they were far too gutless.
Speaker:They were absolutely shit scared of what happened to Bill Shorten.
Speaker:Yeah, they didn't want to differentiate themselves from the Tories.
Speaker:And now that they're in office, They still don't want to differentiate themselves.
Speaker:Yeah, I know.
Speaker:And oh, God, what's his name now?
Speaker:DuTton is trying to wedge Albanese on the refugee thing even still.
Speaker:Yeah, it's all his fault.
Speaker:Because if you see the Murdoch press, they're all about how Dutton was
Speaker:holding Albanese to account about this.
Speaker:It's like it's a high court judgment.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:On a law that I'm fairly sure LNP implemented.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's just the gutlessness of this Labor group to try and tell a story.
Speaker:And instead they have to do the chest beating that's demanded by the
Speaker:Conservatives and the Murdoch Press.
Speaker:And gutless, is all I can say.
Speaker:No, it's like, like Turnbull.
Speaker:Turnbull was beholden to the figures on the right, and it
Speaker:looks like Albanese is too.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:So, we'll talk about some of those things in more detail as we go through
Speaker:them, but that was just my initial thoughts for this episode, is what is
Speaker:the point of this Labor government?
Speaker:We're just getting ScoMo without the smirk, I think, in many ways.
Speaker:I think it is still preferable to the Tories though.
Speaker:Yeah, but...
Speaker:Realistically, is there that much difference?
Speaker:No, there's not that much difference, but it's still preferable to the Taurids.
Speaker:Yes, it's a, it's, it's a prettier wrapping.
Speaker:It's more palatable, but there's a lot of the same shit underneath is the problem.
Speaker:Absolutely, it's one of those things if you, if you peel it, if you peel away
Speaker:the onion and all that sort of stuff, all you've got is a smaller, shinier onion.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So we talked about Robodebt and those recommendations, and that was just
Speaker:an Orwellian denial by Labor of...
Speaker:Of the facts treating us like idiots.
Speaker:Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:. Did you guys see that in Queensland the state government announced
Speaker:will double the first homeowner grant from 15,000 to 30,000?
Speaker:I liked what Saul Slake said about it.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So saw Westlake is a, is a well-respected economist.
Speaker:And he's had 60, he said we've had 60 years of evidence that giving cash
Speaker:to home buyers to let them pay more for housing than they would otherwise
Speaker:results in more expensive housing, not in more people owning their own home.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:All it's going to do is just look after people like me that are
Speaker:already in the property market.
Speaker:I already own my place up here in Mackay outright.
Speaker:I own my place in I donated it outright.
Speaker:I've got a mortgage on that one in South Ripley.
Speaker:You know, it's, If you could increase the property values by
Speaker:30, 000 on all those properties, that would help me out very nicely.
Speaker:Just a bunch of people who maybe their budget for buying a new home
Speaker:was 600, 000, it's now 615, 000.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:And Saul S.
Speaker:Lake said, It's hard to think of a policy that governments have
Speaker:pursued for so long in the face of such incontrovertible evidence that
Speaker:it doesn't work than the policy of giving cash to first home buyers.
Speaker:The news so I was reading this on the Courier Mail website, and it
Speaker:asked people, Is doubling the first homeowner grant to 30, 000 a good idea?
Speaker:In the Courier Mail, amongst Courier Mail readers, 90 percent
Speaker:said no, not a good idea.
Speaker:Yeah, but hang on, if you ask a Tory readership whether giving
Speaker:free money, giving taxpayer money to poor people is a good idea, of
Speaker:course they're going to say no.
Speaker:True.
Speaker:And the other thing is, that all those readers of the Courier Mail,
Speaker:none of them are first time buyers.
Speaker:Because they're all old boomers.
Speaker:Yeah, so there you go.
Speaker:But they don't realise it's going to push the value of their properties up.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Ah, okay, what else did he say here?
Speaker:Saul Eslake said the argument was just bullshit, essentially.
Speaker:But he did propose a new name for it, didn't he?
Speaker:What was that?
Speaker:It was the, it was the House Builders grant.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Because, because, because the value of the money would go straight to home builders.
Speaker:Yeah, the builders.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, there we go.
Speaker:I'm surprised it will actually stop a few of them going
Speaker:belly up though, wouldn't it?
Speaker:Builders?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Maybe.
Speaker:If they could increase their prices by 20, 000 a build.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I think.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Scott?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:I mean, a lot of them are in trouble because they entered into fixed contracts.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:It's one of those things that a hell of a lot of them, a hell of a lot of
Speaker:them bit off more than they can chew.
Speaker:And what they did was they said to Pepe, yeah, we'll, we'll build your
Speaker:house for X dollars and we're going to, we're going to, we're going to honor
Speaker:that contract price for years to come.
Speaker:I mean, they should have actually said, if it's not built in 12 months,
Speaker:then we've got to relook at the price.
Speaker:Yeah, well, even within 12 months, some of the pricing of, of of wooden frames, for
Speaker:example, went up really quickly, so, just some of them got caught out like that,
Speaker:so, anyway still on boomers, so, I think I mentioned, oh, I can't remember if we
Speaker:mentioned it last week, or last time, but so we had the rise of the interest rates
Speaker:on Melbourne Cup Tuesday, and, anyway.
Speaker:What we had was one of the banks, the Commonwealth Bank, looked at its credit
Speaker:card and debit card transactions from 7 million customers and looked at
Speaker:the spending patterns based on age.
Speaker:So that's interesting.
Speaker:The Commonwealth Bank knows the age of its card holders and can then
Speaker:look at the spending patterns and remember what we were complaining For
Speaker:the umpteenth time, of what a blunt instrument interest rates were, because
Speaker:you stupid consumers out there are spending too much on, on discretionary
Speaker:items, forcing the prices up, thereby increasing inflation without regard to
Speaker:the fact that a lot of the components of inflation were things beyond people's
Speaker:control, like filling up the cars, yeah, and also interest rates themselves.
Speaker:add to the inflation rate.
Speaker:And anyway, um, got here a chart, which you guys may not have seen because it
Speaker:wasn't in the notes, but essentially showing different age groups as it moves
Speaker:from left to right, it increases in age.
Speaker:And It's got discretionary spending and essential spending
Speaker:and total spending and guess what?
Speaker:As people have been getting older, the old boomers, they're the ones
Speaker:spending more money on discretionary and essential spending and it's
Speaker:the young people who have not.
Speaker:So that sort of 18 to 39 year age group are the people who have not been.
Speaker:Spending Money, whereas it's the Boomer Class and the Gen X, who
Speaker:have the no surprise there, but just interesting that those statistics are
Speaker:available from credit card information.
Speaker:So just adds to the intergenerational conflict that we've got
Speaker:going on in this country.
Speaker:Tweenie.
Speaker:Between all those, so, essentially younger people forced to spend more on essentials.
Speaker:It's the older people who are spending money on non essentials.
Speaker:And guess what?
Speaker:Raising interest rates probably helps them because they've got money in the
Speaker:bank, increases their interest rates.
Speaker:It's totally misguided policy.
Speaker:Thanks again, Reserve Bank.
Speaker:I, I have not heard any whispers.
Speaker:Somebody at some stage will talk about the government taking control
Speaker:of interest rates and taking it away from the Reserve Bank.
Speaker:At some point, somebody has to talk about it.
Speaker:Greg Sheridan in The Australian, he's got another problem with young people.
Speaker:You're not having enough kids.
Speaker:Not having enough babies.
Speaker:He says we need babies more than we do migrants.
Speaker:Every individual has a right to make their own decision about having children,
Speaker:but these choices are being increasingly made in the face of coercive, who's
Speaker:doing, what are you doing there, Joe?
Speaker:Unwrapping the chocolate.
Speaker:Every individual has a right to make their own decision about having children,
Speaker:but these choices are being increasingly made in the face of coercive, feminist
Speaker:and green ideology that depicts children as enemies of self fulfillment.
Speaker:What a load of shit.
Speaker:And guess what?
Speaker:Greg Sheridan, speaking shit like that, will be invited on to Q& A next week.
Speaker:He'll be on the drum, he'll be on whatever ABC panel show needs
Speaker:a talking head, despite the crap that comes out of his mouth.
Speaker:Mum, you know...
Speaker:Family values, the modern, it's just breaking up.
Speaker:Women should be barefoot and pregnant back in the kitchen.
Speaker:Come on.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Gonna blame that coercive feminist and green ideology.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Just back to the indefinite detention.
Speaker:Good chocolate there, Joe.
Speaker:So...
Speaker:I Was trying to figure out what is going on with this indefinite detention
Speaker:and, ah, maybe I didn't copy it.
Speaker:It seems to be that because it was mandatory and there wasn't any
Speaker:consideration of, um, circumstances that, um, there was no real administrative
Speaker:decision making being made.
Speaker:And it was almost a judicial power being exercised by executive government.
Speaker:And our High Court has decided that there is a separation of powers, that
Speaker:the judiciary looks after judicial matters, and the government looks after
Speaker:administrative matters, and therefore the way that this had been framed was
Speaker:a breach of the separation of powers.
Speaker:Won't know for sure until the decision...
Speaker:Reasons are published, because this is a really unusual situation with
Speaker:this detention, where the High Court basically heard the arguments, and
Speaker:then said Right, everyone come back in 20 minutes, and here's our decision,
Speaker:and we'll give you the reasons later.
Speaker:And that was a highly unusual approach to it, so...
Speaker:Why'd they do it like that?
Speaker:I think that they saw the urgency of getting people out of detention.
Speaker:They knew what their decision was.
Speaker:And they didn't want people held in detention any longer than
Speaker:necessary while they rode up there.
Speaker:Detailed reasons.
Speaker:But detailed reasons only take a week for them to put down on paper, wouldn't they?
Speaker:Oh, Scott, no.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:No, not at all.
Speaker:These often take months to get right.
Speaker:So they knew what their decision was going to be, and so they
Speaker:announced that and said, we'll give you the full reasons later.
Speaker:But that appears to be kind of the argument.
Speaker:So we've made our mind up, we need to rationalise it afterwards.
Speaker:No, I'm okay with this, where the court says, we're really confident
Speaker:we've got this right, but the actual writing of the decision is
Speaker:complicated and will take time.
Speaker:And, because you've got to cite lots of authorities and whatnot.
Speaker:And so I'm okay with that part of it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So that was that was the indefinite detention.
Speaker:Sort of people.
Speaker:that have been held in detention are a stateless Rohingya, unauthorised maritime
Speaker:arrival, sentenced to five years jail for aggravated sexual assault of a victim
Speaker:under the age of 16, who had been in immigration detention for five years.
Speaker:peOple smuggler, um, a man convicted in 1999 of the murder of
Speaker:his wife, sentenced to 22 years.
Speaker:With a minimum of 18?
Speaker:I mean, murder of his wife sentenced to 22 years back in 1999.
Speaker:Like, we let murderers out into the community.
Speaker:Eventually.
Speaker:That's normal.
Speaker:Convicted sex offender, currently on Child Protection Register.
Speaker:afTer assaulting a 12 year old girl in 2012.
Speaker:Again, ugly, awful stuff.
Speaker:My understanding is these are people who would normally be expelled.
Speaker:But because they're stateless, they can't be.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Because under international law, if they're in your country and they are
Speaker:stateless, you have to accept them.
Speaker:Yes, indeed, yep, um, quite a few people smuggling, rape, false imprisonment
Speaker:trafficking of a controlled drug, meth, um, supplying of prohibitive drugs, fair
Speaker:number of drug runners it looks like in here I thought I saw at one point there
Speaker:was a lot of connections to motorcycle gangs, but I'm not so sure about that,
Speaker:but anyway, that's the sort of people who,
Speaker:who are now being released into the community with leg bracelets and
Speaker:reporting conditions and let's face it, that's what goes on all the time.
Speaker:And I've got no problem with them having to wear ankle bracelets
Speaker:and they've got reporting and everything else that goes with it.
Speaker:It's one of those things.
Speaker:They're the same as Australian citizens, if it's not happening to an
Speaker:Australian citizen who's been guilty of the same crimes, it shouldn't
Speaker:be happening to these people.
Speaker:It seems like there's an additional layer of punishment just because
Speaker:they were born in the wrong place.
Speaker:Yeah, that's a good point, but I think to myself, you know, I'll have
Speaker:to go away and think about that.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:We've already mentioned David McBride, not much more to say about him
Speaker:except he's pretty guilty it seems.
Speaker:How much time is he going to do?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Don't know.
Speaker:Poor bugger.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Optus CEO quit after the Optus network failed.
Speaker:I found this part interesting.
Speaker:She was being questioned in the Senate hearing and she said, She
Speaker:previously carried a spare Vodafone sim in case of an Optus outage, but
Speaker:now also carries a spare Telstra sim.
Speaker:That doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
Speaker:I think you'd be an idiot not to.
Speaker:As the CEO of Optus?
Speaker:It's not I have so little faith, it's when the network goes down, you
Speaker:need to be there to make decisions.
Speaker:And you need a guaranteed, as a business I wouldn't trust
Speaker:any single network provider.
Speaker:If I was running my own business I wouldn't be saying...
Speaker:There's Telstra, they have the best network, or there's Optus, they
Speaker:have the best network, I'm 100%.
Speaker:If I want resiliency, I want to make sure that I have a backup plan that is
Speaker:completely separate from the other ones.
Speaker:So Joe, every CEO in Australia, every major political leader, anybody with
Speaker:an important job should have a spare SIM card on a different network?
Speaker:If you need to be contactable in a crisis, yes.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:If you're the chief of the fire services or something, or something like that.
Speaker:That you should have an alternate method.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And, and more, and more and more as the systems are digitized.
Speaker:What, what scares me is the infrastructure now is switched.
Speaker:Every phone call in Australia is switched, either in Melbourne or in Sydney.
Speaker:And if you have a regional outage that disconnects you from Melbourne and
Speaker:Sydney, even if your infrastructure is still up and running, your calls
Speaker:cannot be switched because they're switched in Melbourne and Sydney.
Speaker:Look, if I was the CEO, I would be saying to my personal secretary, You
Speaker:make sure you've got a spare sim, because it's just a bad look if I do.
Speaker:Yeah, I think you're probably, you're probably right there.
Speaker:There probably was a fairly bad look that she actually admitted
Speaker:that she had the other sims.
Speaker:But I honestly think it was quite sensible to have a, a all purpose plan B.
Speaker:When I, when I worked in a telephone exchange years ago.
Speaker:We had an out of area line that actually ran from Guernsey into Jersey.
Speaker:Because when your telephone exchange blows up, you need to be able to
Speaker:call the manufacturer for help.
Speaker:Yes, yeah.
Speaker:Watley in the chat room says all the drug dealers I know have multiple sims.
Speaker:Don't blame them.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I've actually got two sims sitting...
Speaker:Two Sims on my phone right now.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Lots of men conducting affairs also have two Sims as well.
Speaker:Well, that's true.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:While that goes on, ah, there's a phone out there that you can have two
Speaker:sim cards in, swap between them on one phone, don't need, don't need two phones.
Speaker:All of the, all of the iPhones recently support electronic sims, and you
Speaker:can have up to eight sims loaded you can only have two active at a time.
Speaker:Right, okay.
Speaker:Well, there you go.
Speaker:So anyway, that was Optus CEO, she's gone, and Tuvalu.
Speaker:I have a little soft spot for Tuvalu because when I was
Speaker:backpacking in New Zealand...
Speaker:I met, can you guys hear me okay?
Speaker:Yeah, we can hear you, go on.
Speaker:I met some Peace Corps workers who were working in Tuvalu.
Speaker:And so anyway, always sort of aware of the country.
Speaker:So, we've made an offer, Australia, to Tuvalu, allowing residents
Speaker:facing displacement from climate change to resettle in Australia.
Speaker:But we've attached conditions to that.
Speaker:And we'll have veto power over Tuvalu's security arrangements
Speaker:with any other country.
Speaker:So Tuvalu is bound to Australia, uh, for not just defence, but must seek
Speaker:Australia's mutual agreement on any of Tuvalu's security arrangements,
Speaker:covering defence, policing, border enforcement, cyber security.
Speaker:and critical infrastructure.
Speaker:So, although not directly stated, this is clearly aimed at China.
Speaker:Well, this is the sort of bullshit thing that...
Speaker:Morrison would have done.
Speaker:Yeah, here's some money, but hand over your sovereignty to us.
Speaker:Such a bully boy tactic.
Speaker:It is now, particularly with something like climate change that, let's face it,
Speaker:Australia's largely responsible for the fossil fuels industry and that sort of
Speaker:thing, so we are the major cause of it.
Speaker:It's honestly believed that it sounds okay that we're opening up
Speaker:our borders and that sort of stuff to allow these people to move over here.
Speaker:I have no problem with that at all.
Speaker:It's just that, you know, if you're then going to put, attach the strings
Speaker:to it the way they have, you know, that's fucking criminal actually.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Couldn't we have just said, here's some money, here's assistance, here's a deal.
Speaker:Bring your people over if your island gets flooded.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, by the way, if you get approached by things, just let us know.
Speaker:Talk to us beforehand.
Speaker:We'd like to talk if the Chinese come and want to...
Speaker:Do some deal with you, just talk to us first.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Just imposing conditions.
Speaker:It's one of those things.
Speaker:I don't believe bully boy tactics.
Speaker:It's one of those things.
Speaker:It's just that again, the government clearly can't ever
Speaker:have a conversation with anyone.
Speaker:You know, they actually should have had that conversation with them saying,
Speaker:look, if China comes to you first.
Speaker:That's no problem at all, we just don't want you to make it public
Speaker:until you've come and spoken to us.
Speaker:That's the thing so that sort of deal was let me see it's a copy of conditions the
Speaker:Americans apply to the Marshall Islands, Palau and other, and the Federated States
Speaker:of Micronesia, giving Washington authority over their defense issues in return for U.
Speaker:S.
Speaker:government services.
Speaker:And the right to live in the U.
Speaker:S., so we've just taken a page out of the U.
Speaker:S.
Speaker:playbook there.
Speaker:Meanwhile, of course, China provides infrastructure.
Speaker:Doesn't attach any deals like that, but they're the bad guys, apparently.
Speaker:Gender pay gap.
Speaker:Have you guys heard about this?
Speaker:I guess we're all kind of aware that it's happening where there is a gender pay gap.
Speaker:Yeah, there's a Jonathan Pye chat about it.
Speaker:The skit he did.
Speaker:Have you not seen the Jonathan Pye skit?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Ah, okay.
Speaker:Talking about the fact that it isn't that women are being paid differently from
Speaker:men, it's that over a lifetime historical things, uh, basically past injustices
Speaker:are still showing up in today's.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Pay outcomes.
Speaker:So women fall pregnant, stop working for a few years and just don't catch up, was it?
Speaker:So basically people who are CEOs now were juniors 20 or 30 years ago and so
Speaker:the decisions of 20, 30 years ago impact the number of women in senior management
Speaker:and because of that when you take A gender as a whole compared to another
Speaker:gender as a whole, there are more men in higher paying jobs, which means that
Speaker:as a whole, men earn more than women.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I think what they're finding though, is that people doing the same job,
Speaker:men are getting paid more than women.
Speaker:Okay, that was supposed to have stopped.
Speaker:For the same job.
Speaker:So what's going to happen in 2024 is...
Speaker:Every company with more than a hundred employees it's going to be
Speaker:published by the government's workplace gender equality agency, what the
Speaker:pay rates are at different levels.
Speaker:So, companies are now scrambling to make sure that they don't look bad in that
Speaker:women in senior management positions.
Speaker:have to be paid the same as men in the same senior management position.
Speaker:And so when this happened in the UK, the gap got smaller and some big name
Speaker:companies were embarrassed by the revelation that they pay women less.
Speaker:So, so yeah, that's going to come out in 2024.
Speaker:My daughter is involved in HR and she tells me that companies, the ones that
Speaker:she's involved with, I certainly got an eye on that and conscious of what it
Speaker:will look like if, if there is an obvious gap for people doing the same role and
Speaker:the only difference is their gender, so.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of discussion about that and then
Speaker:there was the whole how do you put a value on a presenter's worth?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Who, who is, who is the draw card of the morning show?
Speaker:And so, yeah, the, the relative amounts that those presenters get
Speaker:paid, and quite often there's a lot of discussion around that.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Anyway, that's going to come out in 2024.
Speaker:So, that will be interesting.
Speaker:UK, Joe, their Supreme Court ruled.
Speaker:So, the British had an arrangement where basically boat people would
Speaker:be sent to Rwanda of all places.
Speaker:And the UK courts said, Rwanda's a dangerous place.
Speaker:You can't do it.
Speaker:And, fair enough, so the UK Parliament is having to reassess.
Speaker:They've also talked about shipping people off to Ascension Island, kind
Speaker:of like we have done for, um, Manus, uh, they also have a floating Hulk.
Speaker:Was a...
Speaker:Ah, that's that boat that they've converted into, isn't it?
Speaker:Yes, and apparently they've refitted it now and they're trying to get
Speaker:asylum seekers back on it again.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Is the latest I heard.
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:Because the fire inspector came down and said, Yep, doesn't pass
Speaker:any of the fire safety regs, you can't have people on board.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So just interesting in both countries, Australia and the UK, the court system
Speaker:has basically said to the government, in Australia, your detention arrangement.
Speaker:is unlawful, and in the UK, your extradition
Speaker:arrangement, also unlawful, so.
Speaker:But believe me, the UK government is looking at Australia as a leader in
Speaker:this, and they want to emulate Australia.
Speaker:It's one of those things, I find it really bizarre that you've got,
Speaker:you know, in their British accent saying, you've got to stop the boats.
Speaker:It's exactly what we've been saying over here for years, but you know, it's...
Speaker:I'm not actually saying it's a good policy or anything like that,
Speaker:I'm just saying that we've been saying it over here for years, and
Speaker:now it's been copied by the polls.
Speaker:Indeed, they definitely have copied from us, no doubt about it.
Speaker:Argentina has elected a madman, they've got their own Donald Trump, um, possibly
Speaker:the more They're on Bolsonaro's.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So, this guy.
Speaker:Xavier Millet, um, he is a right wing libertarian nutcase so, very eccentric
Speaker:he was once the frontman of a Rolling Stones cover band, that's okay, he
Speaker:currently owns five cloned dogs, each named after right wing economists.
Speaker:That's not okay.
Speaker:He's warned leftists, sons of bitches be afraid.
Speaker:And so he's anti woke, anti globalist, anti abortion, anti
Speaker:climate change, anti central banking system, and anti socialism.
Speaker:And he is pro guns, pro family, pro education, pro US dollar, and pro Trump.
Speaker:He's promised to move Argentina away from the peso.
Speaker:to using the US dollar as its currency.
Speaker:Now, no other major economy has shared currency with the United States.
Speaker:I cannot imagine how that could possibly work, that they would
Speaker:adopt the US currency as their own.
Speaker:Not a country as large as Argentina.
Speaker:Any country.
Speaker:You know, I know they, I know that the US dollar was the currency of East Timor for
Speaker:a little while until they got themselves up on their feet and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But it wasn't ever a long term solution, it was only ever going
Speaker:to be a stopgap measure when they first became independent.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's, it's, it's impossible to imagine.
Speaker:It's like they, you listen to these Bitcoin bros saying that it's a great
Speaker:idea that El Salvador has adopted.
Speaker:Bitcoin as its national currency or whatever, but people don't
Speaker:understand how money is generated.
Speaker:It's generated by private banks giving loans to people and they
Speaker:don't need the central bank.
Speaker:So you walk into a bank, I could walk into a bank tomorrow and say I've got
Speaker:this 2 million house, want a mortgage against it, give me a million dollars.
Speaker:And The bank will just look at the assets that it can secure against the loan.
Speaker:And your income to see whether you've got the capacity to meet the repayments.
Speaker:And poof, out of thin air, generates a ledger account and
Speaker:provides a million dollars to me.
Speaker:Well, hang on a second, because the economist that came on did say, but
Speaker:the flip side of that is the government creates debts and tells you what.
Speaker:format, it will accept those debts paid him.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So the government taxes you, and if the government taxes you in US dollars,
Speaker:you have to pay them in US dollars.
Speaker:Yes, but my point is, just in general business of operating an
Speaker:economy, the Argentinian banks are not authorized by the U.
Speaker:S.
Speaker:to issue U.
Speaker:S.
Speaker:dollar loans.
Speaker:So it's impossible for them to issue the normal sorts of loans that are
Speaker:issued by banks every day of the week because it's not the local currency.
Speaker:The central government can't authorize them to issue U.
Speaker:S.
Speaker:government dollars.
Speaker:The U.
Speaker:S.
Speaker:government isn't going to authorize Argentinian banks to do it.
Speaker:So the kind of basic...
Speaker:Banking function can't work in that situation.
Speaker:And what was the thing that you just said, Joe?
Speaker:It was what were you saying about...
Speaker:So the government basically implements taxes to take money out of the economy.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:To cool it down.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And those taxes are paid in a format.
Speaker:And that's how they force a national currency is by saying,
Speaker:you have to pay us in X currency.
Speaker:Yes, correct.
Speaker:But at the end of the day, you just become a vassal to the US.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:How are these, how are ordinary Argentinians going to generate
Speaker:US dollars to pay tax to the government in US dollars?
Speaker:Just it makes no sense at all.
Speaker:They're heading for a complete disaster, and this guy...
Speaker:It's alright, they'll just invade the Falklands and everything will be fine.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, he's been popular with the 16 to 35 year old age group, and he's a
Speaker:Trumpian type character who appeals because he's seen to be outside of
Speaker:the, the standard political sort of parties and fighting against
Speaker:the system, rebellious sort of guy.
Speaker:He often appears on stage at rallies.
Speaker:With a chainsaw.
Speaker:Pies up a chainsaw.
Speaker:Pies it up.
Speaker:You can see the smoke coming out of it.
Speaker:It's one of those things...
Speaker:Vowing to slash public spending.
Speaker:Yeah, no, he wants to cut up by 50 percent or something ridiculous like that.
Speaker:He wants to reduce the number of government departments from 18 down to 8.
Speaker:You know, he's just got a slash and burn mentality, which is absolutely
Speaker:ridiculous in this day and age.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I can't imagine him lasting any more than a term.
Speaker:Because if he actually does what he says he's going to do, then the
Speaker:public are going to turn around and give him the middle finger.
Speaker:He couldn't last a full term if he does what he says he's going to do.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Just couldn't happen.
Speaker:yEah.
Speaker:So anyway, poor old Argentina.
Speaker:That's where they're headed for.
Speaker:It's one of those things, I can understand the Argentinians
Speaker:being pissed off with Peronism.
Speaker:I can understand that.
Speaker:Because Pyrrhonism has caused a hell of a lot of problems, but it's also, on the
Speaker:other side of the coin, it has actually also helped in curtailing poverty.
Speaker:It hasn't eliminated poverty, but it has helped.
Speaker:You know, it's one of those things, I just think that they've got to have a long
Speaker:hard look at themselves, and I think that the middle of the road bloke, who was the
Speaker:main guy that was up against this idiot, would have been a far better choice.
Speaker:Yeah, I'm not exactly sure.
Speaker:He was the economy minister and that sort of stuff in the current regime, so
Speaker:it's understandable why people would have thought to themselves, well, you know, our
Speaker:economy is in free fall because of you, so we're not going to go with you, you know.
Speaker:My suspicion is that just unfortunately Argentina's a very corrupt society.
Speaker:Oh, it is.
Speaker:Controlled by...
Speaker:Oligarch families who have their own interest at heart and encourage
Speaker:the government to get IMF loans so that US dollars come in so
Speaker:that they can cash out and...
Speaker:Then take their dollars offshore and bugger the rest of the people and
Speaker:it's be something along those lines Unfortunately, I think for Argentina,
Speaker:but yeah Plenty of news will come out of Argentina over the next couple of
Speaker:years if that guy lasts and implements half of the ideas that he's been Well,
Speaker:he doesn't have, he doesn't have the he doesn't have the legislature or
Speaker:anything like that under control because he's only got 38 out of the however
Speaker:many hundred seats in the lower house.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Well, watch out for the military to get involved then.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:So, you know, it's one of the things, the only, the only thing you could
Speaker:actually rely on him doing and that sort of stuff is actually tapping
Speaker:the military and that sort of stuff saying you've got to back me up here.
Speaker:So you couldn't end up with a, because they've been down Dictatorship Road before
Speaker:and all that sort of stuff, they could end up sliding back into it very easily.
Speaker:And then I think you're right, Joe, then you've got to be worried
Speaker:about the Falkland Islands again.
Speaker:Just quickly on Gaza, Jordan Peterson, he's able to sum
Speaker:up what's happening in Gaza.
Speaker:He was interviewed by Piers Morgan.
Speaker:He confidently stated that, quote, this is a last ditch attempt by the Iranian
Speaker:mullahs to use the Islam against Jews story to prop up their own dismal reign.
Speaker:So that's Jordan Peterson blaming Iran.
Speaker:For the Gaza disaster.
Speaker:I've got no doubt that Iran's got something to do with it
Speaker:But I don't think either is as heavily involved as he makes out.
Speaker:Even the Israel, as I said, Iran's had nothing to do with this.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Well, it's one of the things because Hezbollah hasn't
Speaker:moved or anything like that.
Speaker:That's another, that's another proxy for Iran.
Speaker:So, you know.
Speaker:Apparently there's a lot of gas offshore, off Gaza.
Speaker:So one theory is If they, Israelis, control Gaza, then they'll be able to
Speaker:control 450 billion worth of offshore gas.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Elon
Speaker:Musk on Twitter, or X, basically if you do things like use the word
Speaker:decolonization and from the river to the sea and similar euphemisms.
Speaker:He's decided that that implies genocide of Jews and your account will be closed.
Speaker:So, so much for the free speech that Elon Musk was saying he would bring in.
Speaker:And finally, a little bit about China, uh, Xi was in San Francisco, um, everyone
Speaker:was fawning over him, American CEOs.
Speaker:Apple, Blackrock, Mastercard, Qualcomm, Pfizer, FedEx.
Speaker:They're all one.
Speaker:It's a billion customers.
Speaker:Why wouldn't you?
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:So, the American multinational corporations and their CEOs, um,
Speaker:were fawning over him, uh, cheering everything that he had to say and this
Speaker:idea of trying to sort of isolate China.
Speaker:It just isn't going to work.
Speaker:It is too late just on the chip, briefly America can't stop China's rise.
Speaker:And so America's trying to slow China's economic rise, and the Biden
Speaker:administration has not reversed the trade tariffs that Trump imposed, and
Speaker:it's tried to increase pressure on China by banning the export of chips
Speaker:and semiconductor equipment and selected software, and it's persuading allies like
Speaker:the Netherlands and China to follow suit.
Speaker:So it's trying to isolate China in that regard, and so it's prohibited American
Speaker:investments in China involving sensitive technologies, and the big question is
Speaker:whether America can suc can succeed.
Speaker:The answer is probably not.
Speaker:It's too late.
Speaker:Closing the barn door after the horses bolted.
Speaker:And throughout history, uh, there's been efforts to curtail
Speaker:China's technological rise.
Speaker:In 1993, the Clinton administration tried to restrict China's
Speaker:access to satellite technology.
Speaker:That was in 1993, Clinton administration.
Speaker:Today, China has 541 satellites in space and has a competitor to Starlink.
Speaker:Same thing happened with GPS.
Speaker:America restricted China's access to geospatial data system in 1999.
Speaker:China simply built its own parallel system and in some measures it's
Speaker:better than the American based system.
Speaker:It's got 45 satellites compared to 31.
Speaker:And seemingly much more powerful and the other thing is that they haven't
Speaker:factored in China's capacity to retaliate.
Speaker:So the China's July ban on the gallium and germanium exports was merely an
Speaker:opening shot across the bow to remind America of China's dominance in the
Speaker:rare earths and critical metal space.
Speaker:Has a near monopoly in the processing of Magnesium, Bismuth, Tungsten,
Speaker:Graphite, Silicon, Vanadium, Rulurispar, Tellurium, Indium,
Speaker:Antimony, Barite, Zinc, Tin, I didn't mention it, but probably Unobtanium,
Speaker:I reckon is also on the list, Joe.
Speaker:I reckon.
Speaker:China also dominates midstream processing for materials essential to
Speaker:most of America's current and future technological aspirations, such as
Speaker:lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper.
Speaker:America China controls a lot of these, um, rare minerals, rare earths.
Speaker:It also controls a lot of the processing of the ones that maybe aren't so rare.
Speaker:And it'd be really tricky for Western countries to develop the
Speaker:capacity to process those minerals.
Speaker:Because guess what?
Speaker:It's really hard to get approvals, environmentally,
Speaker:to start processing this shit.
Speaker:Because it's pretty ugly when you start processing it, so.
Speaker:A whole bunch of reasons why the idea of America being able to curtail China
Speaker:is it's just not going to happen.
Speaker:There's a quick summary.
Speaker:Oh look, and just briefly to finish off, Ukraine.
Speaker:The Wall Street Journal acknowledges that the narratives it's been pushing
Speaker:for months Of a successful Ukrainian counter offensive, uh, magical thinking,
Speaker:and there's a headline in the Wall Street Journal, it's time to end
Speaker:magical thinking about Russia's defeat.
Speaker:Putin has withstood the West's best efforts to reverse his invasion of
Speaker:Ukraine, and his hold on power is firm.
Speaker:The U.
Speaker:S.
Speaker:and its allies need a new strategy, containment.
Speaker:What's your favorite YouTuber, Perrin, saying, Joe?
Speaker:Is he still, are you guys still bullish about Ukraine's ability to force
Speaker:Russia back in any significant way?
Speaker:I, I think the Putin has this idea that all he has to do is wait the West out
Speaker:and it looks like the West is gonna get bored and so all he has to do is Carry on.
Speaker:Putin doesn't want peace.
Speaker:He's said his terms for peace are the acceptance of Ukraine, of the four
Speaker:O blasts that he doesn't even have complete control of, and also the
Speaker:complete demilitarization of the Ukraine.
Speaker:So those are his terms for peace.
Speaker:I hadn't heard that.
Speaker:I heard his terms were, give me the territory I've already got, uh, change
Speaker:your constitution so you never join NATO, and, and there was, I thought
Speaker:one other one, but I couldn't remember.
Speaker:That's what I thought his terms were.
Speaker:But anyway.
Speaker:Are you, Scott, are you, are you still bullish about Ukraine's chances of
Speaker:pushing back here, or are we giving up?
Speaker:I think that Ukraine is probably on the last legs now because they
Speaker:have tried, but it hasn't worked.
Speaker:So I think it is time to actually sit down and talk to the bastard.
Speaker:But I don't believe that you can trust anything that comes out of his
Speaker:mouth, you know, it's, I know you've got a, you're looking at the world
Speaker:through rose colored glasses here, Trevor, but I honestly Yes, you are.
Speaker:Because this, this prick has lied before.
Speaker:Realistic.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, all Glasses.
Speaker:Hang on a minute.
Speaker:I'm not saying you're not going to lie.
Speaker:Sorry, sorry, what was that Joe?
Speaker:No, Joe's gone, shut up again.
Speaker:It's one of those things, I just think to myself that you can't trust
Speaker:him because he has walked away from every agreement and that sort of stuff
Speaker:that was on the table before this.
Speaker:Well, you also can't trust the Ukrainians, because they, they also...
Speaker:Yeah, okay.
Speaker:They walked away from, they walked away from, from the Minsk agreement, which
Speaker:is okay, because you know, it's just one of those things, like, you know...
Speaker:They have no intention of...
Speaker:No, no, no.
Speaker:We, we, we can have peace in our time.
Speaker:All he wants is a little Lebensraum, and then Putin will leave them alone.
Speaker:Yeah, it's one of those things, I just think to myself that you can't actually
Speaker:trust anything that comes out of his mouth, because he's a, he's a lying prick.
Speaker:Yeah, well, that's true.
Speaker:You know, it's one of those things, it's just, I never said you can
Speaker:trust him, but I'm just saying you have to be realistic about it.
Speaker:Yeah, and the, the only realistic solution for this is for the Yanks to get
Speaker:involved and actually, is to actually go in toe to toe with the Russians, which
Speaker:would then result in nuclear, nuclear weapons being tossed across borders
Speaker:and that would just be a disaster.
Speaker:So I think to myself, you know, I hope the guy actually does have a, life
Speaker:threatening illness, and I hope that he does die sooner rather than later.
Speaker:But the risk is a further right.
Speaker:I mean, apparently the next election he may well be up against somebody
Speaker:who is even further right than him, who wants to go all out on the war.
Speaker:Which would be an absolute disaster if that actually happened.
Speaker:It's one of those things, I suppose if you, I suppose if you've got someone
Speaker:that's even further right and that sort of stuff, then you're going
Speaker:to be able to, that will then break the nexus between them and China.
Speaker:Which means Russia would then be on their own and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:So then after that, because they're on their own, if they don't even have
Speaker:the, if they don't even China backing them up, then they would fall away
Speaker:by a hell of a lot faster, faster, but it's just, it's a hell of a mess.
Speaker:I do believe that.
Speaker:Ukraine did actually put up a reasonable fight and that sort of stuff.
Speaker:They did actually fight, they did actually try and push back, but the
Speaker:pushback apparently is failing right now.
Speaker:So, I think to myself that they've actually got to talk to the bastard.
Speaker:But, we'll have to see where his demands are, because I think to myself that...
Speaker:If they actually do actually try and negotiate and that type of
Speaker:thing, then that will be perceived by Putin as weakness on their part.
Speaker:So he will actually try and push for the maximum of a settlement, which will mean
Speaker:that Ukraine's gotta kiss goodbye to you.
Speaker:Is has gotta kiss goodbye to crummy and they've also got a kiss.
Speaker:Goodbye the DSK.
Speaker:I think so.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But there we are.
Speaker:Well, anyway, I'm very happy that it didn't actually work because the whole
Speaker:thing was supposed to be over in two days.
Speaker:18 months later, it's still going on.
Speaker:Well, I think Pete's got what he wanted.
Speaker:Ah, no.
Speaker:He wanted all of Ukraine.
Speaker:He did, he did.
Speaker:He wanted all of Ukraine.
Speaker:You know, he did want, he did want all of Ukraine.
Speaker:So
Speaker:he didn't he, yeah, he did.
Speaker:Did he?
Speaker:He did.
Speaker:Did he?
Speaker:He did.
Speaker:Yeah, he did.
Speaker:There's.
Speaker:There's certainly comments that he's made in the past that suggests that
Speaker:Ukraine is part of Russia and that it was a mistake letting it go in the 90s.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Which is one of those things, I just think to myself, all those former
Speaker:Soviet republics have probably...
Speaker:I think a lot of them are shitting themselves.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:You know, that's why the three Baltic states have all joined NATO.
Speaker:And...
Speaker:I think if Ukraine hadn't gone in a different way, it would
Speaker:have ended up another Belarus.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Which is basically a vassal state to Russia.
Speaker:Precisely.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Well, we've run around the world.
Speaker:There we go.
Speaker:Australia, Argentina, Tuvalu, UK, Gaza, China, Ukraine, covered it all.
Speaker:Solved all the problems of the world in a bit over an hour.
Speaker:That's what you get, dear listener, on this podcast.
Speaker:So, ah, John Severs, Trevor, his first move was on Kiev, of
Speaker:course he wanted all of Ukraine.
Speaker:Well, if you want to draw the troops away from the Donbass, you would draw
Speaker:some troops No, he actually tried to take, he tried to actually take
Speaker:Ukraine's capital very early on.
Speaker:He had a whole thing, then he went in there.
Speaker:Just because you fanked in a direction doesn't mean you necessarily want it.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:True?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:How many times?
Speaker:You know, it's not true.
Speaker:It's not true, Trevor.
Speaker:He was actually Chinese.
Speaker:Was the Chinese one in the Art of War?
Speaker:Yeah, the Art of War, that sort of thing.
Speaker:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker:You'd say, oh, well, we don't want all their troops over here in the Donbass.
Speaker:Let's, let's send a few up to Kiev to make them worry about that.
Speaker:So they'll have to withdraw some troops back there.
Speaker:So it's not going to be so bad over here.
Speaker:Like that's just.
Speaker:Just because his first move was on Kiev doesn't mean he wanted to take it, John.
Speaker:That's not how it works, necessarily.
Speaker:Here we go.
Speaker:I think Alright!
Speaker:I think that the troops that he wasted in Kiev and that sort of stuff would
Speaker:have been very pissed off with that.
Speaker:Well, I don't think he's worried about whether his troops are pissed off or not.
Speaker:No, exactly, because he's sending them all to a slaughterhouse.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Because he's a prick.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Ah, John says I'm way off the mark.
Speaker:Well, at least I'm right!
Speaker:There we go.
Speaker:You guys battle it out in the chat room.
Speaker:Okay we're done and dusted.
Speaker:That's another episode.
Speaker:We'll be back next week.
Speaker:See what happens.
Speaker:We'll talk to you then.
Speaker:Bye for now.
Speaker:And it's a good night from me.
Speaker:And Joe's dead.
Speaker:So anyway, good night everyone.
