Suburban Eastern Australia.

An environment that has over time evolved some extraordinarily

unique groups of Homo Sapians.

But today we observe a small tribe akin to a group of mere cats that gather together

a top, a small mound to watch question and discuss the current events of their city,

their country, and their world at large.

Let's listen keenly and observe this group fondly known as the

Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove.

Well, we're back.

Yes, at a break.

So two weeks since the last time we spoke with you.

This is a podcast where we talk about news and politics and sex

and religion, dangerous topics.

And we're not gonna let you down with a dangerous topic in Stan

Grant and more racism tonight.

We're gonna go where angels fear to tread.

I'm Trevor a k a, the Iron Fist with me as always, the Velvet Glove himself.

Scott Goodday, Trevor Goodday.

Joe Goodday listeners, how are you all?

We are all, well, well actually I've got a little bit of head

cold, but nothing to speak of.

And Joe, the tech guy with us.

Joe, how are you?

Evening all.

So we'll talk about a little bit of social stuff, first of all what we've been up to

and then get into the meat of the podcast.

It seemed to me, you know, there's not a lot happening worldwide.

I say that when there's a war raging in the Ukraine and it looks like

potentially escalating into World War iii.

And we are having major battles with our major trading partner.

But, you know, on the domestic front and stuff, it's.

Same old, same old.

So thank goodness for Stan Grant in his his sort of comments about what's

happened to him and a few other things.

So right before we get onto that it has been two weeks.

One thing that did happen to me on Mother's Day, actually, I dunno if

you guys were there when I was telling the story, but I was invited to a

function down at cooling gathers like 35, 40 people from the building

that we're staying in regularly.

And as I'm sitting down talking, it's one of those situations where you

can really only talk to the person in front of you and beside you.

And there's enough conversation and, you know, older crowd.

And then And then Ray mentions to this other guy, I think his name was Keith,

can't quite be sure what his name was.

Keith, tell us about your time as an Anglican pastor.

So, dear listener, I was really, I was actually sitting opposite

a retired Anglican pastor from a bridge Brisbane diocese.

And so that was interesting.

He spoke about his experience and he quite enjoyed the job.

Like he had some job as an administrative role.

Yeah, government job just decided he'd like to be a pastor.

But the interesting thing to come out of it was how small a congregation was.

Really only about 70 people were regular attenders of a service.

I, I'd actually say that's large, certainly compared to the UK maybe.

And and then we are talking is describing how you're really

running a small business and.

Ooh, we got just talking about income and really from 70 regular

people in the congregation.

It was generating about 300,000 a year, which just over 4,000 ahead.

Yes.

From which he would pay himself a wage and then other expenses for the activities

that the church did in the area.

Saying that was interesting.

But get yourself 70 and, and you have to pay your franchise

fee back up to the head church.

Yeah.

Well, I dunno how much they transferred to them, but but there you go.

That's just an interesting little tidbit of information.

Get yourself a congregation of 70 people in the Anglican Church and you

can have a small business with a, an income, a gross income of 300,000.

Scott, there we go.

Yeah, we've, we've got about regularly 50 to 60 contributors to this podcast.

I can tell you we get nowhere near 300,000.

That's a year.

No.

Yeah.

Instead of 4,000 per annum, it's more like 50 or $60 per annum, but that's right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And yeah, he thought that the that the congregation was sort of falling

off over time because of Sunday trading at the shops and also Sunday

Sport gave people other options and yeah, they had other things to do.

They weren't as committed as they used to be.

And I said to him, well, it's Sunday and it's Mother's Day.

Are you going to church later today?

He said, no, I'm gonna give it a miss this week.

So there we go.

That was good.

And the other thing that happened was last weekend I was at felons and I

had my Nu Temple of Satan t-shirt on.

And sat down at the table, barely sat down, and this guy came up, tapped

me on the shoulder and said, hi, Trevor, love the work that you're

doing with the new Temple of Satan.

Just wanna say congratulations.

Keep up the good work.

That was nice.

So it was, yeah.

Yeah.

So that's what happened to me since I've last seen you.

Hello.

In the chat room to Alison and also to Alison's mom, Bev, who watches

or listens as Alison's watching.

So, hello Bev, glad you enjoyed the podcast, and also Andrew.

And that's all we've got so far.

So if you're in the chat room, say hello and contribute.

One other sort of housekeeping thing is Scott Landon.

Hardbottom Yes.

Is coming to town.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

After a four year absence and Landon will make his triumphant

return bring gifts apparently.

So, yeah, 29th.

So keep the 29th of July.

Free details to come closer to the time.

Right.

That's enough of the housekeeping if you like.

If, if it's Landon, surely it needs to be gifted cocaine.

I don't think he does actually do that.

No.

I don't know.

Or, or torture weapons or something like that.

Yes.

Hello?

Anne in the chat room as well.

Yeah.

29th of July.

Keep that free.

Alright, we're gonna, we're gonna be talking about race and Stan Grant,

but I think we need some warmup exercises, gentlemen, before we get

into that time for some r racism.

So I thought we would do a few definitions, look at a quick look at

some systemic racism and then who better to explore racism with than Israel.

And he'll get a mention and then we'll get to Stan Grant.

So, yeah.

Alright.

Just a reminder, racism.

This is a dictionary I got from Wikipedia not from Wikipedia, from

Google, which I think was talking about Oxford languages, was the origin.

And it says racist characterized by or shall prejudice, discrimination, or

antagonism against a person or people on the basis of their membership of

a particular racial or ethnic group.

Typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

So you've got to show prejudice, discrimination, or

antagonism against a group.

Simply just discussing isn't racism the we'll do a lot of discussing.

I was gonna say, I had some microaggression though.

Yeah.

Well it might be, but it's not racism.

Right.

And this came about because I wasn't there, but my wife was at a function

and somehow the topic of skin color came up and the reluctance of people

to acknowledge different skin colors of different people because it was seen

as a bit of a touchy subject, a bit of a taboo subject of, of just commenting

about somebody who's got lovely dark skin or something like that, that

was seen as being potentially racist.

Again, I wasn't there at the conversation, but that's a sort of general topic I

wanted to quickly explore and say that just sort of commenting on somebody's

skin color, if it's not in a negative way, just in an observational way,

doesn't sound like racism to me.

And I was reminded, do you guys remember with Harry and Megan.

Mm-hmm.

And back on the Oprah interview.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

So it was going to be announced that they were engaged, I think.

And in the Oprah interview, Megan revealed that there had, in conversations

in the royal family about how dark the skin of a baby might be a child.

And Oprah was taken aback and clarified really, you know, about

how dark your baby is going to be.

And Megan replied potentially, and what that would mean or look like.

So that was sort of seen as a taboo topic.

I, I saw a commentary at the time of the Oprah interview of black people

saying, we have the same conversation as black people going, I wonder how black

or not black, you know, between one.

If you have somebody who's very dark and somebody who's less dark,

then the conversation happens about what color will the baby be?

Yes.

Will it be darker or lighter brown?

Yes.

And you know, if you've got something one on the one side of

the family who's got sort of pale freckled skin that sunburns quickly.

The example.

Yeah.

Yes.

Or a ginger.

Yes.

Often I've found that ginger people are really resentful of their skin

and wish they had lovely olive skin that tanned and didn't burn.

And it's not, I can't think of an exact instance, but I'm sure I've heard of

where people in gingers would say, ah, you know, say a ginger was marrying and

somebody with lovely dark olive skin, they'd say, ah, gee, I hate the baby

gets the lovely olive skin, for example.

It's not seen as, it's not a racist thing to just comment about skin

color when I wanna make, so, people get hung up on these subjects as

if it's merely talking about them.

Makes you a racist.

It's all part of our warmup exercises.

Why We're just talking about things and it's all okay.

Relax out there.

Andrew says in the chat room, that's a beautiful amputation.

Also seemed a difficult physical observation to make if in doubt.

Don't go there.

Well, I dunno that you talk about an amputation.

You might talk about the stump.

Yeah.

Amputations.

The, the, the operation, isn't it?

I dunno.

I mean, if you look at children, my daughter grew up with a very close family

friend who is of Indian heritage, and she commented that she really liked

him because he was like chocolate.

Right?

It was just a, a naive comment about.

How he was different from us.

There you go.

And, and nothing was meant by it.

She loved him.

Yeah.

Like a brother.

She still does.

Mm-hmm.

So I, I think yes, people can use it to be nasty, but I don't think

you have to assume that somebody making a comment is being nasty.

Yes.

And you might avoid a topic because you think potentially it's something, an area

where somebody doesn't want to go to.

Say, for example, I have an amputation story, Andrew.

Mm-hmm.

That works quite nicely with this because as you may know, I've been doing some

ocean swimming lately and I've conned my wife to come and do it as well.

And she's worried about sharks and she insists that I swim on the ocean

side and she's on the shore side.

The theory being that a shark comes in first from water, it's,

it's gonna take me first and That's, that's true love for you.

That is, anyway it's a bit of a running joke with us over the last

couple of weeks and we visited brother some male demo gorgan the

other day on his island retreat.

And as we were walking around the island this other couple came along

and of course it's a small island where everybody knows everybody.

And so we stopped and said hello.

And this of the couple, the guy had obviously an amputated

leg at about the kneecap level.

You could, you know, it wasn't covered with his pants.

It was a, you could see the metal apparatus that he was walking on.

And so as curious as we were as to what happened to his leg, that's one

where you wouldn't say, gosh, I've noticed you've got an amputated leg.

How did that happen?

Yeah.

Unless you knew somebody really well, because who knows?

It might be.

Regurgitating some traumatic car accident or illness or, you know,

it's understandable that you would avoid the topic directly with somebody

unless you knew them quite well.

And anyway we, as we departed from them, we were walking along with Robin and we

said, so what happened to that guy's leg?

Robin said, shark attack.

Yeah.

This guy's from South Africa and apparently there were three kids

in his grade who had missing limbs from shark attacks.

What the thing in South Africa.

Really?

In that era.

There you go.

Saying, yeah, just ironic that zen and I have been swimming in a

formation to avoid a shark attack.

I'm poo-pooing the idea.

And then we met a guy, he'd actually lost a leg and threw a shark attack.

There you go.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Moving on.

Oh, just.

Basically from the book that was a about Harry and Megan and the author

said is that that it was Prince Charles who said it about the baby.

And just from the article here, it says, what I'm saying is that

on the morning that the engagement of Harry and Meam was announced in

a very kind of benign way, prince Charles started to muse on what their

future grandchildren might look like.

I mean, here's this beautiful biracial American woman and the

world's most famous redhead.

I'm a grandfather, of course, we all do this.

You know, you speculate on that.

But it was turned into something very toxic.

It was weaponized really, by the men in Gray who run the palace organization.

So there we go.

That was that one little warmup exercise.

And I just, the other thing.

Have you guys, do you guys know that there's a Israel FAU

documentary on a B C I view?

I did hear something about it.

Mm-hmm.

I haven't really gotten to look at it.

So I watched the first episode given we spent a lot of time on

Israel fau worth, worth watching.

Very interesting.

He's for lousy.

Yes.

He's very Christian, obviously.

And just the way he he, his Christianity overtook him and also the influence of

his father, which was normal in that sort of culture that he came from.

That was the other thing that came from this, was just the cultural

things that were in play with him.

And and also, you know, there were a lot of sort of islander Polynesians who were

interviewed and making the point that there's a lot of them in rugby because.

The game suits the typical Polynesian Islander physique of very

strong, explosive, powerful men.

And hence why 40% of professional union players were sort of

Polynesian Islander heritage.

And this was all discussed very matter of factly.

Yes, we are mostly strong, explosive runners who can hit

hard and this game suits us.

And that was said in a way that's not racist.

Like that was just a generalization, not meant to c cover, you know, a

hundred percent of island people.

But on the whole of, you know, a representation of a predisposition

of that type of people.

Not meant to be racist, but just an observation.

Nobody's in uproar about, oh, Generalization about physical

attributes of these people.

It's just an observation and a fair one to make, so, right.

Okay.

Oh, what have we got here?

Andrew Jackson says, I met someone with a mastectomy and someone

with shark initiated amputation.

In nudist context, I had conversations about the amputation in the context.

Hang on.

South Africa.

Alright, he's got a story for us there at some stage.

Alright.

It's funny where things lead you to, let's stand grant.

He has resigned from, well, temporarily, at least for the moment, his position

on q and a and his other positions.

And here's a little bit of his farewell statement on q and a from the other night.

Many of you would know by now that I'm stepping away for a

little while, but I'll be okay.

Please send that support and care to those of my people and all people who feel

abandoned and alone, who are wondering whether they have a place in this country

and who don't have my privileges to those who have abused me and my family.

I would just say, if your aim was to hurt me, would you succeeded?

And I'm sorry.

I'm sorry that I must have given you so much cause to hate me so

much, to target me and my family to make threats against me.

I'm sorry.

And that's what yura means.

It means that I'm not just responsible for what I do, but for what you do.

It's not just a word.

It is sacred.

It is what it means to be Wera.

It is the core of my being.

It is respect.

It is respect that comes from the earth We are born into from God by army.

If I break that, I lose who I am.

I am down right now.

I am.

But I'll get back up and you can come at me again and I'll meet

you with the love of my people.

My people can teach the world to love.

As Martin Luther King Jr.

Said, if he struggle, we will wear you down with our capacity to love.

Don't mistake our love for weakness.

It is our strength.

We have never stopped loving and fighting for justice and truth.

I fear the media does not have the love or the language to speak to

the gentle spirits of our land.

I'm not walking away for a while because of racism.

We get that far too often.

I'm not walking away because of social media hatred.

I need a break from the media.

I feel like I'm part of the problem and I need to ask myself how or if

we can do it better to my people.

I have always wanted to represent you with pride.

I know I might disappoint you sometimes, but in my own little way, I've just

wanted to make us scene and I'm sorry that I can't do that for a little.

Mm.

I noticed he was invoking a white person's God.

Yes.

Yes, I noticed that as well.

And a sort of a spirituality is strong with this, with

this one in terms of mm-hmm.

From the earth.

There's a lot of Lou when it comes to, not only in that statement, but

just other things that he says and spirituality and are passing on through

generations and a acquired heritage.

Very spiritual sort of way of looking at his identity.

And Scott, had you seen that before?

I had seen parts of it, but never a whole lot.

Any thoughts that you're brave enough to let us know, or do you

want me just keep wrapping on?

I, I don't, I haven't seen any of the abuse or anything

like that, that is copped.

Hmm.

I'm not a, I'm not a real social media person or anything like that.

Like I've got a Twitter account, but I don't go on there.

I've got a Facebook account, which I go onto a couple of times a week.

I haven't seen him get abused.

I couldn't comment on that if he was actually abused

and all that type of thing.

I think that he'd be better off standing his ground and that sort of

stuff and just saying, well, fuck you.

I'm not going anywhere.

I can imagine it would wear you down though.

I no doubt he has copped a lot of shit.

I've no doubt.

I've no doubt about that.

And I think, and I think that sky News is probably behind a fair bit of it

too, you know, because there was some nonsense that was, that'd during the

coronation they apparently counted up the number of times the Stan Grant was

mentioned and all that type of thing.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, I don't know.

I've no doubt he has copped a hell of a lot of shit, but I just

think to myself, you're probably better off standing your ground and

telling people to go get stuffed.

But anyway I don't know what it would be like to walk in Stan Grant's shoes.

You know, I am a cis white gay man, you know?

Mm-hmm.

It's, I don't know what it's like to be anything different.

I was born this way and all that type of thing.

So as a result, I couldn't judge that.

I imagine he's probably has been worn down over time and that type of thing.

It's just one of those things I don't know.

You know, I could understand him being very pissed off, but I do

think it was probably better off if he'd stayed there and fought it

out rather than actually walk away.

I, I just feel he's given up more than you think.

Oh, no way.

He's honestly, I think he wants to come back as a politician.

Oh, yeah.

There's no doubt about that.

He's looking, use these options.

Yeah.

There's no doubt about that.

And I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to get something going

with the greens at some point.

Well, he definitely would be aiming for a seat on the voice, for example.

Yeah, for sure.

I, I think he's angling for some sort of political role, cushy government role.

I don't know, just some, something like that I think is

what he would be looking for.

But you know, the, the, so the things that struck me about it was, you know,

sacred core of my being from Earth, from God, lots of woo in that and lots of

vagueness on things.

He says things that are so contradictory and, and silly.

Really things like, you know, I'm not just responsible for what I do, but for what

everybody else does, what you do as well.

Honestly, how can you be responsible for what other people do?

You're, you're, you know, this might be systems in place in the world.

You just be totally beyond your control.

It's a complete nonsense to say, well, you know, ge Jesus took on everybody's sins.

So that's the obvious example.

Yeah.

It's, it's setting yourself up as some sort of messiah thing.

Like it, there's no way that he would apply that principle

generally through life.

And as, as if you blame yourself for dickheads abusing you on social media,

take him responsibility for that.

It's just a nonsensical, stupid idea mixed in with a bunch of.

Woo and a bit of Jesus, Jesus thing.

It is.

It's kind of what's in there, isn't it, Joe?

It's sort of, I find it quite unimpressive and I find it done as a way of trying to

achieve gravitas that just isn't there.

It's, I find him quite shallow and he's really got a mindset

of, well, I'm indigenous.

My people had their land stolen and were abused, and that's my fight.

And without recognizing nuance, he's a very, he's really into blanket

statements of, of my people mate.

There'd be a thousand different views in the indigenous community, but I

just don't ever hear him acknowledging the nuance of the different views.

There's a thousand different views in the white community,

but we're all just to stand.

It's all black.

It's all white.

Well, his, his, his mother was white.

Yes.

So does he then say, my community for the white people?

No.

And, and, and, and, and try to speak for the white people.

No, I find him quite divisive.

I find him referring to my people as special.

And when you talk about my people have a can teach the world how to love.

Well I just thought that was a religion.

Yeah.

Well, what, what The rest of us dunno how to indigenous people

have a special ability to love.

Well, no, no.

I indigenous people, Christians don't have, because, you know,

Jesus was love and therefore all Christians couldn't teach the world.

You know, when you, when you make a statement that's positive about

one group, it's potentially negative about the groups that you omit.

And you know, if I was to say white people could teach indigenous people

about how to love, what would you think?

Bloody racist.

But when it's flipped the other way, oh that's all acceptable.

But it's not acceptable.

It's divisive.

It's setting up indigenous people as different to the rest.

He evokes Martin Luther King there, but Martin Luther King was about

drawing everybody into the tent.

He was about equality, not about special rights.

He was just trying to get black people the same rights as

white people, not extra rights.

And he was saying, we're all the same.

Your skin doesn't matter.

It's the content of your character.

He, he's sort of drawing on Martin Luther King trying to set himself

up as some Martin Luther King.

And the Christianity goes hand in hand with that as well.

There's Martin Luther King being a preacher.

Martin Luther King wasn't exactly a a aling He practice what he preached.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let bit's what you're saying.

Mm-hmm.

I just find him, I no doubt his intentions are, are honest and he wants to help.

You know, he's, he's made a very simple decision in life about

indigenous people, downtrodden, fight for indigenous people, special

rights without really understanding how best to go about it and drawing

everybody in together for equality.

And the other thing, of course, zero mention of class.

So, So I find that, you know, in the comments that have happened,

people talk about him having acted with grace and good on you, Stan.

And okay, I can, I can feel sorry for the guy for having been subjected to abuse

and that just shouldn't happen of course.

But he's not beyond criticism and his role for the indigenous community

I don't think is helpful and I don't find him impressive at all.

But hey, that's just me.

So that was sort of my thoughts on, on it.

Yeah, I, I, I find he makes broad statements that just are nonsensical

and, and papers over it with, with Woo and Christianity and spiritualism and.

And then walks away.

Like I read the articles, various articles that he writes, and it's

just a mishmash of ideas that don't actually run together very well.

So the people who think he's the Deepak Chopra, yes.

There is a lot of, yes, there is a bit of that in it.

Yeah.

It's so slippery.

It's like nailing smoke to the wall.

So yeah.

Look through my notes of different things that we've said about Stan in the past.

One idea I, or one thing I just came across recently was like the guy's

quite a hawk when it comes to China.

So there was an article that he wrote about China and there was a

review of it by a guy called mobo.

G a o.

Anyway, that guy is an academic, written lots of books and

papers about Chinese studies.

He's about the cultural revolution, remembers rings, socialist China, the

history of China, and his latest book Constructing China Clashing Views

of The People's Republic Examines how and why different categories of

people have different views of China.

So that guy looked at one of Stan's articles on China and he made the point

that, you know, we've got problems in our relationship between Australia and China.

What we really need is good understanding of the issues to help

us sort out our mess with China.

And he says, you know, Stan Grant's recent article demonstrates that our media's

knowledge of China is less than adequate.

So he says so the reason why he looked at Stan Grant's article

was that firstly, Stan Grant is an articulate and experienced

journalist with an international profile and a respectable reputation.

Secondly, he's actually worked in China.

Stan Grand, he worked for cnn, lived in Beijing 2005 to 2008,

and then again from 2010 to 2013.

And he's been prominent talking about China in the abc SBS hosted q and

a, which often talks about China.

And he was also part of the ABC China Tonight program.

And in the essay that this guy's criticizing, that Stan Grant

wrote grant states that rice.

Sits at the heart of understanding China.

According to him China describes orchestra as a race-based

military block of white countries.

Stan Grant goes on to declare the Chinese Communist Party is

a deep racial consciousness.

It is there in the reminder of people never to forget the a hundred

years of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers of white powers.

And this author says its common knowledge, however, that it was the white West that

inspired China's Communist Party ideology.

Carl Marx was certainly white, and Lennon and his colleagues who led the

October revolution have always been considered white by Chinese people.

And it's basically an article that criticizes Stan Grant

for trying to understand.

China's position as a racist position.

He basically calls bs.

It says bullshit.

And I think Stan Grant is a bit like a guy with a hammer.

Everything he sees is a nail, and for him, everything he sees is a race issue.

This one was something we did, ah, would've been way back, maybe

in the episodes, 100 to 200, somewhere back there, like going

back five years now, I guess.

And I lost the link, but I had the, had the, the the material,

but I can't say who wrote it.

It was an open letter to Stan Grant.

It says, I am an Australian of migrant background and mixed ethnicity.

I grew up in largely ethnic communities in Melbourne's north and have lived

in Darwin and Townsville as well.

I have observed you in the media making various statements which I personally

take issue with, in particular, the divisive nature of your rhetoric and

the monopoly on human suffering that you seem to claim for your people.

No one in this nation denies the horrors that the indigenous people suffered

at the hands of European colonialists.

Nor does anyone expect you not to feel internally scarred by these events.

The most important factor in a healing process is moving forward.

Many of us in the migrant community understand things of this nature, and I

would like to share some of them with you.

It goes on.

I must first address your them and us rhetoric.

No, I think this is true.

Like he talks about my people and them and and us quite a lot.

I have observed you link the current circumstances of indigenous people to

pass atrocities with statements such as.

Well, so many of my people, aboriginal people, there is a deep, deep wound that

comes from the time of dispossession.

This author says, as if the tribalistic sentiments of this

statement were not bad enough.

You feel the need to foster guilt and resentment among people who cannot

change the past as if this will somehow change The present circumstances

of indigenous Australians fueling resentment does not lead to change.

Only positivity in the face of adversity can do this.

This is a tried and true method for the healing process.

He goes on cuz in his statement he said someone's suffering was a scaffolding

upon which he built your prosperity.

Well that's what Stan Grant was saying about white people's prosperity was

built on black people's suffering.

And this guy is a migrant saying, hang on.

I think that was a good article.

It's in the show notes for the patrons who get them and just, not me,

somebody else at least calling out the divisive nature of Stan's rhetoric.

Yeah.

And I, the he refers to Morgan Freeman.

I've seen the Morgan Freeman quote Yes.

Where he says, black History Month.

Why are we celebrating that?

When's white history month?

Yes.

If we want, if we want to stop being racist, we need

to stop talking about race.

Yes.

He says here, my sentiments are firmly aligned with those of Morgan Freeman,

who when asked about how to stop racism, replied, stop talking about it.

I'm gonna stop calling you a white man.

I'm gonna ask you to stop calling me a black man.

We've played that clip in the past.

I might find it and throw it at the end of this podcast as a sort of a sign off clip.

Yeah.

If you want to move forward, bring everybody together rather

than keep pushing 'em apart.

So just yeah.

Constantly looking back, you're never gonna be able to move forward.

Yeah.

If you've always got, if you've always got your, if you've always got your

eyes on the rear view mirror, you're never gonna see what's in front of you.

Yep.

And you know, I, I sort of make this comparison at different times.

Like, my father was a prisoner of war Cheng prison, bur railway, the whole

thing, one of the few to survive.

I don't inherit anything out of that in terms of a, a claim of suffering.

Mm-hmm.

And I don't have a, I don't inherit a grievance against

modern day Japanese people.

It was nothing to do with them.

Mm-hmm.

It's, it's, it's history.

It's, it's not something that is to be blamed on the current generations.

And in terms of, than it's not something for me to take advantage of

as an inherited sufferer of some sort.

No.

I, I think we need to learn from the atrocities of the past and, and

make sure they don't happen again.

Hmm.

But absolutely.

What were the circumstances that led up to that so that we don't do it again?

Exactly right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But not as a, as a blame game.

So, yeah.

What else is there to say?

The only other thing I'd say is he's not a good, he's a terrible

compacter of that show Q and a.

He interrupts people.

It, it may well be that he's got that job because of his

multiculturalism, if you like.

Because it.

Because it's not good.

He's not very good at his job, from what I've observed.

But he keeps getting azi for these different roles where he seems to me

to be quite helpless and there'd be so many other better people to do it.

But anyway you know, fixing historical injustice is a dangerous practice.

Even if you do achieve it.

Anyone looked at Israel lately?

Yeah.

I mean, that, that's I, I understand.

I understand the feeling that the Jews said we can't trust

another nation to look after us.

Mm-hmm.

We need our own state, but the idea that it had to be Palestine

because God had given it to them.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Yeah.

And pushed out a bunch of people who were then living there already.

And, and so, I mean, I know that the, the history of the Zionists,

at one stage they talked about buying an area in the Pilborough.

Mm-hmm.

Yes they did.

And also Madagascar, I think.

Right?

Well, Madagascar was, was Hitler's first plan was to dump them all down there.

Yeah.

But I thought that it actually, that had some legs as well.

And, and the Zionist, whatever, had talked to Australia and had

got fairly far along the the road about building a, a land in the plb.

So there were a number of places that were mooted.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

That wouldn't surprise me.

And it's, it's one of those things.

Had you, if you had your time over again, would you actually support the

recreation of the state of Israel?

I wouldn't because they have, Treated the Palestinians so appallingly badly.

Mm-hmm.

That I just think to myself, well, you bastards don't deserve your own country.

If, if they had, if they were to do it anywhere, they should

have done it in Germany.

Yeah.

As, as, as retribution for the year.

Yes, exactly.

They should've, they should've carved out a section of Germany

and said, but if you're gonna do it anywhere, Israel Yeah, yeah.

Because otherwise you're just dispossessing people.

Yeah.

Who have got nothing to do with it, essentially.

At least in some sense, the, in some sense the German people would have to

actually pay, they would've been German farmers or whatever, who would've lost

their land, who had, you know, who were not sympathetic to the Nazi cause at all,

and they would've been collateral damage.

But this is the difficulty in Trying to fix historical wrongs when you've

got several generations in between.

Oh, but I mean, that was at the time.

Yes, correct.

So, so it would've been punishing those people who maybe not

actively, but passively supported.

Yeah.

The Nazi rei.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I remember years and years ago I heard a, a interview with someone that had

been a prosecutor, and he said one of the, one of the things that struck

him was he said, well, there was this sort of glib sort of, conversation

that was going across the desk.

And they're saying, well, he was only responsible for two deaths,

you know, and he said, you know, if you actually looked at the number

of people that were responsible for two people being murdered mm-hmm.

Then that was an incredible number of people that you'd have to.

Put the gallies, you know, it was, yeah.

I mean, look of the people who worked in the concentration camps Yeah.

It was a minority, a very, very small minority that

actually were even prosecuted.

Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

It, it was the worst.

It was the most monstrous that got Yeah.

Pulled up and the average guard was just ignored.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

You know, just back to this open letter, one of the things he

says here was, nothing can be done about our past standard.

It's not appropriate to judge a nation by its past sins.

Every civilization has committed crimes against humanity at some point in its

history, a far more accurate way of judging a society is by which crimes

and bad practices it has abandoned.

Reform and progression are what makes society great.

And there was somewhere here I can't find it, but it was about criticizing him for

his refusal to sort of talk about class.

But I think it was in the China one.

Let me try and find it.

It's interesting pe people talk about how racist Australia is, but I was talking to

an Indian colleague who said, you know, of all the countries he'd lived and worked

in Australia was one of the least racist.

Mm-hmm.

Really?

Because so many of us are immigrants.

I think it's not abnormal.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

It's one of those things like, you know, it's you know, the best

merry guard hotel and that sort of stuff that was set up around a,

a retirement village in in India.

You know, and they were saying that they had to, they were talking about they

had a telephone factory and that sort of stuff where they were call center.

Mm-hmm.

And they were saying, well, they were used to hearing the Indian accent in Britain.

And they were also saying exactly the same thing in Australia, used

to hearing the Indian accent.

Mm-hmm.

You know, there's been criticism of the ABC for not supporting Stan grant enough.

And Patricia Kavala, who's a mornings presenter was talking about the 150

mentions in News Corp publications that were critical of Stan Grant and quoting

a Max Walden who says, the sustained conservative media campaign included more

than 150 mentions of the ABC's Coronation coverage in the pages of the Australian

and on Sky News over the past fortnight.

So they were very critical of Stan Grant and what he had

to say about the coronation.

Patricia Cavalli is saying, yeah, dirty Rotten News Corp.

And Ronnie salting Twitter makes the point.

Well, why on earth does the ABC and your program in particular

insist on platforming journalists from the Modoc Murdoch outlets?

The only way to send the message that enough is enough is to treat them

with the same content they treat.

The abc it does.

My head in the ABC on panel shows continues to have news called Journalists,

ipa, mouse Pieces, pontificating.

I was listening to her Late Night Live again, it was talking about the G seven

and how they had a quad meeting on the side, and she was like the political

editor for the Courier male, the advertiser, the Daily Telegraph, and she

was just spouting all these things about.

Chinese aggression and the need for the west encounter it.

There's no pushback at all by the presenter.

Philip Adams was away.

There was some other lady in charge.

Just happens all the time.

We was just accepted.

Ah, yes, Chinese aggression.

Gotta do something about that.

Does head in ABC continues to invite news Corp talking heads onto their programs.

Yeah.

Peter Dutton came out and said some stuff about the voice.

Mm-hmm.

Dutton said the voice would have an Orwellian effect where all

Australians are equal, but some Australians are more equal than others.

He described it as a symptom of the madness of identity politics, claiming

it would re racialize our nation.

This is quoting Dutton.

The great progress of the 20th century Civil rights movement was

the path to eradicate difference.

To judge each other on the content of our character, not the color of our skin.

He said, can we judge him on the content of this character?

Yes we can.

And he ends up quite poor.

This voice as proposed by the Prime Minister promotes difference.

It's got a good point.

But people will say in response to that that this is just

disinformation and misinformation, but there's, there's kernels of

truth in what he's saying there.

Well, I think the only thing he's actually got Aker Truth there was where he said

that he's just gonna promote differences.

Yes.

Which is, I understand that's probably the major complaint with it.

So somebody at work sent me a, oh my God.

The voice is just a slippery slope.

What they're really after is and made all these claims and said, oh, there's

this freedom of information request.

So I looked at the freedom of information request and it's very, very difficult

to read, but apparently it was a meeting of a group of aboriginals,

sort of, he national committee.

And there were some interesting things there.

They were pushing that the statement about Australia was aboriginal

first to white man came and stole.

It shouldn't be in the preamble because then it can be dismissed.

It needed to be in the body of the Constitution.

Mm-hmm.

So, so there's some interesting things in there, but there's also,

I think people have been picking through this, looking for things

to take outta context and misquote.

Yeah.

And Dunton has been speaking shit about, you know, not enough detail and we

need longer to talk about it, you know?

Quite a lot of crap in there, but I'll give him something in

terms of what he said there.

The people who criticize him to say, oh, that's misinformation, but they don't

really deal with the issue as such.

And you know, you could say, yes, it does actually set up a re racialization, but

that's a good thing in this case because of X, Y, Z and we just need to do it.

That would be an honest response.

Mm-hmm.

But they don't do that.

They just say, oh no it doesn't.

But without ac just like little child saying, oh no, it doesn't.

What they really need to do is say, well, yeah it does, but that's okay.

In this instance dishonesty, I think in not dealing with the substance from the

opponents of Dutton, I think the reason why I actually supported is because that

You know, how tore apart Atsic and all that type of thing, he just

completely got rid of it overnight.

It would be a hell of a lot harder for them to completely dismantle

this if it was in the constitution.

Was ATSIC a good thing?

Did Atsic need to at atsic?

Ne atsic needed to be taken down a PEG or 12, but I don't think it was

actually worth it just to completely destroy it and replace it with nothing,

which is what they did, you know?

Yeah.

Let's just look at opinion polls.

We've got support for the voice currently sitting on 59% against 41%, so that's been

relatively steady for the last few polls.

What's the margin of error?

I dunno on that one, Joe.

Because, yeah, quite often when they, when they poll prior to

an election, they go, mm-hmm.

Yeah, there's been a 3% rise and they're going, but the, the

margin of error is plus or minus 5% and you go, yeah, I think so.

In other words, it might not be a rise at all.

Yes.

I think this is kind of a, a 2% one, I think commonly with the essential poll.

So, still an essential poll.

Moving away from indigenous matters for a moment or two, or perhaps

for the rest of the episode.

Support for the Republic.

New topic, Scott.

If there were a referendum on Australia becoming a Republic, how would you vote?

54% say yes.

They want a republic.

46%.

No.

Weak, isn't it?

I think that

I think that number will change as as the public gets closer and that sort

of stuff actually, actually as the question and that sort of stuff gets

asked more and more and they start to actually really reflect on it.

The thing to themselves, you know, king Charles doesn't represent me.

You know, they, they'll have a you know, there was a very interesting

photo that the Australian Republican movement put up on Instagram.

It was what was it called?

The three generations of Australia's next head of state.

There was Charles, William and George, is it?

Anyway, yeah.

Yeah.

And they just had all three of them there.

And I thought to myself, yeah, that's a bloody good point.

You know, it's just all three generations are just sitting

there right in front of us.

You know, I think the government's feeling is let's deal with the voice before

we're starting dealing with that public.

Absolutely.

And that is exactly what they've done.

They've deliberately put this on the back burner.

Yeah.

So, 54% in favor, 46% against Dear listener, if you were to think of gender,

who do you think would be more in favor of a republic male gender or female?

Gender?

Think about that one cuz I'm about to tell you the answer.

And according to this poll, at least males, 59% in favor female, only 49%.

So the majority of females still want a republic.

That surprised me.

You mean still want to monarchy?

Yes.

Still on monarchy.

Thank you Jane.

Yeah, that really surprised me actually.

I, I thought it was much closer on that.

I thought you'd end up at 54 at each, at each of them, but no you don't.

Yeah.

And the other one where they looked at it from an age basis,

and this one makes sense.

Yeah, obviously the younger people more likely to want a Republic.

18 to 34 was, it was 60%.

But in the 55 plus category only 46% want a republic.

So, younger ones want a republic, older ones don't.

And the final breakdown in this was by voting intention.

So, again, no surprises here.

Greens voters, 71% want a republic.

And the coalition voters, only 39% want a republic.

The labor and the other independents, 60% and 62%.

So no surprise on that one.

The gender one was a surprising one.

So, a, a coalition voter, old and female is a candidate for wanting to keep the.

I mean the, the minor parties Yes.

Slash Independence.

You've got such a broad political spectrum in there.

Correct.

You've got you've got One nation and you've got, yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Now one nation you would expect would be supporting of the, would

be supportive of the monarchy.

I would say so, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Dear listener, if you are listening to this podcast on your app, you

should see these pictures on your phone because I do chapters and

these images should be coming up.

If you don't see them swap over to a different app.

Most of you are on iPhone and you're just, if you're using the native iPhone

app, you should see these graphs and things that I use in the podcast.

Coming up on the screen.

Have a look at those provided you are not driving.

What else have I got here?

That's it for essential poll.

It was a Republic nice article from John Menardo himself in the John

Menardo blog, which I continue to really enjoy and support with a donation.

At the moment, Australia trying to revive its trade with China

and he just makes the point.

How can we, on the one hand be involved in all these discussions

with the usa where we're saying the biggest enemy we've got is China.

We've gotta buy all this stuff cuz they're gonna invade us.

And then on the other hand talk about how important it is that we

are friends so that we can trade.

And just the duplicity of it.

He says there is a massive contradiction between stabilizing our trade

relations with China and our casting of it as a mortal military threat.

That position is not sustainable.

We are planning to support an American War on China, yet expect China to

remain a loyal trading partner.

Penny Wong and Don Farrell can hardly keep saying they are stabilizing the

relationship with China when Richard Miles is out there almost every day,

dog whistling about the China threat.

But perhaps he's been on the Washington Drip feed so long, he doesn't

understand the immense contradiction in our relations with China and

the enormous risks we are running.

So, nice article there from him just talking about sanctions.

So bit of a statistic that in the 1960s only 4% of countries were subject to

sanctions from the US in, and Today.

Oh.

So the us eu today, 27% of countries are subject to sanctions.

So since 1960 4%, today, 27%.

And they're not just mire countries, they actually account

for 29% of the world's gdp.

So the country's producing almost a third of the world's GDP are subject

to sanctions from the US and other countries, most of which are illegal.

So that's going on at the same time.

What else have I got?

It came out about Price Waterhouse.

Yeah.

There was firm disgusting thing.

Given confidential information about what international tax Dodgers

are doing and asked to provide consultancy advice for the government.

And then the partner involved in it uses that confidential information to

then advise multinationals how to get around the laws that they're actually,

that they had, that they consulting on.

They got they got paid a consultancy fee to help design.

Yeah.

Ah, it's just shocked to tell you.

Shocked.

Yeah.

It's, you know, surely this would be the wake up call for

the government thinking itself.

We've gotta actually reinvest in our public service.

Indeed.

And in this article, it, it just in terms of dollar figures, so for 20 21,

20 22, Australia spent 21 billion on external contractors and consultants.

21 billion.

Hmm.

That's equivalent to 54,000 full-time workers and the actual number

of public servants is 144,000.

Yeah.

So, so more than a third of the cost of our regular payroll was spent on

these consultants who are overpaid and they produce reports that are withheld

from us that we don't even get to see.

They're not accountable for them.

If the report doesn't say what people want, it gets shelved.

Yeah.

Pwc, kpmg, EY, and Deloitte are just raking in money.

And and then on the flip side, charging clients and advising

them how to get around the laws that they're consulting on.

Outrageous.

Will this labor government do anything about it?

No, probably not.

They get too much in donations.

Just pathetic.

Just a little comment to Matthew James.

I'm not wearing a paramedic eels journey.

You see it's a car, Canterbury ugly or something like that.

It's just a bit of everything, but thank you very much for noticing.

Okay.

Yeah, we'd be far better spending most of that money on a regular public servant.

There will be odd occasions where you might need particular expertise, but

you just pay more by using consultants.

Mm.

Alright.

All right.

We see some crazy things in America with police violence and we think,

how does it get to that stage?

Yeah.

Meanwhile, in Australia, we had the event last week where police

tasered a 95 year old woman, she had her coming, she was 43 kilos.

She was walking on a Zimmer frame and you know, apparently the she refused to drop a

steak knife and they tasered her for that.

If they couldn't disarm and deescalate without resorting to taser, then

they shouldn't have the bloody job.

They alleged.

She advanced at them at a slow pace using a walking frame.

She's five foot 2 43 kilos, frail, 95 year old.

Yeah.

And of course having been tasered, she's fallen, hit her head and

sustained life-threatening injuries.

Mm-hmm.

Outrageous.

It's really bloody crook, isn't it?

You know, it's, I suppose they're probably patting themselves and about

saying, oh, at least we didn't shoot her.

I think they've recognized they made a mistake, probably.

Mm-hmm.

I don't know.

I look at groups of police in the mall or other places.

Those guys are weighed down by so much gear and they're often overweight.

I think how you, like, these guys have never chase anybody

down and apprehend them.

I, I had an argument with a friend who had been a cop in the uk was a cop over

here about whether or not they should be armed because they're not in the uk.

Mm-hmm.

And he said, oh yeah, absolutely.

We need to carry pistols.

He'd got involved arresting somebody and the guy had given him

a kicking, managed to get him to the ground and given him a kicking.

Right.

A and he was injured, severely injured.

Mm.

From that.

And he said, if I'd been able to get to my service weapon, I would've shot the guy.

Wow.

And I'm,

you know, you just, you're bringing a level of lethality into this mm-hmm.

That just isn't available.

And yet UK cops managed to survive without it.

Mm-hmm.

Now I understand it's slightly different.

Turn needs a distance.

If you are out in the middle of whoop, whoop, you do need a gun.

Yep.

Yeah.

But, Do they really need a firearm just for patrolling the streets?

And that's, yeah.

That's the difference.

It's one of those things that I can understand that, and

I, I agree with you there.

If they're out, if they're out in the, if they're out in the moon, if they're out

in the middle of nowhere, I think they should have easy access to a firearm.

But do they need to actually brandish it?

No, I don't.

Mm-hmm.

You know, anyway just in terms of police bashing mm-hmm.

In Singapore, at Cheng Airport, a 40 year old Portuguese passenger

attacked a robot police officer on duty with a luggage cart.

In the end, he was sentenced to four weeks in prison.

What's a robot police officer do?

It was a picture of him.

Mm-hmm.

It looked kind of like, that robot in lost in space, a sort of

danger Will Robinson type thing.

I don't dunno what he was doing, but anyway, got attacked with a luggage cart.

Mm-hmm.

He remember Robert Kennedy Jr.

And we spoke about him as a, I'm trying to forget him.

Mm-hmm.

Won't be able to, I don't think as an odd one in that he was a sort of

anti-vaxxer type with some crazy ideas.

One of the disinformation dozen.

Yes.

And I mentioned about his voice.

Mm-hmm.

And how he kind of was almost Pauline Hansen like in the

nervousness in his voice.

And I thought maybe he's got laryngitis or something.

But it wasn't, it wasn't an authoritative voice.

And it was a bit of a turnoff for me in listening to him.

And got a message from one of the patrons called just another

Pinker fan who found this article.

And according to ABC News, Robert F.

Kennedy suffers from spasmodic, dysphonia, a specific form of an involuntary movement

disorder that affects the voice box.

It's not life threatening, but can affect one's quality of life.

And the disease didn't hit him until he was 43.

He used to have a strong voice.

But as a result of this a mild tremble for a couple of years that's

how it began, but gets worse there.

We going, guys got, it's probably caused by a vaccine or maybe, maybe

a vaccine would fix it, maybe.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

You, if you ever meet an anti-vaxxer, tell 'em they've developed a vaccine

that's effective against Chemtrails.

Oh, okay.

That, that'll watch their brain break.

Yes.

A vaccine that's effective against chemtrails.

Yeah.

Yep.

You know, the Victorian liberals are in a shambles mm-hmm.

And dictated Dan's killing them.

Mm-hmm.

And former Victorian premier Jeff, Ken has a solution.

He's back to call to reinstate national service because this also

came from the Victorian young liberals.

Mm-hmm.

Scott, Am I right in thinking you were in favor of national service?

Yeah, I'm in favor of national service, but that doesn't mean that I, you

know, I, at that night and that sort of stuff, you were saying, what would you

do if you were a benevolent dictator?

And I said I would have a national service, but I would not allow

conscripts to a serve abroad.

And I also said that you were also saying that you were talking about

education and that type of thing.

I also agreed with you on the education.

So if you've got a very strong education system and that type of thing, then

it shouldn't matter that if you've got to actually go and do one or two

years in the military at the end of your school and career and that type

of thing, that wouldn't be a problem.

So do you think it's a winning policy for the for the league in Victoria?

No, it's, it's not because, you know, it's I had to agree with the boys

from the TU advocate where the other morning when I was listening to 'em

though, said that this is a, something the young liberals have decided to do.

So force people to actually spend time with them.

Well, the question is who's gonna pay for it and what are they gonna do?

Well, it's, it's one of those things you've gotta actually, it would

actually cost a fair bit of money.

So you'd have to have a very long conversation with the

taxpayer and that type of thing.

You'd have to, you'd have to accept it that it was paid for by the Commonwealth,

and the Commonwealth would have it, that that would, it would actually cost the

commonwealth a hell of a lot of money.

Then you'd have to have an argument, you know, do you have it for six

months, 12 months or two years?

And I also agree that it should be men and women, cuz I do not believe

that you should be, that you should be saying that it's only for the men.

I think they're trying to argue, I think they're trying to argue it'll save money

because it's likely to reduce the number of Australians on unemployment benefits

somehow, because they're gonna be taught.

It going crazy.

How, how the only way it's gonna actually lead to a reduction in unemployment

is if you have a number of blokes and that sort of stuff that complete their

military service and that type of thing.

And I think Jim says this is in a bad life, I might stay in the military.

Mm-hmm.

You know, it, it could happen.

You know, it's one of those things my old man had to do it too back in the

days when they called it the citizens military force, the old cmf, you know?

Yeah.

It didn't hurt him, did it?

Made a man of him.

I dunno about that.

But it's just one of those things.

He had to do it.

And I think it was back then he had to do six months full-time.

And then after that they went into the, went into the reserves after that.

Right.

Otherwise known as the sas?

No, the SAS is the, is the Special Air Services.

The reserves are known as the SAS cuz they fight on Saturdays and Sundays.

Okay.

Fair enough.

You're so cryptic Joe.

At times.

Alright.

I've got couple.

I, I do not agree with Jeff, Ken there because I think Kenneth's just he's the

human headline and all that type of thing.

He's just trying to make a name for himself regardless of the fact

that he's no longer got a name.

It's the only, it's only, it's a policy that's strictly only

possible for a benevolent dictator.

He hasn't gotta worry about winning an election.

Exactly.

You've got this a good idea.

Thwarted by democracy, Scott.

Well it is cuz Finland has compulsory military service, as does the, as do,

no, Sweden has only just got rid of it.

France has still got compulsory military service and I believe

the Netherlands still do too.

And Germany as well.

Singapore.

In Singapore, compulsory, and Israel does too.

Israel's slightly different though.

Israel is, Israel is actually at war.

Yeah.

And Israel is going to continue to be at war because they're gonna continue

to antagonize their closest neighbors.

Yeah.

Ukraine's got a team, sorry.

Ukraine's got it as well.

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Because they've just been invaded, so they've got no choice but to do it.

It's one of those things I just, you know, South Korea according to Matthew.

Yeah, exactly.

Again, with North Korea, just across the border.

Yeah.

I, I think there would be more value in a paid, formal SES equivalent.

So an emergency service, a, a Labor Corps doing civil works and doing emergency.

Mm-hmm.

I, I think there's probably, that would be better than training people

up to be soldiers necessarily.

Yeah, and you've probably got a point there.

If you made the SES a compulsory thing that everyone had to do,

that wouldn't be a problem.

And then you could have a, you'd then, you'd then have this backbone of people

that have been trained and that sort of stuff that could be called up and

in the event of a flood or something like that, they can go down and help.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Other thing is you could just make it attractive so that

people would want to do it.

What the ses?

Yes.

If you need people for these things, well, they don't pay them right now.

That's a volunteer.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

But say for example, if you work in the public service, then if you take

time off to do that work, you still get paid your public service pain.

Mm-hmm.

You don't eat into your sick pay or holiday pain.

So Yeah.

Which I agree with.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

Alright.

I'm gonna call it oh James, you've just joined us and we're just gonna

leave you James in the chat room.

Andrew said in the chat room, apparently my dad in Nho short for national

service, somehow managed to set up an illegal wine trade in the barracks.

Here we going.

We've got a few other topics we'll leave 'em for next week.

Yeah.

Alright gentlemen, unless you had something really pressing that you

wanted to say, get off your chest.

No, I don't think so.

Already vented the national service, so there we go.

Alright, here we go.

Stan.

Grant, good luck in your recuperation make with you putting, I'm putting money

on him trying to move into some political role at some stage in the near future.

See what happens.

Alright gentlemen.

Anyone out there.

Thanks for listening.

We'll talk to you next week.

Bye for now, and it's a good night from me, and it's a good night from him.