Yes, we're back, dear listener.

Episode 435, Iron Fist, Velvet Glove.

I'm Trevor.

Over there on the screen is Joe the Tech Guy.

How are you, Joe?

Good, evening all.

And no Scott this week.

You know, we made it to nine years and one week and he decides to have a week off.

Well, he says he's got a headache.

Get well soon, Scott.

He'll no doubt be listening, uh, on this Tuesday morning when he's doing his walk.

Right, well, what are we going to talk about?

Elections!

UK election.

Very interesting in terms of the voter share and then the share of the seats.

Particularly, it was only last week when I was making the case for proportional

sort of voting and um, and that it seemed a fairer way of doing things and

lo and behold, we had a UK election and it seemed to have a very unfair result.

So we're going to talk about that, French elections, FATIMA payment,

a few other bits and pieces along the way, see how we go.

If you're in the chat room, say hello, that'd be fun and um, yeah,

so But before we do In one of these articles that I'm going to go

through, I saw a quote from a guy, H.

L.

Mentken, who taught, For every complex problem, there is an answer

that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Being wrong doesn't stop such an answer being effective politics.

Um, Joe, I find A desire from particularly the older boomer generation for

simple answers to complex problems.

And that's part of our problem in this world is, is a desire for people to just

see a simple solution and not want to see the nuance and the complications and

how multiple factors add up to solutions.

Multiple factors add up to problems.

It's been true of religion.

That's why religion, religion is a simple answer to the questions of life.

And now a lot of the millennial generation, I would say, like black

and white thinking, like you're either with us or against us.

You think millennials like that?

I think a lot of the millennials I know seem to lack an understanding of nuance.

There we go.

Mmm.

Yeah.

I think it's a thing that also, if people are on the spectrum in some way,

they have trouble.

Yeah,

and I wonder, because the people I'm thinking of are

what they call neuro spicy.

Neuro spicy?

Yeah.

Yeah, so, you know, if you've only got to look at the housing problem in

Australia, there's five, six, seven sort of elements all adding up to that problem.

It's not just the one thing.

So, yeah, it's um, there are complicated, difficult things out there.

And Joe, I reckon that, um, you know, I've been reading a little bit about

identity politics and versus sort of treating things on a class basis and an

economics basis, and I reckon economics is just too hard for many people on

the left, and it's just easier to look at an identity that's oppressed.

And say, got to help the oppressed identity, and really just give

up on the economics, I reckon.

Yeah, I mean,

why, why, why look at people's, uh, wealth, and have to figure that out, when

you can just look at the skin colour and go, oh, you're black, you're oppressed.

Yeah,

so Or rather, you're not white, and therefore you're oppressed.

Yeah, I think there's a real failure on the left.

to grasp the essentials of the failure of neoliberalism since Reagan and

Thatcher and explain that to people in a, in just a simple, straightforward You

know, economics for dummies type style.

There's just way too many people still thinking that trickle down works,

rising tide lifts all boats, and a range of other really bad misconceptions.

And even just with money, Joe, I know you were looking at modern monetary theory

and just the idea that the federal budget is somehow like a household budget.

Bonkers.

It

makes sense because that's what we know and this is a complete,

MMT is a complete inversion of that and it's not intuitive.

Mmm.

Yep.

Yeah.

So anyway, that's what we do on this podcast, dear listener.

Try to get into the nuts and bolts of some of the stickier issues and yeah.

Okay.

Well, um, that was just a little intro piece I was thinking of.

Joe, you're our UK election expert, because you're the closest

thing we've got to that anyway.

Um,

when I last lived in England, it was pre Thatcher.

Wow.

Yeah, exactly.

You're that old.

I am that old.

So, you know, a landslide in terms of seats for the Labor Party.

So they ended up with 63 percent of the seats.

But they got there with only 34 percent of

the vote.

And, uh, the votes that they got were less than what

Corbyn got in previous years.

So there was a low turnout of votes.

And what really happened was that the Conservative vote was split between

the Conservatives and the Reform Party.

Seems to be, and as a result, it was difficult for either party to

finish up in first place in these seats, and that is what helped Labor

gain such a large majority from what was a relatively poor vote turnout.

I should have sent you the video of the old bloke who was saying,

well of course I was going to vote reform, because you know that that

bloke, he was talking about um, shooting the migrants on the boats.

He was saying what we were all thinking, and the interviewer

says, were we all thinking that?

I wasn't thinking that.

Yeah, I saw a guy on Twitter do the math.

So, there was only a 57 percent voter turnout.

Yeah, that's fairly poor given that the UK's had 14 years of conservative

government screwing things up.

You would have thought they would be lining up with baseball bats.

You would have, I mean, they got trounced, but there's

a lot of apathetic people.

Maybe, maybe because they looked at Keir Starmer and the Labor Party.

Well, yeah.

And thought, um What's the point?

I did see I mean,

my gay friends were holding their nose to vote for him,

because they've made a number of, oh, it was anti trans comments.

Right.

And they're saying, yeah, really

They've done the small target again, so they refuse to engage in any debates,

they refuse to make any policies, and, um, Starmer is kind of almost

as conservative as the Conservatives.

I saw this good line on Twitter from somebody who said,

Keir Starmer becomes the 6th Tory Prime Minister in 8 years.

Hmm.

I'll get on to why, um, it seems like he's going to be

doing further nationalis uh, further privatising of the NHS.

Yanis Varoufakis was talking about how Starmer's employing this guy

who was in Blair's privatisation.

The NHS is screwed at the moment.

Yeah.

It really is falling to pieces.

Yeah, it seems like Starmer is It's going full steam ahead on, on that.

So no wonder people didn't want to come out.

Um, but yeah, just getting back to the maths of this, um, only 57 percent of

voters, um, potential voters voted.

And then if the Labor Party only got 34 percent of that 57%, you're looking

at 20 percent of the total population.

Only

1 in 5 people voted for the Labor Party.

It's

hardly a mandate, is it?

And, A lot of those people voted as like a protest against the

Tories or whatever, so they weren't actually voting because they wanted

Labor, it was just that they hated

Victorian reform.

And because they don't have single transferable vote,

you

know, if you vote for anybody else, it's, there's a chance that the

Conservatives are getting back in.

So at a maximum, you've got, you've got 20 percent of.

eligible British voters actually voted Labor, one in five, possibly

one in ten if you, if you maximized, you know, the protest vote.

Joe, is there any doubt that Xi in China or Putin in Russia could get 20

percent of the vote if there was a vote?

Um, no, probably not.

So when they talk about these sort of authoritarian

regimes as being so terrible, Undemocratic authoritarian regimes.

You could mount a pretty strong argument that those authoritarian leaders

could have got the same percentage vote as Keir Starmer did in the UK.

Yeah, I think, um, I think realistically the, the, the people I know

that have come from Russia would much rather live in a shitty political system

where you can't be bothered to vote for the Prime Minister, the one where you are

coerced to vote for the Prime Minister.

But I reckon he could get 20%.

Oh, probably, yeah.

Of, of just, you know, free will voters.

Yes.

There's not a lot of difference.

between these authoritarian regimes and democracies now, is what we're getting

to, certainly with this UK example.

So, very interesting.

Um, so it really worked against the Reform Party.

They got 14 percent of the votes, but only 1 percent of the seats.

Boo

hoo.

Less than 1 percent actually.

Yes.

They got four seats in total out of, I think it's 800, something like that.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats got 12 percent of the

vote and 11 percent of the seats.

Apparently, the Liberal Democrats were very strategic and very clever about where

they worked and how hard they worked.

Only in the seats where they thought that they could

Yeah, makes

sense.

And they didn't go for some overall vote share, they just gave up on lots

and lots of seats because they couldn't spread their resources thinly, so.

There

was actually a website that was, um, something like Tour Is Out.

Which was, you know, depending, you put your electorate in and it said what chance

there was, whether you could, whether you had to vote Labour or whether you

could vote your heart, your conscience.

Right.

Uh, and it was very much strategic voting just to get the Tories out.

Yeah.

So, Conservatives got 24 percent of the vote and 19 percent

of the seats, not that far off.

So anyway, as I mentioned last week, you know, I think if you

want a true democracy, you would want proportional representation.

Where, if nationally, As unpalatable as it may seem, if someone like

Reform gets 14 percent of the overall vote, then they should get 14 percent

of the seats in the parliament.

Um, if you, you know, if you believe in democracy, you've got to

believe in it for groups that you don't like, who are distasteful.

Someone like the Greens, 7 percent of the votes, only 1 percent of

the seats, so yeah, so that's um, that's how that panned out in um,

in the UK.

And Nigel Farage is finally an MP.

Yes, yeah,

so yeah, I thought I'd just check how things panned out in Australia

at the last election, Joe, so um,

I was going to say, with um, what was the first preference vote for

Labor and Liberal of the last election?

Last election the Coalition had 35 percent of the vote and

got 38 percent of the seats.

Labor had 32.

6 percent of the vote and got 51 percent of the seats.

Poor old Greens got 12 percent of the vote and only 3 percent of the seats.

One Nation, again, got 5 percent of the votes, no seats.

Palmer's United Party, 4 percent of the votes, no seats.

And others, which would be, um, Jackie Lambie and people like,

well, she's just other Like various independents as well, I should think.

Yeah, 10.

4 percent of the vote, got 12 percent of the seats.

So, so yeah, even in Australia, with um, with our sort of preferential

voting, Greens, 12 percent of The vote, but only 4 percent of the seats.

Yeah, most of the votes go to, um, Labor.

Labor, yeah.

So it's really an unofficial Labor Green coalition of 55 percent of the vote.

I mean, the theory is that We still have a first past the vote, uh, first

past the post, but, um, you can vote your conscience and hopefully Labor goes,

oh, well, we've lost, you know, this percentage of the vote to the Greens.

What policies are people voting on?

And hopefully Labor pick up those policies, is the theory.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nothing's going to change, of course, to proportional, uh, representation.

Until it reaches the point where it suits the Coalition and Labor.

No, of course.

At some point.

So, um, that's when it might, uh, might change.

And I

don't know that proportional representation is necessarily that great.

Well, um, it just seems more democratic.

In the sense that it's a better representation of what the

people want, whether that's a good thing or not, isn't it?

Is that what you're

saying?

Like, like you get an, Because what we find is the same as, um, the

scare of a hung parliament, where the crossbenchers get undue power

because they're being courted by both sides to get legislation through.

What legislation can you think of that might have been prevented

that we really would have wanted to go through in recent times?

Well, um, I mean the classic one was the alleged Greens

scuppering of the carbon tax.

Right.

So we're going back a fair way.

We are going back a fair way.

Well, that was the last time in Parliament that we've had.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

And you mentioned that in Scott's absence, he'd be chomping at the

bit to chip in then, you know.

Ah, okay, um, what else we got to say about this Keir Starmer?

Um, yeah, ultimately it was such a terrible run of Tory governments in

a really poor response by the voting public in terms of switching over

to Labor and Arguably it's because they just didn't like what Labor

was offering, which arguably is just small target, more of the same.

Very much.

Yeah.

Had it been Corbyn, I think, um, there would have

been more interest in Labor.

Yeah.

Um, let's just see what did, um, what did, what did Keir Starmer

have to say as a priority?

You know, we swept into power and, you know, you could think about all

of the poor people, the inequality, the disasters in the health

system.

He's as an exciting figure as John Major was.

So of all the topics that you could think about as your

first priority as the new UK Labour Party, Labour Party Prime Minister,

what did Keir Starmer have to say?

It is of course an important summit on NATO.

It is, uh, for me to be absolutely clear that the first duty of my government

is security and defence, to make clear our unshakable support of NATO, um, and

of course, uh, to reiterate as I did to President Zelensky yesterday, um, the

support that we will have in this country and with our allies towards Ukraine.

There we go.

First priority, security and defence.

For

fuck's sake.

Well, unless people are watching the election and going, Oh great,

you know, Russia's going to win this now because the UK's going

to pull out of supporting Ukraine.

I've no idea.

That's your first priority.

Defence and security.

Yeah.

The disaster that is the UK economy.

Well, at least he didn't say it was stopping the boats.

Yeah.

Yeah, they've apparently overturned the Rwanda.

Yeah.

Where nobody has been sent, so who knows whether it was

ever going to happen anyway, but

It's just, it's like what we got with Albanese.

You get a few soft issues, easy ones, and then the rest is all the same as what the

toys

were offering.

Otherwise the City of London wouldn't have accepted them.

Yeah, people, um, people recognise that, I guess.

They're going, I can't get excited about Labor, so, and they didn't get

excited, so Yeah, meanwhile, Reform Joe, 14%, Populist Nationalism.

Yep.

Um,

yeah.

I read something here on Twitter from Steve Reid MP.

What is breeding populist nationalism is grotesque levels of inequality.

If you look at the areas that are most likely to vote for reform,

They are areas that have been completely abandoned for far too long.

So Labor's plan to grow the economy, you have to have regional economic

growth, so those areas will have to be, so those areas that have been

completely left behind and abandoned have some hope in the future.

If you have people with no hope to the future, they cling to a misremembered

Version of the past, nostalgia politics.

We have to make the economy work for peoples everywhere if you want

to tackle the causes of reform.

Sounds like Trump's, um, Rust Belt, Rust Belt.

And that sounds like Yeah,

I mean, um, the seats they won were coastal towns.

Coastal towns in the UK tend to be geriatric centres because young

people can't afford to live there.

Ah, okay.

So, I think they're actually appealing to the boomer demographic.

So not so much Rust Belt in that sense.

I wouldn't have thought so.

I mean,

just rusty knees built.

Probably.

Rusty hip replacements.

Um, they certainly weren't the working areas.

You know, um, Wales, well, Wales was Plaid Cymru, because of course

that's the Welsh Independence Party.

Um, so all of the areas of high unemployment in Wales.

And then, um, north of England is mostly Labour.

Right.

Because there is, England is seen as a divided country where basically

there's London and the South and then there's the rest of the country.

And London and the South gets all the money.

And does it get all the money?

Um.

Or is it just seen that way?

No, I think it is.

I think there are much higher levels of not investment.

It's kind of changed.

European Union actually helps quite a lot with their city of culture.

Which various regional cities have had and had huge cash injections.

Yeah, so that's the UK, um, you know, next election, even

though he's got this massive majority of seats, the actual vote was not

strong, it could all turn around.

Oh, absolutely.

I think if, um, there's a very high probability that they'll get, admittedly

it's five years unlike over here.

So they've got five years to turn the economy around, but if it isn't turned

around in five years, rather than Labour going, well, it was a complete shit

heap you left us, and we've only had five years, and we're turning it around

slowly, but we haven't got there yet.

Um, the Conservatives will just go, look at how they've screwed up the

economy, look at all the debt we've got.

Yep, it doesn't take long and you inherit it, so it's like Albanese

here

is inheriting this cost of living crisis, um, pretty much, it's his problem,

his baby is how it's perceived even though the economy is like the Titanic, it

takes a long time to, Turn things around.

So yeah, well, we'll see how that pans out.

Just before we leave the UK, just a bit of propaganda from BBC News.

Headline read, five killed by Russian strike in central Ukraine.

And then three days later, airstrike on Gaza school kills at least 15 people.

And the difference is, dear listener, when it comes to the Ukraine, it's a

Russian strike, but when it comes to the Gaza, it's simply an airstrike.

It's an airstrike.

And no mention of the Israelis.

So, this is the kind of subtle propaganda.

There's an example from the BBC News.

French election, Joe.

And so they have a system where they sort of do a round of voting, and some

of the lesser lights drop off, and then they have another round of voting.

After the first round of voting, uh, Marine Le Pen's party, the fascist party,

The Rassemblement National.

Thank you.

The National Rally, somebody translated it as.

They did quite well in the first round of voting, and we're very hopeful

of doing well in the second round.

Second and final round, I think it's done.

Yes.

And came third, to everyone's

surprise.

Yeah, I mean, I was talking to Dad about it, I think, after the first round.

Because Dad lives over there.

And he was saying that, um, it's kind of what happened with the presidential vote.

Um, the first round of elections, people again vote with their conscience, but

there's enough concern when she gets up in the first round for people to

go, oh shit, I didn't really mean it.

Right.

And also a bigger turnout, I think, in the

subsequent rounds.

Yeah, um, you know, it's the old leopards at my face.

The what?

You're not aware of the Leopards Ate My Face meme?

Leopards Ate My Face, no?

Yeah, Leopards Ate My Face is the person who voted for the

Leopards Ate My Face party.

It was after Brexit.

Okay.

So, the whole thing about Brexit was people were going, well, we wanted to

vote against, we wanted to protest vote against Europe, we didn't want to leave.

Right.

And then we're shocked when so many of them wanted to protest

vote actually got the leave vote.

Yep.

Yep.

In the chat room, Andrew said, because in Ukraine it can be

either side doing the airstrike.

Five killed by Russian strike in central Ukraine.

Okay.

Well, Hamas aren't doing airstrikes.

Ukrainians could have been doing the airstrike in central Ukraine.

Well, maybe in the Donbas.

Yeah.

I think it's always a good idea to identify who's doing the airstrike.

So good on them for saying it was a Russian strike in central Ukraine.

Perhaps they could have said, Israeli airstrike on Gaza.

Yeah.

Okay, um, uh, what did I read on the French one?

That um, that the French centrist and leftist parties strategically

withdrew candidates to bolster each other's contenders ahead

of the decisive second round.

So they got their shit together and instead of stealing votes from each other.

Left the way open for non Le Pen.

And the voting maps that I looked at were very confusing.

Because, you know, unlike in the UK where you got very clearly which seat

is won by which party, in France it was What was the biggest percentage between,

or what was the percentage difference between the two largest parties?

So it was just showing how divided the areas were, rather than who was winning.

Hadn't had a chance to look closely at the French one,

but um, anyway, good to see France dodged a bit of a bullet there.

It was looking a bit ugly, so.

And there

was a concern that, you know, European, or Europe in general, was

getting more nationalistic and right wing.

So,

so that's something positive.

A podcast that's had a lot of negative things lately.

That's good.

Um, Joe Biden in the,

uh,

in the sort of aftermath of his appalling performance in the debate has

had to defend his poor performance and he's been on some different interviews

and he was on an interview on ABC News where he dismissed concerns about his age.

Um, And he said, only the Lord Almighty could drive him from the race.

Looks like he's going to be starring, Joe.

Well, given the Lord Almighty's a fictional character, yes.

Yep, he's there until the Lord Almighty, um, drives him from the race.

One can only hope the Lord Almighty will take, um, Trump from the race.

Yes,

um, yeah, and he also had another excuse.

Let me find this clip where they were.

Well, he had jet lag,

didn't he?

Well, and he's been busy.

Um, like, check this, check this out.

He has been busy.

This, this is true what he had to say here.

Oh, sure, but I was also doing a hell of a lot of other

things, like wars around the world.

He was

fighting in wars

around

the world.

He was busy with wars.

You know, that's true.

It took his attention.

Busy with wars.

That's an excuse for you.

Thanks, Joe, for that.

Um, what else have we got?

Um, a little bit on the US.

Um, um, I haven't had a good chance yet to look at the Trump immunity.

They ruled that anything that was done as a president, as opposed

to as a private citizen, was illegal.

Couldn't be prosecuted.

Yes.

So anything that was done under executive order basically was legal.

Yes.

Some people took that as being that if Joe Biden Issued an

order for somebody to assassinate Donald Trump right now, then he would

be immune from prosecution under the Interpretation under the Supreme Court.

I don't know if it goes that far It sounds like a joke, that it could do, but nothing

would surprise me at this point, Joe.

Yeah, I think, until somebody's actually gone through

the legal Yeah, what's a private citizen and what's a president?

If the president decides that Trump is a danger to the US, because he

was an insurrectionist and decides to execute him unilaterally, arbitrarily?

Yes.

Uh, that's a presidential decree.

It's not a private citizen.

I mean, um, Obama spent a lot of mornings, um, looking at information

provided for drone strikes, giving the final okay, yes, kill that man

there, yes, kill that man, maybe not that one, yes, kill those people over

there, and then the drone strike would be made and they would be killed.

And that was all done as part of national security assassinations.

In theory.

Killing off your political opponents.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, that's the scary part is because, uh, people are saying this, this is

another step on the road to fascism.

Hmm.

Democracy.

Mm hmm.

Um, Joe, there is a law which prohibits government departments from dealing with

anybody who's using Huawei as a, uh,

In any way.

Because they're so scared.

It's their infrastructure, yes.

Yes.

Yep.

There's an article in Fortune Magazine.

The Pentagon has a problem.

How does one of the world's largest employers avoid doing

business with companies that rely on China's Huawei technologies?

So far the Defence Department is saying it can't.

So despite a 2019 US law that barred it from contracting with anyone who uses

Huawei equipment, the Pentagon is seeking a formal waiver to its obligations, um,

which bars them from signing contracts with entities that use Huawei components.

The rationale is that Huawei is so firmly entrenched in the systems of

countries Where it does business, that finding alternatives would be impossible.

And there are certain parts of the world where you literally

cannot get away from Huawei.

So, so the law, um, basically for security reasons, preventing, um, U.

S.

governments from dealing with any kind of Supplier using Huawei.

It's the actual defense department that wants the exemption.

Yes.

I had an interesting podcast this week.

Um, basically there was a bunch of stolen cryptocurrency that was suspected

that North Korea had stolen it.

And there was some software that was being used to basically take lots of

transactions, jumble them together, and effectively money laundering.

But it's a privacy thing.

Anyway, the U.

S.

government has applied sanctions onto this bit of software.

How you put sanctions on a bit of software, we don't know.

But anyone who uses this bit of software, uh, technically is breaching U.

S.

sanctions.

Right.

And so, um And it's encryption type software.

Well, it's an anonymizer.

It's not even encryption.

So it anonymizes your transaction.

Anyway, somebody discovered all this and to protest the law has anonymously

sent 50, 000 US dollars to every, um, Any political figure, any public

figure that has an Ethereum wallet has anonymously sent the money that has been

anonymized through this bit of software.

And therefore, uh, various actors, politicians have received money

that has been laundered through this system that has been sanctioned.

Ah, surely they weren't, they didn't get 50, 000 each?

No, no, no,

no, there's 50, 000 in total has been

traced.

Right.

Right, so okay, so they'll basically be, under this law, these people are

guilty for receiving money that's been anonymized through the software.

It was to point out the stupidity of the law.

Hmm, yes.

Ah, US sanctions.

Yes.

Yeah.

Um.

Interesting clip.

I found this one just a funny one in terms of advertising for US

election, um, just as a little humorous, um, break in the podcast.

Have I listened to this one, dear listener?

This was an obviously a Trump or Republican advertisement.

If you're having trouble sleeping, ask your doctor about

Bidentica, the sleep aid made from 100 percent Joe Biden press conference.

The best way to get something done, if you, if it holds near and dear to

you, that you, uh, um, like to be able to

Bidentica has a patented blend of confusion and forgetfulness that

will calm the most overactive brains.

COVID has taken this year,

just since the outbreak, it's taken More than 100 years.

Look, here's the lives.

It's just, it's, I mean, think about it.

When they sold out American jobs and killed the Keystone

Pipeline, it kept me up all night worrying about how we pay our bills.

But then I got Bidentica and I've never slept better.

Sometimes when I get hopped up on sugar, my parents give

me Bidentica so I pass out.

Other times they give it to me during the day, probably so they can do the deed.

Gross.

Warning, people.

People who have used Bidentica have experienced rapid lying and an

inability to secure the southern border.

Others have hallucinated and fought breakfast cereals.

Corn Pop was a bad dude.

Ask your doctor if Bidentica is right for you.

I don't think that's a real ad, but it might be.

Anyway, it should be.

Well, the news

come from faux news, so

That would, uh That would win votes, that one, I reckon.

That was well done.

Botanica.

Now, where are we?

Um, we've done UK, we've quickly done French election, we've

done a little bit on America.

Let's return home, Australian politics.

Um, Fatima Payman, that, um, Labor Senator from Western Australia who,

um, supported the Greens motion.

Joe.

Um, what exactly was the difference between the payment position and sort

of the Labor Party caucus position and the Labor Party convention

national conference position?

So payment crossed the floor to support a Greens motion that called on the Senate

to Recognise the State of Palestine.

That was the motion.

Labor wanted to add an amendment which was, As part of a peace process with

support for the two state solution and a just and enduring peace.

So the original motion called for the recognition of the State of Palestine.

Labor's amendment was, As part of a peace process.

Now, at the National Conference, the most recent one, the position of Labor

was put forward as this, Labor supports the recognition and right of Israel

and Palestine to exist as two states within secure and recognised borders.

And B, the conference calls on the Australian Government to

recognise Palestine as a state.

And C, expect that this issue will be an important priority

for the Australian Government.

So, it's a sort of an A, B, C in the um, conference position.

And B is, Recognise Palestine as a state, and that was the Greens

motion.

Right, but it misses out A, which possibly is considered a prerequisite.

Uh, so, but it's not contradictory.

It's not contradictory.

It merely misses out the step that says, not as a state as in the whole boundary

of what we would consider both countries, but as part of what is currently Israel.

Hmm, and certainly in the National Conference.

Didn't put in only after it all were subject to a peace process.

So the caucus was adding something that the National Conference

didn't put in its statement.

So I reckon Fatima Payman was closer to the right.

national conference than what the caucus was.

Anyway, like I appreciate that, um, you know, if she went on the ballot paper

as a Labor senator, a member of the Labor party to support Labor values.

And I would be really pissed with, I do get really pissed with people who get into

Parliament and then say, oh, I'm now going independent, I'm not part of the party

that, um, got me here in the first place.

Like, I think she only got something like 1100

votes for

herself.

So she only got in because of, of Labor.

So it annoys me when people, you know, drop the party

and say, I'm an independent.

But I'm just a little sympathetic in this case, because she was closer to the Labor

Convention than what the caucus was.

So, uh,

it's tricky.

Yeah.

She has some sympathy there.

I noticed that one of the MPs in the UK was from a, uh, Palestine.

This was for Palestine, he said, and it was all about, it was a Muslim area.

Uh, my concern would be If that is the plank, if that is the main thing that

you are standing for a UK parliament for, that, that's not a position.

You know, if, if the rest of your politics is, I don't know, more,

more work for the working people, more support for the working people,

you know, tax the rich, whatever.

Plus you're going, alright, and we think there should be peace in Palestine.

But to be, for that to be your main plank, just worries me.

So apparently there's talk that Fatima Payman has been

talking to Muslim leaders about a Muslim based political party.

Yeah,

that's not good.

No, but an Albanese came out basically saying that's not good

for Australia's social cohesion to have a Muslim based political party.

But hang on a minute, we've had plenty of faith based parties in the past.

And they've not been good.

Exactly.

So Joe, you're right, it's not good.

Um, uh, having religion as the basis of your political platform is not

good unless it's a political party.

to be anti religious as a political platform, i.

e.

the secular party that we all remember.

But again, it

wasn't anti religion.

It was all about secularism.

It was separating religion from state.

Indeed.

It wasn't about enforcing atheist doctrines in schools.

Yes.

It sounds like Albanesia has never heard of the United Christian

Party, the Australian Family Movement, the Christian Democrat

Party, the One Australia Movement.

Family First Party, Australian Christians Party and Family First Party are all,

they're all Christian based, um, they're all faith based political groups.

He would have interfered in our personal lives, given half a chance.

Indeed.

And a Muslim party would be the same.

Indeed.

It's

just

pathetic that, oh, it kind of is Muslims organising when there's

been a bunch of Christians organising.

For quite a long time as political parties.

So yeah.

Um, um, anyway, one of the Greens, I think Senators Mareen Faruqi was

being interviewed by David Spears.

Um, and she reminded him that the Senate imposes a daily Christian prayer.

So, you know, we're starting to object to Muslim.

Political parties.

Well, hopefully they'll pull the Christian prayers out then.

Yeah.

To overcome an obvious hypocrisy, Joe?

Yeah.

Don't hold your breath.

Well, um, what was the last referendum?

Not the last referendum, the last, um, census?

I can't remember the figure.

For the non religious?

Yeah.

Or even for the Christians.

Cause it's a Christian prayer.

Yeah.

It was below 50 percent of the population were Christian.

Yeah.

This is from Albanese who declared that the three driving

forces in his life was the Labour Party, the Rabideaus Football Club

and, um, God, the Catholic Church.

Peter Dutton.

Anyone

Turnbull's current view of Peter Dutton is?

Oh, I heard.

Let's, um

You've also heard about his son?

His son.

Dutton's son.

With a bag of white powder.

Yes.

Yeah, I think, um, he didn't ask to be a public figure.

No, he didn't, but given Dutton's very, very public comments about

how he was drug squad and Friendly Geordie's comments about Peter

Dutton's possible closeness to people.

Careful.

Selling large quantities of, um, drugs.

Tell Blake Powder.

No.

You're suggesting anything Joe?

Um, no, no, no.

I'm really

saying that Friendly Jordy's was suggesting things.

Ah, right.

Um, no, I think family are off limits.

I think that was really poor to Right.

Put that on the front page.

As much as I despise Dutton, I think, um, I think that's below the belt anyway.

What does Malcolm Turnbull think of Peter Dunton ton?

He was on the project.

They're best friends.

Yes.

What do you think, uh, what do you think, what

sort of Prime Minister will.

Peter Dutton make if he wins?

Uh, I think that's something we should contemplate with dread.

Oh, really?

Why's that?

Well, he's a thug and he, look, Peter's got one tune that he plays.

I mean, and that's been all his political life.

And that is division and animosity, generally targeted at immigrants.

Uh, it's, uh, it is really, I couldn't think of anyone less

suited to be prime minister of a multicultural society like Australia?

I mean, you know, you look, I, I mean, there's no point pulling my punches.

It's an important question.

I've given you an honest answer.

Fairly blunt.

Yeah.

What do you expect from an ex copper?

I just, you know, former prime ministers don't

normally bag the, um, you know.

They're comrades of the same party, as fiercely as that, in public.

They won't do it in private.

I have to say that Turnbull was

definitely not of the party.

He might have been an old fashioned member of the Liberal Party, he's

not a member of the modern party.

No,

he was old school Liberal Party, but not the current one, indeed, yeah.

Um, yeah.

Hey, remember we said last, the other time, about the nuclear power plants,

that, um, so, The seven sites, each with one plant, will contribute, um,

seven gigawatts in total to the grid?

Yeah, yeah.

Um, and if you had two plants, that would be 14 gigawatts?

So, uh No,

no, no, so That was if they were the biggest plants we've ever

seen at 2 gigawatt, 2 gigawatts each.

Right.

Then 7 plants would give us 14 gigawatts.

Yes, that's right.

So roughly sort of, um, 2 gigawatts per

Per site,

of those 7 sites.

Yes.

Um, so that meant that each power station was worth about a gigabyte.

I mean, let me just read this point from previously, um, Output, uh, for plant

sites ranges from 1 gigawatt per plant per annum, um, which has been the US

average actual production, through to 1.

3 gigawatts, which is the UK's two plant Hinkley point complex, to 2.

4 gigawatts for Finland's three unit site.

So in the 1 to 1.

3 gigawatt per nuclear power station.

And, um, China, has recently, um, connected a solar farm,

uh, world's largest 3.

5 gigawatt just in solar.

You could have handed to them.

They know how to build infrastructure in that country.

They know how to build stuff.

So yeah, solar farm, 3.

5 gigawatts.

And Joe, it only cost In US dollars, a tick over 2 billion.

Cheap as chips!

Yeah, their labour chip, their labour costs are much lower.

Yeah,

but still, cheap.

It was interesting having talked to Pump Hydro, uh, to see the

numbers for, um, Snowy Hydro 2.

Right.

Saying it, it is also over, um, over delay, it's late and over budget, um,

possibly not as bad as Nuclear, but certainly Pumped Hydro isn't going

to be as cheap and easy as we think.

But that particular project is a very fraught with danger one, that one,

because of the soil conditions and what they were digging in terms of the large

tunnels through a very large system.

A lot of the pumped hydro is going to be much smaller stuff, well a

lot of it, I mean there will be some big stuff, but yeah, yeah,

um, what else have we got here,

uh, um.

And again, um, I, I agree that.

There was something about, even with 100 percent renewable, we're still

going to need some form of, um, peaking, as opposed to constant supply,

power station, gas power station.

I read an article, but, um, there's a possibility of creating green hydrogen.

So you take your excess power, turn it into hydrogen, and then you can burn it

in a power station whenever you need, and that is suitable long term storage.

Yep, a mate of mine worked at a, uh, power station in Townsville.

Which ran on jet fuel.

And when the market conditions were, you know, necessary, then

they would fire it up, and it would otherwise just lie there idle.

And, um, he would get a call on his mobile phone to, um, if he was at home, get to

work, because we're going to fire it up.

And, um, He could initiate some of the warm up procedure using his mobile

phone so that by the time he got in there half of it was warmed up and

away they'd go and, um, and fire this thing up, so so yeah, it's possible

to have things like that sort of thing run on hydrogen that fire up as needed.

And if the hydrogen is being produced in a green way,

perfectly fine.

I also saw Telstra had applied and been granted a power

generator license.

I think it was, it was a license anyway.

Um, because they have so much solar now on their buildings that they can

sell their capacity from the grid.

So rather than powering all their infrastructure by, by Buying

electricity from the grid, they can promise not to buy that or use that

energy and generate it internally.

In fact, that's right, they were running their own generators.

Right.

Because the cost to them of running their generators was less.

And the price that they would get from a power company by saying we won't consume

this energy for this period of time.

Right.

There we go.

That was Telstra.

Yeah, so they could bid to not use energy from the grid and they would get

paid for the energy they didn't use.

What sort of facilities do they have where they've

got such a large bank of

solar?

Oh,

telephone exchanges.

You think of how many buildings across the nation, how much roof space that

is, and if you put solar panels on it.

There's a lot of buildings like that.

Right.

Okay.

There we go.

Um, what else did I have?

Just depressing stuff about the Central Pole, number of

people supporting Peter Dutton.

It's too depressing to go there.

The figures are way too high.

A number of numbnuts who think that nuclear is cheap,

yeah,

and that nuclear is cheap compared to renewables, it's just

depressing, and of course it's the same thing, men more likely to get it wrong

than women, old people more likely to get it wrong than young people.

I did hear today.

That Uranium contains about 18 billion calories per gram.

So if you ate a gram of Uranium, it would last you for the rest of your life.

Is that in some weird forum?

It was a meme.

Oh, okay, just the modern sense of flat earthers?

No, no, no.

Seriously?

Yeah.

What else have I got here?

Hmm.

I think that's, Joe, I think that's enough.

A bit of a short one, dear listener.

Yeah, a bit of a short one.

There's a book out on the sub fiasco called Nuked.

A guy, Andrew Fowler.

I was a bit excited about this book, Joe.

Um, you know, the subtitle is The Submarine Fiasco That

Sank Australia's Sovereignty.

I listened to him in an interview and he was talking about how we had this

perfectly, it seemed like he was quite happy with the French submarine contract.

And most of his criticism was towards the Orcus arrangement.

I hope that's not the case, I'm going to get the book and read it,

but, um, because it was obvious to everybody that the French option

was just bloody stupid as well.

Because

If we bought the French option, we should have gone for

the nuclear in the first place.

I mean, if you're going to go nuclear, you might as well have

just done it from the get go.

Correct.

Having a nuclear design and then deciding, well, we'll just pull

out the nuclear power plant and put in a diesel power plant,

was described by submarine experts as fraught with danger and the most

complicated thing you could possibly Um, so anyway, I will get to that book.

There was somebody talking about, oh, you know, all these cars, can't

we just make them electric vehicles?

And someone said, well, no, electric vehicles are designed

as electric from the ground up.

You know, the batteries, uh, Put down at the bottom because of the

center of gravity and there's so much engineering goes into it.

Technically, you can do it, but it's cheaper to build it from scratch as a

I was watching this video where they were in China again,

electric cars, and basically the driver would drive up onto a ramp.

And this machinery would come and, um, detach the battery

from underneath the car.

Oh, I've seen that for motorbikes in Vietnam, I think.

Right.

And, and then reattach a fresh battery underneath the car.

All done within a minute.

And off they go.

Sounded a brilliant solution, um, for, um, sort of the delay of recharging batteries.

At least with a sort of a taxi company could just have a whole bunch of these

just recharging and zero downtime for the drivers who were still in

the car as this was all happening.

Don't know how it would work for a car because the batteries

in a car is an awful lot of space.

So effectively, it's, it's the whole of the underfloor of the vehicle.

So yeah, if you can detach the whole underfloor, it's incredibly heavy as well.

So what I saw was, um, on the electric scooters, where you pulled out a cylinder

that was, I don't know, 50cm by 10 by 10.

And you pulled this thing out and then there was a bank of chargers and you just

slotted one in and pulled another one out.

Yes.

And paid your 2 transfer fee, recharge fee, so you basically

plugged in your old battery and pulled out a new battery, plugged it into

your scooter and carried on, which would make sense for city driving,

I don't know, for highway driving,

and again with vehicles, yeah, maybe if you were a taxi fleet, You could

have the infrastructure, but otherwise

You wouldn't be wanting to swap somebody else's dodgy battery

for your battery potentially.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I

mean, it's like the swap and go with, um, uh, the barbecue gas.

Yeah, well, that's Because, you know, the, the gas cylinders

are only good for 10 years.

Mm.

And so you put in your brand new cylinder that you've just paid

because the, the old one screwed you over and you've expired your 10

years, so you've got a brand new one.

And then you hand it in and they give you one that's got a year left on its Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, that's all, uh, gonna happen down the future, I'm sure.

So, right, well that's enough for this episode.

Dear listener, I think, uh, you're around next week, Joe?

Got anything on?

Uh, not that I'm aware of, no.

Okay, very good.

Um, uh, what does John said in the chat room?

Um, right or wrong, she will be out at the next election?

Payment.

Ah, okay, yep.

Um, um, yeah.

And, um, yeah.

Alright, well, thanks to your listener for listening.

We'll be back next week, probably with Scott and Joe and myself.

We'll talk to you then.

Bye for now.

And it's a good night from him.