Leighton Smith Podcast #279 - April 9th 2025 - James Allan - The Leighton Smith Podcast

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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news Talks It b
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It's time from all the Attitude, all the opinion, all
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Speaker 2 (00:27):
Be Welcome to podcast two hundred and seventy nine for
April the ninth, twenty twenty five. Somewhere in the mailroom
letters was a comment that suggested that I must be
in seventh Heaven at the moment, enjoying myself immensely with
all the events that are unfolding everywhere on the planet.
Who knows where else. The letters also is right, but

(00:49):
it comes with restrictions. To do just one program a
week requires discipline and applied restriction. And it's the latter
that bothers me. The email addresses on my computer remind
me of a running tap that someone forgot to turn off.
None of this is meant to be a complaint, of course,
just some more useless information on background. But in podcast

(01:12):
sixty one twenty twenty, I interviewed historian Professor Jeffrey Parker
on his book Global Crisis, War, Climate Change, and Catastrophe
in the seventeenth century. It is a massive book, eight
hundred pages plus. Parker and I got on very well
on all but a couple of things, one being DJ Trump.

(01:34):
The suggestion was that we would interview again, but at
this point we haven't. But regarding global crisis, wore climate
change in catastrophe in the seventeenth century from the cover
flap revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides. The calamities of
the mid seventeenth century were not only unprecedented, they were

(01:55):
agonizingly widespread. A global crisis extended from England to Japan,
and from the Russian Empire to the Sub Saharan Africa.
North and South America too suffered. Any of that's sounding
familiar at the moment. So the frustration that I made
mention of has to do with what to fit in,

(02:17):
because there is far more than one can deal with
in a program or even in a week of programs.
To be honest, Trump is tearing up the old world
order as promise. There's a headline, is the West about
to implode? There's another tariffs reshoring, something deeper, something darker,
And I could go on and on. Now at the

(02:39):
end of the podcast. There is an article that's fairly lengthy.
I wanted to include it. I had a choice of
numerous articles along the same lines, but this one is
a standout and it has to do with tariffs. There
is another tariff standout that has come to my attention,
and I can't fit it in this week, but I'm
going to save it for next week. It is from

(03:01):
George Friedman. Here's a little example. This is how it begins.
There are two analytic principles worth repeating before delving into
the raft of tariffs the Trump administration issued last week.
The first is that we have entered into an unanchored
world order, a state in which one geopolitical era transitions

(03:21):
to the next. All things that were certain in the
past have become uncertain. The Storm before the Calm that
I applied to us politics, and that was in his book,
The Storm Before the Calm, which is proving more and
more fruitful and useful as the days go on. There's
one term that I've noticed is missing at the moment,

(03:44):
and there was quite a use of it just a
couple of weeks back and beyond going backwards, common sense,
there is not a lot of common sense that's being shown,
people are exaggerating, people are fighting each other in words,
that is, and there are many many opinions now bringing

(04:04):
this back home for the purposes of the podcast. Lawfair,
which I first saw applied a few years ago to
matters in America. Goodness knows how long it's been around,
but it's now one that's in common use, and lawfair
is being leveled and leveraged in various countries, including our own,

(04:26):
mostly in America at this point of time for obvious reasons,
but in Australia, different Australian states, different Australian courts, and
different Australian universities. Lawfair is like an octopus grasping the
world in its tentacles. And on that matter, I could
not think of a better individual to discuss it with,

(04:48):
and all that goes beyond that, as Professor James Allen.
I think most everybody is familiar with who James Allen is,
or Jim if you like, as we call him. He
spent eleven years as a professor at Ottaga University. He
has been the last quite a few years now at
the University of Queensland, and Queensland is a place that

(05:10):
has joined in the lawfare. And I suppose you might
say the core of the subject for discussion is judicial activism.
Lawfair and judicial activism. They go hand in hand, and
it's getting no, it's not getting out of order. It
is out of order, and no one pulls it together
better than Jim Allen. But we talk about a very

(05:32):
wide range of matters. And we'll talk with Jim after
a short break. Now. For those of you who've been
listening for a few years, and I speak specifically about
the radio program, you'd be aware of the name of

(05:53):
Lance Green. Lance Green and I have been made for
a long time. We established that relationship through doing some
joint ventures in tourism, like we would take tours away.
We started with New Orleans, we ended up in Europe,
and particularly Lance has been quiet for the last few
years COVID, etc. And he's now emerged with something different

(06:15):
and I think enticing one word in his mind he
writes best described sicily extreme in the most beautiful way.
Why would he say this? Sicily is a tapestry woven
from threads of various cultures that have shaped the island
over centuries, resulting in a unique blend of flavors and traditions.
I've only been to Sicily once and I love it.

(06:35):
I know other people who've been time and time again.
Lance has organized something for the second half of June
and it's very special and it's only for a very
small number of people. The journey focuses on two destinations,
castell Mare de Gulfo and Palermo. It's designed to immerse
us in the environment where we're staying, no rushing from

(06:56):
place to place. Now, this journey is for no more
than eight guests. Older were small and if you would
like further information, then need to contact Lance by email
at Lance at Lance Green dot endz, Lance at Lance
Green dot endz and he will fill you in with

(07:19):
all the detail. But you better be quick, I think,
because this is only for a few people. The Age

(07:41):
of Foolishness A Doubter's Guide to Constitutionalism in a Modern
Democracy by J Allen, Published in twenty twenty two, The
Age of Foolishness is a doubter's guide to current loyally
thinking about all things related to constitutionalism in a democracy.
This book offers a thoroughgoing skeptical critique of the views

(08:02):
that dominate our legal caste, including in law schools and
among judges, and tastes too much weight on judges to
resolve important social policy disputes and too little on democratic politics.
The author argues that politics matters in a way that's
our legal orthodoxy often down plays, and that author, of course,

(08:24):
is one James Allen, who we are all familiar with.
He needs no more introduction than that. But I have
never I have never bought the book or got it.
I didn't know it existed until very recently. Welcome back
to the podcast. Is it a book I should read?

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well, I'd say things have only gotten worse since I
wrote it in twenty twenty two.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, that should have been my real question.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
Actually, I know, you just have to look at what's
happened in the US. They tried to knock out the
leading opposition figure through well I think are incredibly weak cases.
And then what's happening in Romania and knocking out the
mean opposition person in France. I mean it's not good.

(09:07):
Of course, you know, no one makes money from writing
academic books, so I'm not going to get rich out
of the book. But sure, go ahead and buy it.
My mum will be happy.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
I will buy it, as ask her if she would
sign it for me, please, I could call this almost
if I was giving her the title, this discussion assault
on almost everything legal, because it seems to be happening
everywhere from all sorts of levels and angles. How right
am I?

Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yes, I think there's a lot to that. I mean,
there's just a I mean, I'm sort of rite a center.
Person working in the university is there are very very
few of us, so we see what's happening early and
the sort of sustained. I think it's politics, but let's
call it cultural worldview that is being imposed on people.

(09:59):
So to some extent, not about educating anymore as much
as indoctrinating. I mean, when I went to university in
Canada in the eighties, of course, the majority of professor
back then we're left leaning way a smaller percentage and
now by a lot, but they were. But they had
that old fashioned view that anyone should be able to
hear both sides of the argument, and you could write

(10:21):
a good argument up and get a good mark. And
in some ways that has gone. You know, the universities
will tell you it hasn't gone. But you just ask
any student who's actually in the universities right now. There's
an incredible level of self censorship. If you're a junior
academic and you're on the right right side of the
political spectrum, many of them have to be quiet if

(10:44):
they want to get promoted. It's not a very friendly place.
You can give lots of examples. So we see these
things coming before the rest of society. I'm actually quite
buoyed by the fact that President Trump went back in November.
He's actually doing things. He's ending all the DEI, which
is very maligned. It's just a form of affirmative action.

(11:08):
And he's calling out the lunacy of some of the
transgender movement, letting men play in women's sports, so and
so he's getting rid of that. And you know, putting
men who claim to be women in women's prisons even
when they're rapists. I mean, some of these things just
make you laugh at loud. You you can't satirize them.

(11:30):
So I feel good about that. And you know, I
know the preponderance of people, even on the right side
of politics outside the US, just can't stand the man.
But I think he's doing an awful lot of good things. Well.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
At the moment, things are in a bit of turmoil.
So I seeing you've raised it, and we might well
revisit it. But as far as tariffs are concerned, are
you even just a little nervous?

Speaker 3 (11:56):
Well, I used to teach wto I understand comparative advantage
and free trade does up well. But the simple fact
is that something like ten percent of the world, these
Americans own somewhere between ninety and ninety three percent of
stock market wealth. The next wealthy is forty percent. So

(12:17):
from ten to fifty they own the remaining nine ten percent,
and fifty percent of Americans own nothing on the stock market.
They have debts, they have credit card. Since Trump came
in the first time in twenty sixteen, so beginning of
twenty seventeen until yesterday, So including the stock market falls
we've seen, the stock market has gone up one hundred percent.

(12:41):
If you look at American productivity over the last fifty years,
it's gone it's gone up about it's about doubled in
the last fifty years. Now in Australia and New Zealand,
we'd chew off our right arms to get that kind
of productivity growth.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
We'd we'd like, we'd like, we'd like it. Any productivity
growthy exactly.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
So they've had about in over the last half century,
they've had about a doubling of productivity, but wages have
only gone up. And this is off the top of
my head of about thirty five percent. So the people
who are screaming blue murder, and I'm a conservative, but
come on, the people who are screaming blue murder have
big assets. They have big investments in the stock market.
They're used to seeing it doubled every seven or eight years.

(13:20):
And you cannot deny that the globalization has led to
working class people losing factories, losing highly paid jobs, not
seeing wages go up. And those are the people who
voted for Trump, and why he should care about the
sort of soup comparatively rich top ten percent. Now, obviously

(13:43):
everyone is affected by the stock market, but wealthy people
are affected by it a lot more. And it's no
easy task to try to get try to restructure the
world economy, which right now outsources so many things, so
many manufacturing jobs to China, and then we borrow money,
as Trump's Treasury secretary said, who's a smart guy, And

(14:06):
then we're borrowing money from these Chinese and so we
can buy stuff to make Yes, yes, you know, goods
are cheaper on this, but there's lots of things in
life that are more important than money. I mean, I've
got a piece of the Spectator coming out this week.
There's a lot of things I'd take a mask. I
would take a pretty hefty pay cut. If I could
have a few more conservative colleagues in my law school,

(14:27):
or if we could get rid of DEI completely from
the universities. I could give you five or six things
that where I would I would take a big pay
cut because money is not everything. Sure, if you're going
to be impoverished, it matters, but if it's a five
or ten percent cut to get you know, higher wages
for people who have jobs that give them a bit
of you know, self respect, well that's what Trump's trying

(14:50):
to do. You might not agree with that. You might
think that comparative advantage is everything and all that matters
is getting you know, slightly cheaper goods. But the problem
is on that theory, as I always used to teach it,
what happens then is you take that wealth and then
you redistribute it to the losers because people lose and
for each trade and what pretty blatantly obviously is we're

(15:12):
not redistributing the wealth, and you don't want to do
it through government programs, and you don't want to do
it through a big bureaucracy. You'd like people to have
jobs where they just made enough money that they had
half decent. And so you know, if I were Trump,
I would be doing it in a different tone. I'd
be saying, you know, I don't want to do this,
but reciprocity because leave aside New Zealand and Australia, because

(15:35):
we are sort of clean hands at this and Trump's
terrorists really don't make any sense. But the EU runs
much bigger trade blocks on the US, and the US
runs on them higher terraffs. They make it impossible to
import agricultural goods so they can have you know, French
farms the size of your toilet, and so you know,
no one, no one really can say that the EU

(15:56):
has smaller terraffs on the US than the US has
on them. And this sort of talk by the EU
commissioned that they'd be happy with zero terraffs on manufactured goods.
The whole point is they specifically won't do that on
agricultural goods and New Zealand was one of the biggest losers.
I mean, we all know that the EU are thugs
when it comes to agricultural trade. And so I have

(16:21):
some sympathy with Trump. He's not elected to help the
rest of the world. I don't know. Australia got a
ten percent terariff. I don't know what you guys got.
Probably the same. Yeah, So that's at the bottom of anything.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
And do you know what you want to know what
our biggest biggest export is at the moment, red late
red meat.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean here's the problem. If you take tariffs,
American teriffs, and how they affect our economies, and you
compare that to how this bizarre religious like pursuit of
net zero affects the economy, the net zero is way
more crippling. If we got rid of net zero tomorrow,
both countries, we would be wealthier. Who cares about the tariffs?

(17:00):
I mean, our electricity costs in Australia are about three
or four times what they are in some US states,
and we have the world's highest minimum wage, and we
have a labor relations systems. You don't get rid of it.
In the early eighties, late seventies, it's it's completely bizarre.
You get these two bit third party pseudo judge types

(17:20):
dictating the terms of employment contracts, and so why would
anyone invest in Australia. Then you've got red tape, you've
got green tape, you've got now black tape, which is
the word for you know, Indigenous Aboriginal leaders groups, basically
rent seeking and the blocking projects unless you pay a

(17:43):
sort of fee. So why would anyone invest in these countries.
I don't have any worries about the US economy. I mean,
it's true that terrists are going to hurt for a while,
but you know, the stock market today is back to
where it was what about a year ago, and it
doubled in the last eight years, so there's probably a

(18:03):
little overvalue. I mean, I don't think it's Trump's job
to look out for the rest of the For all,
it's arge what we're doing a lousy I mean, as
Australia's run seven quarters of GDP per capital the coin,
and that's not because of mister Trump. It's because of
both parties in Australia and to a large EXTENTUS due
to the idiotic response to COVID.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
You got it in one, You and I are on
exactly the same We're rowing the same boat with regard
to the fact that it's it's not Trump's duty to
look after the rest of the world, or America's for
that matter, and it's got this way, I think through
vice and corruption. There's been so much, there's been so
much going down behind the scenes. There have been so

(18:44):
many people who have including including senior politicians in America,
who've been making fortunes out of the inside information, et cetera,
that it's time that something was done about them and
about the state that the Americans find themselves in overall,

(19:06):
at the abuse end of much of the rest of
the world.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yeah, I mean it made at the end of World
War Two, it made sense for the Americans to be
a market for all of Europe and get them back
on their feet. But today, let's be honest, most of
Europe spends almost nothing on defense, and they know that
the Americans are going to defend them, and so that's
a massive implicit tax on some poor schmuck in Arkansas.

(19:32):
And they also run higher sort of restraints on trade
than the Americans do. Germany just makes stuff, and they
make it really well, and they export it out, but
there's all sorts of blocks again on agriculture, especially that
it's pretty hard to defend. So the EU I don't
think has any hope in the trade war against If

(19:54):
they get into a trade war against the Americans, the
party that runs a surplus almost always loses. And since
they have a pretty hefty surplus with the US on trade,
and again that's the wrong way of looking at it
unless there's a trade war. But you can't win if
you're the party running a big surplus. I mean, I
think Trump could cripple the Europeans and overnight just by
saying there'll be a four tariff on French wine and

(20:18):
German cars. I don't know what that would be the
end for Germany and really bad for France. So I
don't know why they're doing that.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
I think only a non drinker could pass pass a
tariff like that on French wine.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
I have started to like the big California and Chardonnays,
like the big buttery, oaky ones, and you guys make
this phenomenal pino noirs. I could live without French wine.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
Well, I promised you a bottle of my pino for ages,
but I've still got it. Look you you mentioned so
many things in that little tirade that I've got multiple choices.
Let me start with Now, let me just say, first
of all, what triggered the call for you to do

(21:04):
the podcast whilst the tea hung and marry nonsense. It's
going on in this country at the moment, and the
and the judiciary, but the judiciary has has the cause
in common with the Australian judiciary, the American judiciary, the
French judiciary. So it's a it's almost a universal universal subject.

(21:24):
But let's start with Australia because it's caught my attention
over the last couple of days. Macquarie Law School, for instance,
has been in the news for for for a little bit,
imposing imposing ideology in its in its classes. Then over
this weekend you've got the story of the radical lefts

(21:46):
March through the Institutions written by Janet Albertson, and that's
one of a couple of pieces that she's written in
The Australian that are simp that that are almost must reading.
And then we get to Dr Danny Linda, to whom
you are very close.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Well, she's in my lascal, but she's new So here's the.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Thing I meant, I meant, I'm meant physically close.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
Oh yeah, physically close. Yes yeah, yea. And to some extent,
I know that some of her comments were taken out
of context, but leave her aside, let me comment on
the other ones. So there has been this move in
the last twenty years, and it's often by a hard
left sort of people who had sort of Marxist type
views about the world. You know, Marxism effectively you reduce

(22:32):
everything into the view that there's a struggle for resources,
and then you get sort of romantic about the working
class and the proletariat. I used to have to teach
that stuff in Hong Kong. Well, these days, old fashioned
Marxists are the best sort of lefties because they're actually
open to other people having different views. So these days
it all seems to creep out in these sort of

(22:53):
weird forms. In Australia, they're talking about indigenizing the curriculum
and it's roughly similar in the what does that even mean?
I mean, why would you take a curriculum if you're
saying law school, do we want to have a dispute
resolution process? That mimics what happened in a hunter gatherer society,

(23:15):
I don't. And when you try to ask for details,
like what does it mean to indigenize the culture? What
does it mean to throw around these these words in
the Maori or some sort of Aboriginal language, it always
ends up sort of being an attempt to say, well,
we have to respect culture X. And the answer to

(23:36):
that is, well, some things we might respect, in some
things we don't. I mean, I'm not going to respect
the dispute resolution process that involves the kind of spir
in somebody. I mean, what are we at? Where are
the specifics? And they can't give you a specific So
then when the courts do it, it seems to me
it's always this sort of vehicle for imposing political outcomes.

(23:59):
They're always left wing. I mean, do you have a
pretty imperial judiciary in New Zealand right now? And they
never impose things that conservative side of politics likes. They
used that Peter Ellis case disgracefully because there was a disgrace.
How we talked about this before, but what happened to
Peter Ellis was one of the great disgraces. And after

(24:22):
he was dead, the judges who caused the problem, they
were the problem with basically convicting an innocent person. And
finally they gave him a posthumous pardon, big deal with
what good does that do him? What good does that
do his mother? They both died with no pardon and
no recognition. They should have never been convicted. But they

(24:43):
used that vehicle to just bring in this mallory idea
that wasn't needed, to give him the pardon and to
decide for him. And I mean, it's not even clear.
It's so much uncertainty and nobody knows where the law
is coming from and effectively undermines the long established, old
fashioned notion of the rule of law. And it basically

(25:06):
you're left with people saying, well, you have to trust
the judges. I don't trust the judges. I don't trust
them at all. I mean and so, and they've done
some things that are just it just looks like they're
not bound by any past ideas of constraint. And so
when people talk about in digitizing the culture or digitalizing
the curriculum, you have to ask what do you ask?

(25:29):
What are you asking us to do? And it does
seem a highly political enterprise. In the universities, they say
you can be open minded, and they say, you don't
have to agree, And this is a sort of response
you're getting in New Zealand. You don't have to agree.
You just have to be aware of these things, and
you have to show a little bit of respect. You know,
why should people show There's some elements of every culture

(25:51):
you're going to like, and there's some elements you're not
going to like, and everyone's going to be different. It
shouldn't be the job of a law society or a
university or a government to tell people what they need
to respect or not respect. It sort of undermines liberal
democracy and it's very hard to argue against it in
the universe. I can do it because I've got a chair,
and you know, I've worked long enough that I've got

(26:14):
fu money. I was sort of like that anyway. I've
just got that temperament. But if you have kids, or
a house or a mortgage, these universities are not friendly
places to those kind of people who want to speak out.
They might not fire you, but they'll definitely make promotions
harder and they'll make it your life difficult. And so
people tend to self censor. Students learn to self censor

(26:37):
and sorry and that's when you finished by saying, and
it's not as though there's any symmetry here. It's an
asymmetrical game because no one says we have to respect
Western culture. You know, the culture that gave us antibiotics
and jet airplanes and the rule of law and you know,
cross examination and trials and Shakespeare and you know Churchill.

(26:59):
If anything, they don't respect that. So it's this weird
situation where you sort of hate the culture that's delivered
you the best places to live on Earth. And then
you wonder why. Douglas Murray says, the polls are showing
eighteen percent of young people would be prepared to defend
their own country. That's in the US, that's in Britain.

(27:19):
I'm sure it's the same in New Zealand and Australia. Well,
why would they defend their own country when you've spent
eleven years telling them at school that their culture is terrible,
which it's not. It's self evidently one of the best
cultures ever to have arisen, not to say it's perfect.
And so you know, the whole thing is asymmetrical. It's
I think of this book that a guy are great,

(27:41):
he's a lefty but smart, and he likes to beate.
His name is Stephen Pinker. So twenty odd years ago
he wrote a book called The Blank Slate, The Noble Savage,
and the Ghost and the Machine, just taking on three
ideas that are wrong. The Blank Slate is the idea
that you're born as sort of an open book. You
can just be whatever you want to be, and evolution

(28:03):
has it hardwired things into you and it's just wrong.
And that's the sort of basis we get people saying like, oh,
I was born in the wrong body. It's not even
a sensible claim to make when you think about it.
What does it mean you're born in the wrong body?
And what does it mean that you can just sort
of stand outside of the facts that are imposed on
the world that you have you know, X y chromosomes,

(28:25):
trillions of them all through your body, and you can
just announce you're going to be a woman. You know,
I'm sixty five. If I just said no, you know what,
I feel like, I'm a seven year old. I want
to go play seven year old sports. I think I
could still dominate in seven year old sports. I'm not
sure anymore, but you know, we'd all go You're crazy.
There's a fact about the world, and so you know,
for me that transgender stuff is nuts. I don't care

(28:47):
what people wear or how they want to live, but
you can't play you can't play girls' sports. It's got
such a.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Big advantage society.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
Yeah, that's right. And the noble savage was the idea,
and he'd lampoons. Is this is the idea that hunter
gatherer societies were these idyllic, utopian places where everyone got along.
And we know for a fact that a third to
a half of men die violently in hunter gathered because
they're competing for resources, and women get regularly raped and brutalized.

(29:17):
And nobody wants to live in a hunter gatherer society.
If you can experience a sort of western welfare state,
why would you? And you know that's not a criticism,
that's just the fact about the world and the idea
that there's some sort of you know, the environment is
destroyed in hunter gatherer society is because you're every day
waking up trying to get enough food to eat. So

(29:38):
who can blame people for destroying the environment. But again
you get these weird romantic notions of the past. The
other one about the Ghost and the machine is this
idea that somehow there's a you that's separate from your brain.
And you know, I know that some religious people think that.
I don't. I think Binker's right, But you know that
the pretty powerful book, and it explains a lot of

(30:00):
the craziness. It's people who they say they're the party
of science, but the left isn't. Really. You can't support
much of the trend gender sort of claims and be
the party of science, and you can't really talk about
some of the claims being made about hunter gatherer civilizations
and be the party of science. Is we just know

(30:22):
that a lot of it's wrong, indeed, And it's not
a judgment. I mean I didn't there was no merit
based on me. I won the lottery of life by
being born in Canada, you know, in the nineteen sixties
speaking English. Already, When you speak English, you have won
the lottery of life. I can go as a lawyer
and work anywhere, and all non English speakers have to

(30:44):
speak my language. If I'm a scientist, I can go
anywhere and speak English and they all have to speak
English or they can't get their papers published.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
We have other people, Sorry, yeah, we have an audience.
We have an audience in Canada. We have an audience there,
we have an audience in the States. But that's not
why I mentioned that. If that was your lot I win,
being born in Canada and speaking English, what was your
second lot I win?

Speaker 3 (31:12):
Oh? Well, you know I made I was well. I
was very lucky that my wife picked me. I'm coming
up to my fortieth anniversary coming up in a couple
of months, and you know I got I must have
caught her at a really down moment and after big
night out drinking, because you know that that's the best

(31:34):
thing that's happened to me. I've just been really lucky.
But leaving a side and you know, it's way more
important to who you marry than than the jobs you pick.
But leaving that aside, Yeah, getting out and just we
just took jobs all over. We went first to Hong
Kong before the handover, which is one of the great
four years of my life. It was like living in

(31:54):
a Somerset mom short story. It was just magnificent. And
now it's so sad. I can't eat, I can't go
back to Hong Kong. It's so sad. What's happened there
and then going. I loved, we loved our eleven years
in New Zealand. I'm glad I didn't. Actually, I practiced
law at a big firm and then for a year and
a bit in at the bar in London, and being

(32:15):
a barrister in London is actually quite a nice sort
of way to spend your life. But there were all
sorts of reasons I couldn't do that, Vias the reasons
and stuff being a lawyer in a big corporate law firm,
which I did for FUSE in Toronto. You know, two
hundred plus lawyers in the firm.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Where was that?

Speaker 3 (32:30):
Toronto? I didn't like it, and you know I saw
I've never I mean everyone's motivated by money to some extent,
but it's never been the main motivation for me. I've
been sort of I just I like, I've sort of
fell into working in universities when it was really still fun.
My four years in Hong Kong at the brand new
Universey were really fun, and the Tago Law School from

(32:54):
ninety three to two thousand and four was great. I'm
afraid to say it is from what I hear, it
is not the same place that I left.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Let me reassure you your hearing is right, but seeing
you've raised it. In two thousand and ten, I took
my boy the second one. We went to Melbourne. He
got the idea that he might like to go to
Melbourne University, and we went to Melbourne. There's a whole

(33:26):
story here, but i'll reduce it. And we arrived on
a day we didn't know. We arrived on a day
when it was an open It was a public holiday,
but the university was open with tours and all of that.
So we went and he decided he wanted to be
on the campus. And there's only one college on the campus,
and he gained everybody wants to go there, and he

(33:47):
got access, he got approved, got approved for law, and
he decided he wasn't going to go to Melbourne after
that because there was a clash in subjects. He wanted
to do history, specifically, he loves history, and he said, no,
I'm going to go to Otago. And I breathed something
of a sigh of relief, because even though my father,

(34:10):
his grandfather went to Melbourne and I had cousins and
uncles who were lecturers there, I would have had to
pay for it through the nose and it's a different
story down down in Otago. Now, he was very happy
that he went to a Tago and so was I
question is, what would you advise if it was today

(34:31):
that that was taking place that discussion. What would your
advice be.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
Yeah, I mean, there's an awful lot of degrees that
universities now give which have basically a negative value. I mean,
part of the problem is we've become credential mad. There's
a lot of jobs people used to do without a
university degree, and now it's the sort of arms race
of credentials, and you need to have a degree just
to do a job that really no one with a

(34:57):
straight face thinks needs a degree. And that's partly because
governments like to say, I've got fifty percent of the
young people in the university. But universities really don't really
need to cater They shouldn't be catering to fifty percent
of young And that's not a criticism of people who
don't go to university. I mean, right now in Britaine
we're about the there's going to be huge building for

(35:18):
the twenty thirty two Olympics. They can't get any tradees.
So here's the weird thing. We cut tuition fees at university.
That's basically one of the pledges right now in the
current campaign over here. And so people who are going
into law and medicine, upper middle class kids are getting
subsidized by hairdressers and plumbers who have to pay taxes

(35:42):
to support these people. It's a moral disgrace, and it's
even worse when it comes from a left wing party
because they're supposed to care about that. Well, we know
they don't, and there's a flip going on in the
political spectrum. But how you can defend cutting tuition fees
which means it's coming out of the general revenue, which
means it's coming out of taxes, and we don't. No

(36:04):
one says, hey, you know, we're going to give you
a free apprenticeship. In fact, it's really hard to do
apprenticeships now because they've so overregulated them. Or you know,
these young girls have to go and pay to go
and become learn how to be hairdressers or peuticians or whatever.
So the whole world is skewed on that front. And
so other than the fact of the matter that you

(36:26):
often need a credential for employers to let you in
the door, and I think that's changing it certainly it's
changing in the US. More and more people are saying,
you know, you've gone off and done a women's studies
degree or you know, Aboriginal studies degree or whatever, indigenous
studies degree, and you've just become you know, it's like

(36:46):
weaponized grievance politics, And I'm not sure why would you
want to hire a person like that, what you So,
of course, there are some degrees that are well worth
doing and they're moderately not too political. So engineering, even
engineering is being politicized, but it's a bit harder to
politicize engineering obviously if you have numeracy. My first degree

(37:08):
in math. If you're good at math, you're always going
to get a job. But a lot of degrees, so
I went through and did philosophy, English history a bit
along because you do a first degree in Canada along
with the math. The kind of courses I just aren't
they just start offered anymore by universities very much. Well,

(37:29):
you know, we always had everyone had to do a
survey course on Western civilization. You'd sort of you know,
they used to joke about it, from Plato to Nato
and those are great courses you learned about, you know,
everybody starting with the ancient Greeks and making your way forward. Well,
they you know, they were seen to be idol, idealizing
or something Western civilization. But it's not like we didn't

(37:51):
look at the flaw. I mean, everyone should read Machiavelli,
you know, everyone should read a bit of Freud. He's crazy.
But and so that's gone and history has become more well,
we don't want to look at the great men in history.
We want to look at what happened to the chamber
maid in the seventeen So it's nobody cares. We all
know they had a terrible life. I mean, it's not

(38:12):
that difficult to use your imagination to know that ninety
nine percent of people in the fifteen hundreds of the
sixteen hundreds in the seventeen I had a pretty terrible life,
and it was worse before then. And so why why
you know you could you could sum that up in
about half an hour, but we so so the courses

(38:33):
are being cannibalized because the people who teach them are
teaching them in a way that no one wants to
take them, and they're collapsing. You can see in the
US that people taking the sort of humanities type courses.
The numbers are collapsing, which is a real shame. I mean,
at one point when in the nineteen eighties half of
the CEOs on New York Stock Exchange, the S and

(38:54):
P five hundred whatever it's called, had philosophy degrees is
their first degree, because it taught analytical thinking, it taught
taking arguments apart. One of the great degrees you could
have was a philosophy degree. Not now. I mean, it's okay,
but it's not what it was. So I don't know.
I think it depends what you want to do. It's
hard to give general advice.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Well, so many young people who don't know what they
want to do.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
Well, you know, we went to university without even worrying
about a job and never cried. My parents never said
anything about it. I never thought about it. You just figured, okay, well,
this is the time of life to learn go away
from That's another great thing about Totago. At the time
you'd go away from home. He learned academic stuff, he
learned how to live by yourself, how to drink and
the flat how to drink, and you know, the Puritans

(39:41):
have taken over. The university's one of the great rituals.
I'll get in trouble reminding people of this, but one
of the great rituals every year at Otago while I
was there for eleven years, was at the start of
the Frosh week, at the beginning of the calendar year
academic year. One of the beer companies, off the top
of my head, I think it was Twoeys would always
buy all the billboards around campus, and the billboard always

(40:03):
said Twoey's Beer helping ugly people have sex for you know,
eighty seven years or whatever it was. It was funny
and it had an element of truth to it. Today
they would say, oh, you can't say that. Well, you know,
it's too bad because you know, the Puritans are boring,
you know, a little bit of humor in life, because
you know, it's partly.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
True well being almost eradicated.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
It's been almost eradicated. And then that, you know, the
university has become massively overregulated. So I don't know. Someone
told me there's like six deputy vice chancellors of the Tago. Now,
when I was there, I think there was one, and
even that was too many. And in Australia. The so
this thing, this actually unites academics on the left and

(40:47):
the right of the political spectrum. We all hate the
massively over bureaucratic universities. And in Australia, the wage bill,
well well over fifty percent of the wage bill goes
to people in universities who are not teaching and not publishing.
They're administering who would run their own small business. Where
half the money went to people who managed the people

(41:07):
who were making the money. This is nuts, right, And
that's what we have in the universities. They have these
affirmative action things which they dress up in the language
of DEI or you know, Indigenous concerns or whatever, and
they have I just have these massive bodies who make
you get grants and they look for grant getting. You know,

(41:30):
these are inputs. Government gives money, the university hires all
sorts of people to help you get the money. And
then you get the money and you use the grant
to write an article. And here's the truth about universites
that I still staggered. If you had two academics who
are exactly equal and one of them wrote a great
article in the top journal in the world, with no

(41:51):
money from government, no grant, and the other one you
know put in for this ten million dollar grant. It
wrote the exact same article. Well, the person who took
no taxpayer money would be treated as a pariat and
not get promoted. And I'm not joking about that. Because
you must get grants. Why no one can answer that,
because you have to keep people who work in the university.

(42:12):
Is getting the grants employed? Is the real answer? The
government outside of the hard sciences should end. Well you
did end that. That's one good thing Watson has done.
Actually they've ended all the Marsden grants and the social
sciences and humanity, so that was a great thing. I
can't I commend I commend them on that.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
Let me go back to set a Field complaint over
teaching Ta Kung and Mary in law schools rejected. I
want you, I want your explanation for this, whatever it is.
So a Select committee this we know, we know the
story because Gary Judd Casey had lodged a complaint and

(42:52):
it went it went to Parliament to a Select committee
to be to be discussed and decided upon. So a
select committee has largely rejected a campaign over regulations requiring
law schools to teach students about tea kunger in Brackett's tradition,
but recommended changes based on a related concern. First made

(43:15):
public in twenty three and taking effect from the start
of this year. The regulatory changes would require a compulsory
law course on t Kunga mari under the Legal Education curriculum,
as well as the inclusion of relevant content on t
Kunga mariy in existing compulsory courses. Committee said requiring tea

(43:35):
hunger be taught as a mandatory part of the other
subjects rather than only as a separate compulsory course was
unusual and unexpected and should be changed. A Labour said
there was no need to change it. The Green said
the compliance sorry, the complaint process was flawed, and Act
said the complaint should be upheld in full. Sure it

(43:59):
did need you on first say A Deputy Prime Minister
Winston Peters supported Judge's complaint and said teaching ta kunger
was cultural indoctrination. Now why did the committee decide the
way that it did well.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
The political answer is because mister Luxeon and the National
Party are cowards. That's the simple answer. But again, nobody
can even say what ta kanga maori is. It's sort
of like indigenizing the curriculum. I mean, it's a nifty
little trick. Your top court can just sort of bring
this thing out of nowhere in the Peter Ellis case,

(44:36):
and then the lawyers can say, well, look we have
to study this because it's got actual relevance in the
legal world. Why because it's been made up by your
top judges and imposed into the system. And so they
can say, look, you just have to know this stuff.
Even though you can say, well what is it. We
have to know what aspects of t kanga maori are there.

(44:58):
I mean, I assume that no one wants to have
the sort of you know, early eighteen hundred's Maori dispute
resolution system in play. So again it always seems to
boil down to well, uh, you know, a generous appreciation
of this culture, and again, what does that? What does
that tell you about how you ought to be citing

(45:20):
things as a lawyer. It's very hard to understand other
than as a vehicle which demands that you have this
view of the world where all cultures are equal, which
I don't think is true in any factual not true,
and it's also it's because it's characterized in sort of vague, morphous,

(45:42):
fluffy terms. It's a vehicle that allows you to accomplish
left wing things, never right wing things. So that you
just knew that the court, the supreme your your top court,
would this would make a declaration that you have to
take the voting age down to sixteen, something that no
conservative party wants, but lots of left wing parties want.

(46:03):
You know, they would never you know where they're never
going to make a declaration because lawyers and the lawyerly
cast are today far to the left of the median voter.
There's tons of empirical data on this from the US,
where political donations are are public information. But you know,
I've to say this all the time. If you went

(46:23):
back sixty years, the median voter would probably be more
conservative than sorry, the median lawyer would be more conservative
than the median voter. Today, it's a standard deviation to
the left. At least if the most woke woke workplaces
you'll find in museum go into a big Auca law firm,
I mean, you better have your pronoun sort of tattooed
on your forehead, and you know, there's no humor. No,

(46:47):
it's all left progressive. You know, let's get guys in
miniskirts out there playing playing women's sports. So it's it's
a weird phenomenon.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
So how did how did that start to arrive at
that point? What's the first step?

Speaker 3 (47:05):
Well, here's one of the geniuses of Trump as he
manages to get the Democratic Party to take sides on
eighty twenty issues, like eighty percent of Americans think it's
crazy to have, you know, men playing women's sports or
men who identify as women playing women's sports. And yet
this is the hill that the Democrats seem to want
to die on. You just can run through the cultural issues.

(47:29):
And one of the things I don't understand. We see
this here in Australia at the time Conservative parties don't
want to fight the culture wars, whereas the culture wars
are a winning political issue, and they did pools in
the US, and the three big issues were firstly immigration,
secondly pocketbook issues, and thirdly cultural issues transgender issues. How

(47:54):
the universities around all that woke stuff DEI But in
a lot of the key states, what won it for
Trump was taking a hard line on cultural issues and
this is just obvious. I mean, if people knew how
much merit was undermined in universities by that. I mean,
you know, if you're a white male, you do not

(48:14):
have the same opportunities for scholarships or a lot of
other things that you do if you're you know, a
favored group. And then identity politics is arbitrary. They just
pick groups arbitrarily. You know, someone's one quarter group acts
and three quarters group. Why why is that person group acts?
Why aren't they group? Why? No one can ever say.

(48:37):
It's like the old you know, pre pre Civil War
US rule that if you had any black blood in you,
you were black. You know, it's racist and it's bizarre,
and so I don't really understand. I know, it's a
sort of utopian left wing view of the world where
you know, Marxism has an economic policy was a disaster.

(48:59):
So they've given up on that and they channeled it
into a sort of Marxist type view about the role
of women and society or the role of people who
have mixed ancestry. So just into our just into our
in the sorry, just in the price. Here in Australia,
the last referendum to change the Constitution to put in

(49:22):
a to put in a sort of bizarre and what
would have been a disastrous entrenched body in the Constitution.
She was again she led the nokame. At one point
she said, well, I'm you know, over fifty percent Aboriginal,
and I think that life for Aboriginal people is a
lot better since the arrival of Captain Cook and the

(49:44):
and the Brits. And in terms of life span, she's right.
And in terms of the plight of women there is
absolutely no doubt. And in terms of your you know,
you can just go through the list of things. But
you know, she was pilloried. You're allowed to say that,
You're not allowed to say that, you know, this life

(50:05):
has been better. Nobody, nobody can control how they were
born and who their parents were, and so you get
no credit for that, You get no credit for your
skin color, and you get no downside. You have to
make the best you can of it. But pretending that
a hunter gatherer lifestyle is better than living in New
Zealand today or you have to be almost bonkers to

(50:27):
believe that. And it's a bizarre form of what Pinker
called this romanticism, this utopian idealized romanticism that he called
the noble savage myths, And he's right, he's right. I mean,
let's just give everyone an honest The more intermarriage the better,
the more you know, nobody thinks about. I mean, race
is not really a defensible scientific concept because there's there's

(50:51):
you know, there's almost no genetic differentiation amongst humans. I
think chimpanzees have massively more than we do. So to
the extent we even talk about race, it's not really scientific.
But everyone sort of knows what you mean in a
rough and ready sense. Well, we shouldn't be thinking those terms.
You know, we should be just going out and having
a beer and playing golf. And you know, whoever does

(51:12):
the job best gets the job because you know, you
tax people and that money goes to people at the bottom.
And you know, merit, merit is only defensible to the
extent that it delivers better outcomes, which it should when
better when better qualified people have jobs. So I don't
really I don't like the modern trend. I think Trump
is doing a good job in the US of fighting

(51:34):
back against it and having some wins, and so I
like that, and all the people who don't like that
can't articulate what they don't like about it openly right,
because it's sort of laughable.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
Look, let me let me because you've let me down
this path again, let me go back. And I suspect
I noticed at the beginning that you went too keen
to mention Danny Linden. But I'm going to ask you
this anyway. For those who don't know, this is a
lecture who berated students for Indigenous legal history walkout and

(52:09):
we well, I don't know how many people have actually
heard the tape I did. It was via the Australian newspaper,
and she threatened students. She threatened students, WA's what you
say and what you do if you want to do
well in a law degree. I'll remember or I remember
things she said, I remember your faces, those who left,

(52:32):
and she got quite aggressive. Now it turns out and
I looked at her picture with a blank, blank mind,
blank brain, and some would say that's permanent, and I thought, no,
what is her problem? She's white, she's successful. Why is

(52:52):
she behaving in this absurd manner? Well, it turns out
that she has a bit, i'd say, a drop of
aboriginal blood in her. Who knows, But she doesn't look
anything like an aborigine, and her att I think is
her attitude is a reflection on what has gone before,

(53:17):
in the words of the Vice President of the United
States up until the election, what has gone before, whatever
got rammed into her head came from somewhere, but that's
what's led her down this particular path.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
So a lot of people don't understand US First Amendment
law free speech. I think I'm the biggest proponent of
free speech in an antipody in university. But here's the thing.
If you worked at McDonald's and you started taking a
lunch break from job, from your shift with big signs
out front that said I'm a vegetarian, don't eat here,

(53:53):
you would be fired. And you'll be rightfully fired, because
the one thing, your free speech ends at the employer's door,
and there's certain limits that they can rightfully impose on
you once you decide to take the job. And so
I have in print I said that Australian universities as
a whole would be better run by moderately numerus year

(54:15):
eleven students, and I think that's true. But the one
thing I have never done, because I understand American I
understand free SPEECHMS. I have never directly criticized my employer,
who has actually let me say whatever I want. I
don't know why, because no other conservative gets to. So
the one thing I won't do is the sort of
I'm going to take a break from McDonald's now and

(54:36):
run down the people who've employed me in general terms
outside of specifically talking about my own employer. Universities have
gone crazy. They have gone absolutely crazy, and we know
from the data, again from the political donation data in
the US, somebody looked trolled some guy at Notre Dame

(54:59):
trolled through. I think it was from twenty eighteen to
twenty twenty three, but I might have that wrong. Looked
at every person working in the US loss to see
if they gave money, and if so, was it to
the Democrats of the Republicans? And I think the ratio
was thirty six to one, thirty six to one. And
so it's very hard for people who who have non

(55:23):
progressive lefty views to get jobs, especially in some departments.
I mean, law schools aren't the worst. There would be
no there would be no National Party voters on betting
in any New Zealand university Mawori Department would I'd be
very surprised. So that's a problem. And so these sort

(55:43):
of views are all over the place. And I agree
with you in general terms that it's a bit odd
when somebody has a ancestry that's you know, some small
percentage acts and some large percentage y and they you know,
they feel that they associate themselves with the acts. I mean,

(56:06):
there are cases in the US of of people claiming
to be black who have no black they have no
black ancestry. Or Elizabeth Warren, you know, she got her
first job at Harvard by claiming to be Cherokee Indian,
and it turned out that wasn't true. And now she's
a senator, right and everyone knew that with the credentials

(56:28):
she brought to the table. The only reason that Harvard
hied her, the only reason is because they thought they
could tick that she was a Native Indian and you know,
she pretends that, Well, you know, I got no advantage
from this. It turned out that if you went onto
the street and picked a random white person, that person
had more Native Indian blood than Elizabeth Warren. You know,

(56:50):
it was like one to one thousands. But she was
even lower than the average sort of Anglo American. So
of course there are all sorts of sort of incentives
for people in practical terms. And then combined that with
having been told at school your whole life that you know,

(57:12):
Captain Cook invaded and Western culture is a bad thing.
And you know, if you look at the hunter gatherer
people who are here before, what a wonderful, idyllic, utopian life.
See how do It's just all garbage. So you can't
really blame people who get force fed this. It's like
I don't blame our kids today. I blame my generation.
We're the ones who let the education system collapse. We're

(57:34):
the ones who let you know, Australia's teaching results are
below Kazakhstan and getting worse. They didn't do that. We
did that. We didn't. We got to go to good schools.
I went to state schools my whole life, where in
grade five I knew more grammar with gerums and participles
were than than you know, I can remember today and
I'm pretty good with grammar. But I you know, so,

(57:56):
so we didn't. They didn't do that. We took all
the fun out of life for them. We killed humor.
We we did all these things. We made it impossible
for kids to buy a house because of immigration, because
of our sid and.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
On did we through? Who are you blaming?

Speaker 3 (58:15):
Actually, because I'm blaming our generation people who voted.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
Well, you see, I still won't. I still can't quite
grasp that, even though I even though I basically agree
with you. But you take Australia, take New Zealand, people
kept coming no matter who was making up the government,
whether it was letters or so called or so called
center right, they just.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
Not a party political criticism by me, It was a
criticism of our political class and the sort of elits
who've made the decisions over the last thirty or forty years.
They've they've been terrible, and you know, it's a bit
like COVID. They can't ever admit they made a mistake
because well, I don't know how they'd sleep at night
and b they'd be destroyed. So they just have to

(59:05):
pretend that that letting in you know, massive numbers is
a good idea, and they used to pretend it was
economically beneficial, right, you up gross domestic product, But even
but lots of recent economic studies have shown unless you're
looking at highly skilled immigrants and then there is an
economic payoff for sure, but family reunification and low skilled

(59:29):
sort of people coming in and claiming refugee status all
that they some of those people are just in a
massive drag on the economy. And we now have you know,
third generation immigrant welfare families. This is none of this
is good for the local people. And again, if your
argument is, well, if we let in tons of incredibly

(59:50):
poor third world people will drive down wages, which is
what a lot of Rockefeller Republican Chamber of Commerce types
really want. You know, you can get a cheaper cleaning lady,
Well that's not a very good argument. I mean, you said,
I don't mind paying more, and I think that's the
sort of Trump appeal he represents people now at the
bottom end. And what I think one of the things

(01:00:11):
is that the political spectrum around the democratic world has
sort of flipped and conservative parties basically get the working
class vote now. And that's because left wing parties used
to be Dennis Healey type redistribution of wealth parties. But
they weren't woke, and they weren't progressive on social issues,

(01:00:33):
and they didn't you know, have a problem with humor.
And now basically, left wing parties have become the party
of human rights barristers who see international law as preferable
to domestic law, who see something tawdry. Yeah, well, if
they think there's something tawdry about a plumber having the
same say in public affairs as they get because you know,

(01:00:55):
they've got three degrees, and it's you know, it's very distasteful.
I've never liked it. I've always written about it. But
the more that left wing parties become the party of
the inner city progressive elites, the more the conservative parties
are just representing the sort of average working percent and
that's a majority, yep. And that's what Trump's figured out.

(01:01:15):
I mean, he had not a single endorsement from any
publication I think, except for the New York Post. Even
the Wall Street Journal probably didn't support him. And it
didn't matter. He got incredibly negative cover because people have
realized that the legacy media has become a sort of
left wing talking shop. It's said, and it's sad, it's sad,

(01:01:37):
but you you don't get a fair deal.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
By the way, have I noticed a swing to the lift, Well, yeah,
a swing to the lift on the part of the Australian.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
I think so, but again they occasionally published me I
should be a little careful. I think if you go
about ten or twelve thirteen years it was yes, I
think that's true. And where all of us are petrified.
What's going to happen when Rupert Murdoch goes because his
kids one of them's okay and the other ones are
pretty well, aren't they? And you know, I mean, it's

(01:02:07):
a very prop offitable business and maybe that will override
their desire. But the more the more the Murdoch empire
tried to turn itself into a New York Times outlet,
readers and the watchers will go I think I know
mister Murdoch was trying to run a case and where
was it Delaware or somewhere to get the least wokes

(01:02:29):
under control? Vump I think that failed, didn't it?

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
I'm not sure that. Let me, as we head to
the exit door, let me make mention of two things
and you can trick them as short as you want.
Under the heading of married law expert says Ta Kanga,
progress in the judicial system is unstoppable. Mamari Stephens says

(01:02:54):
it'll take two decades for the two systems to fuse
together into a at a rower, New Zealand law, Mary
law and ta Kanga expert Mamari Stephens says judges are
looking for application to presume it's Toura tic kanya, Tura
ti kanya or Mary law in cases before them. Judges

(01:03:16):
are looking at application of this. That trend is set
together momentum from next year twenty twenty five, when the
general principles and practices of Ti kung and Mary become
a compulsory subject in law studies. The expert says, like
the common law, it will take decades for the two

(01:03:37):
systems to fuse together into ayatiro and New Zealand law.
But that's how it should be. The response I'm looking
for is what will that mean for the law?

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Well, if you're asking for a prediction, she might be
right because basically right wing parties are gutless. I mean
the National Party should have been passing legislation to deal
with this, because you're the judges are going down this road.
They've been to law schools. They buy into this sort
of what I would call mythology. I don't again, I
don't even know what it means to say t kanga

(01:04:14):
mawori that you take a few amorphous concepts sort of
like I don't know, respect that sort of lingers after
you die, and you sort of you say that Peter
Ellis should have been you know, pardoned, but you didn't
need any of that. And anyway, there's so little content
to it that you're not really sure what's constraining. And

(01:04:35):
the more law is open ended, and the more law
is unconstraining, the more that decisions are made at the
point of application by unelected judges. You can see why
judges like this because they're going to be making the calls.
And that just means that all that matters when you
appoint a judge is whether he or she is, you know,
what are their political views. This is the American approach.

(01:04:57):
And one of the things with unconstrained sort of legal materials,
which I would say is true of bills of rights,
but even more true of just whatever t kanga mawori is,
is that everything becomes political at the point of applification.
And the Americans have two hundred plus years of dealing
with this, and they know they have an openly political

(01:05:19):
appointments process, and you know, American in the in the
Westminster world, the British world. We talk about the judges
when they when they give a decision, we talk about
their judgment. The Americans talk about their opinion because they
see everything as just an opinion, which is true. I think.
I think the American terminology judgment connotes that they've set

(01:05:40):
down and they've had this well considered thing, completely divorced
from any subjective biases, and it's just garbage. You know,
your top court of late is imposing sort of progressive
shiblis on the rest of us. Well, there's an easy
way to deal with that. In New Zealand, which has
no written constitution, just pass a few statutes and lux
and just doesn't have it in them. I mean, I

(01:06:01):
if I were New Zealand first or act, I would
be not happy with the lack of courage. But I suppose.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
If as if, as time goes by over the next
twelve months or so, and there was growing dissatisfaction with
National which of those two parties the two other parties,
would you think which one of them would be the
most effective.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
I don't know. I mean, I mean Winston Peters. When
he's good, he's good, and when he's bad he's terrible.
He should have never put into urduring in in my view,
but that was spited.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Well, he got admit that because he'd never be able
to sleep and he'd have to hide his head in shame.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
So yes, yes he would. He would have to do that,
and that caused a lot of problems, and you know,
partly it was National Party incompetence, but yes, I agree
with that. Well, you know, I think they both served
different markets. And given you have the terrible m MP
voting system, as long as they both get in, they
those two parties should be able to work together on

(01:07:08):
at least some issues many. Probably the problem for the
National Party is they represent a sort of leftover wealthy
types don't want to pick fights or a bit cowardly.
They don't they can put their kids into private schools.
They don't care about culture issues because they you know,
they stable two parent families and they can talk to

(01:07:30):
the kids at home, and you know, it's not good
for the rest of us down the road. And then
when you know, a sort of maverick outlawer comes in
and wins in the US, they're more they're more horrified
by Trump than they are by the complete devastation that
was brought on by Biden or just Sender or Adurn,
you know, because Trump doesn't talk like an educated person.

(01:07:52):
He's quite smart, but he does, you know. He he's
somebody they can't And one of the things I yeah,
one of the things I like about Trump is everything
he's doing. He said he was going to do before
the election. He said he was going to bring in terrorists,
he said he was going to fight the every single
thing he did, he's promised. Now. I don't know about you,

(01:08:13):
but for me, as a Canadian who's lived in Britain
and here in New Zealand, right of center political parties
continually promise things and then they never deliver. And so
Trump is this refreshing breath of fresh air where I
said I'm gonna do this, and I'm doing it and
if you don't like it, don't vote for me. Is
effectively the motto. We're used to this sort of wink wink,

(01:08:35):
nudge nudge. Yes, we'll say a few things, we're going
to sort out, you know, the the sort of group
identity politics stuff, and then they get in and well,
you know that's a bit hard. We don't want to
we don't want to deal with a few radicals who
might have aggressive protest movements or something. You know, it's
just it's it's it's it's just a weakness. And the

(01:08:57):
left never seems to be the left side of politics
is less weak. You know, in a way I sort
of admired them. They win, and then they start doing.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
Stuff, and they reward themselves rather well for too.

Speaker 3 (01:09:09):
Especially definitely they definitely do that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
So last point, and it doesn't have to be long.
The chief irony of Chief Justice John Roberts tenure at
the Supreme Court is that the man so doggedly devoted
to defending the judiciary has done so much to undermine it.
In doing so, he has threatened not only the Court's legitimacy,

(01:09:34):
but the republic itself. Comment.

Speaker 3 (01:09:39):
Yeah, I mean it started with the Obamacare case, the
Affordable Care Act, where he just changed it was going
to lose on a proper understanding of the Constitution on
federalism grounds, so he just called it a tax, even
though neither lawyer had argued it was at tax, and
in fact Obama had said it wasn't a tax because
he didn't want the judges to be seen as meddling

(01:10:01):
in you know, a big ticket political issue over how
you deal with medicine and healthcare. And then you know
he dissented in Daubs. That's the tasted over ruled road v. Wade.
And he's always trying it seems like his judicial philosophy
is what is the most politically popular position here, and

(01:10:24):
he's very low. We don't want too many changes. But
the problem is if you have a written constitution, I
don't like them. But if you're going to have one,
then the judge's job is to apply the rules. Now,
I'm an originalist. You're constrained by what was intended by
the people who passed the constitution, and if you don't

(01:10:45):
like that, you amend the constitution. And by being so
overtly political Roberts, he's made everyone angry and so unfortunately
on a couple of cases he's gotten the woman Amy
Barrett Counney to play along with him. We'll see what happens.
The big issue right now are these nationwide injunctions by

(01:11:07):
district court federal judges in the US. I think there's
about seven hundred of them. And you know, the Democrats,
having lost in voting booth are so do they look
for favorable, they forum shop and they find a Democrat judge,
and then the Democrat judge issues. So this is pretty
low level. This is these are district court judges. They
issued nationwide injunctions. These are pretty new. They didn't have

(01:11:30):
them until about fifty or sixty years ago, so throughout
most of US history. And there were more of these
injunctions issues in the first you know, month and a
half of Trump two than you saw going back to
I think Kennedy. And so if you're going to play
that kind of game, it's a very dangerous game to

(01:11:51):
play because it's it's pretty overtly political. Now, the Supreme
Court could have sorted that out. They had a five
to four decision on a temporary injunction, can't remember the
name of it, Missouri or something, and they just sort
of sloughed it off. They said, we can only decide
to later when it's you know, when it's not temporary anymore.
They should have sorted it right then. I mean, it'd

(01:12:13):
be quite easy just to say district court judges cannot
issue national injunctions and it has to go to a
circuit court of appeal or you know, they could even
have the Supreme Court could say only weaken issue nationwide injunctions.
That would be fine, because I can tell you what
the Republicans will learn from this. They will learn to
appoint a bunch of district court judges so that when

(01:12:35):
the Democrats are next in, the judges block everything they
try to do. And the normal rule is that the
left does things aggressively and the right doesn't at first,
and then the right does too. It's like the blocking
and getting rid of the filibuster, and any any Republican
with the brain is going to say, okay, well we'll
do this too. You will get nothing through. And it's

(01:12:55):
it's there's no democratic theory in the world that thinks
it's a good idea to be able to look around
at seven hundred odd judges and find one and they've
all been appointed by Democrats to issue these Trump blocking injunctions.
At the very least, you ought to have gone up
and had a full panel of one of the Circuit

(01:13:16):
Court of Appeals. But again, maybe even only the US
Supreme Court should be able to enjoin the executive because
if they don't have our Westminster system, they have they
have an overt separation of power system right in the Constitution.
The executive is the president, so you don't so the
constitution overrides statutes. If the president wants to do something

(01:13:39):
that's part of the executive power, he gets to do it.
And so I I I'm waiting to see what the
Supreme Court was. I think that Amy Conant Bearer will
come back when it gets to be the full non
temporary injunction. And if she comes back, then the amazing
thing about Roberts is he might flip over to you know,
he's he doesn't like being in the minority. I think

(01:14:02):
he got pilloried a lot in Daubs. That's you know.
I think that was the right decision, whatever you think
about it. Abortion. Nothing in the US Constitution stopped state
governments from legislating one way or another. And ironically, after
all the scaremongering, it turned out it didn't cost Trump
the election. And there are basically the same number of

(01:14:23):
abortions in the US today that than there was before.
Because if you live in California, the rules have loosened,
and if you live in Mississippi, they've gotten a bit tighter.
So if you're a woman in Mississippi, it's true you
have to take get in the car and drive over
state lines. But that's called democracy. You can't expect every
policy to go your way. I'd like a few to

(01:14:45):
go my way here in Australia, but not getting too
much going our way right now?

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):
Where do you keep at it?

Speaker 3 (01:14:53):
All? Right? Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
I'll leave you with one thing to ponder. I'm looking
at I'm looking at the back cover of the spine
of a book on my shelf, Scalia. If Antonin Scalia
was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, what a
wonderfully different world it would be.

Speaker 3 (01:15:13):
That is true. But you know what I have moved.
I've always liked Cilia, but I now think Clarence Thomas
is even better.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
Well, guess what's next door to Scalia? Clarence.

Speaker 3 (01:15:23):
Yeah, that's a good that's a good autobiography he wrote
about himself. You know what he made. He made a
mistake at the front cover that many many people make
where they he quotes that famous line from Robert Frost.
Two roads diverged in the wood, and I took the
one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
And I used to think the same as everyone else

(01:15:44):
that you know that meant you have made choices in life,
and that really affected how you played your life played out.
And my wife and I went with friends to Vermont
and hiked from ind to in and we got to
the Robert Frost area. And it turns out when you
read the entire poem, not just the last stanza, Frost
actually was saying, it doesn't matter what choice you make,

(01:16:05):
it's talking to turn out the same. And it's just
one of those poems where when you read the whole thing,
you just go, oh God, I've had this wrong the
whole time. It's it's quite breathing. It was quite a
clever poem by Robert Frost. It's it's a bit disappointing,
but it's clever.

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
So The Age of Foolishness a Doubter's guide to constitutionalism
in a modern democracy. I'm going to order it almost
straight straight away.

Speaker 3 (01:16:33):
The more the merry I can keep my I can
keep my wife and the lifestyle she deserves, I.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
Better pay double them, all right, Jim, outstanding, outstanding, great,
Thank you all right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:46):
By buck.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
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It's a dual action antihistamine it has it's a unique
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(01:17:17):
twenty four hours. Leverrix is a tiny tablet that unblocks
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So next time you're in need of an effective antihistamine,
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(01:17:38):
Levrix and always read the label. Takes directed and if
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Speaker 3 (01:17:52):
Layton Smith.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
I went to the mail room for podcast two hundred
and seventy nine, missus producer. You're doing well.

Speaker 4 (01:17:59):
Late, No fabulous, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:18:01):
I've got something to share with you. Oh but I'll
save it till the back end can barely wait. Very good.
Why don't you go? As indeed?

Speaker 4 (01:18:10):
Vincent says, I can't help but laugh at the media
and their reports. Sorry opinions of an economic nuclear winter
as a result of President Trump's tariff move. What people
don't seem to appreciate is that he's done this to
protect the domestic interests of the United States and those
who voted for him. He's not beholden to the rest

(01:18:31):
of the world. Most average Americans won't be shareholders, so
they'll be keen to see the prices of everyday goods
go down as a result of increased manufacturing within their
own country. They won't be worried about their non existent
stock portfolios. Keep up the great work. You're both really appreciated, Vincent,
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:18:51):
Indeed, Vincent, very good from Nick. I've just listened to
your podcast with doctor Guy Hatchard's on what really happened
with the recent COVID nineteen pandemic. I've always been a
COVID nineteen vaccine skeptic and would like to let you
know that there are now very good reasons for being so.

(01:19:11):
Please refer to the two attachments below, which show a
six hundred and ten percent increase in the risk of myocarditis,
a three hundred and seventy eight percent increase in the
risk of disseminated encephalom eulitis not encephalitis, no in cephalon eulitis.
So i'd spell a three hundred and twenty three percent

(01:19:34):
increase in the risk of cerebral frombrosis, at a two
hundred and forty nine percent increase in the risk of
Gillian bar syndrome, and still the vaccine has not been withdrawn.
For your information, I have sent the same attachments to
the Prime Minister Leaders of the Coalition, Simeon Brown and
doctor Shane Retty. I have taken this action because the

(01:19:55):
Gene Technology Bill will allow biotechnologists a free reign to
take risks that are likely to result in similar outcomes.
The question that must be asked is are they deliberately
trying to kill us? Perhaps in your rival's a well
known podcaster, you might be able to put this to

(01:20:16):
the appropriate Minister of the Crown. The answer is well,
the comment I have is you've sent this to all
in Sundry, well to a few people. I will be
very surprised if you advise me that you heard back
from any of them. Maybe you'll get something saying from
an assistant assistant that we've got it, thanks, we don't care,

(01:20:40):
or something along those lines. But if you do, if
you do get a reply from any of the people
that you directly sent it, to or thought you did,
then let me know.

Speaker 4 (01:20:48):
Leyton Bretzt written to you about New Zealand first introducing
bill that gives democracy back to the people. That's his subject,
and he says of it sounds all good until one
considers how often we actually see a conscience vote as
for us, say, in social fabric issues. I note the
New Zealand people had no say on any of it

(01:21:09):
regarding the last government or the last fifty years. On
many issues, New Zealand people are still locked out of
important issues facing the nation, and government will do what
they like regardless. Would we the public do any better?
Given how one sided, destructive and unbalanced our institutions and
aspects of society have become. I'm not actually sure that

(01:21:32):
our representatives represent the people so much as the party.
I don't feel well represented. There's no full proof system
of governance. But please, can we do something better than
we are?

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
I'm hearing that more and more, and I don't hold abreast.
You know how change happens. It happens mostly when people
demand it, and enough people demanded, and so the responsibilities
really on all of our shoulders. It's mychaol re your
discussion with Matt Margolis from Warren. This quote from the

(01:22:05):
book A Mountain of Crumbs by Elena Godakova addresses some
of the points raised. The rules are simple. They lie
to us. We know they're lying, They know that we
know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and
we keep pretending to believe them. Also, I can advise that,

(01:22:26):
regarding the space station astronauts, Channel seven and nine here
in Brisbane covered their recovery and return but did not
once mention Elon Musk or Trump. Of course, this is
no surprise. I had watched similar coverage on a Newsmax
stream and saw Slash heard both astronauts expressing their gratitude
to both Musk and Trump. As expected, TDS and MDS

(01:22:50):
are alive and well in Australia too. There was something
I was going to add there. Look for news on
the Newsmax front. It's going to be upcoming fairly shortly
in Australia.

Speaker 4 (01:23:04):
Layton Chris says, you wondered why write leaning politics finds
it much harder to gain consensus than the left. Could
the answer be staring us in plain sight, Those on
the left have little value for human life, personal freedom, choice,
or individual thought. The evidence for this is overwhelming. Because
humans are so diverse, any system that values individual contributions

(01:23:26):
will invariably have dissenters, rebels, and people able to logically
articulate different views. So the right will always be more
fragmented as people align differently on each unique topic. Thus,
I can only conclude that a certain amount of brainwashing
must take place on the left. So for those who
wish to reach the brainwashed left, we must understand that

(01:23:49):
debating their politics is a losing battle. Instead of winning
the mind, we must win the heart by giving them
a better place to belong.

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):
Been good. This is This is interesting considering the interview
today discussion today. I alternate between the two words depending
on how I feel about it. There was a discussion,
and I prefer them now as conversation rises. In the
wake of Donald Trump's victory, there seems to be a

(01:24:20):
corresponding increase in judicial activism and lawfare around the world.
The corrupt activist judge James Mooseburg orchestrated his own judicial
assignments to thwart every single Trump initiative. French leftists weaponize
lawfare to ban marine le penn from the twenty twenty
seven election, the New Zealand High Court dismissed real estate

(01:24:43):
agent Janet Dixon's claim that the real estate agent's authority
unlawfully mandated a Mari course that goes against her own religion.
I believe the proliferation of judicial activism and lawfare can
be boiled down to one core problem, a corrupt, immoral,
and impotent fourth estate. Thankfully, as mainstream media grows increasingly dishonest,

(01:25:07):
new alternative mean there is reporting honestly. PJ Media's Matt
Margolis exposed Bosburg for lying about being randomly assigned to
rule against Trump's deportation of criminal illegal aliens, when a
transcript revealed he already knew the case was coming and
had planned accordingly. The European Conservative reports the increasing conservative

(01:25:28):
backlash against Lepen's false imprisonment. The New Zealand Free Speech
Union wrote a press release about intervening in Janet Dixon's
appeal case. I find it utterly hypocritical that the New
Zealand mainstream media would which hunt the hell out of
poor Andrew Bailey, who merely touched someone's arm in a
heated discussion, and yet remained completely silent on the Green

(01:25:51):
Party's Benjamin Doyle, who suggestively kisses his own son on
the lips and posts sexually suggestive emojis about children. The
old fourth Estate has passed away, the new fourth Estate
has come thanks for being part of New Zealand's leading
new Force of States. So the comment that I would
make on that is that it was very timely considering

(01:26:14):
the discussion that we've just still listened to.

Speaker 4 (01:26:17):
Laden Susan writes about homeschooling, and this is quite lengthy
but very interesting. We're still homeschooling here in New Zealand,
and I wanted to share something we encountered. We have
an eclectic mix of curricula that we use for our
three children, but have chosen Cambridge for our science studies
because it's supposed to be comparatively rigorous and it's used

(01:26:38):
by many of the top private schools in New Zealand.
And she sends a photo from the Cambridge University Presses
course book for a year nine student, and she wants
to show you that the subunit is called protecting the Environment.
The summary section at the end is particularly telling, says Susan.

(01:26:59):
In the other sub units, the summaries are filled with
scientific phenomena processes, principles, and facts as you would expect
of a science book. Here's the summary for this unit.
Nations all over the world are acting together to try
and reduce the harm we do to the environment. The
rams Are Convention has helped to save many wetlands. There

(01:27:23):
has been great success in reducing CFC emissions, and finally
it is proving very difficult to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
And Susan says, I suppose it was a good lesson
on arguable presuppositions, propaganda, and what science is and what
it is not to be honest. We have been disappointed

(01:27:45):
with modern Western curricula. We have modern books and older books,
and it's clear that the general rigger is gone. The
modern books have less actual content and are distracting with
bright layouts and images. This particular series seems to be
obsessed with representing diversity, such as using uncommon foreign names

(01:28:06):
when talking about fictitious students in their examples, and showing
images of these fictitious students like ones wearing his jobs.
The whole concept of adding kids to their examples seems
to be a contrivance of a dei initiative rather than
an educational methodology. I know this may seem monocuous, but
I can tell you that along with this we also

(01:28:28):
see errors on a regular basis. Clearly the authors were
distracted too. The ideological takeover of many of our institutions
has a common route, stemmed by the ideological takeover of
our education system. Healing our institutions will take healing our
children's minds. I'm not suggesting a magic bullet, but a

(01:28:50):
turnaround in education would ripple through society. Still loving your podcast,
and that's from Susan.

Speaker 2 (01:28:57):
Susan superb and correct in as far as I could
tell every sense. Thank you. Now I'll explain. I'll explain
who the author is at the end of this, but
I have to work my way through it. It's too
long for me to read in its entirety, but I

(01:29:17):
will extract as we go. I miss your News Talks
EDB show. Every morning I listen to the radio. Unfortunately,
our sound system cannot pick up newstalks EDB and we
are forced to listen to a bunch of others on
coast in the morning. Please don't get me started on
my opinion of the show. I'm currently listening to your

(01:29:40):
podcast to seven eight with Matt mcgoulas fascinating gentlemen, well
worth your investment in interviewing him for your podcast. Do
you know the doc the gentleman in charge of the
Sport and Recreation bachelor degree that I graduated in in
two thousand and nine once made a valuable statement to me.

(01:30:01):
It was referring to me. He said, you think higher
education is all about answers and the correct ones, but
do you know the real purpose of higher education? I answered, no,
I don't. He replied, it is about asking the correct questions.
I have never forgotten his wife's statement. I will endeavor

(01:30:24):
to listen to more of your smart podcasts. Laton, just
heard your statements on how kiwis get fed a diet
of left wing socialist media, and I couldn't agree more.
And unfortunately has got worse or somehow has increased. The
ratio is not equal fifty to fifty left right slanted
media content. What what is your estimate measurement? Laton? My

(01:30:46):
wife and I always watched TV one News at six pm. However,
over the years it has somehow slowly but surely increased
its political angle of investigating and reporting toward the left.
Mind you, I guess it, sir, has always been like that. Why,
you could say, because it's a state funded television station,

(01:31:07):
therefore it must or needs to cater for most of
its audience preferences, and that would be leftist or socialist
political beliefs. I've noted how all the reporters now appear
to angle this stor is toward leftist socialist view and
I do and I don't agree with this. And the
question then is are the reporters leftist socialist voters or

(01:31:28):
they have leftist socialist political views. The answer, of course
they do. Absolutely. During my studies toward my bachelor I
missed out a bit hit. But during my studies toward
my bachelor degree the two thousand to two thousand and nine,
I was fed a diet of leftist socialist angles of education,
and of course I swallowed it hook line and sinker,

(01:31:50):
came out favoring the leftist socialist in my thinking. I
can't tell you how long it took me to understand
my thinking was incorrect. However, I changed my political beliefs
to the center right, and I am so thankful and
relieved I did. What concerns me, latent is this constant
left wing socialist agenda of education being fed to students
in our system. It is wrong on so many levels.

(01:32:14):
The education system teaches students now to become university students
join left wing socialist groups and organizations that are funded
by the state at tend protests and align themselves with
the left Why And that's where I'm going to leave it,
because it gets quite intense. And at the end he says, Now,

(01:32:35):
I'll tell you what he says at the end of
a minute, let me tell you who he is. His
name is Layton Smith. He comes from the Deep South,
and I got to know him through this is producer
keep me in my lane, please, But I got to
know him through a phone call I believe I got

(01:32:56):
or was it a message anyway either way from a
woman who said, this fellow is in hospital having had
a motorbike accident where he lost his leg and his hip,
and he's miserable on account of the fact that his
name is the same as yours, would you please consider

(01:33:16):
giving him a call or words to that effect. So
I rang him in the hospital and he couldn't believe it.
It was fun and we corresponded quite a lot, and
he rang the program a few times, quite a few times,
and he wrote to me a lot, and I haven't
heard from him in the last few years, and so
I'm very pleased lately to hear from you and that
everything's great with what you referred to as you and

(01:33:40):
your wife, and you ask at the end, hope you
and Carolyn are happy, and well, do you want to
know a secret? It's not going to be a secret
for much longer. Thirteen is my lucky number. I was
born on Friday of the thirteenth. I've got my driving
license on Friday the thirteenth, thirteen years between Carolyn and me,
and today, this very day is our thirteenth wedding anniversary.

(01:34:03):
So there you go. We're out of here. We're going
We're going to celebrate exactly as a producer. Happy anniversary.

Speaker 4 (01:34:10):
Thank you, darling.

Speaker 2 (01:34:11):
You're most welcome. Now, what you were about to hear

(01:34:35):
maybe the best. If it's not the best, then it's
certainly in the top grouping of opinions on the current
tariff situation, and it explains some of the misunderstandings that
exist and that you hear every day on whatever media
that you get your information from. At the end of it,

(01:34:56):
I will credit the author. I wanted just to be
a statement that I believe is so good you can
make up your own mind. On April second, President Donald J.
Trump did something no other president has had the spine
to do. He declared Liberation Day and slapped sweeping tariffs
on the very nations that have been gutting the American

(01:35:17):
economy for decades. A ten percent universal tariff across all imports,
targeted punitive tariffs up to thirty four percent on bad
actors like China. And guess what we should be furious
Not a Trump, but at the spineless presidents before him
who let things get this bad in the first place.

(01:35:37):
Let's be clear, these tariffs did not start a trade war,
they responded to one. For decades, our so called allies
and trading partners have been gleefully waging economic warfare on
the United States with the full permission, no the encouragement,
of prior administrations. China flooded our markets with cheap steel,

(01:35:59):
violating trade norms and collapsing American mills. The European Union
protected its own industries whilst slapping barriers on ours, and
Taiwan and others enjoyed one sided access to our consumers
while shielding their own markets with layers of red tape
and tariffs. And what did our leaders do in response?

(01:36:20):
They looked the other way, smiled, shook hands, signed one
sided trade deals, sold us out. They told us it
was for the global good, for peace and prosperity, But
the only people prospering were in Beijing, Brussels, and Tokyo.
In smalltown Ohio, Detroit, and western Pennsylvania, all we got

(01:36:43):
were pink slips and bordered up factories. Trump's Liberation Day
tariffs long overdue justice. They're a correction to a rigged
game that's been hurting American businesses, workers, and families for
far too long. Let's talk steel and aluminium. In twenty eighteen,
President Trump placed a twenty five percent tariff on foreign

(01:37:05):
steel and ten percent on aluminium to pushback against dumping
and reclaim our national security edge. That was not a
rash decision. It was backed by years of data showing
our dependence on foreign metals made us vulnerable. Yet in
that time, d C elites told us to let it happen,

(01:37:28):
that free trade meant letting foreign nations cheat while we
played by the rules. Even our farmers haven't been spared.
Take California as almungrowers part of a twenty three point
six billion agriculture export economy. Under previous administrations, they were
hung out to dry as countries like China and India

(01:37:49):
retaliated against our lack of backbone by imposing their own
crushing tariffs. Instead of defending our farmers, those in power
shrugged and said it was the cost of doing business
in a global economy. Its nonsense at its unforgivable. Now,
the hand riggers in the media and predicted the Biden
administration holdovers are moaning that these tariffs could raise consumer prices,

(01:38:14):
that they could cause friction, that they might prompt retaliation.
Good let them squirm, because the goal here is not
to make life easy for globalist bureaucrats. It's to bring
fairness back to American trade, to restore dignity to American work,
and to put America first unapologetically. Treasury Secretary Basant was

(01:38:39):
right to warn other nations not to retaliate. The message
is simple. This isn't about starting fights. It's about ending
decades of economic surrender. For too long, the US has
subsidized the success of other nations while they've exploited our openness.
That ends now. Then we begin on a different angle,

(01:39:00):
and this is one that I think New Zealand needs
to pay attention to. I have ever since. Well, this
reveals itself, and I think that we fall into the
same category. Let's talk about the bigger picture. These tariffs
are not just about economics. They're about sovereignty and national security.
COVID nineteen exposed what happens when America offshores everything from

(01:39:21):
microchips to medicine. We were left scrambling. Now with these tariffs,
we have a shot at rebuilding critical industries here at home.
You think New Zealand isn't or doesn't share that same issue.
We've heard for years that American manufacturing is a relic
of the past, that we should get used to service
sector jobs, that we can just code apps and order

(01:39:45):
stuff from China. But what happens when China turns off
the tap? What happens when global supply chains buckle. We
need American factories, we need American steel, we need Americans
building things again. Tariffs may cause short term adjustments, but
they paved the way for long term independence, and that's

(01:40:06):
worth every penny. The truth is these tariffs are a
moral issue. When we allow foreign governments to manipulate currency,
exploit labor, and dump products in our market, we're enabling injustice.
And when our own leaders look the other way, they
are complicit. President Trump isn't just fixing trade, He's exposing

(01:40:27):
the rot. He's showing us how many American politicians were
more loyal to global think tanks than to the people
who elected them. And that's what really stings the establishment,
because Trump, like Reagan before him, puts the American people first,
not in retrick, not in focus grouped slogans, but in action, bold, unapologetic,

(01:40:50):
unmistakable action. Where Reagan challenged the Soviets, Trump is challenging
a corrupt globalist system. And just like Reagan was right,
then Trump is right now. If you're not angry about
these tariffs, you're not paying attention. We should be furious
that it took this long to get here, Furious at
presidents who smiled while our industries died, Furious at politicians

(01:41:14):
who used Middle America as a bargaining chip for Davos klout.
But thanks to Trump, the tide is turning. He may
be the only president since Reagan who's had the courage
to stare down the world and say you will not
take advantage of America anymore. And for that, every American,
every farmer, every factory worker, every small business owner should

(01:41:35):
be standing and cheering because it's about time someone stood
up for us. Shame on the ones who didn't, and
thank God for the one who finally did. Now I
know that that's some American oriented, but through much of that,
especially when I made mention of it about independence, about pharmaceuticals, etc.

(01:42:00):
Took me back when I read this, took me right
back to the beginning, to the beginning of COVID, when
we were confronted by a problem and that was supply,
and I remember taking part in a discussion on it
that with regard to New Zealand and our lack of
independence in pharmaceuticals and how we depend very much on

(01:42:23):
China and other countries to well help us out. It's
fine at the moment, although very recently, relatively recently anyway,
we've had the restrictions put on not three months supply
of essential pills, but one month at a time because
the supply chain was not giving enough at that time,

(01:42:44):
and nothing's changed since. As far as I'm aware, you
still only get one month's supply, not three as it
used to be. And that's an example of where we
will strike the rocks if we don't do something about it. Now,
show me a tell me who in government over the
last few governments, but particularly over the last two, including

(01:43:07):
the present one, has done anything with regard to pharmaceuticals
or establishing something here or helping and aiding and abetting
someone to establish it here. Now, if I've made a
mistake here and something's happened since my memory serves me,
then tell me so, and I be very pleased, and

(01:43:28):
I'd be too happy to withdraw and relax a bit.
But in the meantime, just as I'm aware, that's the
way that it stands, and we should be demanding it
of whoever is in a position to do something about it.

Speaker 3 (01:43:43):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:43:43):
That commentary was written by one Kevin McCulloch mc culugh,
not Rob McCulloch, but Kevin McCulloch and taken from town
Hall dot com. Now, as we are about to send

(01:44:06):
this off for publication, I have received some figures from
Patrick Basham and the Democracy Institute and the Democracy Institute
National Poll for the Daily Express at a pile of
thirteen hundred likely American voters. Now, this is on the tariffs,
and the figures fall this way. Forty eight percent of

(01:44:28):
Americans hold, forty eight percent say good, forty one percent
say bad, and eleven percent are unsure. So the goods
winning at the moment. We'll see how long that lasts.
Only time is going to tell, and only time will
provide the answer to all of this. But it is,
if nothing else, fascinating to watch, and that will take

(01:44:50):
us out for podcasts two one hundred and seventy nine. Now,
if you would like to correspond, feel free go for
your life Layton at newstalksb dot co dot enz or
Carolyn at NEWSTALKSMB dot co dot nz logic complaints with
herpleas and I'll take the rest. In a few day's time,
we shall return with podcast number two hundred and eighty,

(01:45:12):
and I can tell you that we'll be dealing with
the Australian election and there's plenty to this, plenty to discuss.
So until then, as usual, there is only one thing
to say, thank you for listening, and we'll talk soon.

Speaker 1 (01:45:34):
Thank you for more from News Talks at b Listen
live on air or online, and keep our shows with
you wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio

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Leighton Smith Podcast #279 - April 9th 2025 - James Allan

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Leighton Smith Podcast #279 - April 9th 2025 - James Allan