Leighton Smith Podcast #276 - March 19th 2025 - Michael De Percy - The Leighton Smith Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talks EDB. Follow
this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
It's time for all the attitude, all the opinion, all
the information, all the debates of us Now the Leighton
Smith podcast Power by News Talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to Podcasts two hundred and seventy six for March nineteen,
twenty twenty five. Doctor Michael de Percy is a political
scientist and the Faculty of Business, Government and Law at
the University of Canberra. He says the education system is
exhausted and AI is going to replace so many people.
But he says what he calls the inertia in institutions

(00:52):
spreads far wider the WHO and the United Nations. For example.
Now in last week's podcast, I dropped in a short
paragraph at one stage that read, Trump's art of the
deal is the most democratic thing we have seen since
the experts told us to trust the science. Einstein reportedly

(01:12):
said that one fact, rather than a hundred experts, could
prove him wrong. Trump has done in less than two
months what thousands of experts have failed to do in years.
And that is a fact. And that was the final
paragraph from an article by Michael de Percy, Trump's Art
of the Deal, Trump's the Science. And that's how we
begin the interview and then cover a raft of other

(01:35):
interesting and pressing topics, but first a covet of other
things that interest me and I believe interests you connected
to areas that affect the whole world at the moment,
well pretty much certainly us and where this story actually
emanates from. I attended Apple's and your meeting. It was

(01:57):
a turning point against ESG ANDDI. Keeping in mind that
ESG is Environmental, Social and governance. I attended Apple's annual
meetings several weeks ago. I saw many signs of how
corporate culture is shifting away from ESG and DEEI now
to understand why. Let's briefly discuss the basics of how

(02:17):
people actually engage with minor corporations and goes into some detail.
I'm going to pass on that and skip to the
final paragraph. The activist class that pushes for ESG, DEI
and biased corporate policies now has to contend with their
worst nightmares. Shareholders who want businesses to focus on business,

(02:41):
not politics. A growing infrastructure is committed to maximizing pro
fiduciary influence at America's biggest companies, and the political space
is incredibly ripe for this action. Apple is just the beginning,
Laten Smith for many across the world. A US Federal

(03:02):
Reserves decision to exit the network for greening the financial
system is that central banks can refocus on their primary mandates. Well,
who would have thought stabilizing economies, controlling inflation and fostering growth. Currently,
ENNGFS membership includes central banks and financial institutions from twenty

(03:24):
two countries in Africa, thirty two in Asia Pacific, and
twenty in the Americas, which may now be emboldened to
reevaluate and abandon whatever priority they have assigned to climates initiatives.
It then gets on to another matter, but it's associated.
For instance, Canada's federal government has implemented a plethora of

(03:46):
climate policies, leading to higher carbon taxes, more volatility in
the energy sector, lower export income, and overall disastrous state
of the economy. Aspiring to drive Canada toward more climate
idiocy is Mark Karney, recently elected Canada's Prime Minister by
the ruling Liberal party. However, other Kannadians have different thoughts.

(04:09):
Major banks across North America relieving Mark Carney's international net
zero banking scheme, but some Canadian banks remain members. According
to Rebecca Schultz, Alberta Minister of the Environment in protected areas,
the remaining Canadian banks must abandon Carne's net zero banking
alliance and invest in safe, affordable, reliable Canadian energy again,

(04:35):
according to the minister, isn't that an amazing comment in
this day and age, how quickly things can turn. By
the way, Mark Carney will be a disaster. I think
I've said this somewhere else. He will be a disaster
and the Opposition leader would make a damn fine Prime minister. Now,
leading from that, with regard to central banks, let's move

(04:58):
to our own and Professor McCulloch on the fourth of March,
which was about the same time that Adrian Or did
his great walk out the door, never to be seen again,
and he wrote this, and I don't know whether it's
before or after the exit, but either way it's very good,
McCulloch says. Over the past six months, interest rates in

(05:19):
Australia had barely changed. Their official cash rate was four
point five percent back then and is now four point
twenty five. Not so in New Zealand. Our ocr has
swung from five point five to three point seventy five,
plummeting nearly two percentage points. How come well, Just over
six months ago, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand was

(05:41):
doing shock and awe O double ar It was desperately
trying to engineer a recession to quell the runaway inflation
that was caused by its runaway printing money program known
as quantitative easing. Six months later, New Zealand languishes as
one of the world's worst performing economies. I'm unaware of

(06:04):
whether you know this or not, of course, but I
didn't For some reason, I hadn't picked this up. We repeat,
New Zealand languishes is one of the world's worst performing economies,
coming in at one eighty one out of one ninety
country in terms of the IMS Economic growth numbers one

(06:25):
hundred and eighty first out of one hundred and ninety countries.
How low can this country slump? So now the RBNZ
has a new genius strategy engineer a boom. The proof
is in the Yel curve below. It shows one of
the wildest swings of any country that I've looked at
six months ago, our short term rates were way above

(06:47):
our long rates. Now the situation is reversed. The graph
shows how New Zealand has gone from panic tightening to
panic loosening. Yes, the Kiwi economy is characterized by a
close to zero sloped trend line rate of economic growth,
but with wild reserve bank induced booms and busts around
that near zero productivity increasing trend the worst way to

(07:11):
run a nation. National's response was to renew the contract
of why Cata University Vice Chancellor Neil Quigley last year.
The well connected man who has presided over this fiasco
as Chairman of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand good
one National. He concludes, what can I add to it?

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Nothing?

Speaker 2 (07:30):
However, there is some housekeeping that I need to deliver
unto you. For podcast two seven five. Nobody got an
email on the Wednesday of release. You did get emails
on this most recent Sunday. I cannot explain it to
you in great detail. What I know is that I've
got a notification on Wednesday evening after the podcast had

(07:55):
gone up. I think that there would be no emails
because of some technical changes, and those technical changes are ongoing.
Don't ask me, it's too complicated for my simple mind.
But there are some further changes that I now would
like to make you aware of. You will get one

(08:15):
today if you're on the list. Of course you have
to subscribe to It doesn't cost you anything to subscribe.
You can just get yourself listed and you get an email,
usually on a Wednesday, So there is one today, a
normal email. Then on Sunday next to twenty third of March,
there's a further selection of episodes from twenty twenty five

(08:36):
so far. Then Wednesday of next week there will be
no email. Please keep that in mind, so you simply
have to go help yourself to it from Newstalks AB
dot co dot nz in the podcast section. Next Wednesday,
no email. They're on Friday, the twenty eighth of March.
The Wednesday email content will fall into your box. Amazing,

(08:59):
isn't it? Anyway? They're doing their best to cover this off,
and it's all to do with improvements they're making too well.
I don't know whatever they think Opensteed making too pardon
by ignorance, but I don't care. I do care that
you're not getting your email, but I don't care why
that's just the way that it is now in a
moment or two. Michael de Percy, Doctor Michael de Percy

(09:25):
is a political scientist and a political commentator. He has
a long list of credits. Fellow of the Royal Society
of Arts, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of
Institute of Logistics and Transport, is a member of the
Royal Society of New South Wales, editor in chief of
the Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, and a

(09:47):
member of the Australian Nuclear Association. He is a graduate
of the Royal Military College of Duntrue. He was appointed
to the College of Experts which bothers me at the
Australian Research Council in twenty twenty two. He also was
a graduate of Australian National University and he is a
senior lecturer at the University of Canbra's very good to

(10:10):
have you on the podcast. I read your latest piece,
Trump's Art of the Deal, Trump's the Science, and I
thought got to have you. Thank you, great to be here.
What do you mean, Trump's Art of the Deal, Trump's
the Science.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
The first thing I'll say is that I teach political
leadership and a few years ago with my students who
were looking at how do we measure leaders And one
of the things we were looking at at the time
was Barack Obama. And over a period of eight years,
when you actually lined up what he'd actually achieved, it
was all symbolic. So symbolism obviously is a big part

(10:47):
of political leadership, but the actual achievements were very minor.
In fact, probably Obamacare was his major achievement, which was
effectively undone in the first Trump administration. So I started
looking a bit deeper into this idea of achievements and
what presidents in particular actually achieved, and when we come

(11:10):
to the second Trump administration, it's very interesting that Trump,
when he makes a deal, he starts with the worst
case scenario. So you can imagine, you know, basically the
strongest man in history at this point in time, and
if you're dealing with him, he's going to give you
this apocalypse apocalyptic sort of idea of what the future

(11:31):
could be like as his starting point. He then uses
that to create all of this sort of disruption and
puts the person he's negotiating with into this state of disarray.
He then sort of dials that back to ultimately achieve
what he's after. And the unfortunate thing I find is

(11:52):
that for the leader of the free world, the free
world's not supporting him. And we have all of these experts.
Each time he tries to or begins making a deal,
we have all of these experts. I noted you mentioned
my membership of the College of Experts of Istralian Research Council.
But the point that I'm making is that these people
Donald Trump, presidents of the US, our own prime ministers

(12:12):
and the like, they're actually elected by a majority of people,
which is what liberal democracy is all about. And unfortunately,
instead of having these people being backed by those experts,
effectively the experts are disagreeing with the voters. And Australian
Prime Minister John Howard famously said that the voters are

(12:34):
always right in a liberal democracy, if you get voted in,
it's the correct solution, that's what the people wanted. Unfortunately,
what we're seeing when Trump's trying to make these deals
immediately people are jumping on board saying that you know
this is this is not how things ought to be done,
you know the president's wrong, or you know that this

(12:55):
is disastrous for democracy and the ridiculous thing is that
in every measure, Donald Trump has been elected with an
outright majority across the board, in every measure of electoral success.
He achieved it the most recent US election, And I'm
finding it bizarre that as he's making these deals on

(13:16):
behalf of the American people, and with that the Anglo
liberal democracies, the people just aren't getting on board with it,
and they're sort of going off in their own expert opinions,
which frankly are great for advice, but they're not representative
of the people that voted these people into power.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Are they expert opinions?

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Though? Well, that's the other thing. If you were to
look at expertise in particular. Now you know, obviously different
people have these different views. In the US. Meerscheimer and
others have even gone against Trump, which I found quite
bizarre because traditionally they're very much about liberal institutionalism, and

(13:59):
when we look at liberal institutionalism effective, we were talking
about the liberal as in small l liberal, not in
the American sense of the word, but as the individual
is most capable of making their own decisions for themselves,
which leads to free speech and other ideas about liberal democracy.
And in our world order. Traditionally, the United Nations was

(14:21):
founded on these liberal democratic principles, which of course have
now been captured by smaller, non liberal democratic countries, which
means that the UN is effectively moved away from its mandate.
It's exhausted, it's been captured by other interests. And of
course the US has let this slide by not funding
it as it may once have. And of course Donald

(14:44):
Trump is in the business of undoing the world order
that effectively is no longer achieving its aim of bringing
liberals sort of democratic capitalism to the world.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
What is it do you think that prevents other world leaders, commentators,
experts from appreciating Trump for what he actually istently you do?
Where are they coming up short?

Speaker 3 (15:11):
It's interesting that this whole idea of woke and look wokeism,
the wokarati and someone that these terms are not necessarily
well defined. But I would put it in terms of
and sorry if I go a bit into history here,
but if we look at what we love, if we
look at John Stuart Mill and his classic work on liberty,

(15:35):
Mill look for the modern reader. If you read on
liberty now you're thinking, oh, there's nothing new in this
this this is basically how we live. But in Mill's
time it was radical. But one of the things that
there was a critique a quality fraternity. And I'm sorry,
I should should be able to recall this off the

(15:56):
top of my head, but in effect a critic wrote, uh,
this this this piece where he argued that liberalism in
it or individualism in its extreme, would actually be dangerous
for society. And what we're sort of seeing is that

(16:18):
the woke movement was about extreme individualism related with identity politics,
but to the point where the individual no longer head
for the concept of the common good. And the common
good is basically where individuals act in their own self interest,
but they also have this sort of tide of the

(16:38):
community that enables them to act within their own self interest,
but in a way where they're basically looking after themselves
so that nobody else has to look after them. And
you can imagine that as a society has more and
more people who need the society to look after them,
eventually we're going to run out of people who are
actually doing the heavy lifting. And so this idea of

(17:02):
extreme individualism at the expense of the common good has
got to a point where it's so many of us
are carrying those who are not carrying themselves. Now, this
originated in the United States, and so it's interesting that,
particularly here in Australia, we tend to be years behind
the United States. So any trend, even disastrous trends, that

(17:24):
start there, we tend to take on years later, even
when we're seeing the evidence that it's just you know,
it's a disaster. And so this woke idea of extreme
individualism through identity politics is something that's been picked up here,
but also in the UK to some extent, New Zealand,
and certainly certainly in Canada. And I refer to these

(17:44):
countries as the Anglo liberal democracies. And in many ways
what we've got at the moment are leftist governments in Canada,
the UK, and certainly in Australia. And these governments have
sort of run full bottle with the extreme individualism of
identity politics at the expense of the common good, to

(18:05):
the point where governments are actually funding all of these
initiatives beyond their means. So in the Australian capital territory Victoria,
for example, the state government in Australia is well beyond
its means carrying the debt that is actually now starting
to affect other citizens in Australia. And of course the
Australian government has been spending on subsidizing renewables and other

(18:30):
sort of economic policies that aren't necessarily working because the
cost of living is just out of control.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Can I just ask you a question there, what the
Australian government has been spending money on. We now know,
of course that if we didn't know before that in
the US money has been dumped in all sorts of
places and disappeared forever. In other words, it's not accounted for,
and it's being handed out to people who don't deserve it.

(19:00):
It's being wasted. Is it the same to any degree
in Australia do you think?

Speaker 3 (19:06):
Well, I'm not sure about waste. We haven't had that
level of transparency which the Department of Government Efficiency is
looking into in the US. But it's certainly something that
I hope will be a trend that we do follow
with sometime in the future. A lot of it is
to do with green eye ideals about energy and industry,

(19:26):
and we see this most recently in our Wala steel works,
where effectively they've been pursuing this sort of green steel idea,
which hasn't been commercialized anywhere in the world. There is
a German outfit that's trialing it, but it's not commercial
it's not standalone at this stage. So Australia has been

(19:46):
pursuing these green ideals where effectively it's not commercially viable,
and hydrogen in particular is one of these areas. So
we've got all of these subsidies going to the renewable sector,
and we've got all this critique about the potential for
nuclear to fill this gap to fix the problems we're

(20:07):
experiencing our energy sector, but unfortunately we don't know how
much this is costing. So we've kind of got this
political debate where nuclear is the enemy and it's going
to cost half a trillion dollars or whatever. We actually
actually have no idea how much the subsidization of the
energy sector is costing us in the meantime. And not
only that, it's one of those inner city versus the

(20:30):
regions situations where what we have is people in the
inner city are quite happy to have renewable energy to
feel good about themselves, while people in the regions are
actually suffering from the externalities that are caused by this
change in the energy system. And in fact, what we're
finding is it's not even cheaper. It's going up again
by some nine percent in July this year, so it

(20:53):
just keeps going up and up. It's not achieving its
original aim.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
Well, I'm going to say that we're in no better
condition than you are, but for possibly somewhat different reasons.
I mean, we rely a lot on water, and there
is a very deep concern at the moment from anyone
with any intelligence because we've had a very dry summer

(21:17):
and we are under threat with electricity supply. In the meantime,
of course, we're importing because we under the previous labor
government such as it was, we banned we've banned coal
mining and searches for oil and gas, etc. And now
we import cheap crap coal from Indonesia. It's really quite

(21:38):
an extraordinary scenario. And at this particular moment, if we
don't get rained very soon, then we're going to go
into blackout zone. Now you've i think already suffered in
some parts of the country from blackouts, have you.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
Not, Yes, Yes, that's definitely been the case. We've definitely
suffered from blackouts and other problems, especially during storms and
floods and other things. But some of these have also
been self indue just by a lack of capacity in
the sector.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
There is a very large exit number of people from
this country going to Australia, and it's slowed down, but
it hasn't disappeared by any stretch of the imagination. Give
you an example, and I get quite a bit of this.
I received a letter after last week's podcast from somebody
who said that they are leaving the country again. They're

(22:33):
going to Australia because their kids are there. They can't
get work here. All highly qualified at university level, can't
get jobs here, and so they're in Australia and the
parents are now going over. Also added by the way,
and I don't know quite how this fits in that
they may return to the US, so possibly they came

(22:54):
from there in the host place. I don't know. They
may return to the US, but they're waiting to see
how Trump turns out. But that is one example. Three
kids all in Australia because they can't get work here,
and that is what is inspiring so many to live.
Of our mixed family of four We've got two in
London and two here. The two here, well, one of

(23:16):
the two here would like to would like to go
to the States and will probably end up in Australia.
Is it noticeable to you. I know that the numbers
are increasing in Canberra, the population is increasing in Canbra
some say that it's increasing at the highest highest rate
of any parts of Australia. But is there a noticeable

(23:38):
increase Do you think of New Zealand as in Australia
from your perspective now.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
Not from my perspective, And it's difficult to tell at
the moment because we seem to be taking on a
lot of so called refugees from the Middle East and elsewhere,
and that's been more of a sort of noticeable problem.
I think the relationship between Australia and New Zealand, you know,
and the anzac spirit. I mean, you know, we don't
even think of Australia and New Zealand as separate countries

(24:05):
or cultures, despite the formalities. So look, I must admit
I'm not noticing that sort of influx. But it's interesting
too though that in terms of employment opportunities, one of
the things that's happening in Australia at the moment is
employment is quite unemployment is extremely low, but the reason
is because most of the jobs are government jobs, so

(24:28):
it's kind of a false economy in that regard. But
at the same time, Canberra is certainly growing because the
public service has been growing some thirty six thousand additional
public servants in the term of the Albanese government. And
of course the problem for the ACT is that the
market there is quite tired in terms of housing. It's

(24:49):
very expensive and they've got limited room to grow as well,
so it's sort of spilling over into the regional New
South Wales, creating its own problems for infrastructure and other things.
But it's very shortsighted in terms of basically manipulating all
of the economic indicators, including unemployment, through government funding, which

(25:12):
is you know, on the ground, it's not really helping people.
And if I can give you an example of that,
there's a neighbor of mine who is now in his sixties,
and he said to me when he was nineteen, he
was living week to week and he thought, I've got
to do something about this. I can't live like this forever.
And he basically trained himself to budget and to save
and to live within his means. And he said to me,

(25:35):
here he is now in his sixties and he's living
week to week again. But there's nothing he can do
about it. It's not a lack of discipline. It's just
a simple fact that he can't afford to live as
within his means. It's basically impossible. So you know, on
the one hand, we've got these economic indicators which look great,
but the reality of living in Australia is extremely different

(25:57):
to that picture that's being painted by the government.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
I think he made a mistake a little while ago.
I think you meant the Abaloni government didn't.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
Well, yeah, baloney. Anyway, that was that was that was
doing the rounds over the weekend from the from the
Saturday Australian cartoon.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Talking of the federal government. Of course, it doesn't include
the position of the state governments, and they seem to
be a bit at sea. I don't know which state
government you would nominate as being the best one at
this point of time, but from my perspective, none of
them seemed to be firing on all cylinders.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
Look, yeah, that's that's true. And look, you asked me
earlier about Trump, and I wanted to just sort of
come back to that idea of why I see what
he's doing is so important and it relates to what
we're talking about with the state governments here. But I
mentioned the critique of John Stuart Millan. It's actually James

(27:03):
Fitzjames Stephen in his work called Liberty, Equality Fraternity, and
it was a really interesting critique of John Stuart Mills's
work which effectively outlines what we're seeing in terms that
woke identity politics when it comes to the state governments.
When it comes to the state governments, what we're seeing

(27:24):
is the state's effectively playing the same electoral game that
the federal government is playing, and we're seeing things like,
for example, in Queensland, we saw this idea of fifty
cents trips on public transport and it's interesting because that
effectively plays to Brisbane because the public transport situation and
the rest of Queensland is abysmal. So in effect, people

(27:48):
in the regions are once again subsidizing those people who
live in the cities and have all the access to
public infrastructure. And we see the same sort of game
being played in New South Wales and elsewhere in effect,
what they're doing is buying votes and people seem to
be going along with it. Now, that wasn't necessarily a
case in in Queensland the recent state election there, but

(28:12):
it's certainly been the case in Victoria and to some
extent in New South Wales. In New South Wales we
see the premiere talking tough on anti Semitism and other things,
saying all the right things, but at the same time
we're not seeing any action. And this really brings me
back to that Trump Trumpian argument that Trump is all

(28:34):
about the action. He's making these deals, he's making things happen,
whereas we look at Barack Obama symbolic, you know, really
important symbolism in terms of the first African American president
of the United States, which in effect shows how our
system works. It's about merit as opposed to identity, but
then going full swing where it's all about identity now

(28:56):
it's not about merit, and then Trump coming along and
trying to turn that on its head. And we're seeing
the governments of Canada, the UK and Australia not being
real happy about following this is changed. But look at
the change that's coming because we can't afford to keep
living the way that we have. And like I said,
it was James Fitzjames Stephen who actually warned about this

(29:18):
in John Stuart Mill's time, which I find extremely interesting.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Let's go back a little too, what you were saying
about the speed with which philosophies have traveled through the
English speaking world, in particular our two countries. As you wondered,
I'm just trying to recollect your words, but you wondered
whether or how long it would take to eradicate that.

(29:43):
My contribution to the discussion over a number of years
has been, if it happens in America, particularly in California,
it'll get here, and it'll get here sooner than you think.
And political correctness was the beginning of it, and it
romped in here. I remember buying in the States some

(30:05):
small books of Christmas stories written by satirist. They were
send ups of regular stories like Little Red Writing Hood,
et cetera, but they were adapted for the appropriate politically
correct approach. And we're going back to the late eighties here,
and I brought the books back and I read some

(30:25):
stories on radio, and I got abused. One guy I've
never forgotten said I'm never listening to you again if
you're going to quote that stupid stuff because he didn't
get it, he didn't understand, he thought it was he
thought it was genuine. So that's an aside. But my
question to you is, if it gets here that quickly,

(30:48):
why shouldn't it's eradication Once started in America, as it has,
why shouldn't that spread here equally as fast?

Speaker 3 (30:56):
Well, one could hope. I think economic circumstances are going
certainly going to help. But it's interesting that it's almost
like there's this latent sort of socialist concepts and people
refer to the long march through the institutions, which in
many ways we're kind of living, particularly in the education

(31:17):
sector in Australia and the US and elsewhere. But it's
kind of like this ideal of not so much multiculturalism,
but that it's not about your identity, but at the
same time, it's all about your identity. And I think
vested interests have become so embedded in these institutions that, look,

(31:42):
my research really does focus on institutions, and when we
look at institutions, we're talking about the formal and the
informal rules of the game. If you like. That can
include organizations and so on. But in effect, institutions are
very difficult to change because they're meant to be decision
making tools that make things more efficient. You can imagine

(32:05):
if you had to vote for which day your garbage
would be collected every week. It would be ridiculous. Right,
So we have this institution where it just ticks along.
It takes care of business and hopefully in the interests
of the common good. But because the common good has
become less of a focus, these institutions have started to
focus on achieving the aims of identity, politics, and other things,

(32:26):
and in doing so, the institutions start to replicate themselves,
where they're bringing in people who have these same ideas
and on it goes. Now, typically institutions can't change themselves.
They have to be disrupted by an exogenist or an
external event. And in many ways I've argued this in
teaching leadership that leaders actually can be a force for change.

(32:49):
They can be a great disruptor that disrupts the institution,
and usually that's through their ideas or approaches to particular things.
So basically what we're seeing is Trump is now like
the great disruptor, which is disrupting these institutions. But having
said that, the institutions within states but also at the

(33:10):
UN system level, these institutions are exhausted. They're no longer
achieving the purposes that they were meant to achieve, which means,
and again on the theoretical idea, that they can't change
themselves otherwise they know. It's kind of like an institution
that's designed to keep the status quo. It can't change
itself otherwise, it can't keep the status quo, so it

(33:32):
has to be recreated, it has to be disrupted. Wars
are a great disruptor, of course, but like I said, Trump
is a disruptor as well, So there's a little bit
of inertia in institutions as well. And I think sometimes
it's easier to even disrupting the institution means that it
takes some time to change, whereas that incremental change that

(33:54):
occurs over time within the institution tends to be much
more difficult to overturn. It kind of creeps in. And
as you said about political correctness, and I remember that
exact book that you're talking about from the late eighties.
It was almost funny back then, but it was a
precursor to things that if we'd been more conscious.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
Of we might have it was prophetic.

Speaker 3 (34:17):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, but yeah, so look in terms
of institutions, I think that's the reason. It's the inertia
that it creates, and you basically have to undo them.
And what we're seeing at the moment if we have
these leftist governments in the rest of the Anglo West,
and of course give it a few years before Trump's
ideas come through here and look, in many ways, if

(34:40):
we can see I mean, I'm hoping that JD. Vance
will become president in twenty twenty eight, and if that's
the case, we might be able to see the continual
undoing of this identity politics that is creating all of
the problems for us at the moment.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
I quote you something I know before I do. Tell
us what you teach each subject.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
So I teach leadership in our MBA program. I having
been an Army officer, It's something that I've sort of
theoretically understood for a long time but also practically in practice,
and I teach this overseas in Bhutan and China. Locally,
I teach political leadership at an undergraduate level and I

(35:26):
also teach one of our subjects, which is called professional orientation,
and professional orientation is basically teaching my students how to
set up themselves during the time of their degree instead
of waiting till getting to the end and then wondering
what they're going to do with it. And I sort

(35:47):
of see it as my university is very much my students,
very much my people. I'm a Western Sydney boy then
grew up in far North Queensland. I live in the
regions now. A lot of my students are from similar circumstances,
and many of them, like me, are first in family
university graduates. So I work with my students in particular
to develop social and cultural capital, which means that instead

(36:12):
of going to your parents, who might have just been
working class, hard working people who don't understand university or
other advanced ideas of careers, you actually have a network
of people that can assist you. And that was certainly
the problem. That or not problem, but that was certainly
the circumstances that I grew up in, where the people
around me had no idea about these sort of high

(36:34):
falutant ideas of the academy and being an intellectual or
even journalism and things like that. So I try and
do my students. But that's currently I've been doing it
for some twenty years now, so it's changed over time.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
What it quotes you something that I pulled specially for you.
Political scientists who dabble in the field have contributed to
the problem by providing empirical justification for the ideological tilt
to the left. It's often said that political scientists are
closet animists, who, in their deepest dreams, admire strong states

(37:12):
with well read bureaucrats who have the authority to order society.
Stanford's Francis Fukuyama is exhibit a of this tendency, having
intellectually drifted from supporting democracy to putting a quasi Leninist
emphasis on political order. Where did you go wrong?

Speaker 3 (37:33):
It's interesting. I've attended a few of Francis Fukiyama's events,
and of course in the nineties he was talking about
the end of history of the last Man, which was
kind of like a slant on Marx, who saw historical
processes as undoing the institutional framework. As I mentioned before,
but it's interesting that Fukiyama went from suggesting that liberal

(37:57):
democracy had won the West and the rest to then
saying that, well, oops, you know, after September eleventh in
two thousand and one, that's sort of through. And I
don't mean to laugh about that, but it was the
situation that he had sort of made this statement that
it was the end of history, and then history just

(38:18):
came back to bite him and he had to change
his ideas and admit that he was wrong. And he
then started saying that identity politics was the greatest threat.
So I'm not quite sure that he would be exhibit
A in that way. Look, the thing for me is
that I'm very much a liberal Democrat in the way

(38:39):
that I believe that individuals are sovereign that they can
make the best decisions about their own welfare, that they
ought to be supported in that the role of government
is not to give us a vision, but to create
economic and social conditions that enable us to pursue our
own visions. So very much about the individual, but also

(38:59):
with a strong sense of the common good. And one
of the things that I've noticed, particularly in the academy
in the university sector, but they don't represent the ordinary people.
They represent their own elite and their own elite ideas.
And you know, we can go back to the London
School of Economics in the UK, which was established by
the Fabians in effect, and so a lot of that

(39:21):
sort of intellectual leftism, if you will, stems from that era.
But again it had as its basis looking after the
ordinary people, and of course that has since changed and
it's now about virtue signaling for the wealthy, inner city
elite at the expense of those ordinary Australians what Menzies

(39:43):
would have called the forgotten people. But the interesting thing
now is the forgotten people are a completely different group.
It's the traditional working class that are being left behind
by those who supposedly had their interests at heart. And
I guess for me, well not, I guess they know
for me. As soon as I sort of had my
damascene moment, so to speak, and I started representing and

(40:07):
writing for the people in the regions of a region Australia,
I found my audience and in many ways found my voice.
And you know, it actually feel like I have a
sense of purpose, whereas before it seemed to be this
sort of fake intellectualism that had at its roote not

(40:27):
looking after ordinary people, but in effect like you say,
a closet Leninist designed to create the sort of the
dictatorship of the proletariat that would then teach the players
how to think. And we're sort of seeing that in
many ways, whereas a liberal Democrat would be looking at

(40:49):
learning how to think as opposed to telling people what
to think.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
There are two two professors who have taught in this country.
Jim Allen is one and the other is Ramasakur, both
of whom you'd be familiar with, and they have taken
themselves off to Australia and been there for some time.
We missed them, I my dad, as far as the
education system here is concerned. But I know that I

(41:18):
know that Jim struggles to some degree amongst the literati
at university from her well where he doesn't quite fit in.
He's very brave man. And Ramesh has called it quits
in Canberra. And did you know him by the way
in Canberra?

Speaker 3 (41:37):
No, not personally, but we've certainly corresponded.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
You, yeah, and has moved farther north to a bit
of climate. They have survived and they continue to contribute
as you are. But what I'm wondering is how you
get away with being to the right as you are,
however you want to describe it. You're a standout and
I would have thought that you would be on the

(42:02):
receiving end of some considerable objection.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
That was certainly the case in this but that not
so much rejection, but the being told what to do,
I guess doesn't really sit well with me, even though
I was in the military. It's quite kind of an anomaly.
But I found that it was just by sticking to
my digs over time. And look, I must admit, like

(42:28):
I said to, my university were very much focused on
giving ordinary Australians a practical education that helps with their
employment and other things, and so I fit in extremely
well with that university. And our school has prided itself
on its diversity of opinion as well, which is quite unusual.

(42:51):
So in many ways, aside from some initial reluctance that
was later on embraced, and I think that's the case
with many people. You basically have to establish yourself and
once you've done that, people just have to get on
with it because they're not going to change. So I've
had that experience, and look, I'm very grateful to my

(43:12):
university for that experience. And it hasn't been what I've
seen certainly in other places. And again that's one of
the reasons why I've worked there for twenty years. But
to be honest, I'm actually finishing up in July. I've
been there twenty years. I'm feeling rather stale, and I'm
going to move on. And one of the other emeritus

(43:33):
professors said that I'm probably the last of the conservative academics.
But look again, I think our education system is exhausted.
Artificial intelligence is going to replace so many people, and
I'm seeing it already. I'm dabbling in the area at
the moment in terms of using it as a personal assistant,

(43:54):
using it for conducting literature reviews. And it's not going
to replace the intellectual rigor that's needed for research, but
it's certainly going to reduce the staffing requirements that traditionally
were very expensive. But also I think that there's going
to have to be some sort of change in things
because those the old institution that has been captured by

(44:17):
the left is not actually producing people who are useful
in the economy. You know, we've got business skills that
have exclusively focused on gender studies, focusing absolutely Yeah, you know,
we've got to give.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Me, give me one or two so that people will
know to avoid them.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
Well, look, I mean, I guess you'd have to discern
this from your own sort of reading of the media.
I probably wouldn't. I wouldn't just yet. Maybe after July
I'll speak a bit more freely, I guess. But my
point is though that instead of focusing on key things
like the mining and resources sector in Australia, we have

(44:58):
academics who actively think that that's morally wrong to actually
support this industry. And this is where it becomes really bizarre,
because without the mining and resources sector, Australia be a
third world country full stop. And people just don't appreciate that. So,
you know, it's all well and good to have these
sort of high moral principles, but to forget the fact
that you can only have these high moral principles because

(45:21):
of a particular sector of the economy is just ridiculous. So,
you know, for me, I think we ought to be
focusing more on these major sort of elements of the economy,
like transport, telecommunications. There's hardly anywhere that's teaching these things now.
Economics is probably one of the most in demand careers.

(45:44):
Yet people are moving away from teaching it properly by
incorporating mathematics and statistics. So we're like taking the easy
path in so many things, and we're not producing the
skills that are needed. So these skills still have to
come from somewhere. So I think there's an opportunity for
disruption in higher education in particular.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
And yet this was from the Australian over the weekend.
A law degree needs to teach serious, complex content, not
imposed mind bending in doctrination, as is the case at
Macquarie University Law School. Students in law s or Laws
five five will fail part of their degrees if they

(46:28):
deliver an acknowledgment of country in an oral presentation with
insufficient passion and sincerity.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
Please. It's yeah, this is identity politics in its extreme.
I mean, firstly, you know there's no law against you
not doing an acknowledgment of country. And you know, look,
I find this bizarre. My great grandmother was Camillroy and
she was committed to being in Australian. I guarantee you

(47:00):
she would have voted against the voice a referendum in Australia.
But you're not allowed to say that you're not allowed
to be that type of you know, INDI genous person
has been proven. And it's again what we're seeing is
this sort of the wok araty embracing these concepts, forcing
it on others. But really they're not doing anything to

(47:21):
you know, fix the problems or the circumstances that are occurring.
You know, obviously in indigenous people throughout the world have
had a raw deal historically, and you know, there are
things that need to be done to improve that. But
you know, these having an acknowledgment of country and then
assessing somebody on the passion that they displayed. I mean,

(47:42):
this is the most subjective thing I've ever heard of.
How do you do that? You know, and people are
passionate in different ways. It's like grief. People grieve in
different ways. So but again this is just showing how
extreme this is becoming. But look that I'm pretty sure
we're going to see that that gets undone rather quickly
because it's embarrassing and it's certainly it certainly is not

(48:08):
about liberal democracy, is it. I mean, it's effectively telling
you what to think and how to behave, which is
you know, what we'd usually refer to as a dictatorship.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Well, so much of it has sunk into the business world.
And I think of Qantas just as the first example,
and the way that public companies are run and they've
and they've got away with it.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
Is it retreating, Yes, it's starting to. But you can
see some resistance, particular in Australia in the UK. But
in effect, as soon as Donald Trump, you know, came
in and made some executive orders around genders and around
DEI and all this sort of stuff. As soon as

(48:52):
that happened, some of the major companies in the world
started backtracking. And I think, you know what, Look, it's
not unusual for businesses to want to work in with
a particular government. We saw that in Australia. I remember
seeing Chris Bowen with the Business Council of Australia in
tow wherever he wins. And now we're starting to see,
because of the economy and because of the failures of

(49:14):
their energy policy, the business community is starting to say, well,
hang on a minute. You know you promised all this stuff.
It's not working. We supported you, it's not working, and
we're seeing that with DEI and other things.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
I want to go back to AI as you mentioned,
because there were a couple of things that spun off
from that. This was a literal conversation yesterday with somebody
to do with editing of television news. So you've got
scenes coming out of Ukraine, for instance, that are really

(49:47):
unsuitable for the public and they have to be edited.
How would you How would you because I said there's
no way you can you can do it? How would
you train a machine AI to do the editing on
its own, of editing out the bits that weren't that
weren't appropriate. How would you train at the start of

(50:09):
a certain spot and cities at a certain spot.

Speaker 3 (50:12):
Look, I'm not involved in that technical side of things,
and in terms of all of the technologies. Look, I
was using Facebook and my teaching back in two thousand
and seven, so I'd probably more of a superuser as
opposed to somebody who designs or develops these systems. I
think the thing with AI, it's much like an institution.

(50:34):
It can only deal with the past. It can't deal
with the future. And that's where I mean. Look, it
can help in terms of planning, it can help in
terms of all sorts of creative solutions to problems, but
it's a resource. It's not the be all and the
end all, and I think that's part of the issue
is that you can't use AI. It's artificial intelligence, it's

(50:59):
not false intelligence, so you need a level of human
intelligence to be able to use it as a tool.
So the thing about AI is that it makes things
more efficient. It could be the case that you could
train it to go through footage, and based on that, look,
we can already see that if you want to search

(51:20):
a photo in your phone, you can put in a
topic and or bring up all of your pets or
all of your travels or whatever it is. So you
know that we can see already that this does work.
But that doesn't mean it's going to select the exact
photo that you wanted. You'd still have to It basically
narrows it down and enables you to then find what
you're looking for. And I dare say, in terms of editing,

(51:41):
that would be the case where you'd be presented with
less of the raw footage that you could then tweak minorly,
as opposed to having to scroll through. So just give
you an example in the past, if I was conducting research,
So going back to my undergrad degree, where my assignments
were handwritten, I'd have to go to the library and

(52:02):
read all these books and highlight them and produce cards
and so on. And then, of course, when Google came along,
divided that the references were available online, and increasingly they
are now through library databases at universities. I could do
Google searches or search the catalog and find these resources
and draw on them. Now the thing is now I

(52:23):
can actually get AI to do that, and I'm finding
that a year's worth of work just in finding the
sources that I want to look at, a year's worth
of work is taking twenty minutes. Now, I mean, you know,
that's an incredible level of efficiency. But it doesn't mean
that I can just let AI write what I'm doing.
I still have to, you know, I'm still in control
of what's happening. But it does all of that sort

(52:45):
of grunt work. And traditionally too, I would have employed
research assistance to go and do that work. I would
then look at what they'd done and sort of narrow
it down from there. But what I'm finding with AI
is it's replacing those people. They don't need to hire
somebody to do it. Now I can get AI to
do that, but you can't take away that, or at
least not in our lifetime or my lifetime. I don't

(53:06):
think in terms of of I don't think it's going
to do everything for us, but it's certainly going to
make things more efficient. And I'm finding that already in
the most incredible ways.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
You don't think that, And we've reached or we're on
the verge of reaching the point where they can self create.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
Look, I'm not sure about that, and I guess now
we're starting to talk about cybernetics. You know, that crossover
of humans and machines, and it's not really my sort
of specially.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Does it frighten you?

Speaker 3 (53:40):
No, No, it doesn't. And it's interesting because we use
we use AI around the house. We have the those
Google Nest speakers throughout the house, and it's incredible. You
need to know about the weather, you ask it a question,
it gives you the answer. Now, the answer is not
always great, and it's not it's extremely imperfect. But at
the same time, when you don't have that tool, it's

(54:02):
amazing how much you miss it. So you know, look,
I just find that it gives us this incredible amount
of access to information. But again, it's not going to
it's not going to do the hard work for us,
and I think the hard work. It's interesting that there
was a book Deep Work came from a professor of

(54:25):
computer science in the US, and he was talking about
needing to do at least four hours of deep work
per day that added value to something, and he was
saying that if you didn't do this in the future,
what would happen is you'd be replaced by some sort
of machine or program. And in many ways, people who

(54:45):
receive emails and then forward that email onto someone else,
they're effectively going to be replaced by some sort of
routing system, and we're seeing that happening already. So there's
still that requirement for deep work, but it's much more creative,
it's much more intellectual, and in many ways it's much
more interesting. So look, I just find that it's it's fascinating,

(55:10):
but it's also very helpful, and for those who are
not sort of getting into it, they're going to be
left behind, at least initially. But look, having said that,
I realized that in around two thousand and seven, when
and Twitter sort of came online. Now X, there was
this belief that it was going to democratize the world

(55:32):
and democratize the media and all the rest of it.
Pretty soon well a few years after, Yeah, the legacy
media effectively redominated all of those new areas. But we're
seeing that happening again now, not because of this desire
for democratization, but the simple fact is that the old institutions,
the media institutions, are so expensive. Like your podcast, you

(55:54):
can do this now more efficiently and better because you're
more hands on and involved in it than if you
had this sort of team in a legacy environment where
you have to pay for officers and studios and all
these different things, and the legacy media is finding it
too expensive to produce the content that people want.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
You recently had some issues with a government department on misinformation.
Disinformation tell us the story briefly.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
So briefly, I was arguing that what we're seeing in Australia,
the most successful political party, the Liberal Party, established by Mensis,
brought some eighteen non labor groups together, and we're starting
to see that group fracturing into smaller conservative parties. And
one of my concerns is that whenever the conservative parties

(56:46):
fracture in this way, the vote fractures, which means we
tend to end up with a labor government. On the left,
they tend to all sort of vote as a group,
whereas on the right we tend to think for ourselves
and therefore we might want to punish a group who's
not doing what we expect them to and so on.
So I wrote about that because I was concerned about that,
and I looked at some historical processes in terms of

(57:08):
primary votes, and traditionally the coalition party, the Liberal and
National parties in Australia have to get more than forty
one percent of the vote and also beat of the
primary vote and also beat the Labor and the Greens
primary vote in order to win government. And the only
time this hasn't happened is when the left has been
fractured in a similar way. And somebody took what I'd

(57:32):
written as saying that I didn't understand the preferential voting system,
and I was saying that I had said that if
you didn't give your primary vote to the coalition, the
candidate couldn't win, which is absolute nonsense. I didn't say that.
I said, based on the historical situation, giving your primary

(57:53):
vote to anything other than the coalition is a suboptimal
way of ensuring that you end up with a conservative government.
And so I was taken to task on Twitter. Mind you,
so I don't know who this person was, what they're
qualations were, anything like that, but I was taken to
task by them, and I requested an apology from the department,

(58:16):
and of course I received no such a policy apology,
but I was effectively defamed by them, And in their
response they basically went from saying that it was disinformation,
to then misinformation, to then saying that these statistical possibilities
were so vast that nobody really knew, you know, what

(58:36):
the result could be. And I just thought that this
was so bizarre that this government department, an anonymous person
on social media could effectively defame me and uh and
then just doing you know, nothing could possibly happen about it,
and all under the guys of misinformation and disinformation. In effect,

(58:56):
what happened to me mirrored the critiques of the misinformation
and disinformation laws that effectively people could use these to
achieve their own political lends and there'd be nothing that
citizens could do about it. So I'm extremely glad that
none of that has been approved in terms of legislation.

(59:17):
But what's interesting is that the coalition government that effectively
I was suggesting people or to give their primary vote
to if they wanted a conservative government, they've been backing
some of these moves as well, and so it's a
real sort of chicken and egg problem is that if
the conservative major parties won't actually stand by their principles,

(59:37):
then people are going to vote for conservative minor parties,
which means that we're going to end up with a
labor government. But they just can't sort of seem to
see this, and that's what concerns me, because nobody can
afford another three years of this current government.

Speaker 2 (59:50):
Okay, that takes me to something I was going to
ask for and then decided I've asked it so many
times in the last few years. I wouldn't repeat it.
But I'm going to explain to me pleased if you can.
I was born in Melbourne. My grandfather was a mare
of Preston for a number of years. I cannot understand
how Victorians could vote for the labor governments they have

(01:00:11):
had for so long. It drives me insane to what
has happened in Victoria. Why is it so why did
so many Victorians time and time again vote for an idiot?

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
I wish I knew the answer to that question, but
I suspect what we're seeing a lot of it is
about the vibe. And what I mean by that is,
you know, there's this idea that you can fix the
energy problem by having government run everything. Now that may
well be the case, but not under the current system.

(01:00:49):
It would have to be a new sort of technology
or some other disruption to the existing institutions. But I
think too the practice of buying votes, and particularly through
virtue signaling, has what's been attractive. The other thing, too,
is that Victoria has had one of the most ineffective

(01:01:10):
oppositions in its history. So there's a lot there that
relates to the conservative parties trying to outlabor the Labor Party,
and of course they're no good at this because it's
not what they do and their base is not interested
in that. So they move further and further away from
their base, which means the base abandons them, which, as

(01:01:32):
I say, it results in a labor government being re elected.
And I think this is the tragedy because Mensis, when
he established the Liberal Party, brought these groups together. He
was able to function in terms of what was a
broad church. But Mensi's never envisioned factions within the Liberal Party,
and now we have basically formalized factions within the Liberal

(01:01:54):
Party in Australia, which is a leftist socialist concept. It's
rather bizarre. So an ineffective opposition and a labor government
that's prepared to spend money that it doesn't have on
certain segments of the community is effectively buying those votes.
But the reason those votes are for sale is because

(01:02:15):
the conservative major Conservative parties have abandoned their base.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
Would you put the federal Liberal Party in the same
bag at the moment.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
I would, But I'm hoping. No formal election date has
been announced, so technically the campaign hasn't commenced even though
they're campaigning, and so I'm hoping that mister Dutton has
an arsenal prepared that's going to start hitting the ground
as soon as the formal campaign begins. And I think

(01:02:47):
in many ways this is a really smart strategy. And
again this is a bit like coming back to Trump.
Instead of supporting Trump and trusting in the person that
is in charge and that was democratically elected, people start
sort of getting their own ideas and complaining and you know,
not sort of seeing what's going on. And I would
hope that mister Dutton has this ass or prepared and

(01:03:09):
it's going to be deployed as soon as the campaign begins,
because one of the risks in politics particularly is an
opposition if you expose all of your tactics and techniques
and the approach that you're going to take too early,
you're given the incumbent government time to prepare and to
counter those arguments. So I'm hoping that that's the case.

(01:03:29):
But unfortunately, in the meantime, people are sort of jumping
to the minor parties, and the minor parties are obviously
encouraging this because in Australia at least I think it's
three dollars twenty five or something per primary vote if
you get more than four percent of the primary vote
goes to these political parties. So there's a vested interest
in the minor parties to actually get a hold of

(01:03:51):
that electoral reimbursement funding via the government. So look, in
many ways, this competition, particularly on the right, is causing
the problems that is enabling the left to keep getting
returned into power and that's what concerns me about the
upcoming election. And you know, look, the coalition is certainly

(01:04:15):
moving away from its base. I don't think it's looking
after its base and the way that it ought to.
But I know for a fact that our economy is
going to be much better under a coalition government than
it currently is in what, in my view is the
worst government Australian history.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
Speaking of the coalition, the term Uni party has caught
on recently. I think recently. Am I right? I wasn't
familiar with Uni party as a term.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
Yeah, it's really yeah, yes, well.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
So it's they refer to it in America and they
refer to it here. What is the Uni party?

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
The Uni party is a term that captures a concept
that's been around for a very long time, particularly in
the United States, and traditionally it would be shown in
a cartoon with like a sort of monopoly style cap
businessmen holding out two hands with the Democrats on one
hand and the Republicans on the other hand, and so

(01:05:15):
in effect what we're seeing in Australia. I heard it
referred to as double haters the other day, that people
hate both of the major parties and they're looking to
the minority minority parties to you know, to capture their base,
so to speak. But in effect, it's a suggestion that

(01:05:37):
corporations or some other elites are controlling both parties, so
it doesn't matter who you vote for, they're going to
look after their own interests and not yours. So that
concept in liberal democracies has been around for a very
long time. But the idea of the UNI party is
interesting because there's enough evidence to say that it's a thing,

(01:06:01):
and we can look at that in terms of particularly
around energy policy, in the focus on ideas around the climate,
we can see that there's sort of this majority rule
that fits in with and I don't want to be
sound like conspiracy theorists, but you know, it fits in
with the ideas of the World Economic Forum and the
UN and others, particularly around the climate, and people are

(01:06:23):
sort of thinking, well, you know, it doesn't matter who
I vote for, they've both got the same ideas. Who's
actually going to represent my ideas? And that's where we're
seeing that sort of fracturing, particularly on the conservative side
of politics.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
I have a very strong feeling that the net hero
is going to fall apart worldwide very shortly.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
Look at it. It has to economically. So look, I mean,
I'm not a climate scientist and I'm not interested in
getting in those debates. But what I find really interesting
is that if this is about reducing carbon emissions, then
nuclear is a no brainer, you know, but that for
some reason doesn't enter the argument because they don't want nuclear.

(01:07:07):
So it's kind of like that. It's not like they
want to address carbon emissions. They just want to have
wind and solar as the dominant power source, which of
course leads you to think, well, if you follow the money,
where does this take me? And I agree with you
about net zero. I mean, you've got China and India
who don't really seem to care about this concept. Why
should Australia and why should New Zealand be so concerned

(01:07:31):
about their outputs when it's not going to make a
link of difference? I think too. Trump is going to
undo a lot of that as well. But look, in effect,
we just can't afford to sort of take this ideal view,
and if it was actually about reducing carbon emissions, then
nuclear should be front and center.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
Except those who will object to any downsizing, shall we say,
are still being taught in schools that their life depends
on and the planet depends on CO two being eliminated.

Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
How this is sorry?

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
How long will it take for that to be corrected?
Do you think? I mean, first of all, he's got
to persuade the teaching staff and the unions that they're
barking up the wrong tree, and that's very unlikely.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
The thing that I find problematic is that a liberal
education is helping citizens to think for themselves, and we're
not experiencing a liberal education. We're experiencing in doctrination and
that's pretty clear. We're even seeing at universities as you
mentioned Macquarie and the Law School just previously. So again,

(01:08:46):
I think what we're seeing is the institutions that are exhausted.
They're no longer achieving what they were established to achieve.
If you look at public education in New South Wales
in particular, the Henry Parks was one of the champions
of primary public education in Australia because of the bush rangers,

(01:09:08):
who were living without the moral influences they needed, thought
they could just go off and robin kill people whenever
they felt like it. So you know, we've kind of
gone from this establishing a moral base, which is important
in our youth, in particular to now actually telling them
what to think, which is the complete opposite of the
purpose of education. So I think it's going to take

(01:09:31):
a disruption. It's certainly starting with Donald Trump. Whether that
infiltrates in Australia, I think we'll see that if we
do have a coalition government return to power, if not
another three years of labor, it'll take longer because I
think it'll embed more. Having said that, the market always
swings things around, because eventually we're going to have people

(01:09:53):
graduating from universities who've had indoctrination rather than education. They're
not going to have the skills that they need to
function in industry. Industry is going to need to get
those skills from somewhere else, which means those people with
their sort of woke education or indoctrination are not going
to be in the not going to get the jobs
that they need to continue their virtue signaling or whatever.

(01:10:17):
And it's going to turn around. Now, that's an imperfect
way of doing things, but liberal democracies are imperfect because
often our economic rights and our political rights sort of
butt up against each other, and we have to satisfy
us as opposed to satisfy all of those different needs.
But again, I think eventually, even with net zero all

(01:10:39):
these other things, it's going to have to correct itself
soon otherwise we're not going to be able to afford
to keep going as we are.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
And I think, finally, i'd like your opinion because you
have a military background. I saw a headline over the
weekend in Australia with regard to an appeal for the
ANZAC forces to come together and establish themselves much more solidly.

Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
What say you used to do that? When I was
at the First Field Regiment in Brisbane, were actually had
a New Zealand Gun detachment. They came and worked with us.
It was fantastic. Look they shared history there is remarkable.
It's really important. I agree that we should continue to

(01:11:28):
and strengthen those ties. And continue to strengthen those ties.
I think it's interesting. You know, I'm sort of the
chapter representative of the RSL here in my small village
of Gunning in regional New South Wales, and despite the
population only being some eight hundred people, we get at
least five hundred people turning up to our ANZAC day service.

(01:11:50):
Is about one hundred in the morning dawn service and
at eleven am we get five hundred plus, so and
the skill children involved, it's really important. I don't think
that's going to go away anytime soon from our sort
of shared history in that space. But I think the
biggest problem is not so much the relationship, but it's

(01:12:11):
the lack of the lack of spending on defense. We
saw recently the Chinese navy off Sydney, you know, creating
all sorts of issues for both Australia and New Zealand,
and I think in many ways our response was completely inadequate.
So we've been found wanting in that regard. Trump's calling

(01:12:32):
out other countries. Look even Canada. Canada to remain a
member of NATO needs to spend at least two percent
of its GDP on defense, and it's spending less than that.
I think New Zealand's in a similar boat. Australia is
just over two percent, but it's clearly not enough. So
this whole sort of focus on defense, which you know,

(01:12:54):
traditionally we've had that problem. Even in the Second World War,
Australia wasn't capable of defending itself. I mean, you know,
people forget that without the Americans, Australia would have been invaded.
You know, whether they were here for them or ask
it really doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
But did they get taught that in school these days?

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):
No, no, they don't. And it's something I really pick
up on all the time because it was you know,
we're talking tens of thousands of Americans who died in
effect in defense of Australia, and you know that that
sort of shared history between US and the US is

(01:13:31):
really important, but it's just not it's not emphasized. It's
sort of like this idea that we're no longer culturally similar.
The two countries are, you know, these separate entities and
that's the end of it. We ought to be independent,
but we don't have that capacity. It's almost like we're
in that phase of appeasement before the Second World War,

(01:13:54):
where appeasing one's enemies was enough and you'd be fine,
and of course that led to the disaster of the
Second World War. Whereas I think if we had much
more credible capabilities in terms of defense, which is the
whole idea of defense in itself, it's the deterrent capability
as opposed to its offensive capability and we're just not

(01:14:17):
building that. And again too, we see even in recruiting,
people are just not interested in their own countries. They've
been sort of taught that they're global citizens and that,
you know, the Nation States are old fashioned. I mean,
all of this is late nineteen ninety stuff, which is
part and parcel of Fukiyama that's been discredited. But in
many ways, I think there's we've kind of got this

(01:14:39):
two speed cultural understanding of our past. We've got some
who are you know, definitely support the memory of the ANZACs,
but then we have these others who think we don't
need the US as an ally and they just simply
forget that the role that the Americans played in Australia's defense.

Speaker 2 (01:14:59):
And that's wrong. Michael has been an absolute pleasure. I've
got to say that it's so good to be able
to just roll from one topic to another and back again.
On occasions. It's been most informative, and I hope that
we will get a chance to do it again. Maybe
after July when you when you have departed from the

(01:15:22):
University of Canberra, we can get together again and discuss
some things. Because you can be certain of one thing
we will never run out of topics to talk about.

Speaker 3 (01:15:33):
Absolutely, Thanks late, it's been a pleasure. Lat and Smith.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
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(01:15:58):
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(01:16:19):
X Leverix and always read the label, take as directed
and if symptoms persist, see your health professional. Farmer Broker Auckland.
They enter the mail room for two seventy six and
missus producer. It's interesting that Muriel Newman and Rodney Hyde
both paul commentaries of such enthusiasm that it's extraordinary. Really,

(01:16:42):
I don't think so. Latent.

Speaker 4 (01:16:43):
They're both they're both thinkers, and they're both based in
New Zealand, which often people.

Speaker 2 (01:16:50):
Like, well, if you based in New Zealand, you probably
have a better idea than most of what exactly what's
going on. Let me kick off a great chat from
Murray great chat with Rodney Hyde, and it brought back
memories of Rodney Hyde MP. I was a new stringer,
a cameraman for one of the two main networks, and

(01:17:11):
was on assignment when I interviewed Rodney and from memory
Richard Prebble. We shared a car. We shared a car
ride across town, and I recall this Rodney had an
antipathy toward naive young Christians with puritanical views. There was
a degree of snorting and stickering. The reason this stuck
with me is that I had recently become a Christian

(01:17:34):
and it felt quite uncomfortable. Now I say this, he says,
not to deride or humiliate Rodney, but as an ironic
anecdote on hypocrisy and shallow beliefs. I too, once thought
of Patricia Bartbert as a pathetic prude without any introspection.
So I understand the hypocrisy of my own form of views,

(01:17:56):
and when I think about it, it's a personal failing
all of us find impossible to eradicate. I loved the
honesty of Rodney's stories and views. You really did yourself
proud with this extraordinary interview. Now enclosing, our extended family
lost a thirty three year old in perfect health within
a few days of the infamous jab. The clincher for

(01:18:19):
me of this being medicinal misadventure was evidenced by the
cover up from start to finish. This quote couldn't possibly
be vaccine related. No coronial inquiry, no acknowledgment, just a
deafening and defiant silence. I'll leave it there, despite my

(01:18:41):
fury at what our leaders did to my former country.
God bless from Murray, who is now living in Queensland Layton.

Speaker 4 (01:18:49):
That's very sad, Wayne says. I'm sorry, Wayne, I've just
edited you a little bit because it's so such a
good letter, but so long, he says, I'm so thrilled
to have heard Rodney Hyde's discussion on podcast two seventy five.
Over the years, I've listened to so many wonderful discussions,
but this one and killer has compelled me to write

(01:19:11):
for only the second time to try and express the
joy it engendered it hearing such common sense. The enlightening
exposure of the perverted so called sex education was of
course greatly disturbing. Rodney's statement that this is a hill
we need to die on is indeed a call to
battle that I have been wanting to answer. I have

(01:19:33):
contacted let kids be kids as a start. We must
all do what we can to eliminate this generational corruption
of our precious children and grandchildren. Rodney's personal testimony of
becoming a follower of Jesus for just one year was spellbinding.
It follows on from President Trump's statement that America must

(01:19:55):
return to its Christian founding roots. Rodney spoke so clearly
and well for someone only a Christian for such a
short time. I'm also aware of the many liberating historical
stories of the local tribal ma. They welcomed the treaty
and rule of law, oftened by the written Westminster system
that gave them stability, not the infinitely variable Teacunger. I'm

(01:20:19):
also mindful of my grandparents coming to New Zealand from
Scotland and Ireland over one hundred years ago to escape
the class system and to enjoy the galitarian society. Rodney
so eloquently described, My grandparents and parents worked hard to
make their way in life, and that is a fine
example to me. It grieves me to see that to

(01:20:41):
Party MARII and Green's creating a false narrative of class
systems when the opposite color blind society I grew up
and was such a foundational part of all of our lives.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
I found a conversation with Rodney Hyde very interesting. Rights
Chris I particularly liked the discussion about the Judeo Christian
ethic at its place in Western society. Also of interest
to me was Rodney's conversion to Christianity. He showed that
he under stands Christianity well. At one stage, Layton said
that Jesus didn't figure in Judaism. Rodney said the Old

(01:21:18):
Testament recognized that the Messiah was coming. The belief in
a Messiah was at the heart of Judaism. However, as
Rodney said, the Jews didn't recognize him. The connection between
the two religions is Jesus, who said that I have
not come to abolish the law that is the Jewish

(01:21:40):
law or the prophets. I came to fulfill them. Anybody
wants to know Matthew Chapter five, verse seventeen. Christ was
a Jew but not a Christian. However, he was the
founder of the Christian religion. His followers were Jews who
became the first Christians. The Catholic Church recognizes that it
has its roots in Judaism, as wishes christ As. We

(01:22:03):
got a lot of feedback, a lot of feedback on
last week with Rodney. It's roll again.

Speaker 4 (01:22:09):
Laden Pete says, thanks for last week's anonymous correspondent letter,
withheld until you could read it. The letter was well
worth the weight, if only for the clear and easily
supported statement that Mari and Pete says. I see it
as primarily the treatist activists and government pandering to those
activists are holding the country back economically. The bloke and

(01:22:33):
his wife along the street are fine, as are their children.
They are doing their bet. I do not wish to
see us move to an ethno state riven by ethnic
and interethnic division. I do not see a need for
Mari seats in Parliament or Mari wards in local body elections.
The division is not helpful, nor the forced spirituality and

(01:22:54):
suggestion that those with some Mari DNA know more about
the water, the environment and families than anyone else. The
issue extends to government failure to attend to sorting out
the courts and the White Tangi Tribunal. To remind both
that Parliament is sovereign. Enacting necessary legislation to resolve the

(01:23:15):
coast water and the currently oversized public service via the
Treatyised Public Services Act twenty twenty is essential and required smartly,
they can keep up the good work. That's from Pete.

Speaker 2 (01:23:30):
Pete's appreciated, thank you and glad you are. Glad you're
enjoying so from Bronwin. I'm behind scheduled, have just listened
to James Raguski and looking forward to rolling onto Rodney's
episode next. Isn't James amazing? I've heard him speak about
the Wow before, but he has so much more to offer.
I do hope that you'll have him on again sometime.

(01:23:51):
I'll be listening a second time and looking up the links.
He provided kind regards, Brodwin. And then about four hours
later I got the following Please may I add a
PostScript to my earlier email. I have now listened to
the following episode, also excellent with Rodney.

Speaker 3 (01:24:08):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (01:24:09):
And I'm grateful to the doctor who wrote in explaining
the impossibility of a nasal PCR test breaking the barrier
protecting the brain. I've always been skeptical of this claim
that many people make, and it's very good to have
that explained. Thank you, Bronwan. And it's the first time
I've ever had a follow up so quickly.

Speaker 4 (01:24:31):
Leyton Jin says, I sensed something different about Rodney Hyde.
I wanted to confirm my suspicions, so I went back
to listen to podcast one eighty eight, where you interviewed
him almost exactly two years ago. I can confirm there
is definitely a subtle but detectable change in the Rodney
Hide of today. He exhibited a certain depth and seriousness

(01:24:52):
in the content of his dialogue which I've never heard
in the past from him. The clincher for me was
when he said he used to think of his children
as clever animals and his marriage as a mere agreement,
but now he views his children as gifts from God
and can considers his marriage sacred. That speech could only

(01:25:12):
come from a person with new conviction. His involvement in
let Kids be Kids proves as convictions Let kids be
kids is a good way for parents to realize they
are not alone in wanting to protect kids from destructive
gender and sexual ideologies. Family firsts Bob McCroskey warned us
three years ago about the Ministry of Education's wicked and

(01:25:35):
insidious Relationships and Sexuality education, which targets primary age kids
with confusing and dangerous idea viruses such as sex changes, pronouns, transgenderism,
and other evil gender ideologies. Doctor Muriel Newman recently warned
that while National is making good progress on some issues,

(01:25:57):
they are making almost no progress on many of those
other issues that motivated New Zealanders to vote for change.
In other words, National is not eliminating woke the title
of her article. This is in stark contrast to Donald Trump,
who's doing everything in his power to eliminate woke. Muriel

(01:26:18):
Newman suggests that National would be wise to pick up
on Winston Peter's Public Service Amendment bill to remove diversity,
equity and inclusion regulations from the public service. I agree
with her. Either Luxeon kills woke or woke will kill
his political ambition. Wake the heck up, Luxom. That's from Jimmy.

Speaker 2 (01:26:40):
Yeah, well, I'll double down on that. Don't miss what
comes after the mail room in this podcast. Finally from
me in twenty seventeen, I knew that New Zealand was
in trouble. One of the first announcements was about banning
single use plastic bags. Not only would we be banned
from using them, but the government was going to control

(01:27:00):
us by banning their production. The message was clear, New
Zealanders are stupid and you need us to tell you
what to do each day. Along came COVID and with
it vaccine mandates and rules around contact that were at
best supposedly designed to save lives, at worst utterly in humane.

(01:27:23):
I began to wonder when the poster of regulation haircuts
used in North Korea was going to become mandatory in
the workplace. Fortunately, the Empress of that era was finally
found to have no clothes and she resigned, with many
of us hoping that we would never see her or
her colleagues ever again. One bad pole for National has

(01:27:45):
me seriously doubting the intellectual capacity of my fellow New Zealanders,
particularly the MSM mainstream medium. Almost hourly they're foaming at
the mouth, bursting to tell us that Luxon will be rolled,
while Chippy continues to bark at every parsing opportunity to
tell the party deluded that he is back and poised

(01:28:07):
to win in twenty twenty six. Do I think Chris
Luxon is an inspirational prime Minister. No, but he's still
better than past notable disasters like Adern, Hipkins and Shipley
in that order. Luxon is a businessman who is used
to leading working groups of largely like minded individuals who

(01:28:27):
are focused on a common goal that keeps the wheels
of commerce turning, which is what we need in our
country's economic engine room right now as we navigate the
mess that addourns, Hipkins and Robertson and their merry band
of fiscal duncers and idea logs left behind them. Chris
Luxon is at his best in front of other business leaders,

(01:28:49):
an impressive, action driven speaker. If we are to avoid
another election backflip, his communication style needs to be addressed
by an expert with urgency. The people he needs to
appeal to, most those that swing at every election, just
don't get him. I have no wish to return to
the daily handwringing, the murdered vows and the hangdog expressions

(01:29:14):
from the pulpit of doom style of leadership. I do, however,
want someone to help Luxon, save himself and above all,
our country before it's too late. Heaven help us if
we wake up late in twenty twenty six to a
labor to party Mari and Greens led government. Best wishes

(01:29:35):
Liz superbly put together. I hope it was superbly read
or at least passes, and I congratulate you. And that's
what we need more of. Say it, folks, great letters,
put it in writing.

Speaker 4 (01:29:48):
And thank you to all of you for that very thing.

Speaker 2 (01:29:51):
Indeed, and we shall see you next week.

Speaker 4 (01:29:53):
You will thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:29:55):
Thank you cardly, and don't miss what's next. No, I
guess she could say that what I'm about to deliver
is at least consistent with the topics that we've spoken
about the last couple of podcasts with Rodney Hyde. In

(01:30:18):
two seven five, of course, we talked about sex, education,
school and other scholastic things. And this week, of course,
we just concluded a conversation with Michael de Percy on
well much of it was on education, and so is
what is about to follow. For those of you who
don't know who Amy brook Is. She made her name

(01:30:41):
as a children's book writer. A long time ago, she
published a book called one Hundred Days, which is an
attempt on her part to persuade us that the Swiss
system of governance would suit this country better than anything
else that we've adopted. And I don't want to say
that she's failed in convincing us, because quite a few

(01:31:03):
people have her book. The one hundred Days is still
available anybody who wanted to get through Amazon. But let
me quote you, one of the most unfortunate things that
has happened to New Zealand is that we no longer
have a quality magazine examining what is happening in this
part of the world from a socio political point of view.

(01:31:24):
Given this, fine Australian magazine such as Newsweekly and Quadrant
are well worth support. I'm not familiar with Newsweekly, but
Quadrant I certainly am. I checked my backlog of Quadrant
magazines prior to recording this, and the oldest ones that
I can lay my hands on are from two thousand

(01:31:46):
and three. And as I was waiting for missus producer
to come to the mail room, I was looking through
to mail and there was a quadrant for today and
lo and behold a disappointment called Chris Luxen written by
Amy Brook. Given the extraordinary damage done to the economy
of this country by the former Labor government, the National
Party's initiatives to attract investment can only be applauded. However,

(01:32:10):
the voting public can be particularly ungrateful, especially when the
government's focus, no matter how important in economic terms, is
not taking into account issues of considerable importance to the
majority of New Zealanders, and public perception is everything. We
all know that what is being taught in our schools
is a travesty of a genuine education, as Kevin Donnelly confirms,

(01:32:34):
is likewise the case in Australia, and no one Minister
of Education, no matter how well intentioned, has a chance
of restoring standards. Given that the Ministry of Education has
become an institution where neo Marxist controllers of the curriculum
have long become entrenched. There will be no chance at

(01:32:55):
all for genuine education reform until the Ministry of Education
is disbanded and the decisions on what should be taught
in schools are left to parents. Decentralizing education so that
in every province education is establishments are set up with
parents in control, not the bureaucrats nor the left wing
teacher unions, would facilitate a return to what needs to

(01:33:17):
be taught and taught well. This goes on Former Labor
leader Chrysipkin's left wing mother will have had considerable influence
on the dumbing down of the curriculum. Chief researcher for
the New Zealand Council of Educational Research, she is one
of the strongest advocates for the new Science curriculum, with
its politicized agenda, prioritizing quote matters of concern close quote

(01:33:42):
over actual facts. Under this last Labor government, Latin, which
I later regarded as the most important subject I studied
in school, was conveniently removed. It necessitated academic standards high
enough to challenge board pupils such as I was, to
change their attitudes. In fact, it wasn't so long ago

(01:34:02):
in England that one could pass all other exams but
would not get into some top universities if one failed
to pass in Latin. So much was it valued. So
from here I will quote only briefly from the remains
of the article. Moreover, most parents would not be mandating
the celebration in schools of LGBT identification as a source

(01:34:24):
of great pride, and would certainly be in favor of
removing from the curriculum the highly graphic sex education which
is today encouraging teenagers toward well. We spoke with Rodney
Hyde about this. He went into some detail, and you
can duplicate that here parents are going to have to
object more strongly, as is now happening overseas, where, for example,

(01:34:46):
strong opposition is now being mounted against drag queens being
allowed to perform in front of children in libraries. In
spite of the inevitable media frenzy, many New Zealanders will
be quietly applauding the protest the Destiny Church has mounted
against this. Moreover, in the next paragraph, Prime Minister Christopher
Luxen is now under fire, as the Conservative Party points out,

(01:35:08):
because of his dismissive response to an early childhood educator
who raised the alarm over a growing number of preschool children, yes, kindergarteners,
requiring they be addressed as they them rather than as
boys and girls. Rather than acknowledge such growing concerns and
the effect on vulnerable children of the transgender movement, the

(01:35:30):
Prime Minister dismissed this concern instead instead issuing a generic
statement of support for the LGBT community, thus completely ignoring
the particular issue at hand. Moreover, a previous government's decision
to ban conversion theory from being accessed to help youngsters
wanting to free themselves from same sex relationships should never

(01:35:52):
have been a government decision. And then she refers to
the fact that New Zealand is now hundreds of teachers
short and no wonder when writing some usback for Ian
Wishart's Investigate magazine in relation to the deliberate dumbing down
of education in this country. I was contacted by so
many teachers and principles and even lecturers and former professors,

(01:36:14):
appalled at what was happening, some writing in the trade
journals to object. I would try to encourage them to
write to the mainstream media, where what was happening would
then be more widely known, only to be told their
articles were always refused publication. And those of us in
the business know that this is essentially true. There has

(01:36:38):
long been a battle for the minds and hearts of
young New Zealanders, and indeed their parents and conservative parents
have lost because the long march through the institutions by
neo Marxists that is basically communist influences, was well underway
by the nineteen sixties. At any way, where are the
replacements going to come from? The teacher replacements? No intelligent,

(01:37:00):
academically qualified graduates, even those keen to share enthusiasm for
their chosen subjects of physics, chemistry, history, languages, etc. None
of them will want to enter a profession which compels
them to learn and inflict upon their pupils that almost
completely fake language to Rao, which bears little resemblance to
the original Marri language that is spoken nowhere else in

(01:37:23):
the world. Amy has been butting her head against that
for as long as I can remember. Anyway, taking all
these things into account, is quite obvious why teacher shortage
is going to remain. There are so many issues this
conservative coalition is failing to address. Both the destructive Jasindra
Adirn and Christopher Luxon's governments have set a mission targets

(01:37:47):
so ridiculously high that they would impinge on agricultural productivity.
I was on looking ahead and seeing CO two and
omissions and what have you. I was tempted to get
into it a bit today, but I've decided not to
because I want to do a podcast on it very shortly.
What a part of state we have come to? And

(01:38:09):
why is this supposedly conservative government not representing the wishes
of the majority of New Zealanders but operating with such
blinkers on that it would lose the election if it
were to be held tomorrow. Luxon is no longer viewed
as a leader with a finely tuned attennae. On the contrary,
he is costing the National Party votes. And no, we

(01:38:30):
do not need a four year parliamentary term. It's this
is quite obvious if we reflect upon the further damage
that Adern's and Grant Robinson's governments would have done had
they been allowed to proceed for a year longer. A
three year term is quite sufficient.

Speaker 3 (01:38:49):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:38:49):
I don't know about you, but I hope and cross
my fingers for what it's worth, that Christopher Luxen will
come to life at some stage, that someone will be
able to penetrate his brain and let him know what
he's doing wrong and certainly what he's not doing right,
and persuade him Accordingly, this country cannot afford another term

(01:39:13):
like the Adern regime and that will take us out
for podcast two hundred and seventy six. Now, if you'd
like to write to us latent at newstalksb dot co
dot z or Carolyn C. A R O. L y
n at newstalksb dot co dot z. We do love
getting email and we appreciate it, so go for it.
We shall return in well a few days for podcast

(01:39:36):
number two hundred and seventy seven. Until then, as always,
it's a case of thank you for listening, thank you
for your correspondence. This week is really good. Thank you
for listening, and we shall talk soon.

Speaker 1 (01:39:57):
Thank you for more from Newstalks EDB. Listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio

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Leighton Smith Podcast #276 - March 19th 2025 - Michael De Percy

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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 #276 - March 19th 2025 - Michael De Percy