Boonta Vista - EPISODE 130: Bau-ing Down The Haus

Episode Date: January 5, 2020

The gang talk about the absolute fucked state of affairs in our bushfire nation and the horrible sweaty lizard people running the show. *** Support our show and get exclusive bonus episodes by subscribing on Patreon: www.patreon.com/BoontaVista *** Email the show at [e-mail]! Call in and leave us a question or a message on 1800-317-515 to be answered on the show! *** Twitter: twitter.com/boontavista Website: boontavista.com Merchandise: boontavista.com/merchandise Twitch: twitch.tv/boontavista

Welcome to Punta Vista episode 130. We are all here huddled in a bunker. An underground bunker waiting for the raging fires to pass by. Because if you haven't heard, most of the country is on fire now. And this is how we live and we love to see it. I'm Andrew. I am here with my friend Lucy. Hello, everything is awful. It's just buttery smooth.

It's great. It's a good time. We're also here with Theo. Hey, how you going. Now, I am going to say, um, it's convenient that we had my, my gamer room to convert into this bunker. It was underground already. I wish you'd have asked permission first, but I kind of understand that this was necessary. Again, nice to have been asked, but you are welcome here. to ask in the future. We must ration the cans of monster carefully.

We need to sustain ourselves over time. And of course we also have Ben. Hello Ben. Hey, hi, it's lovely to be here. I'm using one of Theo's gaming catheters. Uh, Because obviously the situation here is not fully, facilities aren't there, but that's okay. We've got enough to last us a while.

Now we do have the gaming catheters but we also have the IV drips full of monster energy drink. Do not, and I repeat, do not get them mixed up. It's a 50-50 mix of monster energy and soilant and it's actually everything the mixed up. It's a 50-50 mix of monster energy and soilant and it's actually everything the body needs. Oh man. But yeah as we said I feel like everybody's pretty aware that great big chunks of Southeast Australia are on fire and have been for I think what is pretty much months now? Yeah, since well the fire season started in like September this year which is very cool August 31st I believe is the official start date of the fire season which is a very long time it's not just even the southeast of the country that's on fire

South Australia is also very, very heavily on fire. Tasmania, very heavily on fire. All of it is on fire. I think there are even some fires in WA as well. It's basically the entire country except the NT because there is nothing to burn there. Yeah, well, you know, let's not j it. That's, let's not ask for trouble. And how many Belgiums would you say that is? Are we approaching one Belgium? I do have actually... I have one country comparison in the nights here, but we'll get to that a little bit.

My goodness. So, um, so Ben, take us away. All right. So, so... So, um, take us away. All right. So, as people in Australia probably would have noticed, it was fucking hot this year. It was, in fact, the hottest year that we have ever had, which is really cool. It was also the driest year that we've ever had, which is also the driest year that we've ever had, which is also super cool. So this year we got a national average rainfall total of 277 millimeters. That is record breaking, obviously. The previous record low was 314 milliliters, and that was set in 1902.

Yeah, but it probably rained less at some point in the millennia before that. Ten thousand years ago, I think you'll find. It doesn't even mean anything. I'm sure the Bureau of Meteorology doctored all their records from 10,000 BC just to appease the warmest. Yes. Yeah. So again, it was the hottest year as well.

The average maximum temperature of 30.69 degrees was two degrees above the 1961 to 1990 average, which is how we usually measure things. The previous record was 30.19, that was in 2013. We kicked that one's ass. We broke Australia's hottest ever recorded day twice in two days, which is super chill. The previous record was established in 2013. It was 40.3 degrees. On the 17th of December we hit 40.9 and then the next day we hit 41.9. So usually the last 10 times before 2013, including 2013, that that record was broken. It was always by increments of less than 0.25 of degree.

These two times we broke it, it was by 0.6 of a degree, and then an entire degree. Which, there was a CSRO climate scientist who was talking to the ABC who said, yep, this is pretty much exactly in line with the thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and th, and th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, and th, and th, and th, and th, and th, and th, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, and thi, thi, and thi, thi, thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, thiiii, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, and thi, which there was a CSRO climate scientist who was talking to the ABC who said, yep, this is pretty much exactly in line with the between one degree and 1.5 degrees of global warming, you reckon Australia has experienced since 1920. It's a fun thought. How much difference does a degree make? A lot it turns out. Huh. And then what makes this even more spectacular is that all of this happened without an El Nino event, which is what usually drives all the climate record breaking stuff in Australia. But we're done with El Nino's now though, right? Yeah, we'll never get those again as far as I understand it. As long as we don't get an El Nino, we're probably all right.

Yeah, I think we cancelled our subscription to El Nino. You know, you just kind of let it go for a really long time. Yeah. Now if I, am I correct in thinking that El Nino is Spanish for the nino? The boy. Big boy, I believe. We're ditching the boy. Oh boy. We're ditching the boy. Oh boy. So that is why, well, all of our fire seasons for like the last however long have been starting earlier and lasting longer and because of these conditions, which is why we've had a particularly heinous one this year. And that fire season has been chock full of fires. We have had fires, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, West Australia and Andrew, as you were probably acutely aware. We have had fires in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia,

and Andrew, as you were probably acutely aware, you guys are staring straight down the barrel of some extremely bad-looking fires. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Just trying to push that out of my mind. Yep, well, there's a lovely reminder.

Apparently that in itself is completely unprecedented. There was a the the the the the the the the then, the thuuuuuu is thu is a thu is a thu is a thu is a thu is a thu is a thu is a thu is a thu is a thu is a thu th reminder. Apparently that in itself is completely unprecedented. There was a guy from the fire center at the University of Tasmania speaking to the garden saying that what makes this unprecedented is the fact that it is the first time whether there has been a fire from southern Queensland right through to New South Wales, into Gippsland, into the Adelaide Hills, near Perth, and on the east coast of Tasmania. It never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never sp sp sp sp sp sp sp sp sp spa. It never the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the th. th. the, the, th. th. the the th. th. the the th. the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, is. the, is. the, is. the, is. the, is. the, is. the, is. the, is. the, is. the, is. the, is. the, is. the the the the the. the. the. thea. theaugh. thea. thea. thea. their, is. their, is. their. their. the the the the the the elaide Hills near Perth and on the east coast of Tasmania. It never spans the entire country, but here we are. It's hard to describe like, we have apps and stuff like that that are getting updated by the fire services and that sort of thing where you can look at a map where they're constantly sort of updating and overlaying where the fire areas are and they keep expanding and that sort of stuff.

It's really hard to sort of communicate the scale of it in terms of just watching the areas around you day by day and just continue to black out these larger and larger areas of the map that are like the size of you know whole states in the US kind of thing. Oh well let me provide you with a frame of reference which I'm sure will help you. So so far the fires have burned about 5.9 million hectares about 59,000 square kilometers which and I'm sure this will help is about the size of Croatia. Oh...

If you're not really familiar with how big Croatia is, it's about 5.9 million hectares. Well, from all the times that I've walked from one side of Croatia to the other. It takes way longer than you'd think. Yeah, and that really helps to inform my understanding of the scale. So far, an entire 20th, like 4% of New South, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, thi, th, th, th, thia, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, thi, thi, thi, the scale. So for an entire 20th, like 4% of New South Wales is either on fire right now or has been on fire so far this fire season, which seems like a fair chunk. It is. Let's be real. I wouldn't want less to be on fire, just personally. I don't want to, like, you guys probably have your own thoughts, but 4% seems too high

for me. I just feel like... Less, less sounds good. If I'm going somewhere, I don't want to go somewhere, I don't want to the one in 20 chance that it's going to be on fire. just see what the clearest route is. I don't want that but for seeing whether my destination or anywhere between me and my destination or me are currently on fire. Yeah.

It gives you that little notification. It's like, just letting you know, this place is on fire. Do you still want to go? No, it turns out. I don't. All of these fires have meant that a whole bunch of coastal towns have been completely isolated because, and also the coastal towns were full because it's fucking Christmas and New Year's and everyone's like, well let's go to the beach, that'll be lovely. And then they go to the beach and then God screams at them, you're trapped. And then you get these fucking insane photos of like 10,000 people on a beach in northern New South Wales just like with all of their horses and their dogs and their children under

like some Blade Runner 2049 fucking red skies. They're very upsetting. They're very upsetting. They're very upsetting. Did not like seeing any of those photos from over here. their that, I th. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. th. that, I that, I that, I that, I that, I that, I that, I that, I th. th. th. th. th. th. thi thi, that, th. th. th. th. th. th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th. And th. And th. And th. And th. And th. And th. And th. And th. And th. And thi, thi, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then, then it did not like seeing any of those photos from over here. Horrified. Very unpleasant. Yeah, I bet you're starting to really regret moving overseas now, Lucy. I suppose I picked a good time. Yeah, yeah. It's all, everybody got twilight zoned when they said, I'd live at the beach if I could. And then the plot said, what if the only place you could live? the beach. Then they said, oh, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I th, I th, I th, I th, I th, I th, I th, I th, I'd th, I'd th th th th th th th th th the, I'd that, I'd that, I'd that that, I'd that, I'd that that that that that that, I'd that, I'd the that, I'd that, I'd that, I'd that, I'd that, I'd th. th. th. th. th. th. th, I th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. the, I'd the, I'd the, I'd the the the the the the the the that, that, that that that that that that the theat theat theat theat theat the that that plot said, what if the only place you could live was on the beach. But then they said, oh, it's okay, I could probably just drive out of here, my car

and then their car melted and it was just a series of mishaps that left them there. This doesn't happen all the time, by the way for our overseas listeners. This is completely not normal. I feel like a lot of people think this is just like the black Saturday or whatever black day it was bushfires and it is far worse. Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday. You got to come up with a different thing for each and you want to call them all. Now this is a cold like Tuesday.

Smokey Tuesday. Charcoal. . The fire decade. Yeah. Flame grilled Friday. It's um... Oh boy. What the Fridays we call it? Try to eliterate them. Come on. So, so yeah. I mean, this of course is all the thing that I've just had some very direct experience with.

Where, so Canberra, where I live, um, is pretty far inland from the coast. And it takes sort of two or three hours to get out to the coast from here, depending on where you're going or any of the sort of coastal towns. But due to both the location of Canberra and it turns out, I guess, kind of the geography of it as well, a lot of it is in these kind of low-lying valleys. It means that a lot of the smoke from bushfires in surrounding areas all gets pulled across by cool ocean winds, and then settles over the city here.

What we've had in recent, like maybe in the last week or so, is these weather events called, I think it was a temperature inversion, where the air gets pulled across from the bushfires over to our west, and all gets pulled across the city down into the valleys, and then, like a little inversion of cool and hot air just forces the smoke down and the valleys and then like a little inversion of cool and hot air just forces the smoke down and won't let it get out which fucking rules. We we love not being able to see more than like three or four hundred meters. I think we've seen like people have been tracking, you know, the metric of particulate

matter, which is, you know, the shit that you need to not be breathing. I've never looked at a government website more than the fucking air quality index. And so like a hundred is hazardous, right? Two hundred is where it officially enters hazardous. Yes, okay, yep. And we were seeing that in Sydney a little while ago where we were all across those southern suburbs, the the the the s, which, which, the s, which, the s, the s, the s, the s, the s, th, th, th, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, you, that, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you that, you that, you that, you that, you that, you that, you that, you that, you that, you that, you that you that you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, th, th, th, th, th, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi s-s, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi. And we were seeing that in Sydney a little while ago where we were all across those southern suburbs, we were seeing like 250, people are just going, this is terrible, you know, I believe, I believe in Monash a day last week we saw upwards of 1500?

It, which is still technically hazardous, I believe. It is still technically hazardous, so, so for me, over the last couple of weeks, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, th, th, all all all all all all all all all all all all all all all all all all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all tho, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, th. th. th. th. th. All, th. All, th. All, th. All, tho, tho, tho, tho, tho, tho, tho, tho, tho, tho, all, tho, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, hazardous, I believe. It is still technically hazardous. So for me, over the last couple of weeks, it's regularly been over 1,000. So, Jesus, crust. Which is, which is just like thick smoke in the air, you look out the window and like, if anything's further than sort of two houses away, it's all hazed out and everything. It's all got Superman 64, draw distance kind of stuff going on. the the the the th. th. th. th th th th th th th. So th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th the tho tho thi thi thoes thoes thoes thoes thoes tho tho tho thi thiks. So thiks thiks thiks thiks thiks thiks the the the the th th th th th th th th th th th th th th. So th. So th. So th. So th. So th. So th. So, th. So, the the the the the the the theeeeats thea thea thea' thea' theats theats thea theats thate theats the the the the than sort of two houses away, it's all hazed out and everything. It's all got Superman 64, draw distance kind of stuff going on. But... Very specific. And then...

And then, last week, it went up to 7,500. Oh my god. Which was... No, no, you must be mistaken, Andrew. That's simply bad. That seems like that would almost be the worst in the world for a major capital city? I believe it was measured and rated as the worst in the world. At the time it was like, sort of middle of the day, like 1 or 2 p.m. streetlights on dark outside. Jesus Christ. Kind of smoke. And your young kids must really enjoy that. Like for young children and that's what you want. Nothing your kids love more on

their summer holidays than not being able to go outside at any point. They only just finished school where they couldn't go outside for the last several weeks of term, so they just kept them inside the classrooms every day. And like, we sort of, we didn't put together for a little bit, that our older daughter, who is six, for like the last sort of week of her term, she was going to bed and then just getting back up every half an hour or 45 minutes and coming out and saying, I can't go to sleep, I can't go to sleep, I can't go to sleep.

Which is not really like her. Like my kids are, my kids are really good at just going and getting into bed and. Nice kid, brink. Yeah, nice. to generally speaking, we go and put their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their their, th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th, th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. thi, thi, thi, the, the, the.... thooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. th. nice way to live. We've worked with them. So generally speaking, we go and put them to bed out around their bedtime and unless there's something different happening, they just drop off, you know. It's not a whole production. So yeah, she kept getting up over and over again and one of the other mums of a kid at school said to my wife, yeah, it's because they're inside at home

and then they go to school and then they keep them inside at lunchtime and they're like six-year-old kids who aren't able to just run around. They have like all this energy that they haven't been able to burn off at any point during the day. Circadian rhythm is gonna be all off. So we had th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th the th th th th thu thu. That's the problem. So we had all of that going on. We had, yeah it had started to get to that point of being like seven, eight, nine, hundred, over a thousand on the air quality index, which for me was when it started to get to the point of like I don't feel like I can be outside without having something over my face. And you know, like I would go to work and get out of the car and have to walk a couple of blocks to get to my office and just feel, you know, like a burning in your throat the whole time

you're breathing outside. Great stuff. So we went to, um, so for Christmas we went to my in-laws place in Victoria, in Lakes entrance, which is currently has had all of the people evacuated out of it, all of the holidaymakers evacuated, but we went there because we were like, because a, that's where we were gonna spend Christmas, but also I was just, I was starting to get like desperate to not be surrounded by smoke.

And I'm not a person who is particularly prone to like getting, like very emotional or panicky about things or anything like that. My usual approach to a lot of stuff is just kind of, you know, is there something practical I can do about this or is there some kind of way in which I can solve this issue and if there is genuinely nothing I can do, then I'm usually pretty good at saying, oh well, time to just let go of that thing and not stress about it a whole bunch. Which, you know, I understand makes me one of those people that like, if I'm having a conversation with someone who's like, someone at my work is making me really mad by doing this thing, I'm the person who says, well, what you should try doing is having

a conversation with them in which you say X, Y, and Z and they go, no, I just wanted you to listen to me complain. Yeah, you're that people that people fucking hate. Yeah, that's you. So, I'm not here to listen to your winch, folks. So, oh, you've got a problem? Why didn't you just solve it? Yes. Uh, however, this has been an issue that over the course of weeks and weeks, has just started to give to give to give to give to give to give to give to give to give to give to give to give to give the to give the the to give the the the to give the the to give their their their to give to give the the and the and the and to give to their to to to to to to to to to to to to to give me this feeling of like low-lying dread at all times. That every time you wake up and look out of the window to see how bad is it today. And like, it's one thing to see everything on the news.

And then it's another step up the scale to literally be living in just constant reminder of what's going on. And also the fact that it's having a really direct health impact on the people in town.. tom tom tom. tom. tom. tom. the tom. th. th. And th. th. th. th. thi thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. to to to the to to to the to to to to to to the to to to the the the thi thi the fact that it's having a really direct health impact on the people in your town a woman stepped off a plane yeah just died and just died on the tarmac at the Canber airport the other day yep she arrived in Camber and died in like 30 seconds what I haven't even heard about this yeah superfuss it went into um not what's the, what's the lung thing, arrest where you can't breathe. No breathitis. Some type of the sphixia? Mm-hmm. So, so,

it must be cool to have to keep having the conversations like when you get up and it's 9 a.m. And there's no sun yet because it's just dark because of the smoke and you know your kids like, Dad, did we kill the sun? I'm like, no, no honey, we just blotted it out with poison. It's fine. It's fine. Has got abandoned us. In a way, yes.

Yes. You know, the fun thing is, is that this is not the only country that we're fucking up as well, because all of the the the the the the the the the the the the thu... th. th. th., which is obviously the color that absorbs the least light. It's speeding up their melting process by about an estimated 20 to 30 percent. Ben I hate what you've just said and I wish you hadn't said it. I too hate it. Because it's depressing you or because I got the thing wrong about white? Was I wrong about that? Oh no because it's depressing me. Everything sucks. Yep I was just trying to buy some masks for myself for my children to wear. Everything sucks. Yep I was just trying to buy some masks. I was just try to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to the the the the the the to the the the to the the the the the to the the the the the the the the the the to to the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the tryluceauuoleateateateateateateateateateat. I I don't hate. I don't hate. I don't hate. I have to toeat. I hate. I hate. I hate. I hate. I to to buy some masks for myself for my children to wear. Because you have to get a certain grade of, you have to get P2 filtering. Where do you even buy these? Well, in Canberra you buy them fucking nowhere.

Right. Because they're sold out everywhere. Haven't you, you're gonna have to get the special ones for, how beard are you at the moment? I don't want to shave your fucking beard off or it's th. It it it it it's th. It's th. It's th. It's th. It's th. It's th. It's th. th. th. th. th. to th. to to to to to to to to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get a to get to get to get to get to get to have to have to have to have to have to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get to get th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. I. I. I. I's thi. I's thi. I's their thea. theateateateateateate. I their their theateateateate. I to to to to to to to to to to ththe special ones for how beardy are you at the moment? I don't want to have to shave your fucking beard off or it's not going to work. Get a cool anime one. Get a like Naruto style. Yeah the Naruto mask. Yeah I think I am getting one of them. I'm getting one of the I've had to order them from interstate because you cannot buy them anywhere in Canber. And I got like a bunch of the sort of P2 rated ones with the little valve filter thing on it for my wife and kids and my parents. And I got myself one of the, one of like the big ones with the little like canister things on both sides. Because I like I need one of them anyway for various things. Becausetime that I'm doing things like sanding

stuff, it just like destroys all of my airways. Because luckily for me and my family, we all have lots of issues with like asthma and all that kind of thing. Anyway, so I called I called Bunnings yesterday because like one thing was in stock on their website and I was like, well I'm not going to waste the time going down there. I'll just see if this is, their website is notoriously bad for saying a thing is in stock and it's not. And I phoned up and got the hardware desk and asked the guy about the availability of masks

and he said, the stuff we're getting isn't even making it to the shelves. He said we don't know when things, when new stock is arriving, but there's people just waiting in the store for when it does arrive. And basically the stock arrives, we turn around and hand it straight to those people and then we're out of stock again. So anyway, we were in, we're in Victoria over Christmas and I finally felt some kind of blessed relief from having several days of no bushfire smoke hanging around everywhere I was. Driving there, even just driving there, I just felt like this, this low thrum of

anxiety the whole way because it still took maybe like a solid two to three hours of driving away from Canberra before it started to clear and just driving long distance and every hill that you crest and as far as you can see the horizon is still just blanketed in yellow smoke and you can't see anything in the distance and it's it's all thoroughly apocalyptic and shit. So we came back from there for Christmas and it was good driving back into Canberra and back into the smoke, great feeling. And we had talked about going to the

South Coast to stay with my parents because my parents have a house there and That's where they were going to be and we thought we would just go down there for a couple of days And it's been New Year's Eve with them and we did have a lot of debate about whether or not it was The right thing to do but basically it was like well, there's no smoke there. There had been some fires nearby, but they had all all th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th tho tho tho the tho the the tho tho the tho tho the tho' tho' tho' tho' their their their the' the' the the the the the the their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their the the. the the the the the the. thea. thea' thea' thean. thea' thea' thea' thea' thea' thea' thea' the. the. there's no smoke there. There had been some fires nearby, but they had all been downgraded to under control. The forecast was for we're not expecting any kind of danger or fires around here. And if we stayed in Canberra, we were just going to stay in thick horrible smoke. Or, as we turned out to not be here for the level 7,000 unable to any light to penetrate level of smoke which we missed but we missed that because

we decided to go to the South Coast and we got there and then more fires started to happen and then more fires and then more fires and then the power the power got knocked out because as we heard on ABC Emergency Radio the only way that we were able to get any communication because the power got knocked out which meant that everybody's NBN got knocked out because the government's way of putting in NBN was to not run lines to houses or anything like that it's to say hey we'll give everybody some Wi-Fi. We'll do some satellite stuff, all that sort of thing.

So if you don't have electricity running to your house, that's it. We probably won't be in that kind of situation, though, like those, that combination of factors where you might lose power but also need to communicate with the outside world in some thirty thirty thirty..... thirty thirty thirty. thirty, thirty, thirty, thi, thirty, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thirty, thi, thus, thus, thus, thus, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, tho, tho, tho, thi, tho, tho, the the the their, their, their, their, their, their, their won't be talking about it. So yeah the power went out, the smoke kept getting thicker, everybody's phone reception stopped working and so basically the only thing that we could do was sit in the house with our kids and listen to ABC Emergency Radio as they talked about which highways around us were be closed down and how the place we the place that that. the the the the th. the the th. the th. the the th. the th. the the th. the the the the the tho the the the tho the the the tho their their tho their their to to to their their their to to to to their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their thoes. So. Soa thoes thoes thooes thoooats. Soa toeats. So. So. So. So thoes their their their their their their their their the house with our kids and listen to ABC Emergency Radio as they talked about which highways around us were being closed down and how the place we were in was too late to leave now and we did all of our... it's fun to pack like go bags

while your children ask what's going on we all love to do that. So yeah the kids bit of holiday over New Year's Eve love to do that. So yeah, the kids' bit of holiday over New Year's Eve was to sit in a dark house with some candles. We had to try and keep them entertained while we just stayed in a house with big thick smoke going outside. They were entertained when a RFS firefighting helicopter landed on the front lawn. Huh. Yeah, so we started to see more and more choppers everywhere and the fire bombarding planes and that sort of stuff.

And it's just the whole thing. Yeah, so the troper landed on the front lawn, so that they could get refueled, because they were landing on highways nearby to refuel that had been closed down. But it was too dangerous due to both wind and the fact that everything around them was burning. So that's a land in the nearby town, and it turned out they landed directly outside the house that we were staying in, which, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, the, so, the, the, so, so, the, the, so the the the the the the the the the the the their their land in the nearby town and it turned out they landed directly outside the house that we were staying in which the kids thought was pretty exciting. It's like you've got your own personal air show except it's probably less dangerous. Well it was like Gale Force Wins at the same time as well. So like I was strangely nervous about standing on the

balcony of a house in Gale Force Wins where a chopper was like wobbling was like was like the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the house the the the the the the that we was like the the the th that we were th that we were that we were staying that we were staying that we were staying that we were staying that we were staying that we were staying thing thing that we were staying that we were staying that we were staying that we were staying that we were staying that we were staying that we were staying that we that we th. th. the the the the the the the the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house the house. their their their their their tho. tho. thop. thop. We're thoooooooooooooo. thoooooo. tho. their the house the house was like standing on the balcony of a house In Gale Force Winds where a chopper was like wobbly trying to land Like 20 meters away from us because I was like don't things go wrong at airshow sometimes? I think every air show has to have at least one crash or it's not officially an air show one mandatory crash. Yeah, yeah, and it has toto be into a stand like it has to be into the crowd. Yeah so that happened and the kids were very excited by it and so the whole thing for us turned into what the fuck are we gonna do and just listening to ABC Radio which I think we can all agree was an absolute godsend. There are people out there who are try to thi to the to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be to be the the the the the crowd the crowd the crowd the crowd the crowd the crowd the the crowd the the the crowd the crowd the the the crowd the the the the crowd the the the the the the crowd the the the the the the crowd the the the the the the the the the the the to the to to to the to the the to ABC Radio, which I think we can all agree was an absolute godsend. There are people out there who are trying to talk shit about the ABC and their coverage

and everything during all of this. But it was literally the only way that anybody in that town was getting any information about what was happening, which roads coming in and out of the town that they were in were open and closed, which highways nearby were open and where they they they they they they were they they were they were they were they were they were they were they were they were they were they were they were they were they were they were they were they were they town that they were in were open and closed, which highways nearby were open and closed, when and where they were going to be able to get out, how to get emergency supplies from places near you. But yeah, basically just heaps of towns through out there, like towns that we had driven through on the way there, the fire had gone like through the main street of the town and burned down, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, lots, the the the the th of th of th of the th of th, th, tho, their, their, tho, their, their, their, their, thoes, the, and where thoes, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, and where, th. th. th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th.... And, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, th we had driven through on the way there. The fire had gone like through the main street of the town and burned down,

lots of these old heritage buildings and all that sort of stuff. We were really lucky, obviously, to not be in the group of people who had to be like evacuated out to the water or to try and like escape by boat or anything like that. But it did get to the point, like with the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the their their their their their their their th their th. the the the the, the, tho, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, like, their, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like escape by boat or anything like that. But it did get to the point, like with the power being out, they said it might be out for a week because 150 power poles had burned down along the highway and they were like, how long will it take us to fix that? We don't really know. So... Cool. This all sounds so good and normal. It was really, it was a nice, I was so glad to finally be off work after not having a problem for a day for ages and to do a bit of relaxing. So this is a wonderful way to do it. So then we finally got to the point of,

we were just trying to figure out what we were going to do and then the message from emergency services started to come out which was we are clearing the highways as quickly as we can we are clearing the roads in and out of the town as quickly as we can everybody who doesn't have to be here needs to go and that's what they were telling all of the tourists in all the different towns if you th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th tho tho tho tho tho tho tho tho tho tho the the the tho the tho tho the the the to to to to to to to to to the the to the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the th the the the the the toe too too too. too too. too too. too te te. te. tea. tea. teaughe to to to toe toe toe too toe toe toe to to to the the they were telling all of the tourists in all the different towns. If you don't have to be here, you need to go. Because we had already just had all of this like, you know, with all the power out and everything, there's no lights on inside the house. So as nightfalls, you can look out to the horizon and just see the red glow coming up behind all the trees of the bush............... And the the the the the the the the the the tree. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. the trees. the trees. the trees. the the the trees. the trees. the thoes. thoes. the. And, thea. the the the the the the the. And, the their. And, the. And, thi. And, thi. And, the the thi. And, the the. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, th. And, the. And, the. And. And, the. And, the. And, the. And, the. And, the. And, t t t t t toge. And, t together. And, th they. And, they. And, they. And, they. And, they. And, the trees of the bushfires that are like, you know, 10 or 15 kilometers away from where you are.

Massive plumes of smoke going up in the sky. So we said, okay, we're gonna try and get the fuck out of here. Got everything packed up and went down to the, to the main road that leaves the town and immediately hit a queue of hundreds of cars backed up to leave. Because of course the highways and stuff were still closed. And then it just turned into a great big fun waiting game of trying to figure out just what to do, just sitting in the car with like half a tank of petrol. And kids love that. Kids love being stuck in a car that is not moving for hours on end. Kids love being in a stationary car for hours. So we sat there for three hours and moved about six

car lengths before my dad walked down from his house and strolled over to the car where we were and said, hey. And the kids got out and just played on the grass nearby and stuff. And of course, everybody was being really good and there was a lot of nice community spirit from everybody. Like some people at the house next to where we were waiting, let my wife and kids go and use the bathroom, there was a woman walking up and down the line of cars with like a big jug of filtered cold water offering to refill

everybody's water containers and all that sort of stuff. That's nice. And yeah, so the thing for us that, you know, we could hear over the radio there's, there's cars backed up for miles and people have been waiting the the the the the th th. th th th th there. there. there. there there there there there there there there there there there there there there there was a there was a there's there's there's there's a there's a there's a w wo there's a wa there's a wo there's a wo. There's there was a wo, there was a wo there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's a there's there's there's there's there's there's th. th. th th th th. th. the the the. And the. And the. the. thea thea thea' thea' thea' thea' thooooooooome. the. the. there's a there's a there's a you know, we could hear over the radio, there's cars backed up for miles and people have been waiting for hours and hours and they open the roads for a little bit and then they're closing back up again, they don't know how long they're going to be closed for and they're doing emergency back burning and that's going to take hours and people should be prepared to stay overnight in their cars. So we just didn't know what to do because it was like, well, you know, we could say, oh, well fuck this, this isn't going anywhere, let's just go back to my parents' place and stay there. And then you could come back the next day and it

could be exactly the same or the line could be twice as long or whatever. So I just stayed with the car and my wife and kids went back to my parents' place. And so I wound up sitting in the car waiting for six hours until they finally got to the point of saying, okay, we've cleared the roads enough and the police are going to start escorting groups of people through like 50 cars at a time. And then we finally got going and drove through the Sussex Inlip Road that goes to the town, Sussex Inlet where my folks are, and yeah, just seeing everything just gone between there and the highway, you know. Just, just like blackened matchsticks sticks sticking out of the dirt and nothing

else as far as you can see. And then we did get up to the highway. The highway was blocked on one side but unblocked to the direction we needed to go, which was good. And we went up that way and again just everything burnt as far as you could see and still smoldering fires and tree trunks everywhere and then just like the occasional house sitting there that was like just fine So yeah, and then we finally got far enough away to like a coastal town sort of you know hour away, to feel like we were clear of it and safe. And then we could start our four-hour drive home.

So a drive that normally took us about three and a half hours, door to door, wound up taking 11 hours. Big shout out to my kids for being so fucking good throughout everything because... How we get it, you love your kids. I do love my kids. I love my kids because we had that 11 hour day of just, you know, me and me and Elna being like so on edge and stressed out and not knowing what was happening or what to do and they're just there wasn't a moment of either of them complaining or crying or anything because that shit makes it worse. I would have been a huge asshole. That's impressive.

And you're a grown woman. I know. It just like we, you know, me and Elna had one moment of snapping at each other about something. But, and then the kids were like, you're grown-ups, you shouldn't be yelling at each other. Like, fuck off. But yeah, I mean, like, it just makes me think of, you know, five years ago, when Evie was a baby, she like hated being in the car, so we would drive back and forth between Camber and Melbourne to see people for the holidays and she would cry for like five hours. She would just scream and there was nothing you could do. Like, you could stop and get her out of the car and calm her down until she stopped

crying and then you try to put it back in the car seat and she'd be like, oh fuck this car seed and start screaming. And th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th thus thus thus thus thus the thus thu the the the the the the the the the the th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th the the the the the the the to the to to to the to to the the to the the the highway at nighttime and shit with somebody in a very small space with you screaming at the top of their lungs for hours is a very nerve-rattling way of driving. That sounds bad. So to go through that entire day and have them just be so good made such a difference obviously. Can I just back pedal a little? Sorry. Can I just back pedal just to tide a bit? Sounds like learning to drive with my mom.

And my mom. You see it, see like a car, you know, at a cross street like several blocks away and be like, oh my God, look out! So, so yeah, then we drove back to Canberra and of course again as we started to get back into Canberra more and more smoke and the visibility going down and down to the point where you can only see 500 meters in front of you. We were driving back in at night time by that point,

so it meant that you just couldn't see anything. It was just like like like like like like like like like like like like like the the the the the the the thethat point, so it meant that you just couldn't see anything. It was just like driving through an inky void. And the only thing you could see was the tail lights and headlights of other cars on the highway. But then we finally got back home and all got in and said, at last, we're all safe, we're all okay. Time to start getting ready for the catastrophic bushfire warnings forecasted for today. Or at which it is a barmy 42 degrees. Which is roughly 108-ish?

It's about 2,000 made-up degrees. Yeah. 100 Kelvin. So, um, so like, and look, let me just say obviously what we've been through isn't like what people have been through who've been, you know, on the coast and have been staying in accommodation, like I can't imagine what it'd be like to be stuck in a place with no power, horrible smoke outside, and like you have one hotel room with your several children because you were like, my children will be running around outside or my kids will be like dicking around at this caravan park with people or whatever. I can't imagine what it was like

for people who had to get evacuated onto the beach and then pushed back into the water. I think it would be absolutely horrifying. I th and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, and like, the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the th the th the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the th, you th, you th, you th th th thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo who had to get evacuated onto the beach and then pushed back into the water. I think it would be absolutely horrifying and it's just it is really fucked up to be there and be like, you know, how much am I meant to be telling my kids in terms of what they're meant to be worried about? How worried am I meant to be? That's a genuinely really, like a really difficult thing is to be like, you cannot be panicking about everything the whole time. You can't be thinking about it absolutely every second of the day, or you will go fucking crazy.

But by the same token, you can't ignore what's happening, you can't not be dialed into it because as we've seen, everything changes so quickly. Everything changes so quickly with all of this stuff that you need to be listening and you need to know what's going on. So basically, yeah, just the whole time for the last week or two, I've had the level of anxiety of Theo being pulled out to join a game of pick-up basketball at little speech. Oh my God.

Is that a thing that could actually happen? It could happen at any time. Oh my, potentially. Imagine Theo. You're in, you're in the 1992 movie, White Men Can't Jump. Oh, and I'm the White Man. You're sitting in the bleachers. You're sitting in the bleachers watching a game of street hoops take place on a half court, when all of a sudden,

all of them stop and turn to you and say, hey, the white boy. You can't can't jump. Get in here. Get over here and start playing. Also, we are skins, so pop that shirt off real quick. That's how I've felt for... Oh no. That sounds bad. It's interesting because, like, you know, I know people who suffer from like generalized anxiety and stuff like that.

And for me, it's obviously been like difficult with all of the levels of bushfire smoke and warnings and then all of the stuff we've just been through in the last week or so. To just have like this this just low humming terror in the bottom of your chest all the time of not only what are the actual direct threats but even stuff like all of the bushfire smoke, I've just found this to have like this cumulative effect on me over the last, however many weeks of like this, this animal part of your brain that would normally be saying, Hey, see all this stuff around here? This is a sign that something bad is happening or coming, and you shouldn't be here. You should be trying to get away from this. And yeah, just having this really low-level, internal, instinctual attempt by your body to trigger like your fight or flight responses to particular things, it's just kind of nerve

rattling all the time. Well, there's nothing to worry about, though. I'm sure the government of Australia is doing so much to end these bushfires immediately. They're probably all over it, right, Ben? Yeah, absolutely. of Australia is doing so much to end these bushfires immediately. They're probably all over it, right, Ben? Yeah, absolutely. And before we get to that, I'm going to list some more depressing things about what this fire has done.

Uh, so... I wish you wouldn't. Well, get ready. So this is specifically for New South Wales, the two facts facts I'm about to tell you, which is where the bulk of the fire has been. I think it's been about 3.6 million hectares, which is more than half of the 5.9 million total. So these ecologists that University of Sydney put out a paper where they estimated about 480 million animals died as a result of the fire. Half a billion almost. So this list does not include insects, bats, or frogs. Does include mammals, birds, and reptiles.

And then they put out a follow-up paper yesterday, or the day before yesterday, where they said, well, that's actually an extremely conservative estimate. We actually think it's way more. A half a billion, more, more than half a billion. So if that was people, that'd be, I said about a 14th of the population of the planet? Yeah, that's a one bit of Indonesia.

Yep. Pretty cool. They also reckon about 8,000 koalas have died. Which is about, it could be about a third of the population of koalas in New South Wales, which is, um, yeah. Just think about that for a while. Yeah, we had to tell our kids not to look out the windows too much as we were coming down the highway because all the, all the like toasted kangaroos and shit that you see that are just these little blackened shapes of their legs sticking up.

This news is all around the world by the way, particularly the koala deaths. Well I want to really hit the Americans hard. There was like a photo where a cyclist was giving water to a koala. In Australia it's like heartwarming cyclist saves koala with water and all across everywhere except Australia it's like half charred koala fends off death for a little while and then dies. Which is a way more accurate summation of the situation and just it goes to show that Australia's media except for the ABC is and the Guardian is absolutely fucked and they have they have no idea what they're the their their they. their theycala. the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the their their their their their their their their their they. their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their they. their their they. they. their their. their their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their their. their their their their their their the Australia's media except for the ABC is, and the Guardian, has absolutely fucked and they have no idea what they're dealing with.

They have no concept of what they're dealing with. Oh, man, I think I got rid of this from the document, but there was a particularly depressing quote from a guy talking about the koala deaths, where he was like, well, we'll never really know because the fires are burning so hot that by the time we get into there, there will be no remains left. Very cool. Yeah, and there have been people that have died. When I checked yesterday, I think we're about an estimated 22 deaths. There's a whole bunch more people missing.

There's been, I think, at least three of those have been volunteer firefighters, two who were both fathers with, like, basically, newborn kids. A tree fell on their firetruck. Volunteer firefighters. Volunteer firefighters. Another one was a 28-year-old volunteer firefighter who was in a truck with three other firefighters when a fire tornado picked it up, flipped it on its roof and he got trapped in there and died. The other three lived.

He had a pregnant wife, which is cool. We've lost about 2,200 buildings so far, I think is the estimate. Yeah, it's been pretty devastating. And then while all this was happening, our Prime Minister was in Hawaii throwing up the single worst shakker that I have ever seen in my life. It looked like shit. He was just in fucking, he was in Waikiki. He just looked like he was having the dumbest rich white guy holiday. The most basic bitch holiday of all the time. What a piece of shit. Do you know the right hand rule that you'll do to figure out like which direction currency is going with perpendicular to something?

Yeah, yeah. That's essentially what he was doing with his shark as well? Yeah, it's way too vertical. It's the the the the the the the the Yeah, yeah. That's essentially what he was doing with his Shaka as well. Yeah, it's it's way too vertical, it's too rigid. The 90 degree angle between his pinky and his thumb, which is heinous. Yes, it's yeah. Look, I know we've got bigger tragedies going on, but this is a tragedy in itself and you, you hate to see it. A national disgrace. He just couldn't get back. he that's th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. the is the is the. the. the. the. he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he thi. he he he he he hee. hee. hee. hee. hee. the hee. the the their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their the. He's the. the. the. the. the. thean. thean. thean. ta. ta. ta. ta. ta. ta. ta. ta. ta. the. get a flight back to Sydney, that's what I read. Well I mean he wasn't in Hawaii until he was. Well that's because his his press secretary, well his press secretaries the the PM's office was like, because Samantha Madden journalists put up that screenshot of her texting the PM's office being like, hey I've heard he's in Hawaii, here's a bunch of stuff and they just replied being like don't, the the the the the the their, their, th.. they're they're they're th. he. he. I he. I he. I he. he. he. he. he. he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he. he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he. Well, he's he. Well, he's he. he. he. He's he. He's he. He's he. he. He's he. he. He's he. He's he. He's he. He's he. He's he. He's he. He's he. He's he. He's he. He's he. He's he. He's he. He's he. He's he. He's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he. he. He's he. He's texting the PM's office being like, hey, I've heard he's in Hawaii, here's a bunch of stuff, and they just replied being like, don't believe

everything you see on Twitter, and then they told someone else that it was categorically false. And then for some reason, after two volunteer firefighters died when a tree fell on their truck, he was in Hawaii, but he was heading back. He was cutting his holiday short. What a tragedy. That is so generous. Would everyone like to feel mad for a little bit? Would that make you feel good? I'm already there. Would you like to be angrier? I had the time scheduled in to be mad, so it would be a shame to waste it.

Give us a little as a treat. just quotes from Morrison addressing the fact that he was away, right? This is him speaking on 2GB. We had planned to spend it down on the South Coast, as we usually did, but we had to bring it forward, as I said, because the commitments we had India in Japan. So we had to tell the girls we wouldn't be spending as much time down there. So in return, I try to give them a bit of surprise and their tauuuuse. their. I. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's. I's their. their. their. theirsea'er. th. th. thii. theirse. their thi. toe. toe. toe. toe. We had toe. We had to spend to spend their their their their their their their their their their. We's their. We's their. We's their. We's their. Wee. Wee. Wee. We're their. We're th. We're th. We're th. We're tryn't tryn't tryn't toda. toda. trye. toda. toda. toda. toda. toda. We've toda. trye. toda. toe. We hade. We've toe. toe. We's what dads try and do if they can when they've been working hard all year. I know there's lots of dads and moms out there who work hard all year and try and treat their kids at this time a year and mate that's just what I was trying to do. It's just unfortunate it's come at such an awful time particularly for those living around Sydney New South Wales. Going into a doggy dad. Office getting paid over half a million dollars a year and I just wanted to nip off to Hawaii with my kids at Christmas like every working bloody family does.

I just, I, not to sound terribly unkind if I do. Oh, oh, go on. But there has been this talk of like when people have been coming to his defense here and saying, everyone's entitled to a holiday hey work-life balance is important. Scott Morrison is a worker. You're the prime minister you don't have a right to work life balance. You gave that up. Yeah number one number one like you know talk like talk in the corporate world of wellness and stuff like that is fucking horse shit and I hate it it's it's all it's all it's all just this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this this the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the in the corporate world of wellness and stuff like that is fucking hoarse shit and I hate it. It's it's all it's all just this fucking garbled

masquerade of like ways that you can say that you're looking out for your employees without doing things like just giving them more leave you know pizza pizza instead. Yeah what if what if we had a foosball table but you still had to work until 9 p.m. Like wellness, wellness. Hey, what if we every now and then sent you an email saying, you know what you should do on your own time with your own money is try meditating. Just shit like that. It's fucking bullshit. And it's again one of these corporate speak things for, hey, we're looking out for everyone and doing good in a way that does not require us to say, what if we did things like more

aggressively defended or shored up your entitlements? What if we did things like paid you more money or gave you more leave to spend away from work with your family? Or did shorter hours or a fucking four day work week or whatever whatever any of those things. But entry he was just trying to practice self-care. Just just doing a self-care in Hawaii for his poor fucking hard done by wife and kids. You know when you need people. You know when your job just gets too hard and you're like boss I got a I got to take a tak I'm tak a mental health day and I and you and you and I and I and I the the the the the the th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th. You th. You th. You th. You th. You know th. You know th. You know th. You know thi thi thi. You know thi. You know the the the the hea hea hea hea hea hea hea hea hea hea hea hea hea hea he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he's he's he's he's just he's just he's just he's just he's just he's just he's just he he he's just he he he he he he he he'm gonna take a day. I'm taking a mental health day and I assume in this context that's the government general I don't really know who he applies to for leave and they're like, look we got got some big projects

on, number one, it's really the only one that I can think of right now is there's a fire fire the size of three-quarters of a Croatia, not quite Croatia level yet. Maybe we need to band together and do that and he's like, no, I'm entitled to this. Call me when it's a whole Croatia. Call me when it's a whole Croatia. When you get to the one Croatia, I'll come back. And also make sure to lie to anybody that as well. About three quarters of Croatia, I think is a Costa Rica if you want that number. So number one, the fucking, you know, work-life balance and wellness type shit that journalists

have been putting out in his defense, fuck off. As soon as he starts to show any fucking level of concern for the work-life balance or wellness or whatever of your average worker, of all of the people that he's been so happy to see their fucking jobs casualized and their hours shortened and put on to contracts instead of having a permanent role or anything like that, he can go and fuck off and I don't really give a shit about his fucking kids. Number one, they get to go to the fanciest fucking schools and all that sort of thing. They get school holidays just like everybody else. If it's that fucking important to you to spend however much time with your kids on a

regular basis on their holidays, don't be the fucking Prime Minister. I don't fucking care. Like if, like, you know, do your fucking term and then go and hang out with them. I can't believe I wasn't here. I can't believe I left Hawaii when I could have seen that piece of shit in the flesh. Just sitting motionless alone in his chair while the sun slowly sets. Wasn't he at like a weird resort that was only for military personal as well? Really? Yeah, it was something weird about that which I think it might have been a security thing or some shit. But I would have gone down to Waikikiiki k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k- that that that that that the that the the the the the th. It th. It's a th. It's a th. It's a th. It's a th. It's a th. It's a the their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their th. I th. I th. I thi thi thi thi thi te s- s-feea' thea' theea' theea' theea' theea. theeeee it might have been a security thing or some shit, but that is fucking- I would have gone down to Waikiki for this. I never go to Waikiki. It would have done it. That's right. Kiki. And anyway, here's another quote. This one will... This is so, can I just say as well? This is not the first time, to my recollection, that he has, that he has That he's like used children as a shield for something that was politically inconvenient for him to talk about. Oh

It's it's totally unsurprising because his whole his whole stick right apart from being a ex-marketing guy is is He's just a dorky dad. He's just I just loves his kids so much and I'm rigid-ditch, I'm dinky-die. I wear bad hats. He's dinky-dye as fuck. And like, it's totally unsurprising and yet still depressing at the moment, like, at the same time to see him just still try and apply disaster response through the lens of being a dad instead of being, like, a leader of the country. The leader of the country. He's not even good at marketing. He's not even good at it. And like the idea that people would find this and like,

he's stuck on this now, right? Like he's fucked because he can't be super serious to go back on it. But like, the idea that people would look at him like, oh, this is all too hard and fuckinging and fucking and fucking and children while people are sitting in their cars waiting to see whether the inferno would catch up with them and their children, right? Like while they, while their government continues to attack, you know, climate science and continues to attack the, you know, the ABC and all this sort of stuff. Well, I noticed, I noticed, I noticed, nobody's asked him why he didn't take his

fucking kids to the South Coast this year. Oh, that's where we usually go. Oh, so why? Why Hawaii? Anyway, Ben, I'm amped up now. Hit me with the fucking quote. All right, get ready. I'm gonna get your resting heart rate to hummingbird levels. Yeah, it's 120 now. So this is what he said at his press conference, which is maybe the single most fucking passive aggressive thing I've ever read of my life. And it makes me want to ship myself. And maybe I will. I get it that people would have been upset. to know that people would have th have th have their th have th their their their th th th their their th th their their th. th. the thi thi thi thi thi. thi. thi. the. th. th. th. th. thi. thi. thi. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. It's their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. their. the. the. the. t. te. te. te. te. te. te. te. te. te. te. te. te. their. was holidaying with my family, while their families were under great stress. They know I will not stand there and hold a hose. I am not a trained firefighter, nor am I an expert like those in the next room doing an amazing job, but I am comforted by the fact that Australians would like me to be here simply so simply so I can be here alongside them as the to all were angry at me because you missed me so much. That's

why you're aggrieving. Even Tony Abbott's on the fucking hose. Good grief. And you're supposed to be out in front, you're not supposed to be side by side with Australians, you fucking idiot. Like you think of all the all the state-level emergencies that we've had in the last 10 or 15 yearsthey're working with all the experts and all the experts sort of come to some sort of, you know, 30 second, a minute kind of summary to give to people and then the Premier gets up and he or she says those words to the people as a leader to say, hey, this is what we've done, this is what the situation is, this is what we're doing. Not be like, ah, I know you guys, look, I would just be in the way if I was on that fire hose, so I was just going to, you know it would be better

for me to be doing fucking nothing, right? Like I know you guys love me so much, I'll just be, I'll be with you, not with you, or like side by side with you in the house or even in the same country, but I'll be with with there. I'll be, you know, in spirit, you know, the Holy Spirit. So I'll be in the next room sucking my own dick, but let me know if I can order some pizza for you or something. Now there's several issues with this, of course. Number one, as people have pointed out, during, uh, which, which ones, which day of the Victorian ones named after, um, where, the, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, to, their, their, their, their, their, their, so. So, so. So, so. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so. So, so, so, so, so, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, day of the week were the Victorian ones named after. Where there was a whole, there was the whole scandal about, by the right wing papers about fire commissioner or police commissioner or whatever, Christine Nixon, going out for a dinner, going to dinner while the bushfire emergency was happening. Was that a gastro pub, I believe, was the word I saw used? Oh, that it was a nice dinner. That's the problem.

So, so she went to dinner and I believe the the timeline was that basically they'd been told, okay, we're having a bit of a lull but we're expecting it to get really fucked up again later, so just go and eat something now and then come back. And she did, and it was this big thing where all the right-wing papers had this big beat-up about, oh, Commissioner eats a meal during this disaster. And of course, people were able to dig up the footage of one fucking Scott Morrison Back when he was in the opposition on Q&A Talking about how much of a bad look it was and how much of a bad choice it was for Christine Nixon to go and eat a fucking meal while this was happening and you know he didn't say oh, she's not going to be there holding a hose

No, instead it's about you are one of the state figureheads who is coordinating the response to this thing and you need to be present and aware of what's going on and like and also just being the public face of some of this stuff. Yeah, imagine if you signed up for Pager Judy except, you know, your pager only goes off when half of the f- is on fire. And you're like, hey, that's a pretty good deal. Right? Most of the time, I'm just going to chill out. I'm going to, you know, take my kids to Hawaii. I'm going to go golfing.

Enjoying not sitting in Parliament for any period of the year for some reason. But then if the country's on fire, or maybe underwater, thattwo things. Fire, water, you can call me, you just hit me on the pager and I'll be right there. Imagine that those were the terms of your employment. But you go, hey, the country's on fire, fair call. Honey, I got to go, I just got to be there. We just ticked over from 50 to 51 percent and it is time for me to go back. Spring and action. Now of course the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other the other th. th. th. th. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. Spring and action. Now, of course, the other massive fucking issue with this is that like these fires have been going for a long time now. During all of this, there have been various different bodies desperately signaling how bad this was going to get and asking for a nationally coordinated response from the government.

Morrison has refused to meet with, like, groups nationally coordinated response from the government. Morrison has refused to meet with like groups of former fire service chiefs who all got together and said this is a really big serious issue and the government needs a coordinated response to it and we would all like to sit down with you and talk about it and he just refused to meet with them. There's been a whole bunch of different stuff where he's basically just been completely fucking missing in action. They had a whole timeline on the Guardian of the last sort of week or two of just how many days in a row he just wasn't seen in public. And like it's not a matter of, oh people know that I'm fucking useless and basically shouldn't even have a job.

Oh, shucks. I'm just a prime minister. What am I supposed to do? It's my first day. It's my first day. It's my first day. People know that. No, it's that like you're, you actually have a fucking job. That is, you should be up there making decisions and helping to coordinate the responses to this stuff. He even had a fucking quote out in the news of saying, like dismissing people's criticism of him and saying, oh, the last thing that people want is the federal government coming in and stepping all over toes on these state-rubes. Yeah, it's not really the vibe we're going for in this government. We're kind of a minimalistic, easy-going government government. Government. And government. And, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, th. And, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the th, this forces. Yeah, it's not really the vibe we're going for in this government. We're kind of a, kind of a minimalistic, easy-going government. Yeah. And, more of a hands-off kind of government. We're sort of like the brutalist of governments, right? Just a sheer concrete

wall that you cannot get past. The Bauhaus government, yeah. And, not the band's bahoe- They're crazy. thi. It's the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the their their their their their their their their their their their thousand- It's their thousand- It's thoomomorrow. thoomorrow. thoomorrow. their their house, thoom. thoomomom. their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their thoom. thoom. thoom. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. thoer. than. tho tho tho tho tho thoooo thooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo crazy though. You're crazy. You're crazy. It's almost like once there are fires happening in almost all the different states and territories in the country, what would a word for that be? Perhaps a national thing that is happening that maybe a federal government could get involved with? Oh, yeah, there's just been all these people asking for all these different resources and everything and what do we get from them is like, oh, but you know, I'm not actually going to be doing anything personally.

It's not like there have been big logistical issues and communication issues when a fire straddles a state border because they're getting different alerts for different areas and they have different ways of rating things and they are using obviously each state's own resources on their state side of the border even though it's the same fire and that that could be alleviated by some sort of national coordination so it's fine. Can I just, we've been saying a lot of negative things and so I'm gonna chime in with something positive. Oh great, just try and bring the mood up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up up. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. the th. th. th. th. thi. the the the tho tho the the their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their their thi. thi. the. the. the. theateateat theat theat teat teatea. theat theat. theate. theate. the. the. their ths and so I'm going to chime in with something positive. Oh great. Just try and bring the mood up a little bit. So we give Albo a lot of shit, Anthony Albeneasy, you know, he's kind of easy to make fun of. It's because he sucks. He's a bit of a useless fuck.

He's a bit of a shithead and he's trying to reach some sort of made up political success that doesn't exist by being just piss-weak about everything. But when it comes down to it, the core belief of this man is that he loves fighting Tories. That's what he does. He fights Tories. And when the PM chose to go on a holiday at a time of national crisis in just an incredibly tone-deaf, fucking stupid move, he was there to say this. I'm not going to be critical of Mr. Morrison personally in terms of his circumstances of him taking leave with his family. That would be cheap politics and I'm not into that. You fucking weak prick. Fuckered piece of shit.

Because obviously he's not going to say anything because he's worried that he ever takes a holiday. He's, you know, going to get in shit a the the the the the to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to say thin to say th th th th thi thi thi thi the to say to say to say to say to say to say to say to say th. th. th. th. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi to say to say to say to say to be to to to to to to thi to thi. thi. thi. thi. theeea. thea. toooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. to say anything because he's worried that if he ever takes a holiday, he's gonna get in shit for it. But I think there's a pretty easy solution to this. I think he'd be fine if he never took a holiday in the midst of unprecedented catastrophic bushfires. I think if he avoids doing that... A raging national disaster, yeah, like if the whole country was in peril, probably don't nip off to a bungalow somewhere. And you're probably, okay, I think it's fine to maybe say, hey, he probably shouldn't have done that. But also, as has been noted, labor took a policy to the last election for a big round of funding for like, state firefighting services and

to establish like a big aerial firefighting force and all that sort of thing, perhaps this would be a good time as people are feeling this unbridled level of fury at the Prime Minister and his complete seeming detachment from this issue to point out the fact that when we went to the last election, you actually had a plan to contribute positively in some way to this and that maybe if you had been elected there would have already been proactive measures taking place before all of this happened perhaps a bunch of homes could have been saved but no unfortunately Anthony Albany's number one strategy as opposition

leader seems to be, hey, let's keep the politics out of it. If there's one thing people hate its politics and that's why I, the leader of a political party, will not be doing any more of them. Just completely fucking asleep the wheel. I believe they're, they're doing spigot politics, which is where they hide behind a pot plant, until the time is right, and then they will jump out and yell spigot and someone. And that's how politics works. Here's something positive to say. If everything Scott Morrison believes is true, then hell is real and he will be burning there for all eternity. Oh, that is quite nice.

It's just going to be him in just unbearable heat, smoke you can't breathe in, just fucking up handshake after handshake. Just slippery, wet handshakes being offered by him and taken away by other people, sliding out, avoiding his eye contact. And he gets to do that for about, I would say, maybe 200,000 years. And then it's on to the dick peeling. Now, we're on to the dick first and then they'll flay his dick. Now we're going to have to talk about this for a minute.

The dick. We can boil the dick, like score it and then... Okay, I think people... If you put it straight into ice water, immediately afterwards, it actually just comes off by itself. Now if you're an international listener, it is possible that you have seen some footage of the things that I am about to describe. So, so as Ben has said of this timeline we've had a months-long fire season during which Scott Morrison has basically refused to acknowledge all the stuff that's happening, he's just we refused to take meetings with all

these different people asking for more funding for the services that would have helped to mitigate some of this stuff because hey we wouldn't want anything to services that would have helped to mitigate some of this stuff, because hey we wouldn't want anything to impact that budget surplus. Then we've had him being on holiday while all this is happening. It's worth noting as well that as this stuff was starting to reach its peak, the Liberal Party's New South Wales emergency minister said, right, I'm off to Europe for my holiday, goodbye. And then he said, hey, I'll come back back if to to to to to to to to to to to to to to th and thi thi thi thi thi thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi, thi. thi, the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the they. We. We. We. We. We'll th. We'll th. th. We'll th. thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, thin, the.uuu.e.u. thean, thean, thean, thin.uu. Wea. Wea. We'll, the. We'll, holiday, goodbye. And then he said, hey, I'll come back if it gets really bad though. And then he didn't.

Very cool, and everybody loves it. You would think if there was one thing worth canceling your holiday over, it would be most of the state that you are the emergency minister for being on fire. But no, apparently this was not worth it. So anyway, Morrison has continued on with all this stuff. He has eventually relented and revealed that he is in fact on holiday, but that he's coming back as soon as possible, which we all strongly suspect was when the holiday was scheduled to end anyway.

He's then come back being dismissive of the idea that people are angry about the absolute vacuum of leadership at the top of this country and instead said, no, it's because they love me so much and they wish that I was spooning all of them in a comforting way during this trying time. So finally, he started to do a little bit of what everybody, and th. thi. thi. thi. th. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. their their thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. th. th. th. th. thi. thi. thi. He, th. He. He, th. He. He, th. He, th. He's, th. He's, th. He, th. He, th. He, th. He, th. He, th. He, th. He, th. He, th. He, th. He. He. He. He. He. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. thin, thin, thin, th. th. th. th. thin, th. th. thin, th. th. thee. the. the. the. the. the. the. th in a comforting way during this trying time. So finally, he started to do a little bit of what everybody basically expected to be happening this whole time anyway, which was doing some press conferences and going around to see some of the people in some of these affected communities. The press conferences have not gone well, as he has been very sort of angrily and shirtily dismissing any sort of talk about. It's just a Twitter thing. Oh, it's just people on the blue website being mean to me. Everybody else loves me. Everyone else loves me. You know, like I feel like he's struggling

a lot to not repeat the line that like National's leader and Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormick has, which is it's all just inner city lefty greenies. Woke Capital City raving lunatics who want to make political mileage out of this. So he has started to go around and do some tours and it's there that we have been subject to some of the most cripplingly excruciating footage of a Prime Minister trying to talk to people that we've ever fucking seen. I can't even watch it. It's so painful.

They went to the town of Cobago, which had been mostly wiped out, I believe. Went right through the main street of the town, basically destroying everything there. And in trying to do his photo opportunities, he's walked up to a pregnant lady who, and held out his hand to shake her hand. And now the cameras are rolling on this and the audio is on. And she can be heard quite clearly saying, I'm not going to shake her hand. And now the cameras are rolling on this and the audio is on. And she can be heard quite clearly saying, I'm not going to shake your hand unless you give more money to the firefighting service that they need. He's then just, without acknowledging her,

reached down and grabbed her hand, shoved it into his own outstretched hand, and shaken it a few times, and then dropped it. And she then starts to say, sounding very distraught, you know, we've lost everything, we need help, we're not getting enough help, and he just kind of turns around and starts walking off as the local council member who's there with Scott Morrison just steps in between them. And in what I think is, is probably supposed to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to look to to to to between them and in what I think is is probably supposed to look like he's

comforting her instead just basically provides a human shield for Scott Morrison in which he steps between the two of them and just like restrains her with his body. Plants a big wet kiss on her cheek at the same time as well. Why? It's disgusting. I hate it. It's just some really weird interactions going on there between the two of them. It's just genuinely, like it genuinely to me,

I just, you know, obviously there's lots of people, lots of, like, you know, the old centrist boomers who love to freak out about everything on Twitter and stuff saying, ah, he assaulted that woman by touching her when she said she wasn't going to shake her hand and stuff like that. And like, you know, he's not assaulting her, but like, it's like, Morrison. It's extremely, alien behavior. But also, I don't think that there is any interpretation of it that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can that can be that that that don't think that there is any interpretation of it that can be offered other than the him turning his back on the woman who is publicly grieving and asking him for help and then some

weird fucking liberal dude immediately coming in and effectively like just controlling that woman's body with his body. However you would like to put it, however you would like to classify that. He has basically just moved in to just block her and move her away. Everybody in the town has then just started yelling at them. I'm saying, fuck off, you won't find any votes here. Scamo! They're yelling. And they just turn around and trot off to try it. I'm saying fuck off, you won't find any votes here. Scamow! Scamow! They're yelling.

And they just turn around and trot off to the big BMWs that they arrived in and immediately high-tailed it out of town. Yeah, I mean, they've showed up, he's showed up expecting that what people want from him is for him to be there and for emotional support, but what people actually want for him to be there and for emotional support. But what people actually want for him him is that, plus him to run the government, and to see him just walk smack bang into the wall of the consequences of his and his government actions is astonishing. You don't get to see that on tape very often. And, but we've seen it over and over again in the last couple of days.

You'd think that um once you had to like make someone shake your hand by just reaching out and grabbing the hand they didn't extend to you you wouldn't do it again? Oh hey I would say that she doesn't want to shake my hand I wonder whether I may do some self-reflection. Or is she just a raving, pure, enlightened greeny that doesn't believe in hazard reduction? Probably. Probably. This, of course, was immediately the line that was run by very right-wing people in the media and on Twitter was, oh, but Cabago is a town of old hippies and everything.

So they're big raving leftists and they hated him anyway. And they're just using the chance to chance the chance the chance the chance the chance to the chance the chance to the chance the chance the chance the chance to the chance they they they they they they don't the the. Uh the, uh the doesn't the doesn't the doesn't the doesn't the doesn't the doesn't the doesn't the doesn't the doesn't the doesn't the doesn't the the that doesn't doesn't doesn't doesn't doesn't doesn't doesn't the the the the the the the the the th doesn't doesn't doesn't doesn't doesn't th doesn't th doesn't th doesn't th doesn't th doesn't the doesn't the doesn't the old hippies and everything. So they're big raving leftists and they hated him anyway. And they're just using the chance to yell at him and everything. But not instead. Yeah, and they're right to do so. Instead, there is more footage of him walking up to a fire service volunteer in his uniform who is sitting down in a shed. And again, walks over to this guy and stretches his hand out and the man says to him, again, on tape, I don't really want to shake your hand. And what do you do when someone says that to you? Hey, do you take it lying down or do you employ your no-nonsense get things done attitude?

And, you know, resolve the handshake that you began. Because hey, you know, you don't want to leave a job half done. Well, we just two blokes being blokes. And what it blokes to? You shake his hand. It would be embarrassing if he left him hanging. It would have been embarrassing. It would have been embarrassing if he just went, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, to, to, you, you, you, to, to, to, to, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, th. And, to th. And, to th. And, to th. to to th. th. to th. to th. th. to to th. to thi. thi. thi, th It would have been embarrassing. It would have been embarrassing. It would have been embarrassing if he just went, you know what? I understand you're upset and I'm going to listen to why you're upset. That would have been super weird.

So instead, what did you do? Well, like, I guess that he thought to himself, hey, imagine how bad it would look to the electorate if they saw me only do half a handshake and they said this guy can't get things done. Yeah, imagine if you're caught on tape going like down low and then you get absolutely too slowed. Mmm. Terrible look. Break your heart.

So instead, he reaches out with his right hand, grabs the completely immobile dead-fished left hand of this guy that is sitting on his leg, picks it up and just just wobbles it two times and let's go. Again people are like what the fuck is this guy doing and then another bit of footage emerges which is of Scott Morrison talking to the person who presumably heads up this group of volunteer firefighters who had taken him in there to do his photo up. And it's a bad look all round as the guy who had taken him in there seems to be apologising to Scott Morrison that the firefighter has not performed as advertised in smiling and shaking

his hand and everything. And Scott Morrison said, oh it's all good, I understand that he's just upset. And the other guy replies, yes, he's just lost his house. Yeah, I'm sure he's just lost his house. Yeah, I'm sure he's just tired. He's not fucking tired. Oh, that was it. I was that. I'm sure he's just tired. And he says, yeah, and also his house has just burned down. He's lost everything.

Just, and he doesn't say, oh, fuck. He's just like, oh, yep, it's all good. Yeah, it's a real Tony Abbott, I'm sure you understand sometimes shit happens moment. Just, yeah, just the tone deafness, the absolute inability to just empathize with people. And the thing that struck me the most about it, of course, was that it is so, it's just so transparent that he has said, ah, well, we're obviously at the point where I've got to do some damage control. I obviously have to, you know. Not actual damage control, just of my image.

Rehabilitation of my government, not rehabilitation of fire service or, you know, the areas damaged or anything like that. No, no, instead it's just regular old PR style damage control. How can we spin this? How can we make this a positive? We need to get out there and show, you know, us getting along with people and people being grateful for me being there. And what I was so struck by with the footage of the woman was the way that as soon as it became clear to him that he wasn't going to get what he came for out of the exchange. He just turns his back on her and starts awkwardly shuffling away from the encounter.

He doesn't say... Well, this is useless to me. He doesn't say, oh, I'm so sorry, please tell me what you need. I'm listening, I'm here for you, or anything like that. I can see how upset you are or anything. He literally just turns his fucking back on her and walks away. And it's just so clear that it's just the the thiiiiiiiiiii, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thus, thus, thi, thi, thi, thus, thus, thus, thus, thus, thus, thus, thus, thus, thus, thus, thus, thus, thus, thus, thus, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, th, thi, t, t, t, tus, tus, tus, tus, to, tus,'s just a transaction to him. And that she wasn't going to give him what he wanted out of the transaction, which was to be seen, you know, getting a hug or a handshake or whatever from him on camera.

And what was she supposed to get out of the exchange? A handshake from the PM. And you should just shut the fuck up and be happy about it. He's a hideous fucking ghoul. I hate him. Absolutely is like the level with of, like just the seeming complete and utter inability. Zero empathy for any of this. Just we should have known when he had his those sneakers photoshopped onto the photo. I mean he was an absolute freak from the start. Well when, you know, obviously I was talking to my parents about this while we were away and my mother was trying to make sense of all of this as well saying, you know, like, we were sort of trying to figure out like the, what is the best way to spin all of these things and all thinks and all that sort... that sort. th. tho tho that sort, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you that sort tho, you thi, you thi, you thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thr-a, thi, thi, thi, thin, thin, thin, thi, thi, thi, thi, thr- thr- thr- thr- th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th, th, th. th. th. th. th. thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, thi, that, thi, that, that, that, that that that that that that that that that that the that that, he th of talking about, you know, are they trying to figure out like the, what is the best way to spin all of these things and all that sort of stuff? And she said, you know, I don't, I don't think that it's even that conscious or anything.

I think it's just that it just doesn't have the ability. He just doesn't have it in him to just be a normal, the decent decent decent decent decent decent decent decent decent decent, to to to to to be a to be a to be a to be a to be a to be a to be a normal, to be a normal, to be a normal, to be ato just be a normal, decent human person to these people. And of course... He has no soul. He's a horrible void of a person. Yep, I think he is 1,000 percent a massive fucking ghoul. And I think as well that he is the perfect culmination, what we're seeing from him right now, is the perfect culmination of the way that Australian politics has been going for the last

decade or so, which is that each of the leaders of, each of the last several leaders of the Liberal Party in Australia has been shown over and over again that the thing that you will be rewarded for electorally is having like a three-word slogan, basically lying whenever it suits you. Being cruel to immigrants. Being cruel, but most importantly, never ever acknowledge that something has gone wrong or not gone the way it was supposed to go or that you could have done something better because I feel like that is the thing that we have been so devoid of in

political leadership in this country for what seems like a really long time now is this ability to say hey we massively fucked up this robo-dead thing and we made a bunch of people's lives really hard and we're gonna really look at what went wrong and try and fix it. Keep leaving it. Just leave it until it runs its course. Just leave it until it runs its course and and the problem is that I think that they are so fucking stuck in this mode of well you know we kind we've picked our narrative at the start which was there have always been bushfires. It's all, there have always been droughts here, and it's, you know, country's gonna do what it's gonna do, and they're so stuck on this path of,

we're just gonna keep saying, look, it's all fine, and it'll all sort itself out. And we can't change course now, we can't change course on our climate policy, we can't change course on showing empathy to people. We can't change course on spending money where it needs to be spent instead of obsessing over a fucking theoretical budget surplus. We can't do any of those things. And so instead what we wind up is the Prime Minister's New Year's address,

where he says, hey, what a great country we live in where we all have a positive attitude and everybody loves it. And how good's the cricket? Maybe the cricket will make... Maybe the cricket will inspire some of whoever it is that's having a cricket. Maybe the cricket will inspire some of whoever it is so too. too whoever it is so good too. too.

thxic. Like beyond a metaphor, just this smoke, you can see, there's a match about a month ago where you could literally see the bushfires on camera from through the stance. Didn't they have to hospitalise one of the fucking star players with smoke inhalation? Probably. Maybe. But Andrew going back to what you were saying, though, they're doing all of this and with the express understanding that the media will carry them every step of the way, the news corp media will just have their backs the entire way.

I know we're all out of time on this episode, but I'd love to cover it on another one. I feel like this is going to put us fair but over time, but I might just do a little bit more. Fuck it, let's go. Just, I really want to toucet on what the media is doing with this because the whole newscorp really pushing this, hey it's anything but climate change narrative is is pretty fucked. And also this links into some more stuff about how fucked the climate is, so this is fun, get ready for that theo. So, gonna start with Miranda Devine here, because she's really summed up this whole thought. So instead of writing a new piece on her beliefs about fire problems, she shared one that she wrote 10 years ago.

Ten years ago. Where she captured it saying it was truer today than it was a decade ago, which I mean it wasn't true then it's not true now. The headline is, Green ideas must take blame for deaths. Cool. In the article she says, this is a direct. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. thi. th. th. the th. the th. to, to, the the the the the to, the the th. the th. th. the th. th. th. th. th. th. the the the th. the the the th. the th. th. th. the the the th. th. the th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. the th. th. th. th. the. the. the. to, to. to, the. to. to. to. to. to. the the. to. the the the the the the the. the the the the th deaths. Cool. In the article, she says, and this is a direct quote, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp posts, but greenies. Cool. It's so good that you can publish that. And you can just say whatever you want. It's fine. So her thesis is that environmentalists have stopped all the hazard reduction burning in this country,

which we're going to, we'll get into that in a second. And her one source for this, the one person who says the fires have been because of a lack of hazard reduction burning and that environmentalists called the lack of hazard reduction burning is the guy who was at the time the Victorian manager of the Timber Communities Australia Group, which is a lobbying group entirely funded by the logging industry. Huh. But they wouldn't, they would know, right? Who, who better?

And if you, if you guys really want to dive into this, go back to the episode that I did with, Ketan was a beautiful chat. We go into all of this. One great takeaway from that was that, um, Keton just went and looked it up on the, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, th... th. th. th. th. th. to, to, to, th. th. to, to, to, th. th. th. We, th. to, th. We would, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, th. We w wo, they. We wo, they. We would they. We would tho, they. We would tho. We wooo. We would would the. We would the. W. We would the. We would the. We would the Kettin just went and looked up. You just just went and looked it up on the New South Wales Fire Service page with their freely available data that shows that we are performing more hazard reduction this decade than the previous decade. It's just there. You can go and look it up. You don't have to write a fucking stupid column and leave your ass hanging out in the wind, you can just go and look it up, just like a journalist would, just as a normal journalist, wanting to have some sort of source, go and find it, possibly from primary source. How good would that be? Yeah, but you don't have to do that if you're writing opinions, I don't even worry about it, so it's fine.

Obviously the whole narrative is fucking stupid. The Greens have never held the sway of power anywhere as a party. The sort of other argument that's being put forward is it's not the capital G Greens, it is just greenies in general. And the one article, if you look at all the fucking, just crazy people on Twitter that are pushing this line, they point to one incident where some environmentalists in East Kippsland, Victoria did some protests that dropped 370 hectares of planned hazard reduction burns down to 9 hectares of some hazard reduction burns that were going to happen. That was a bunch of aging hippies in a town

that just said, hey, we don't want this. And that's it. That's enough to say that the entire country is burning because of this. But it turns out there's actually some other things going on, and it's more complicated than that, would you believe? So hazard reduction burns, if you're not familiar, are burns that are done in fire critical areas where they want to reduce the fuel load. So the sort of dry stuff that's on

the ground, they want to get rid of that so that fire is less likely to spread. So you can only do that in between the fire seasons, right? Because it's relatively dangerous in fire seasons, because obviously that could spark another fire. There are also a bunch of other flow-on effects from the normal stuff you get from smoke and whatever. But because our fire seasons are getting longer, obviously there's even less time that you can do that. Because our population is spreading out, you can only do it in places that

aren't going to be threatened if that fire takes off, so there are fewer places that you can do it in. I was talking to a friend of mine who he does land management and fire incident control in one of the parks apartments and his sort of take on it was that there has been some small G green opposition to plan burns and that it's played a little bit into their policy, but there has been substantially more constraint from industry, like tourism, impacts on road networks and businesses, airports, wine growers, you can't do it near schools and age care facilities because of the smoke. Those are the primary drivers for it. And even further than that, once you get to the point where we're at now, when you're in, the policy, the policy, the policy in, the policy in, the policy in, the policy, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, their, their, their, the primary drivers for it. And even further than that, once you get to the point where we're at now, when you're

in either extreme or catastrophic on the fire danger index, hazard reduction burns do nothing. The fires are so hot that they will just jump from tree to tree instead of burning the ground material. This is from the ABC fact check, University of Melbourne Associate Professor Trent Penman who studies bushfire behavior told fact check prescribed burning effectiveness decreases with increasing FFDI, which is a forest fire danger index. When you exceed an FFDI of about 50, you switch from fuel-dominated to a weather-dominated fire. At this point, while fuel has a small effect, it is overwhelmed by the weather.

David Bowman from the University of Tasmania said that in catastrophic conditions, such as those prevailing in the current Queensland and New South Wales, all organic matter is going to burn. There's so much heat and strong winds winds the fire the fire the travel across landscapes regardless of whether they've been burnt previously, it doesn't affect the fire behavior. As Theo was saying, they've been meeting and exceeding their hazard burning coverage targets. So New South Wales, the state most affected by the fire. They hit 106% of their hazard reduction targets last year anyway. And on top of that, they're being given even fewer resources to actually do these hazard reduction burns.

The industrial manager from Public Service Association said that in the New South Wiles Parks Department's, their 289 rangesthat in the New South Wales Parks departments their 28 senior ranges have been trimmed down to a hundred and 93 since 2011. So it's basically literally anyone but... I don't think any of this matters. I don't think anyone who's even writing about this believes what they're saying whatsoever. It's just this pathological inability to accept that anything could be their political parties fault or it could be the fault of climate change. Or that it might be complicated. That you can't just like nail it on one

on one thing which is a terrifying prospect for getting it into a headline. Sure. You can't put two things in a headline? Let me round us out here with a thought, because I know we've gone very long and what we might do is come back to the game. We're just riled up. We're bloody angry, Australia. A couple of Dave Hughes over here. Oh, I'm so mad.

I want a birdie beetle. We established that wasn't wasn't wasn't wasn't was wasn't that wasn't that wasn't that wasn't that was that was that was that was that was that was that wasn't Dave Hughes in the end, didn't we? Was that someone else the birdie beetle? No, that's there was him. He did that. Okay. Okay. So yeah, I think what we might do is come back on a bonus episode and look at the the whole culture war aspect of this and all of the conspiracy theories starting to be circulated and where we expect that to go. Oh, th. That's that. That's that's that's that's that's that's that's the the the the they. Oh. Oh. Oh. That's they. Yeah. That's they. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's they. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, they. But, they. Yeah. But, th. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. they. they. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But. But. But. But. But. But. But. Yeah. Yeah. But. Yeah. But. Yeah. Yeah. But. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the. the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the whole. the whole. the whole. the whole conspiracy theories starting to be circulated and where we expect that to go. Oh, that's going to be great. But yeah, I guess the other thoughts that I had about this are the number one, like you're saying, guys, this people want to try and make this a single issue. That's what, that's what like liberals as a political party want.

But the problem is, like, it's a perfect example of how this doesn't gel with anything to do with like climate change policy for them. Because for them, what they want their climate change policy to be is to say, well, we could reduce our emissions to zero, and it wouldn't get rid of the entire world's emissions, so let's just not do anything. But the problem is that it's more complicated than that. And it is a thing that requires a globalized effort. And if you are one of the highest emitters per capita

around the world in a first world country, you don't have any kind of leverage to go to other countries and say, we need help because we are now starting to see the very long long time predicted increases in temperature making this catastrophic impact on our country. We are starting to have longer and dry bushfire seasons. We're starting to not be able to do hazard burning because the season is staying so much longer. Like when the, when the, the, the the guy is starting to see the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the thi thi to see. to see. to see. to see. to see. to see to see. to seea the to see to see to see to see to see to see to see to see to see to see to see to see to see to see to see to see. to see. to see. the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the tie. tie. ti ti ti. ti. tia. tia. tia. try. the the the tia. the tia. try. tia. try. tia. try. try. tia. try. tia. be able to do hazard burning because the season is staying so much longer. Like when the guy in the chopper landed on the lawn in the house I was at, I went out and offered him a drink and it was a Canadian guy because Canadian and American firefighting forces would come over here and help us during our fire

season and Australian pilots will go over there and help during like the Californian fire season and the Canadian fire season. But the problem is that that's starting to be a thing that we can't do anymore because in all of those countries the fire seasons are now becoming so much longer that they're starting to overlap and they're just going for like you know six months of the year so it's not a thing anymore where we can share these resources like we used to do and as we've seen now it's not a thing where where we can say oh well you know it's a

volunteer fire force that takes care of this because this fire season has already gone for months, and we're only like a month into the fucking fire season. So things are changing. Things are different. You need to be able to say, hey, maybe we need to change some of the things we're doing. Maybe we need to look at the fact that there is more than one factor at play here, but none of that shakes out politically for a party that wants to have just a single dumbed down

version of everything. So I think that's where we're going to have to leave it for this week. I'm good. I'm going to leave everyone with one one final thought. Oh please. Just a nice little message of positivity. Now this is just something I saw on January 1st New Year's Day that just that just that just that just that just that just that just that just that just that just that just that just that just th. That just th. th. th. th. th. th. th. I th. I th. I th. I th. I th is just th is just th is just th. I th. I th is just thi's thi's thi's thi's thi's thi's thi thi, I'll thi, I'll thi, I'll thi, I's thi, I's is th. I's th. I's is th. I's th. I's th. I's th. I's th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th. th is th. th. th. th. thi's thi thi thi thi thi thi thiiiiiiiiiiiiii thii thii thi thi thi thi thi thi thi thi on January 1st New Year's Day that just made me smile, just a little tweet. I'll read it out to you, here you go. Stay safe and have fun this new year from all of us at Exxon Mobil Australia. We live in hell. Great stuff. So folks if you would like to hear that bonus episode where we will talk about what the political commentators within the Australian media have been saying about this and what some of the dumbest people seem to have taken away the response to it, how people are immediately going to rally the worst parts of their brains in order to push

away at the idea that any of this is something that's happening for a reason or is anything that we can do anything about. Please head on over to Patreon.com slash Buntavista. You can support the show for five US dollars a month and get an extra episode every week. Join us for Hell World 2020. I've got an article about feet that I'm just putting out there into the ether now so Andrew can't drop it from the schedule so pop on over there. And see you can hear us talking about that and also Theo

talking about I believe it's where foot fetishes come from is that correct? That's right. Okay. Little a little educational little sequel to Where the Wild Digs are I believe. Yeah. So thank thank you th you th you th you th you th you th you th you th you th you th you th you th you th you th you th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th th that that that that's a sequel to Where the Wild Things Are, I believe. So thank you very much for joining us. If you are out there anywhere, please stay safe. If you have any sort of ability to get away from any of this sort of stuff, please do so. Yeah, as every, well, a bunch of people speaking to the media who stayed back to try and defend their homes and property said, do not stay back and try and defend your homes and property. It is not worth it.

Get the fuck out of there. Yep. One other thing here, actually. Erin Riley on Twitter at Erin Riley, A.U. Has been organizing emergency accommodation for people. So if you need a place to stay during the bushfire emergency, you can get in touch through find a bed. the phone number that you can contact is 027202 6588.

That's 027202 6588. You can also send an email to find a bed a you at Gmail. 888. That's 027202. You can also send an email to find a bed-a-you at Gmail.com. So basically people are signing up and registering to say either we have a room that a family can stay in for a couple of days or weeks or months or whatever. A lot of people are banding together to figure out what kind of resources they can share. So if you have, you know, if

you're anywhere in the kind of New South Wales, Victoria or surrounding areas and you are able to share any kind of accommodation or anything like that, please have a look there and see if there's anything you can do to help people who have just lost everything. So that's it for us. And have a happy a happy a happy a happy a happy a happy th a happy th a look there and see if there's anything you can do to help people who have just lost everything So that's it for us and have a happy new year Happy new year Happy New Year, happy new year. I went to bed at 930 on New Year's Eve. Me too.

I stayed up to a midnight. We're in the upside down. Wow. Good on you, buddy. All right. That's it, everybody. Thanks very much. Look after yourselves.

And, you know, let's try and figure out how we can organize together to get ourselves some better political representation in this country. See you next week or we'll see you over on the bonus episodes. Bye. Bye-bye, everybody. Bye. Bye.