PBD Podcast - What Happened To Australia? w/ John Anderson | PBD Podcast | Ep. 182
Episode Date: September 5, 2022In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by John Anderson and Adam Sosnick. John Duncan Anderson AC (born 14 November 1956) is an Australian politician and commentator who served as the 11th... Deputy Prime Minister of Australia and leader of the National Party from 1999 to 2005. TOPICS 0:00 - Start 9:59 - John Anderson on the Australian police state 19:22 - Is the USA the best country in the world? 47:15 - Should the US be sending money to Ukraine? 1:27:26 - Reaction to Joe Biden’s 'Soul of the Nation' speech 1:40:02 - What people should know if they are going to run for office 1:45:00 - Reaction to 70,000 People protesting in Prague because of soaring energy prices . . . Subscribe to John's YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/3TK2SB1 Check out John Anderson: Conversations on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3D04K2O Support John Anderson: Conversations: https://bit.ly/3q8trCF Text: PODCAST to 310.340.1132 to get added to the distribution list Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pbdpodcast/support
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Right. Well, folks, we have a special podcast here for you.
We have the former deputy prime minister of Australia, which is
deputy minute prime minister is a vice president to us, right?
Would that be the equivalent of a vice president in the US?
It would indeed.
It would indeed.
So we appreciate you for coming out.
Obviously, been following your commentaries,
specifically last two years with what's been happening during COVID
and seeing how Australia,
we always looked at Australia as a free nation.
You're thinking Australia and all of a sudden
like, wait a minute, am I watching this from a movie?
Is this in a movie or is this real?
You know, some of the stuff wasn't even believable.
You thought it was fake, but then you're talking to some relatives in Australia because I'm
a Syrian.
They're like, no, this is happening in a certain region of Australia, but not all of
it.
So it's very interesting.
So for folks who are in today, you know, and you don't know a lot about what's happened
with Australia and politics, we're looking forward to taking a deep dive into that today.
We got a lot of different topics.
We'll get into obviously, I want to hear your thoughts on one of the greatest speeches
ever given the last few days, which President Joe Biden, I don't know if you had a chance
to watch that speech.
Greatest is one word for it.
Yeah, I mean, his wife thought it was the greatest speech of all time.
Anybody's ever given, but it's, you know, his wife has to think that, right?
That's a very...
It's a loyal way.
I've got to give her credit.
Yeah, I've got to tell you, it was a deeply, deeply, deeply troubling speech.
Well, I wanna hear why you think that.
I wanna hear why you think that we'll get into that.
And then the rallies, obviously,
which things are getting close to what's going on with,
you know, midterms coming up this year,
we got some weird events taking place.
I wanna know your thoughts on police state,
FBI's involvement.
You know, when you were there from 1995,
I wanna say to 1999 to 2005,
if I'm not mistaken, when you were the deputy prime minister,
the years you were there, what it was like,
how much it's changed, how much the world politics has changed,
whose allies are Australia's allies today,
what are some thoughts you have on the future
where politics has gone.
So if you just tuned in with us, you know,
and you were at the vault the last couple of days, four days,
a couple of thousand people.
We had an incredible party at the house.
Still God knows what you have.
You guys, we didn't get done till 3.34,
John's 40th birthday.
That's true.
Kevin Connolly, Chas Paul,
and Terry, we had a great time.
You know, Saki, it was a great event.
But today, we're back at the podcast on Labor Day,
not on Labor Day.
I know that you expect us to be called Labor Day and chillin.
And by the way, and then we'll talk later on as well that, you know,
John is now running a podcast as well.
What an interesting thing.
First, Dave Rubenstein, who's a billionaire, decides to start his own podcast,
a deputy prime minister of Australia, decides to start.
It's such a different, well Barack Obama had a podcast.
What I'm saying is we're living such, it's so great to be able to hear from, learn from
folks like this.
So 100%.
John, once again, thanks for coming on.
If you don't mind taking a quick minute and just given us your background of what you
were doing prior to being a deputy prime minister to becoming a deputy prime minister
and where you are today.
Well, look, thanks for being here. Really appreciate it. I'm a great admirer of America.
I worry about your divisions, but you know, we need you. The rest of the world need you.
We really need you. That's the first thing I'd say. I grew up on a farm north-west New South Wales.
I'm Scottish extraction. I have always been a farmer, my son and daughter and more now run our
farm business. I'm there sometimes, Martin, look like it today in a suit, but I drive the weak trucks and
I have repair things and try and get the background going.
I was educated in Sydney, Master of Arts in history, was asked to go into politics.
Didn't go looking for it.
I thought this was crazy, but people said, you think you've got something to offer,
which is very kind of, and I ended up in it.
I had just that happen, by the way,
because this last week, I'm asking people
to go into politics who ask you
that persuade you to consider actually going into politics.
How did that happen?
To retiring federal members of parliament,
congressmen in your language at the age of 27.
It was pretty prec
it was pretty percussive of me.
Wow. And I got in there when I was about 31, I think. And then Rose Frida Ranks became
Deputy Prime Minister. It's a coalition in Australia on what you would call
the list of the Republican side. You've got the Liberal Party, but it doesn't mean Liberal
and American term. Got it. It means sort of classic conservative stroke true liberalism with a capital L and the national
party, which I led and when they're in coalition and in government, the national parties
later becomes a deputy prime minister.
So I had ten years as a cabinet minister.
I was a deputy prime minister for six years.
I was there at a pivotal moment when we realized
democracy hadn't won out.
That was 9-11.
Our Prime Minister was in Washington,
he was only mad from where the plane went into the Pentagon.
I was acting Prime Minister back in Australia.
That's part of my job.
I thought though, in 2007 there was an election in Australia.
I thought, I've done my bit, I've got a family, I've got other interests, I'll make way for someone
else.
I don't want to be a career politician addicted to it for life because I don't think that's
a good thing.
So get out.
That was the Washingtonian model I think.
Don't hang about past you used by, don't.
And there it is, married four kids, five grandchildren.
Married four kids, five grandchildren.
So if you don't mind going back to the 27-year-old
when somebody comes up to you and says,
I think you got to run.
What was the, they said, I think you got to run
because that, that, that.
Is it because the country needs a leader like you?
Is it because the way you process issues?
Is it because you can have a career in it? Is it because the will you process issues? Is it because you could have a career in it?
Is it because you can make an impact?
What was that conversation like?
Well, it originated with me attending a rally that he was speaking at,
where he made three points that I disagreed with.
And so I stood up very politely and said,
I want to take you to task on all of those three issues.
I don't think you will keep my generation loyal to the
party with what are outdated attitudes on issues that don't matter a lot. And I did it
in reasonably humorous way. And instead of holding it against me, he said, I think you've
got something to offer. Interesting. I want to retire. And I want to do the run in my
place. And I, my jaw hit the ground. I was farming. I'd finished university.
I was home farming, working with my dad. And what would be very familiar to a lot of American,
you know, farming operations, very big family farm, but not a corporate style thing, not that big.
In those days, you know, a lot of American equipment, all the same techniques, same crops.
And I was enjoying that. But did have a sort of burning sense that if you want to stand
on the sidelines and criticize the way the generals are
running the war, you've got to at least be prepared to
enlist as a private.
So I thought, all right.
Very wise man.
Powerful point.
The man in the arena.
Yeah, it's a powerful point.
Teddy Roosevelt.
Yes.
So I thought I'd better have a guy,
otherwise I'm a bit of a hypocrite.
And you said the beauty of democracy is right from day one.
You put yourself in the hands of others,
so they make the judgment.
I say, look, I, this is what I believe in,
this is what I pursue.
You decide whether you want to go with me or not.
And for a long time, they did.
It still amazes me a bit. Not sure I would have gone with me all the time,
but others were kind enough to support me.
What an approach to take.
Here's what I stand for.
Do you like it?
Create if you don't, totally get it.
We'll move on and go vote somebody else
instead of myself.
So Australia, for most of the listeners,
we have a 5% of our audiences from Australia.
OK, there we have. Obviously it's in the US, but we have a good-sized
listenership from Australia as well. For those that don't know, historically,
what has politics been for Australia and how much has it changed recently? If it has.
Well, Australia, of course, same size as continental USA but only 26 million people, mainly on the eastern seaboard.
It arose out of, of course, the Declaration of Independence of America and obscure way, the Brits,
ostensibly looking for someone else to put their context, but also looking to recognise they'd lost the Jewel
and didn't want other European countries to settle Australia, so they settled shortly after
the War of Independence.
And it was given self-governance quite early.
The English were quite enlightened about that.
We might complain about them, but they weren't bad, actually, as these things go.
And Australia became, it's a federation, like America, not as many states, states and
territories, but they were made a nation by an act of the British Parliament,
peacefully, cooperatively, in 1900.
With a monarch or with a democracy?
Yeah, the Queen is still a monarch.
Yeah, it's not a republic.
So, but we call it a washmister,
because our House of Representatives is modeled
on the English House of Commons.
The Senate is precisely modeled on your Senate.
The only trouble is that our Senate really should, they are more of a house of review and of
wisdom and of elders.
In my view, people who have had real life experience, it's become just a creature of the
parties.
So, the last two years, so if we can just get right into it, what happened the last two
years, you know?
We were watching some things
that you can't go to work, you have to stay at house,
you can't even get out, if you do get out,
people have to stuff that didn't even make any sense,
like I was saying earlier, it was like,
we're watching a movie, a horror movie.
You know, like what was that one movie
where you can only get out of certain time
and people can go out and get purge?
What's that one movie where it's purge, right?
Yeah, so what happened? What got to this point? Is that
how
Australia would have typically chosen to handle a crisis like COVID, a pandemic like COVID or
that politics heavily get involved in the last couple years?
It's a really good question. I've done a lot of thinking about it Jordan
They just asked me on his show the same question and I
Sort of reverted to form a little bit, I suppose, and thought I thought the training
when we're in politics is be careful what you say about your own country outside it.
And I wasn't quite tough enough.
The reality in Australia was as I mentioned, as a federation, what you saw internationally
more than anything else was the city of Melbourne in the state of Victoria, which is led by a
pretty far left socialist premier.
Yeah, it was bad.
And it's still going on because they arrested
and handcuffed a pregnant lady
doing the wrong thing in a way that doesn't pass
what we would call the pub test.
Do you have that expression?
It means that if you were down at the pub
and you said, this is what the government's done
to a citizen, people would say that is unacceptable. The pub test, like pub test got it. Like you're hanging out at the pub and you said, this is what the government's done to us. It isn't people who'd say that is unacceptable.
The pub test, like pop test, got it.
Like you're hanging out at the bar drinking,
shooting it with your buddies and you're like,
hey, what are your thoughts on this?
And everyone's like, yeah, I don't know about that, mate.
But here's what troubles me.
I'll get to say it even though I'm in another country.
I don't know what's happened to some of the,
you know, Australians who are known for having
a bit of a laryx spirit for being resilient,
for being tough.
And the, you know, my father was involved in the Second World War, the North African desert, the first
battle of any significance where the Nazis took a back footstep.
It was there, General Rommel, against the English General Montgomery.
My father was fighting with the Australians.
Why do I mention?
Because Rommel wrote in his book that these soldiers from Australia
are the finest product of the British Empire. There are no known as Lyclam. They were tough,
they had initiative, they had resilience, they would fight for freedom, but they expected
freedom in return. And I don't quite know what happened. I'm going to say that to you,
in Australia and so I particularly in Melbourne, that's made them give way to an expert
ocracy that says, well, you know what's best for you. And they look like
rewarding that father by re-electing him partly because the
opposition is not strong enough. So I can't give you a full answer, but I can
confirm to you, it is concerning. The biggest state in Australia is in
New South Wales, where a lot of this idiocy wasn't as bad.
But what it was about in Melbourne, equal biggest city, and that's a true international
city that people have prepared.
It was the most locked down city in the world, and we now know that the economic and the
cultural and social costs were worse than the disease.
I don't think you could really argue that point.
So there was a difference between what was going on in New South, that's where Sydney is, right?
Yeah, yeah. I was there 10 years ago versus Melbourne, which is just south of that, right?
When Queensland is just above that, Perth on the left side, most of the most of the citizenry
is on the right side of the country, but there was a clear difference between what was going on in
Melbourne, and Sydney. So Melbourne was the centerpiece of the lockdown state is what you're saying.
It was the lockdown capital of the world.
So you would say a Melbourne is like more like a California or a New York for us.
Yeah.
Okay.
Or maybe even worse than that.
Way worse.
Well, the lockdown capital of the world, it is worrying.
But don't miss this thing that I'm saying, what's happening?
Because I think it's happening in a lot of Western countries. A lot of citizens, see the great
American model was, let's get this clear, it's about the individual. So the individual,
let's you call belief, the supremacy of the individual, and their beliefs should shake the culture
and values, which were downstream of the individual, and government was downstream of the culture.
But we're reversing that. We're making ourselves creatures of the state. And there seems to
be something creeping in there, what might be called the progressive left, the post-modernist
or neo-cultured Marx or sort of world, where people want bureaucracies and experts and expert
toccracies if I can use that word.
That's mangling the English language, isn't it?
I don't think you've probably never
mangled English language in America, but they
seem to be this desire for others to tell us what to do.
Why?
The way they're creating such momentum, though.
I think it's fear.
I think your American founders got this right.
You know, if you've got to defend freedom, if you're not really careful, the people will
go, will give up their freedoms for safety.
So you ought to explain what real safety is.
You ought to explain what freedom is, and we're washing it out of our culture.
Sorry, I didn't drop it. Yeah, again, like, you know, okay, so let me ask this real safety is you got to explain what freedom is and we're washing it out of our culture. It's hard to interrupt.
Yeah, again, like, you know, okay, so let me ask this question.
Typically in us, like when I lived in Iran, how we looked at a US, right, there was a sec
that looked at US, like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to live there.
Oh, I'm going to walk the streets, I'm going to run into Rocky, I'm going to run into
20-month-old, I'm going to run into this, I'm going to run into Grimmlands, I'm going to run into Ghostbusters, it's going to be awesome, I'm going to run into Rocky, I'm going to run into Tony Montana, I'm going to run into this, I'm going to run into, like, that's, I'm going to run into
Gremlins, I'm going to run into Ghostbusters, it's going to be awesome man, going to America,
right?
Like, that was the dream to come to America.
Can't wait to run to Gremlins in America.
But then on the flip side of it, you would see some people in the streets, you know,
Mac, bad, Ombrica, Mac, bad, Ombrica, death upon America, death upon America. So there was a major love and then the media sold America
as the devil.
I mean, it was like the worst thing that ever happened
to the world was America.
How dare they let women walk around with,
you know, their hair hanging out.
How dare they let women wear shorts and skirts
and shortleaves shirts and
a little bit of cleavage on how dare look how what they're doing to their, we would never
do such a thing and people are like confused, who do you listen to?
How dare or how does Australians, how do they look at America?
What is America to the typical citizen of Australia?
It's a really good question.
I would think in recent times as China has become more and more threatening and they are,
they've got a list of 14 demands out against Australia for supposed sins.
None of which in my view was sins at all.
I don't think Australia's chains are there, I think China has.
That is driven Australians to a greater consciousness of the importance of their lives.
But it's a really important question because I would say it's an Australian and an admirer
of America that the world needs a policeman and you want it to be a good friendly coherent
policeman, the beliefs in freedom, which is what America has done since the end of the
Second World War.
They have secured the international architecture
that's kept my region.
The Western Pacific's safe made people prosperous,
including the Chinese themselves.
And we're very thankful for that.
And we wanted to continue.
But here's the rub.
I can really deeply understand why some Americans say, hey,
we put our blood in our sweat in our tears,
now money into this.
And just as you've told us, there are some people who, not only not appreciate it, but
who to hire us for it.
My plea would be to Americans as Roosevelt in the 30s understood so well.
That for all of its might, American needs are free world and it's worth defending.
If we're all to live in a cowherent global
environment and it's under attack at the moment, we're very conscious of that now strider.
So the game of dominoes, the first one goes and I'm not talking about dominoes like you play
dominoes. Shout out to Dylan, he's beating everybody last night, he played again, he's doing really
good. But dominoes, when you put one down and one drops and boom, everything goes right, okay.
My grandkids love playing it.
Yeah, I mean, I was a grown man, I like playing it,
but let's keep it between us.
So, but Domino, so, you know, in the world today,
there were many times like in our barracks,
we had this one guy that was a bully, okay.
But if nobody was around, he would bully everybody,
okay? But say I was around and another guy was around, it was two of us. If we were around,
he was a good guy. Yeah. He wouldn't take advantage of nobody, he wouldn't bully him, because
he knew we wouldn't allow that, because it was just not cool. We didn't like that, right?
Okay. You have that feeling in families. You know, you have
that feeling where a mom feels protected by maybe a son because if the son's not around the father
will take a, you know, a B of U save or vice versa. If this father's not around, the kids will take
advantage of mom. You'll see it in pubs when you go to a bar, you know, there's this typical guy
that's drunk on around, but there's the one guy that is whoop this ass through your four times. So, you know, don't push your weight around
because if you do that to anybody, I'm going to come and clean you know. So the fact
that that one guy is there who doesn't impose himself, but he's at the bar, he's in the
family, he's at the military base, nobody takes advantage of others. That being US, how
true is that that if US goes down, the rest of the world is going to feel it?
Uh, it's absolutely true. How could it be any other way? What you have to realize, you say that
from Australia, but a lot of people in America don't see it that way. You know, a lot of people in
America say, well, you know, we keep saying America is the greatest country. The world, you know,
America is not the greatest country. That's becoming a movement in America and by the woke and some of the professors
these people are going to go on the right.
Yeah, and it's just you're sitting there like,
what does it matter with you?
But from your perspective,
somebody that's from Australia,
somebody that got to the highest level of politics
in Australia, how do you view US?
And what US, if US falls,
how the world's gonna feel it?
Like what would happen?
Say US falls tomorrow, who takes advantage of people next?
Well, it could be very ugly indeed.
You go, what might be called an arc of autocracy
as a former prime minister in Australia labeled it.
So you've got China, you've got Russia,
you've got Iran, you've got North Korea in particular.
And then you've got ISIS and so forth.
And they loathe the idea of Western freedom.
Is Western freedom worth standing up for?
Well, ask the people who are so keen to get to America.
They're everywhere.
The people who want to get into Australia,
the people who are trying to get into Europe and Britain.
Why do they want to do it?
Because they're lands of opportunity.
They're lands where you don't feel that the police are
going to knock on your door at 3 o'clock in the morning
and drag you away on Trump.com charges
and take you to a wigger prisoner.
A concentration camp. These things really matter. And of course,
what's happened is that whilst we've been so comfortable after the Second World War
in our Western Conses, I mean, they've been good years. I'm a mid-baby
boomer boy. Did I pick my parents well, though? Lived in Australia. It was a free
country, a land of opportunity, oh, just too young to miss a Vietnam, I've had none of that. So while I've been feeling
fat and lazy and comfortable, I haven't been too bad on it, run what you know what I mean,
you've had people who loathe the western way of life, not just externally, but within
our own cultures, that they know the march of the left through the institutions, the cultural
Marxism or neo-Maxism.
I don't see why we should show our way from using that term because they don't.
Saying, well, why aren't the working classes rising up? We need more rushes. They're not doing it.
It must be the strength of the institutions in the West, the families, the political systems,
the community involvement, the churches, the courts. So let's undermine their validity.
And you see it today in the de-staturing movement. The de-staturing movement, when you stop
and think about it, looks like an attack on the sins of the past. It's much more than
that. The word plays out now. Kid's mind is exactly as it's meant to. You're the inheritors
of such a nightmareous culture, Frank from Rudy from England puts it, that it's meant to. You're the inheritors of such a nightmarish culture,
Frank Favrydi from England puts it,
that it's not worth defending.
And maybe those guys have, say, who want to bring it down
are right.
And that would be my plea.
We need to wake up to this.
What we've got, it's not perfect.
But this is the best way to resolve our differences.
And when we need to change, let's do it
through the political system where we can manage our disagreements, which is what worries me so much about your president's
recent speech and the former president's response to it.
So you're concerned also about the former's response to it, so please unpack that.
First go with Biden and then go to Trump.
I've been in politics on other games.
And in your case, it's a slightly different Australia,
because we have compulsory voting.
But I reckon, can I be blunt?
I don't want to insult your country or your country people.
But what it looked like to me, let me put it that way,
and someone can push back if I'm wrong or if I'm being insulting,
was that your president, with pole backing,
tuts the lines that he thought might bring his voter base out.
But in so doing, he really took a slash at all those people who have already been described
as irredeemables and as deplorable.
And now hang on, that's tens of millions of Americans.
They're not all irredeemable and deplorable people.
A lot of other people, we just talked about
COVID, who grew the food and who took it to market and who processed it and bought it to
your food, your door risking their own health. They were the muscle, if you like, that kept
the place going, that we forget about. The commander in chief's job should be to be a
unify heart, to reach out, to lead, to say if you're dissatisfied
with our system, if you're unhappy with it,
sit down and talk to me and explain why.
And we'll try and understand our common humanity
so we can pull together again
and rebuild a coherent society.
That's what worried me so much.
And then of course it invites an incredible response,
insane, what have you said?
What message does send to our kids about the way that you relate to one another when you've got a difference?
What does it say about what real leadership is?
You know, Henry Ford II from this country, the car-making family,
once gave a definition of leadership.
You know, you've got to have a vision.
One, you've got to be able to explain it to others,
so they know what the vision is.
Two, thirdly, you've got to have a vision. One, you've got to be able to explain it to others. So they know what the vision is. Two, thirdly, you've got to have about yourself
the personal qualities to make them want to work with you
to make that vision real.
I reckon that's a pretty good definition.
Well, what is the vision?
And how are you explaining it?
And is it inspiring people to work with you to achieve it
or is it inspiring division and loathing
of anyone you disagree
with? Well, who's the last guy here that unified
anyways? Who's the last president that was a unified, that brought both parties together?
It's probably a better question for Americans. I admire many of you. I mean, you think
of a Truman. David McCulloch wrote the most, when I get a lot of young people there can
be, and they say, I'm interested in politics, and most of them I say forget it because you're about yourself.
I don't use that language.
But the really outstanding ones I say go and read,
one of the books I always recommend is David McCulloch's book
on Truman, The Great Big Thick Time.
He was a guy, he left with office
with the lowest approval ratings
of any president leading office that we know of.
We look back on it now and know that he was one
of the great presidents of all times.
I think the thing with approval ratings is it's also what's happening in that moment,
meaning after 9-11 George W. Bush's approval ratings were sky high. I mean to get to 50% at this
point in America, I don't know how it's in Australia, isn't anomaly. 50%. I don't know if Trump ever
hit 50. I don't think Biden's ever hit 50, much less 51.
I think George W. Bush at one point was in the high 70s.
Unfortunately, it was on the heels of 9-11.
But I mean, I've been saying that for two years now,
I would love for somebody to be at the executive office
who can get 60% in this country.
I've been saying that for a few years now.
I just don't know who that is.
But that means that you've got to drag people over from the other side.
Correct. You've got to convert people.
You're a leader. You're not slamming me because I have a different view.
You're not slamming me because I voted for Trump because I felt shut out.
Correct.
You're actually reaching out and you're saying,
hey, can we have a conversation?
See, an Australia, I don't know what's happened here, but one of our better universities
have been tracking confidence in the political system and democracy now since 1970.
Pestagringly, a number of Australians have confidence that our democracy is working properly.
If you don't trust at the system, in fact, if it's bad enough not to trust the people
at any given point in time, if you no longer trust the institutions, that's really serious. If you don't even believe
in, understand and trust the principles behind the institutions of freedom, then you really
are in trouble. So trust is critically important. You don't build trust by calling people
names. That's my perspective. Can you zoom in a little bit on that? Can we zoom in a little bit?
A public trust in the government since 19 what what yours?
58 58 so so high was who Eisenhower
He's kind of the and then from there. It's just gone down Johnson dad. That was a good drop off Nixon
Massive drop off Ford flat Carter drop Reagan came up came up. As you can see, it's peace right
at George W. Bush right at 9-11, right? No, that's that senior. No, you're talking here.
Yeah, right there. That was the peak moment. What year was that? I was 2000, 2001, right
after 9-11. So, Clinton goes up and then since George W. Bush drops Obama drops.
Yes.
Trump goes up.
Trump's the only guy that goes up for it.
It's not even a go up, but he goes up in the last two years and then you have
Biden is a slight coming down.
And what are the numbers though?
Because it's hard to hear.
See 25% 20.
Yeah.
Right now.
The last time it was even near 50.
Bush George W. Bush. Yeah, and what was that?
2000, 2001, okay, that's on the heels of my mother. But here's a thing you make a good point if you go to that
You know last the last I mean hit 60% who look at the last I made six so that's 60% in all one right 9 11 the last prior
To that the last I made's 60% was 1970. Nixon. Right.
That's interesting. So, but this is, it proves your point when the last time that this happened.
So, so if you look at the drop off, look at Clinton, how he was, right? Clinton went up. He was,
so essentially Clinton, but this is after the midterms. This is after New Gingrich's compact with
America. This was after the Republicans took back Congress, the House in the senate this was not the beginning clinton stern this is
after he technically reached across the aisle and got the change of party in the
house and the and the senate well gingrich was man of the year what ninety four
i thought you had time x the man of the year it was ninety four so that goes back
in the early stages because gingrich economy wise he's the guy i mean he brought
the economy to
where was that but even still they were able to work together,
the two of you guys were able to work together.
Well, the Gingrich was one of those guys that is sort of
responsible for how divisive politics is now.
What he was going after Clinton.
The part that I would, I would like going back to the conversation
we're having to say, we need a vision, then you sell it,
then hey, get people to buy in. Okay. But to be a
unified, like in UFC, like this is almost on one, and if this is the playbook that everybody has
to use, or it's been like this the entire time in UFC. Okay. Usman, maybe a great fighter. He's not a
good promoter. Okay. You know, you got these guys that are great fighters who are the best at what they do, but they're terrible at promoting right
Conner maybe wasn't the best the whole incredible promoter, right?
So, you know may whether was a great fighter and he was a great promoter
Guess what he got paid the most in the history of boxing right because you know how to do mo
Are we out of phase, but it's all about show and less about politics?
Is this more showmanship?
Is this more about just winning your base
and maybe converting a few independence
and you're gonna get elected?
Is that what it's become?
Like do people do Americans care less about politics
and they care more about who the enemy is
and who can scare better and who can, you know,
sell the dream better?
I wonder because how much do people actually sit there
and say what policies
the best policy today? Or is it the fact that the guys don't know how to sell the best
policies? I don't know, I'm not in that world. It's your world. Well, I'm out of it now,
but you know, I'm very keen observer of it. We've got to be realistic, too. So it's not
all the politicians fault. Not online. We were talking earlier about cultural malays, about
the months of the left, undermining institutions deliberately trying to destroy the politicians fault. Not alone. We were talking earlier about cultural malays about the months of the left undermining our institutions deliberately
trying to destroy the ideas behind. I mean you've got this whole. Was it 16, what's
it called, the the new theory about the settlement of America and its origins?
1619. Yeah, the 1619 project. I mean it's all seems to me to be an attack on
your real history so that young people end up
with a very distorted idea or they're a blank sheet and they're very cynical.
I think that's a big worry.
So we've been in our associated state because life's been so good.
We've almost got the idea that we can do away with suffering, we can solve every problem.
Whereas real freedom demands that you're vigilant all the time and you believe in your
ideals and you defend
them and you try and make certain that government is downstream of culture so that it responds to us.
We don't respond to it. But the other thing that I would note is that Americans have traditionally
always revered at least the office of president and that was a, you could show up in that chart
and the president was there even if you didn't vote for that particular president. He was our president. He was the president of our republic. I understand for my history
that this has been a very deep thing in Australia. And in some ways, I think it was Senator
Fulbright, a pretty legendary figure right around the world, not just in this country. But
he made the point, this is where I think, you know, cheaper tax that are not based in evidence
that are unfair can do so much damage.
You made the very telling point. He said that President Roosevelt misled the American people
in pursuit of a high ideal. He was referring to Roosevelt putting a bit of spin on something
with Germans during. This is FDR, you're talking about FDR. but he misled the American people because he was trying to get America into the war
he believed only America had saved the world for freedom he misled the American people in
pursuit of a noble objective thereby opening the door for President Johnson to mislead
the American people in relation to Vietnam in pursuit of selfish ideals.
And I think that was a pretty interesting point.
He was referring to this sort of, because you can see it in that chart, that reverence
that Americans had for the highest office in the land for so many decades.
And look at the culmination of that now for the past few presidents.
You said this is our president, this is our president.
The thing that people have been screaming for the last decade or so is not my president, this is our president, the thing that people have been
screaming for the last decade or so is not my president, not my president, and that's
on the left and the right, whether it's Trump or Biden or even Obama, sad reality is guys,
this is the president of the United States.
So my humble plea, I suppose somebody from the Anglophile, as we would call it, the
five eyes countries, the English speaking democracies,
they share, the five eyes refers to the fact
that they all share the deepest military intelligence.
So it's America, it's Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
That the plea would be that we need,
and long for a coherent America, for your sakes, because I admire you, that's all I say.
But also because the world needs a good cop
in very dangerous times.
Your enemies are not your fellow Americans, surely.
They're the people they wanted to destroy.
Your great experiment in freedom.
Thank you for bringing that up,
because that was actually going to be my next question is,
who is Australia's enemy because it's in America today?
I have so many conversations with people on the left and on the right and I'm very in the middle
People on the right will say and I have one friend in particular
He's probably listening right now. He's like the Democrats the left that is my enemy and there's Pete
And I'm like really you're fellow American is your. Because you have people calling for civil war these days.
Out loud.
Okay, and then you have people on the left saying,
if you're a mag of your Trump guy,
no way can I stand with you.
You're un-American, you're attacking democracy.
So this concept of your fellow American being your enemy,
when clearly the enemy needs to be focused on
all the names you mentioned before,
the China, the Russia, the North Korea, the Iran,
all these guys.
How do Australians process it?
Who's your enemy?
We've got the same problem.
We've had a recent federal election where my enemy was the other guy politically.
No, hang on, it doesn't matter if you're an Australia, it doesn't matter what gender
you are, what pronoun you're putting in front of your name, what state you come from,
the color of your skin, whether you're wealthy or rich, actually, you're firstly an Australian.
And you've got to join interest in keeping the place, if you're like safe for democracy,
where there's prosperity, there's opportunity for your kids where you're not going to be
hauled off in the middle of the night.
There's no fellow Australian, serious Australian, who wants to do that to you.
I mean, obviously, I think there are direct parallels here with your society.
But there are people who are massing, massive
military capacity around the world who would do anything to take those things from you.
I don't care about your internal wars.
We've got a brilliant fellow in Australia and I wish I could remember more detail, but
his name is Tim Dixon.
He worked for a former prime minister on the other side of the me.
And he's been working with a group of people and they've been studying relationships around the world and he said to me that they've their research
indicates that in this country you can have a bunch of wealthy republicans and a
bunch of world-of-the-democrats. Mind you most of the money seems to be on the
Democrat side, these sides, particularly with a new tech man in their billionaires
and things, but the antipathy is of a similar level to that that exists in the Gaza Strip in the Middle East.
You know, the antipathy towards their fellow Americans have a different political persuasion.
It's so deep that it's of that level.
But by contrast, you said you got into the Midwest and find a Republican
Fambour and a Democrat Fambour and they get along fine just like they would have in the old days.
And they josh about their differences and they might even have a face argument about them, but they don't
reduce it to personal attacks and hatred. Correct. That's, and I think that's the
problem in America today is that you're taking ideology or philosophies and
making it personal. Why hate you because you support so and so? It's like, can we
get back to the point where we're debating ideas, not personalities. And I think
that's a problem in America today. But, a minute. Fine. You're saying that. But at the same time, we know which
ideas do better. But the better ideas are not winning. It depends on which ideas you're ready.
Okay. So, okay. So go for it. So go through politics. Go through issues. Be specific.
Be specific. What does you want to go with?
What is you want to go? You want to go up taxes?
Can I throw one in from a thread? Go for it.
He's a blunt reality when it comes to budget management
and the proper management of the economy is a highly moral thing
because it directly influences opportunities.
You capacity to help those who are not doing well,
your freedoms, everything depends on a strong economy.
And I'll assert it. doing well, your freedoms, everything depends on a strong economy.
And I'll assert it, I can't think of a team of non-conservatives who have ever run the
budget terribly well.
Well, in America, I think it's exactly that.
It's your point.
Well, if you wanted to beat ideas, all right, how did trickle down economics work under
Reagan?
From what I were call not well?
It could be wrong, correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time that we balanced the budget
was under Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and the famous James Carvell quote is, tell me what
you didn't like about Reagan, Clinton, the peace or the prosperity.
Who's policies were they?
Those are Bill Clinton's policies.
Who was moderate, Democrat. But no, who was Bill Clinton's policies. Who would... Moderate?
Democrat.
But no, who was handling, who was handling the economy at that time?
You're saying he did it all by himself without the help of newt and others?
I'm not saying, but, well, if you want to start going down the line of who was in charge,
we can go that route, but the end of the day doesn't the job fall on the president?
And you're saying Reagan's politics didn't work?
I'm saying trickle down economics didn't work.
What part of trickle down didn't work?
Just because people say that doesn't mean that's true, right?
So when you say trickle down didn't work, explain.
Say that, but give us a little bit more depth in it.
Well the whole thing on trickle down economics is the fact that it's what.
The concept essentially has been lambasted since
that it did not work.
But who said that?
I'm asking you, is this your opinion
or is this what others are saying?
Well, look at his favorability ratings.
They tumbled towards the end of his presence.
And you question logically, explain to me
why trickle-
Oh, it's seven years old at the time.
So I can't go into in-depth about Ronald Reagan.
But then that's the problem then.
Then the problem is we keep repeating what we're being told
with our questioning, what we're being told,
and doing, we're being a little lazy.
Okay, so let's go to the Trump tax cuts.
Let's talk recent memory then.
Okay, okay.
The problem with Republicans today is that they stood
for the party of low taxes, lower the deficit, balance the budget.
Here comes Trump.
We've added trillions on to the deficit
because of Trump.
Yes, there were some tax cuts.
They favored the wealthy.
That's great.
I'm not in favor of more taxes,
but it's not like that worked out well
for the balanced budget.
Like for example, what's this lady's name?
Jean-Pierre, what's her last name?
Korean, Korean, Korean Jean-Pierre. She's like, yeah, what's this lady's name jump here? What's her last name? Korean Korean jump here
She's like, yeah, let's look at what the prior administration did the prior administration lockdown kids from going to school
She's saying this would a straight face yesterday. I'm listening to him like, wait wait, who locked down?
Who locked down kids from going to school?
What the hell are you talking about? Well, wait a minute.
And then you have Biden gets up and Biden says,
we don't believe in defunding the police.
How can Republicans not protect the police and the FBI?
What are you talking about?
You're in a half ago,
you're talking about defunding the police,
maybe a good idea.
So it's so much gaslighting that people are just going,
yeah, yeah, that's exactly what it is.
The $200 billion, what do you call it,
a program that they came out with for the kids,
the rescue plan that they came out with $200 billion.
Yeah, $200 billion, fantastic rescue plan.
That's what we did.
We're trying to help these kids.
Only 12% was spent.
There's the other 170 billion, 180 billion dollars is sitting in the account doing nothing.
Only 12% was like, you really care about the stuff.
So if you go back and think basic principles, basic principles, policies, taxes, if we keep
just repeating what other people said, trickle down economics, they don't work.
And then we say, yeah, trickle down economics. They don't tell me why it didn't work.
Well, tell me why it worked.
No, no, since you brought it up, you got to defend yourself.
I don't need to. You made the argument.
I didn't bring up trickle down economics.
You brought it up. So tell me, defend why you didn't work. Tell us.
I listen, I'm not going to start defending or.
But no, but will you put it?
Okay. How about this?
Would you agree that in the, no one Clayter out there trickled down economics
didn't work?
That's something that people agree.
I disagree.
I disagree with you.
I feel like that is the thing that people talk about.
But I can give my argument.
You need to give your argument.
Okay, then I'll admit that I don't have a nuanced approach
to this other than the fact that I know that it quote unquote
didn't work.
Yeah.
For example, this is my p-controversial topic.
I wasn't around during civil rights. I wasn't around during civil rights
I wasn't around during slavery, but I'm gonna go on the record that that stuff didn't work well
Well, I didn't have to be there to in order to describe it a couple of observations from the other side of the pond about the Reagan years
It came in after Carter when the American economy was on his knees by the time he left the American economy was much stronger
More significantly
What was the slogan it's morning in America again.
You had the collapse of communism,
the wall came down, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall
and the wall came down.
And actually that lies in some ways
that the part of the problem.
I think we went to sleep, we thought democracy's one out.
And democracy's seen to be on the marks. So I would say that there's a plus side there. And in relation to Trump,
if we break over, it's worth noting because that's not economics. It's part of it.
But it's so sure. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, hang on. I would argue that the
sheer strength of the American economy, which the Russians couldn't match, was the
undoing of that autocratic regime.
And it's collapsed.
It was the strength of this economy.
That's pretty powerful.
That's a massive blow for freedom.
And in relation to the Trump views, but until COVID started, what you actually saw because
this country, this incredibly wealthy country, every time I come here, I'm a remorounded
of it.
You know, the magnificent buildings.
And anyway, I could a remorounded of it. You know, the magnificent buildings and, anyway,
I could go on and on.
But you'd had flat lining real wages,
and the things standards had only been rising
because people had gone deeper and deeper into debt.
You can charter all that out.
That was starting to reverse.
You had higher levels of employment,
and real wages were starting to rise again in this country.
Now, I don't know where you go post COVID
and in terms of the policies of the current administration,
but to be fair to the Trump era, you could chart all of that out.
More people had jobs and real wages were starting to rise again.
I think that's a big thing in an age where I'm totally what really worries me now, is
the astonishing concentration of wealth in the Western world, but particularly in your
country, astonishing accumulation of wealth, inferior Western world, but particularly in your country, astonishing accumulation of
wealth, inferior and fewer hands. You've got the techs, millionaires who have enormous influence
over government policy, while many Americans are saying, hang on, we're going back to these
days of declining living standards, really falling real wages, we've got the same problem in Australia,
you know, unique. And that really worries me economically and socially.
And I don't think it can actually separate the two.
Don't it?
The perspective from the other side of the point.
That's great, but you're making the parallel between Australia and America.
It's basically Australia, a mirror of what's going on in the States.
I think it's common to all Western countries.
And I really despair at the lack of focus
on repairing budgets.
We could face a serious global food problem,
particularly if the Iranian situations,
they're starting to export grain environment.
You think the Ukrainian or the Iranian?
Okay, because Russia and Ukraine are major wheat traders.
I think the Ukrainian is the number one wheat.
The country exporter in the world, I want to say.
Number five, Australia's number six.
China, believe it or not, is a very big exporter.
Funny how the world works out, but the point is
that the next crop might be different matter.
They might not be able to say, but we may face
a global food security issue of very big proportions.
That will be another international shock.
How are countries going to cope?
I've just been to a conference in Canberra, which I shared where we were talking about this,
because most economies are so deeply indebted.
And no one's talking about putting some shots back in the locker.
No one's talking about budget repair.
No one's grappling meaningfully with saying, you know, we are going to wipe our kids off the face of the earth. We don't do something to get our economies back in order. And if there's another,
there'll be another pandemic. We haven't got the resources to help with it in the way that we
did in the past. And you Americans, thankfully, are investing heavily in the Ukrainian situation.
You're putting a lot of stuff in there.
You think that's a good thing?
I'd like us to continually just throw billions
at Ukraine.
You can't, it's inconceivable.
We let the other side walk all over Ukraine.
That will be so dangerous for global stability
and peace.
It'll be terrible.
So you are an advocate that America does get involved
and even more involved in what's going on in Ukraine?
I don't want to tell you how to do it.
No, but I mean, you have an opinion.
But while you're putting a lot of resources in, and I admire that determination, and the
West has shown it's still some unity, that must be turning a clear signal to Beijing,
we do still have some strong beliefs in freedom and democracy and what have you, but it's
costing us.
It's costing a lot.
Then you've got a Germany, of course, It's pumping, still pumping because of bad policy.
I would say more money into the Russian economy than it is into assisting the Ukrainians
withstand that on us.
Why?
Because it needs its gas.
Well, they set up a very high policy.
They were unrealistic.
This is one of the great problems.
Naivity.
We didn't stand up when the Chinese started taking over those islands.
We didn't stand up in the Middle East, red lines, all that stuff.
Oh, they're nice guys.
They'll come to their senses.
Yeah, well, that's what they said about Adolf Hitler.
Some people who only understand strength and resolution.
I want to say, I actually think the Americans, again, have led on this.
They're putting up the bulk of the results.
The Brits have been good.
We've done our bit. We actually really have, we've stepped up in a long way, but
we've tried, we're putting stuff in there.
Yeah, these things really matter.
I'm not sure I'm fully convinced sending money to Ukraine is a good idea.
And I think maybe they don't have a choice right now that they have to do that, but I
think there was a different way
of handling that situation
because all it's doing is
you're unifying Iran, Ukraine,
and Iran, Russia, and China.
And the closer they get,
and they unify against US.
I mean, US isn't trouble if they do that.
A lot of people aren't in trouble if they do that.
So, and Ukraine is, you know,
he's done a great job, become this heroic figure, but at the
same time, not comfortable with all of it.
You're saying Zelensky?
I'm not comfortable with all of it.
I mean, I understand Ben stiller thinks he's the hero, whatever, but, you know, I'm just
not comfortable with it.
It's like, hey, this is not enough.
You need to send us more money.
Hey, this is not enough. I'm just not comfortable with it. It's like, hey, this is not enough. You need to send us more money. Hey, this is not enough. I'm just not comfortable with that. It makes me very uncomfortable with the way
he's raising money and, you know, asking people to send money and then he's doing a photo shoot.
For what was the one that he did a photo shoot?
Oh, it's a vote. Are you saying that it's a sense of entitlement?
Yeah, I'm not comfortable with it. Because the reality of it is, listen, so, you know, again, this goes back to leadership.
If the right strong personality is there, the other guy doesn't bully.
Goes back to the same exact example I gave 20 minutes ago when there's that one person
in the family and he dies, people get bullied and take an advantage of in that family.
When there's this one guy at the bar that he just shows up in the places quiet,
no one messes with anybody, they just have a good time
and then he leaves, then bullies show up and abuse others.
Yes, I think nobody in the world is intimidated by Biden.
Nobody is.
And he's horrible foreign policies.
Would I show him any strength on the way he
handle Afghanistan, just open it up and said,
listen, if we're going to go after Ukraine, this is the
time to do it. So anyways, we've already talked about that
many times. I'm not convinced the solution. I look, I'm in
the insurance business. What is the insurance business?
Risk? No, the insurance business, it is risk. Yes. But
insurance business is about don't buy the product after you
have cancer. Don't buy the product after you had heart
attack. Don't buy the product. The best part about insurance is bite early and keep it
Insurance companies make money because people cancel their policies if you keep your insurance policies
Insurance companies don't make money so it's more preventative, right?
Yeah, I'm gonna tell you something but then you got a bully called mr. Pitten as well
I I understand and the bully wouldn't be a bully
if America had a leader that knew how to stood up,
stand up and be strong.
The bully only can bully because there's not somebody else
that says, hey, knock it off.
So Putin doesn't wake up in the morning
or go into sleep thinking about Biden.
He doesn't think about that.
And you know how certain people in life they threaten, there's certain people
you're not worried about their threat.
If Joe Biden right now said,
John say something, I'm gonna whoop your ass.
What would you do?
Yeah, exactly.
So you know what I'm saying?
There is no weight behind his words.
And I don't think we can handle it.
You think I went asleep worrying about Trump?
Putin?
100%. Yeah, he's unpredictable, 100 had he's through the Chinese of one million percent. Yeah, but so Vladimir Putin may be a bully
But he's a pest. He's a pest. He's not a threat. Gijin being as a threat and all we're doing right now is throwing resources that Ukraine
We're running out of the US army is running out of ammunition like we are not going to be able to defend ourselves
Should we have to, again, to throw a gun at Joe?
And this is not like,
well, and Ukraine isn't like we're going out
to defend Japan or Taiwan or Hong Kong.
I mean, Ukraine has always been one of the most corrupt
countries in the world.
So yes, while Vladimir Putin may be a bully,
all we're doing is driving him into the arms
of Xi Jinping.
And I think it's worth to think of Vladimir Putin
as a Joseph Stalin.
While Joseph Stalin wasn't some hero in the world
We we won World War two because of because of the Russians and all of her snow point this out
But if we didn't have the Red Army to stand up against Germany and how powerful Germany was we would have never won World War two
We would have never won this out. So I think it's very
It's not very beneficial for us to be throwing billions of billions of billions of dollars at Ukraine
Especially when all we're doing is driving plan and putting it to jeans on?
I got to say to you, I understand what you're driving at.
It is a real problem and again, the worst offender, let's be honest about this, is not actually
the Americans in that regard.
Naita, you know, really essentially is Trump was pointing out, bludging on you guys and
not spending enough on defense.
And then it all goes to custard.
Hey, where are the Americans?
You know, we can't live without you.
And my own country has not been active enough.
We've been spending about 2% of GDP on defense.
We've always wanted to hide under your umbrella.
But to pick up what you're saying, I think there's a fair bit of wisdom
and history is always a great teacher, isn't it?
You think the end of the Second World War, the Allies squeezed the German Pippen until the Pipps squeaked
as they put it, they just nailed them to the floor and look at the results. After the
Second World War, I just, I think, you know, if you want to talk global leadership, you
want to talk insurance, you want to talk compassion, you want to talk doing the right thing. Think of what the Americans did with MacArthur and the lead in Japan.
And Japan now is a major force for good in the world, I would argue.
It's a democratic country.
It's co-operative, it's a great partner and an ally.
You think of what happened in Europe.
This country had a horrendous death after the Second World War.
They turned around, found another $13 billion
for the Marshall Plan.
Europe wouldn't exist.
It wouldn't obey.
It was in a worse mess when they introduced the Marshall Plan
that had been at the end of the Second World War.
Economy, shop, kids starving, just an absolute mess.
And the Americans displayed leadership and wisdom.
And maybe a big part of what we need to recognize in the West
is that after the Berlin Wall came down,
we kind of left them all to it.
So the Russians actually tried democracy for a few years,
and they couldn't make it work.
Under Boris Yeltsin, yeah.
And where was Europe?
Where were we all?
In helping them through that difficult period where
they became so cynical, they said, give us back some order and democracy collapsed and
they embraced Mr. Putin because he gave them back some order.
You know, there's a downside, a lot of serious downsides, they gave them back some order,
they felt safe in their beds at night again.
But history is a valuable guide.
And one of the reasons I admire your country so much is because you saved Australia during
the Second World War.
But you also gave us an architecture afterwards that advanced democracy and made the Western
Pacific prosperous region.
You brought up Japan right there and what they were able to do.
And you were referring to China.
Since you're Australian and we're United States. I think it's the perfect segue into this concept of this quad this quad alliance between
Australia India
Japan and United States in the Indo-Pacific region. Yeah, what are your thoughts on this alliance?
I think it's a very good. I think it's a good one. Lake on you. The great statesman from that tiny little Singapore
He warned over 20 years
ago what was coming. And he said, he
actually, his perspective was the
Chinese may never have to fire a
shot. They just squeezed their
economic muscles and everybody will
toe in. But he said, unless
combinations that are committed
to freedom combined together,
you know, there'll be no way to
hold this juggernaut. And I think
that's right. Japan has moved a lot, Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated. I mean, you know, there'll be no way to hold this juggernaut. And I think that's right.
Japan has moved a lot.
Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated.
I mean, you know, the most extraordinary thing
for that to happen in Japan.
Only a few months ago.
He was a, I actually knew him.
He was a great and a fine man.
Yeah, we met before we were serious office holders.
And he told me how much he respected Australia,
because he told me the story.
That as a young man, he'd not known what Japan had really done in China in the 30s and then right throughout Asia.
They were not told at school. He said, I went to Australia and I started to understand that we had not behaved as honorably as we're told.
I started to understand that Australia and the West had behaved very honorably. And then when I discovered that the famous sub-mariners,
midget sub-mariners who were killed in Sydney Harbor
in a raid there in 1942 had been given military funerals
because the Australian military said,
we will set the standard.
You know, they were obeying orders.
They were doing their country's bidding.
We would expect the Japanese to respect our dead service people, men and women, so
we will give them a military funeral as controversial. And he said at that point, I came to realise
that we had behaved dishonorably, you had behaved honourably. He was paying tribute to Western
values at that time. I'm not saying we're perfect. I don't want to sit here and say we're
perfect. But I just want to say that history shows us at our high points, we've got things
right.
Your point about firing off too many shots now is really worrying because you've got so
many trouble spots around the world today.
The British military used to say that when in Empire days, which I know Americans hate,
as a concept, and the Americans were always having a go at Churchill over it.
But the British used to say they had to be on the maintain two
battles and one major ones and one minor one at any given time.
And that goes to your point, what could the American military
really cope with, even with all their allies on board?
If a really serious problem, well, I guess we've got one now.
But if others start to think he's our opportunity,
we'll go for it now.
That is a real danger. And we truly need statesmen and women to lead us through it. We really do.
Hey Pat, you um that alliance that we're talking about with John here America, Australia, Japan, India.
My question is about India. I think population wise, you said 25 million in Australia. Yeah, I think in Japan, it's a
Little over 100 million 125 million here in the United States, 300 million.
India, 1.4 billion people, right?
I mean, that's not, I mean, they're them in China, neck and neck as far as world population.
And I know you have strong thoughts on where India's role is and how young they are versus
China's age.
What do you, what do you say about that, Pat?
All I'm hopeful of is the right philosophy,
winning and advancing.
The India is the one country
that does not trust China at all,
and China doesn't like.
It's a past to China.
But if they're willing to stay that strong against China,
the world is a safer place.
If India, their philosophy shifts into what China believes in and they become united,
the world is going to be in deep trouble with those two guys unite.
Very problematic.
The fact that these guys stand up to China makes the world a better place, but that's a
completely different conversation.
But it's part of it with this whole quad concept with Australia.
We now have all of us, too, where America and Britain have a great to share nuclear technology
and ultimately nuclear submarines with Australia.
I mean, I don't want to go on a limb here, but it seems to be it's the good guys versus
the bad guys, okay?
The five eyes that you talked about, right?
The UK, Great Britain, United States, Australia, Canada,
EU, democracies, everyone, and then it's China, Russia,
Iran, sort of totalitarian states, if you will.
That seems to be, and then India,
think they're on our team, pretty sure.
They're a democracy.
Right.
India.
At the end of the day, I mean, why would the world allow a China to take over because we self doubt?
Neil Ferguson makes a point I asked him a few years ago, one of my podcasts. What are the three greatest threats to our freedom?
He said first is Lamyk extremism in ascending Islamic extremism number one. No, no three, sorry, in ascending order. Okay, gotcha.
Second, misadventure between the super power and the rising super power, miscalculation.
Well, that's what we're talking about.
But the greatest is that we don't believe our history, our values, we've rejected them,
we've undermined our own confidence in our own model.
And this is the amazing thing.
This is why it's so brilliant to hear your perspectives as somebody who you know you see the floor
You see the weaknesses, but you see the value in the opportunity for us to flourish as human beings
I can flourish in my own country now even if the society's becoming less and less coherent the politics is breaking down
But if we're not careful our kids in 20 years time won't be able to
Yeah, so for me sometimes But if we're not careful, our kids in 20 years' time would be able to.
Yeah.
So for me, sometimes the kids in Grand Kiss,
like when they talk about how many generations
does billionaires' wealth last?
Three generations later, the money disappears.
Not because the original guy that created it, the founder,
he knows how much work it takes to make the money, the guy that made it, the founder, he knows how much work it takes to make the money,
right? The guy that made it, made it. Then the kids, they got a glimpse of what daddy or mommy,
the price they paid. So they get the first hand training. Here's what dad had to do.
Grandkids have no clue what it took. And great, grandkids have no clue what it took. You're hoping
somebody wants to pass down the legacy and continue it.
And someone has to keep teaching it and not compromise the values and principles. It's very,
very hard to stay disciplined and keep high standards when you're rich and you can buy everything
and life can be very easy. It's a very, very hard to say no to your kids, to say no to
the things that we don't need to spend money on. What's the big deal?
It's just a thousand bucks.
What's the big deal?
It's just 500 bucks.
What's the big deal?
It's just 200 bucks.
I think America right now is becoming that.
Unfortunately, it's there no longer standing up to saying no.
Hey, can you send us more things?
American people, no.
Can we spend more money on this?
No.
Can we go to, no.
It's the great, great, great, great kids
are now running the country.
And they don't have a clue what it took
to pay the price of building this thing up
to where it's at today.
Anyways, that's just my idea.
And then what happens when you got money
that you never earned?
You easily give it away.
You don't care.
You give it away to anybody and everybody.
So we're not, we're not diligent with the amount of work people did prior to us to get America
to where it's at today.
And the arrogance of thinking you'll never fall.
I mean, you've seen stories like that in a military.
You've seen stories like yesterday.
Florida states plain Louisiana, LSU, right?
2417, Guy catches the ball.
He fumbles it. Florida state gets it. They're about to score a touchdown. They fumble the ball. LSU, right? 2417, guy catches the ball. He fumbles it. Florida State gets it.
They're about to score a touchdown.
They fumble the ball.
LSU comes back.
They throw a touchdown.
They're about to do what he called it.
Did you see it or not?
I didn't see anything.
So Florida State is up 2417.
LSU is about to receive the ball.
The guy that receives the palm to kick off
or the punt fumbles it.
Florida State gets it on the 10 yard line. They score a touchdown apparently then there's a flag. They come back,
they're about to score another touchdown. The guy fumbles the ball on three yard line.
LSU gets it back. They take it ball, they score a touchdown. They're about to kick the what do you
call it? The one point extra point to tie it. Mrs. DePoing. Games over. Zero seconds left on the clock.
Florida State's win 24-23.
The arrogance of thinking, we have it because we're this.
We don't think it'll happen to America.
The level of paranoia, I don't think it's high.
And the people running it are very reckless with the way they're spending money.
And it should be deeply concerning to a lot of people.
That's my thoughts.
I mean, we're spending money, sending money to everybody, trying to save up sales, solve
everyone's problems. And we're not teaching, hey guy, life is hard, get a damn job.
You don't know how hard life is, I believe me, it's very, very hard, but it's not one,
one thousand of how hard it was in 1776.
It's not one hundred thousand of how hard was your hard to date as a joke
a 200 years ago.
So stop bitch and stop whining,
stop feeling sorry for yourself.
And more importantly, the leaders at the top,
stop, it's one of the hardest things to do as a leader.
One of the hardest things to do as a leader
is to feel bad and guilty for the amount of work
somebody else has to do like you did
to get to the point where you feel guilty, want to help them get it in an easier way to got to pay the
damn price and we're in a place right now where we feel sorry for everybody.
It's a very weak leadership position because you don't have a backbone.
That's not real leadership.
Real leadership is to empower, tell people we believe in you and challenge in them and
willing to stand aside even though they may criticize
you demonize you and hate you a little bit
and you're gonna say I'm gonna be okay
because long term you're gonna be independent.
You're not gonna need me long term.
The job of a father isn't to keep the son dependent
to the father for his or rest of his life.
The job of a father is to keep the kid independent
that one day son doesn't need him.
So when the daddy's dead, son says,
oh my gosh, my dad raised me well.
We're not thinking about those things today.
We're just thinking about,
isn't that the $200 billion, do whatever you want to do
with it with a bunch of games?
And I think it's a very weak leadership,
and it's concerning.
Well, you're in a unique position to be able to say that,
you see.
See, man, I can try and make those points
because I've been in public office,
and I've seen it, and I've had the incredible benefit
of being able to study history and meet people and talk
and discuss and all the rest of it.
But in the end, I've not known the alternative. Personally, you have, which is why what you say is so powerful
and why you can render such a service by my say-so. When you say things like that, when
you bring respect to reality, you've seen the option. You've seen people yesterday.
Yesterday we have a couple guys at the house two nights ago. I mean, yesterday, I'm
midnight. I'm talking to these two Iranians.
I said, tell you a story, I haven't told anybody.
What's that?
Three, I'm living in Plano.
So four years ago, I go to my dad.
So I got to talk to you.
I don't want you to tell anything to Jen.
What's that?
I'm going to go to Iran for a week.
You're not going to Iran for a week.
I'm going to Iran for a week.
I'm not telling anybody.
I have to go to Iran.
Why? I have to go to Iran. I have to go see Iran where I was raised. I Iran for a week. I'm going to Iran for a week. I'm not telling anybody. I have to go to Iran. Why?
I have to go to Iran.
I have to go see Iran where I was raised.
I want to see it.
I'm yearning for it, right?
Yeah, I'm on a whole chat and jam hospital in all these places.
And he's like, no, you're not going to Iran.
So I'm telling you, I'm going to Iran for a week.
I just want to go see this place.
Because I want to take my kids to Iran one day.
I want to go see it first. And then when these guys are grown-ups. I want to take them to Iran one day
And it was long story short letters come in my sister shows me something and
He's able to persuade me not to go we're running a company. It's not fair
You got kids you got wife you got companies people are relying on and it was obviously I didn't go to Iran for the one
I was gonna keep a low key and then boom. I was gonna go and come back
You have no idea how bad I want to go back here on and see what Iran's like.
You know, I want to see what happened there. Here's a great nation with a rich history
that lost it all because of extremism and not paying attention to the value of freedom.
And then in America, which the greatest country in the world, hands down the greatest country in the world, the
idea that accelerated and grew at a pace that no other country in mankind has ever grown.
And here we are apologizing for.
How weird is that?
When have you ever heard a team win first place and apologize to second place for whooping
their asses?
I've never heard of that before.
Have you heard about that?
Like have you done Brady saying afterwards this and I've never heard of that before. Have you heard about that? Like have you done braiding same afterwards as us
and I'm so sorry we beat you.
I'm so sorry our ideas and plays are just better than yours.
I'm so apologetic.
Can you see Michael Jordan going to the Lakers and saying,
we're going to, you know, the Phoenix Sands,
hey, I'm so sorry I beat you man.
Really makes me feel so bad.
No, we're a leader.
This is what we are.
Comes with pressure, comes with a lot of animosity
from others because they don't like the fact that they lost.
But at the same time, don't put in their face.
Be humble winner, be humble number one,
and keep the standards high.
We have a standard issue.
And unfortunately, I've said this numerous times.
With high standards today, you're not going to get elected.
The only way to get elected today is with low standards, with today's policies. To inject the concept of high standards today, you're not gonna get elected. Do you only want to get elected today? Is with low standards, with today's policies.
To inject the concept of high standards, I believe,
into men and women of a nation.
You need the support of education,
you need the support of universities,
you need the support of a lot of people to get it to say,
you're right, the way we can resurrect what we once had,
we all need to buy into high standards, low excuses,
responsibility, reliability, pride in our nation,
pride in our last name, pride in the fact that I'm an immigrant,
I came from Iran, and even though I'm born in Iran,
I'm made in America, I got pride for my blood,
but I love the country that gave me this freedom.
That message today resonates with a percentage,
the other percentage sister and say,
you're arrogant, I can't believe you're saying this.
Again, this doesn't mean feel sorry for me,
this message is not gonna sell.
This just means, say it anyways.
Don't be afraid of you're losing certain people.
Sell high standards, we're not selling high standards.
We're selling low standards today.
We're selling feel sorry for me today. We're selling victimhood today.
100%.
So the only answer to cancel culture is courage culture.
Teletruth.
Well, I think what you're talking about is on the table.
There's a famous phrase, I'll just dumb it down. You got to take the good with the
bad.
And the problem with this, you know, wokeism, leftism, victim mentality is that they want to burn
the whole thing down and dismiss all the good that's been done here in America.
Well, they did this and all they did that and I'm gonna, it's not fair. It's like, well, where you want to go, buddy?
Because you're living in this country, complaining about this country, where would you like to go?
It only costs 500 bucks to get a ticket to go anywhere else. Go someplace else. So that is what is so upsetting to me.
It's like you're a 100% believer in capitalism, right Pat?
I'm 100%.
Okay, however, you are willing to say,
maybe there's some areas that can be fixed,
but you're a capitalist.
Fair enough?
I'm in the, I'm all about incentives drive the right behavior.
Okay. So whoever controls the about incentives drive the right behavior. Okay.
So whoever controls the incentives will produce the right
behavior.
So if the incentives today are controlled by a Biden,
they produce the wrong behavior.
That's what I believe in.
Okay.
But overall capitalism is you agree with it, but it's not,
what do they say is it's not perfect, but it's the best
system we've ever seen.
Everything else is secondary to it, but it's not perfect.
You know what would I would use though?
It's natural capitalism.
It's 100% natural.
Rather than forced upon you, collectivism.
To me capitalism, when some people apologize for it, and we all say it because somebody
else said it, which is what.
It's not perfect, it's the best thing we got.
Bullshit.
It's natural.
It's you.
We're naturally born capitalists. We are capitalists.
It doesn't matter what you think about. We're capitalists. Everybody's a capitalist. Even the
socialist is a capitalist. You know, even the communist is a capitalist. The communist is so competitive
that he wants you to believe his argument as the best the only difference between the capital is and the
Communist is the Communist wants to eliminate a competitor the capitalist wants to have a competitor
He just wants to compete against the competitor to see if he can make it or not
When it's trying to eliminate the other one wants to compete
Allow me to see if I can do a better job. Okay
Capitalism doesn't work when bureaucrats and aristocrats show up. But till then it's a great system
What about the socialists who's tweeting about capitalism
from their iPhone?
I always find that ironic.
That goes back to the whole concept where even they've sold you
that trickle-down didn't work.
And so, we're gonna go back to that?
Of course we are.
They've sold you a smart guy that trickle-down doesn't work
because they've saved the power of affirmation,
saying it's so many times until smart people like you say,
maybe they're right.
So trickle down worked, that's what you're saying.
It's not about trickle down work,
it's meant incentives work.
The only difference, you know how I would do differently?
Here's how we do differently.
I would tax those that don't bring value to the economy.
But they don't have any money to be taxed.
It doesn't matter, I'm taxing you higher.
The more value you, it should be the other way around.
Commission's paid higher to those that perform higher.
You don't say, hey, wait, what did you do?
You did 200,000 orders last month,
Payment Lower Pays Commission.
What sales organization ever does that?
Hold on, I do have to say something,
because you came up with an idea a few months ago
that I fully agreed with.
Which is what?
You shouldn't tax anybody that's making less than 50 grand.
I'm totally okay with that part.
I said that part, but if you're,
but that's different from what you're saying.
No, once you go above that,
then we should tax people that produce more less.
The more you produce, you should pay less taxes.
So that's the antithesis of the progressive tax system.
Yes, so that's the trickle-down that you're saying with that.
But my philosophies, I need a new country to run this philosophy.
We would never work in America.
They would never bind to what I'm saying to you.
Yeah.
In Australia, so ultimately what I'm saying is there's, especially on the left, I mean,
you might have even mentioned something on the right.
America, we, you know, we're not doing it right.
We need to start over.
The 1619, woke is a mo...
These are people who are born and raised in America.
You never hear immigrants who have moved here
and have fled other countries saying,
America, they're not doing it right.
They're in line to freaking get here.
In Australia, is there that wokeism on the left
that's basically saying, you know,
everything that happened with Aboriginal people,
everything that happened with criminal,
like, what's that parallelism?
Well, it's very powerful.
It's common to the Western world. That's point a lot of it of course came out of the
left bank and intellectualism in France and I noticed president macro on the other day said we've
exported we don't want it back always the Americans picking up some of these madoddies but it's
no different in our country it's no I mean if I haven't said there's an attempt in Edinburgh
in Scotland at the moment to tear down the statue of Livingston.
Livingston was a Scott who became one of the leading abolitionists fighting the slave trade.
You know why they want to tear you down?
Because the aged 10, he worked in a cotton mill and some of the cotton might have been produced by a slave mill, a slave owners.
Therefore, he should be torn down.
Now, first question is, what sort of society, how, you know,
to judge him when he was a 10-year-old,
had to go out to work to get a bit of bread for us,
suppose he's probably widowed mother or whatever.
What year was this?
1800s?
Yeah, but he was part of a great abolitionist movement
in the UK, which was the leading empire of the day.
And, inconveniently, it was a bunch of wealthy white privileged males often Christian
who fought slavery.
They're meant to be the cause of all the problem now, white, wealthy privileged males.
They're the problem.
So all of that stuff is alive and well.
But what I would, I'd go back to a point we made earlier about if capitalism is to work well,
because what capitalism does is captures the genius of, you know, however many billions of
minds there are, making individual decisions about what's in their own best interests.
But it needs to happen in some sort of context of a moral framework. So governments got to set some
rules, you know, and you got to have the ways of capturing people
who really do the wrong thing.
So you want a mixed economy, but the other point is,
it comes down a lot to whether you're culture is one
that's a high trust culture.
And I'll give you a very simple example.
In Australia, we had the Australian Mutual Providence Society,
financial institution.
It started out as its name implies a providence
society for the less well-off insurance for widows, you know, if they lost their husbands
so they could feed their children and so forth. It grew into one of our major financial institutions.
Two or three years ago we had a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the banking and financial sector.
It emerged that a lot of these people, these banks couldn't be trusted. They hadn't been
behaving the way people thought they should have.
It was a bit overplayed.
There was still a lot of ethical behaviour.
I'd want to say that to anyone listing.
There were many bankers who did the right thing.
But the AMP came out of it utterly disgraced.
It went from a leading historian said, the most trusted institution in Australia after
the churches when it was set up in the 1840s, to one where you couldn't put your
buck and trust that it was safe and the Australian people completely lost confidence in it.
And it was all about its charter, the people who set it up, the fact that they were committed to
creating wealth, not just for their own comfort, but for the benefit of others. And it was seen to be such.
It was trusted. So it comes back. It's not just trusting her politicians.
You need it in your business sector.
You need it in your courts.
You need it in your education system.
When trust breaks down, freedom disappears.
Because the three of us are here,
four of us are here in this room.
As we met, one of the questions in our minds
was, can I trust this person?
If we trust each other, we can have a cooperative agreement and discussion. If we don't,
we're looking to think, gee, I need some security. I'm going to back off. Freedom's less important
than security if trust breaks down. You see what I'm going? Yeah. So once you decry,
they're need to trust, once you
breed up cynicism, once you breed up suspicion of the other person, it goes back to one,
I hope you'll forgive me for saying this as somebody from the other side of the world, but I'm so
distressed by the tone and the words of the attack that your president launched that can only be
seen as an attack on so many millions of his fellow
Americans. I just thought it was just my Biden again. Yeah, this is the famous speech
you're all talking about here now where we just he hardened down presumably on poll numbers
designed to get Democrat voters out. We don't have to do that in Australia because voting
is compulsory. If it wasn't, we'd have the same problem as you. Half people who wouldn't
turn up to vote and even less than half of young people are such.
Compulsory meaning mandatory.
Yeah, in Australia it is.
You have to vote.
You have to vote.
If you're 18 or older.
Yeah, you do.
You have to.
And what do you find if you don't vote?
Yeah, you are.
Not heavily, but you are fined.
Wow.
You have to register and you have to vote.
And as you think that is a good thing?
It's a mixed thing.
The Prime Minister I served with doesn't believe in it.
I used
not to, I think I do now because I think the horrors of trying to get people out to vote,
the bribery that corrupts, I can't say bribery corruption, but the extraordinary things
that happen to try and get your vote, your base out, to try and appeal to your base rather
than the national interest, what's good for the country? I think compulsory, the way we have it is probably
the lesser of the problematic approaches.
I wouldn't die on a ditch over it,
but I think on balance I can have.
I know you have strong feelings
on this compulsory voting.
I know you do.
Because your idea on voting was actually very unique.
I've never heard anybody come up with the idea
that you had, you know what I'm talking about, right?
I think you had to earn the right to vote.
Right.
Same way you live in a house and kids don't get a chance to vote
for what they're doing until they're contributing to the house.
If you're contributing to the house,
you've earned the right to vote.
If you're contributing to society,
you got to earn the right to vote.
I'm more comfortable with a 14 year old kid
who's paid $3,000 in taxes to have the right to vote
and the 25 year old kid who's never paid a nickel in taxes,
he should not vote. So it shouldn't be based on age, it should beold kid who's never paid a nickel in taxes, he should not vote.
So it shouldn't be based on age, it should be based on who's contributed to society.
My system of vote, again, it's not a popular, people would lose their minds if I pitch
my voting.
Well, I'm sure there's people listening, they may be like, Pat, you're out of control.
It's okay.
I'm not sitting here trying to make friends.
I didn't create this podcast to say, I need five more friends in my life.
I created this spot, yes, to see if you enjoyed,
you disagree with the tell me,
I'm, you know, you totally have no clue
what you're talking about, fine, I'll receive it or,
you know, there's a point to it,
but you know, you said something
when you're telling the whole history
of what they're trying to do with that man
who worked at a cotton...
Livingston.
Livingston and, you know. Livingston you know, yeah, living son of Africa.
He cared about, he really cared about setting Africans free.
Who would he be in America?
Like if you were to make a comparison to someone in our history, who would that be in America?
Oh, I don't know, you're the figures because I were there, they're decrod now, but he
would have been a great American
Harriet Beecher Stowe, I don't know that's a bit of a wild pluck
But somebody who really went out against the grain of the day and said look these are people of equal worth and dignity to us
We Lincoln a Lincoln. Well, he was president living yeah, yeah, yeah, all that ill
I got yeah, and he worked with all that ill. I got that.
And he worked with William Willoughforce, who got my political hero.
William Willoughforce inherited a vast fortune.
He went into Parliament of the age of 21.
He was seen as a future prime minister in Britain, which in those days was the leading empire
in the world.
You know, and he went, underwent this sort of extraordinary, you know, sort of Christian
opening of his eyes and he decided that Slavic was evil and he started actually campaign on the basis.
Their slogan was, am I not a man and a brother?
And Wedgwood pottery, I've heard of Wedgwood pottery.
First, it's a famous English pottery company.
Just I, Wedgwood.
He struck the first political pamphlet of you like, a whole series of actual pieces of pottery, dishes and what have you.
And they had this incredibly beautiful picture
of an African man looking up pleadingly
and the slogan on an Amon on a man and a brother.
Now that was revolutionary stuff.
And here are these people, privileged white males
who were apparently at the heart of every problem
you could ever imagine, saying, we've got this this wrong and they took denigration, they were cancer, subject
of cancel, cult of nothing else, the king cut wouldn't talk.
That's an English expression.
Wilberforce was cut by the king which in English society and a super parliamentarian meant
that you were a nobody for his position on all this and eventually they won.
They won. And then Britain sent ships
out onto the high seas, British Navy ships, to stop other countries trading in human beings,
the misery of human beings. But you used the term that I've never really heard before, you said
de-statification? De-statuing. De-statuing. De-atuing. Pulling statues down. Yeah, I mean, this, I, my mind
went to what was happening during 2020 in COVID.
Yeah.
And I remember a very specific story.
There's a difference between a Lincoln and a Thomas Jefferson
and our friend, what's his, what's his name?
Lucius Trescott the third.
And the Confederacy, you know,
Robert E. Leestonewall Jackson.
And I remember this was one of the first podcasts
when we first started this thing.
And two plus years ago, should Confederate statues be removed?
And what should we do with them?
And I, you know, Pat, to his point, very emotional,
at the time, Adam over here.
I'm like, take them all down, remove them.
They shouldn't be here.
Their traders, Confederates, get them out of here.
And I was very emotional and vocal about it.
And then I started seeing what was happening.
And then all of a sudden, slippery slope, let's remove Lincoln.
Let's remove Jefferson.
It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, guys.
Yeah, I want to get rid of Churchill because he was a racist.
Hang on, the lucky defeated was something of a racist.
Yeah, that guy Hitler was pretty bad.
But, you know, not blokey defeated was something of a racist. Yeah, that guy Hitler was pretty bad, but you know, what I came, you know,
not everything's black and white is gray or essentially what I came to the
premise of is yeah, those Confederate statues, if I had to say, would be moved
into a museum. You want to understand about the Confederacy?
We can't teach what happened. You can't just watch everything.
I get that because for example, I mean, I got to want to,
I joined a de-staturing movement. If somebody wanted to put a one up to
I think you could, I don't think we could. At all Hitler.
I'd want to, I'd want to pull it down. Of course.
But on the other hand, if it were, you know, somebody who had a mixed record,
you know, we've had one pulled down in Australia.
You had a mixed record. He did, no, not about it. But he did good things as well as bad things, you know, we've had one pull down in Australia. He had a mixed record. He did no doubt about it
But he did good things as well as bad things, you know, you got to take the good with the bad John
You know an English writer. Sorry if I'm sounding like an Englishman now that you know the roads you've all heard of roads
Colossians and he was a satvabring mixed record. He did some bad things
He did some terrific things and some of the people he's trained up with these money sense of done fantastic
They wanted to pull his statue down
and a British writer, Matthew Parris, said,
no, no, no, no, leave it there.
Put a statue of the king of the Zoolers,
opposite him on the other side of the street,
until both sides of the story.
And then we'll all learn something.
You remember that, Lucius Traskout, your buddy?
One of my favorite interviews of all time.
No, you, but you know what it is, you know,
as the saying goes, he who controls the present controls
the past, and he who controls the past controls the future.
So people can, and I think this is George Orwell,
I want to say he said from the 84 book or something.
So whoever's controlling the present
is kind of telling people what happened the past
and you got to be kind of careful with that.
So the only way for us to remove all these statues and all these different people, you know,
all you're saying is you're afraid of people learning about the history of what happened
the past.
If I really want to teach my kids leadership, they're eventually going to be reading about
this guy Hitler.
They have to, they've already read about him.
They've already studied about him.
They start reading about him at seven, eight years old.
You have to know that evil does exist in regards to leaders, or some leaders that are willing to go out there,
and you have to be ready for it.
You have to be strong for it.
So if you want to understand capitalism,
you have to read both wealth of nations.
You have to study Thomas Sol, a Milton Friedman,
but you also have to read communist manifesto.
You have to read it because you can't read one,
what out the other.
You have to read and say, I see what the argument he's making. So if we eliminate these all we're saying is, let's
dumb them down to people because we can't handle people in the past who either were flawed,
either they'd, you know, something bad, but God forbid we learn about the true history of it.
It's a form of coppin' out and being weak let's let's talk about Biden's speech, you know a couple comments was made about it one
When Trump heard his speech by the way, can you pull up the picture?
Who came up with the setting though? Did you see the setting?
Did you watch the entire speech?
Have you listened to the entire speech? No, I've seen parts. Have you have you listened to the whole thing yet or no?
No, not okay. So I was watching this thing and
Have you have you listened to the whole thing yet or no no not okay? So I was watching this thing and
You know it's it's a very weird speech very very and the reason why it's a weird speech is a follow-on reason so for example
How many times the Trump gives speeches when he was a president?
How many times was he on camera talking? All all the time daily that guy was a day how many times is he on camera talking given speeches?
Yeah, it daily that guy was a day. How many times does he on camera talking given speeches
Once every three or six months. I'm actually I'm not being sarcastic. How often is he doing that? I mean he's gets prep brief press briefings, but no like this is not very often
This is not but Trump was doing these steps of things all the time right?
So if you're not doing this that often that's part of your strategy where your own team says Joe
We don't want you to give a lot of speeches when you do them, you have to figure out a way to capitalize on these moments.
I thought it was a missed opportunity.
It was very divisive.
It was very, you know, the 74 million people you have to be careful with them.
Those are Marines who are standing behind them.
People were upset about the red light.
That just doesn't look good.
Period.
That just doesn't look at what the way they did uh... setting but aside from that here's what trump said
trump hits back at by the nissus rally since fby raid danger to our democracy
comes from the radical left not the radical right
uh... he shot back at uh... at him
the save america event marked trump's first rally since the fby raid hits uh...
hit his home august eight trump a focus day large portion of the speech on
the corruption and extremism of the Democratic Party Republicans and the mag of movement
are not the ones trying to undermine our democracy. We are the ones trying to save our democracy.
The danger to our democracy comes from the radical left, not the right. And so he gives
that speech. Then Nikki Haley goes out there and says, where's the Nikki Haley speech?
There's something about when Niki Haley said.
I thought I had it here.
She thought it was very,
what's the word she used?
Condescending.
Condescending message.
That was the most condescending,
the most condescending speech ever given.
President of my lifetime.
President of our lifetime given a message
that's condescending.
The Joe Rogan slammed the blood red dark background
of Biden speech
She reacted Friday to the background
Speech to host the spot about Joe Rogan's running the podcast and we're saying, you know
He couldn't believe what the background was like, you know, what imagine thinking this was a good idea
It's what Joe Rogan said imagine thinking this was a good idea
So you know with the current state you saw this. I don't know you said you didn't see this you saw bits of it
bits and pieces of it and obviously you had some thoughts about it Is there anything else you want to say when you saw this speech like did you see that speech saying there was
10% of it that was good. It was you know this part of it that was good because one party stock and maggot the other
Parties I'm not just the president for the Democrats. I'm a Democrat president for the left and the right and the middle
I want to be the president for everybody you can can't say that, but at the same time you take shots. Yeah. An organization.
Again, I want to be respectful of American and American. So I can only say I was just
personally deeply distressed as an observer from the other side of the world. As I see America
as the leader of the free world and critical to our future. And I loath division, I hate the idea of division.
So what I saw was, yes, some appeal to some higher ideals.
But that was to sort of almost set up the attack
on people who have a different set of opinions,
as apparently being responsible for smashing those ideals,
rather than to say, how can we sit down and talk through
and recommit to those ideas?
And I found myself thinking,
this is a surprisingly fluent speech
because I've seen a lot of fluent speeches.
You know, I usually say the cards
or we hear him repeating bits that are on the order here.
A genuine question.
Would he have had some sort of device there
for order cues, screens in front?
Because it was quite fluent.
Yeah, I think you make a great point here
and I'm gonna give a couple different perspectives here.
I hear so many people basically saying,
Joe Biden can't speak anymore, okay?
He's got dementia, you can't even get words out of his mouth.
He was pretty clear for an hour,
people understood what he was saying.
Twenty-three minutes, 22 minutes.
Okay, so half hour almost.
Point is he gave a long speech.
So on one side of things, people are saying,
he can't speak,
he's in the basement hiding, well, he's out there.
I don't think it was necessarily a speech
that will live in infamy.
However, this is the thing that he's missing.
Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans
are a threat to the very soul of this country.
Okay, Maga is the new Republican party.
Okay, what's Donald Trump's approval ratings
within the Republican party?
90%?
Tyler, you would know this.
It's close to 90%.
Okay, so the Republican party that we knew,
the George W. Bush previous Republican, Dick Cheney,
you know, that establishment, that doesn't exist anymore. That's gone.
But does a Republican, how do you trim and clinton, a democratic party of Trumon and Clinton
exist anymore?
Arguably.
But that's specifically about the Republicans. The old Republican guard does not exist.
The list chanies of the world, Adam, Kansas of the world, the dick chanies of the world,
the Mitt Romney's of the world, the Georgia B. Bush, gone.
This is Trump's party, whether it's good or bad, he controls the party.
So what Biden is missing is, quote unquote, the MAGA Republicans are that, that is the new
Republican party.
It's not a fringe element of the Republicans.
So your point is that it really is an attack on a vast number of Republicans.
That's what I'm saying is that 80 million people voted for Trump and of the Republicans,
75 million people who were talking about here.
So it's a mixed messaging.
So that's maybe what he, I don't know, clearly somebody was telling him what to say, wrote
to speech, what have you, but that is what resonates the most with me about this,
is that the misunderstanding that the Republican party
is now the Maga party, the previous party is now gone.
The rhinos, gone.
You know what's the only time a speech like this works?
When you know for a fact, you have a big lead.
You can't talk like this when you don't have a lead.
He doesn't have a lead. You have to try to have a big lead. You can't talk like this when you don't have a lead. He doesn't have a lead.
You have to try to show a different side.
You can't talk like this when you don't have a lead.
He does not have a lead.
So it's got to come from a different angle.
It's got to come from an angle to try to win people over.
You know, when I left, when I started out in politics, my predecessor in my, I think
I don't know what you'd call it, district, I think, but in my electorate.
He was a wise man, a very good man.
And he said, now, but as you kick off John,
there's something you need to understand.
He said, half the people who voted for you will love you,
and half the people who voted for you won't.
That voted for you.
Yeah, and half the people who didn't vote for you
will hate you, but half of them will actually think
you're a very good person. Don't antagonize the people who did not vote for you will hate you, but half of them will actually think you're a very good person.
Don't antagonise the people who did not vote for you.
Many of them will have different perspectives.
They may not have been able to put their ticker against your name, but they're fine on
Australia.
Yes.
I fully agree with that.
I agree.
And you said, this is what distressed me about the speech as a former practice.
Look, I just from a little country and I was only the deputy, I wasn't the president
of the United States, but I look at it as I could really
concerned, deeply committed person when it comes to democracy
and freedom, and I think this guy,
is what he says, his words are pullance.
And there are all those Americans out there who voted for...
I just don't think Trump was the problem, as people say,
so much as the product of the problem.
If you've got further Americans who feel so alienated, so left behind.
So dismissed by today's elites, including...
We weren't talking about capitalism,
the tech billionaires, the screeneners,
who seem to be quite contemptious of little people.
It's as though they're the problem.
They want their plasma TVs and their jet skis
and their Chevy Suburbans, and they're the enemy
of the planet.
So while I get wealthier, and I'm not going to give up
any of my lifestyle, and I'll get around the world
to climate claims, change conferences, and I'll live in a mansion, and I'm not going to give up any of my lifestyle and I'll get around the world to climate claims, change conferences and I'll live in a mansion and I'll have several
holiday hires as scattered around the world and I'm a global citizen.
You people who, by the way, just happened to feed me and keep the transportation system
working and educate my kids and police at the streets, you're just scum, you're the enemy.
That sort of contempt is extant in all of our countries.
I'm not singing out the United States, please don't hear me say that.
I'm saying, I think it's a real problem for social harmony and democracy depends upon
social harmony.
Depends on trust, it depends on respect for the other person.
When you have a debate, it should be as fierce as you like.
I've listened with respect to what Patrick's saying
with all of it.
With all of it.
Because, sorry.
Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead, keep going.
And we don't have to agree on everything.
No.
But we're going to have a fierce argument
on the things we might disagree on.
But in the end, we're fellow human beings.
Right.
And if we lose sight of that, and if some people have scum, they're
the enemy and gaiya, the goddess earth or whatever, we start to paint them that way. No wonder
they're going to hit out. So what's the commander and chief's job to do? Make sure he's actually
got his army behind him, not a great slab of them wanting to, you know, overturn the system.
Right. And to your point, I mean, Hillary Clinton learned this lesson the hard way when
she came out and said that half of our Republicans are what she would throw into the basket of
deplorables. Not a good look to start talking shit about your constituency, whether they vote
for you or not, to your point, half of people that vote for you will like you, not like you.
So here's a question you had to ask yourself. So imagine like, you know how, I don't know
what Trump's record is,
when he endorses you, you win,
and when you don't, you lose by 37%,
your name is Liz Cheney, okay?
So the power of an endorsement from Trump is a lot of power.
Think about the guys that are getting ready for midterms.
I'm talking, everybody else is like,
man, I gotta, I need him to give a good speech.
How many of them are sitting around saying,
oh my God, what is gonna be the value
of a Joe Biden endorsement today? What the hell am I getting? Like, I need him to
be better so I can get more influence from your endorsements. Imagine Joe Biden comes
you're running somewhere. Yeah, I endorse Adam Sausnik for, you know, district is this
the, how much weight does that have today? So it's almost that his speech Hurts others as well that are hoping for them to give a speech to get that endorsement. I mean, we're gonna find out
We'll know we'll know to come up once you're whether there's value to it or not. I hear you. I'll also give a different perspective
You know part of the problem that's happening in the Senate right now is that they're putting out weak candidates
Okay, and you know the house is expected to flip,
but in the Senate, they're expected to hold
if you look at numbers,
it's because the candidates are weak.
And yes, you are right, that Trump,
I think, went like 20 in the last week,
something like this.
Oh, five and 17.
Okay, but there's a problem with that,
is that all these people are just bowing
at the throne of Trump,
and they're just basically saying, yeah,
sure, I'll do whatever you take. They were doing that to Obama. Obama was the same way.
Not to this extent. Obama was there's definitely a, a kneeling at the golden calf of Trump
in his horseman for Obama for a Democrat was super valuable. Correct. But not as valuable
as Trump. Well, then that just means Trump's better. So it doesn't mean that it's worse
No, it's just that they're gonna pander to him
Yeah, that they pander to Obama like what are you talking about?
Well, are we talking about like people didn't pander to Obama like the what do you think they're gonna do?
Obama's gonna say I'll help you but here's what you need to do that
This means candidates are just gonna be as Trump he is possible and just paired exactly with Trump and then.
Just like candidates are going to be as Obama yes possible.
So what would have happened?
What would have happened if Donald Trump in response to that speech had said in January
and times, sorry, I'm so sorry that the President of the United States feels this way.
I'm so sorry that he misunderstands that we believe in the American Dream of Freedom.
We actually want to build a cooperative nation. We actually want to build a co-operative nation.
We actually want to say all Americans matter.
We want to say that there is serious policy.
That's not what he stands for.
But what would have happened if he had...
It's not gonna happen.
What's gonna happen if Donald Trump doesn't tweet?
What's gonna happen if Donald Trump doesn't pick fights
with people that he isn't had picked fights with?
We can have this wishful thinking of Trump,
but we know who Trump is, like him or not,
he's not changing.
I'm rising a hypothetical.
What would have happened if he had actually texted?
And what I'm saying is the hypothetical
is not even possible.
That's not Trump's DNA.
He's a fighter.
And people love the fact that he's a fighter.
And some people do not like the fight.
They're a waste of fight.
We know Trump's M.O.
He's a fighter.
He's not gonna come out and try to unify. You'll be in a long list of people that have been trying to change this case.
Yeah, not okay. Well, it was all about that. It leads under the second question. I would
love to go down the hypothetical rabbit hole, but there's no hypotheticals within Trump anymore.
We know what we're getting. Can I ask you a second question? On behalf of my fellow Australians,
one of the things that they most commonly say to me, the question they ask, how come that America of 300 million people, a global leader,
full of very, very bright and capable people who have done astounding things in all walks of life,
I'm patting this out of it, but that's the intent behind the question.
On behalf of America, we thank you for the compliments.
Yeah, I'll take this. On behalf of America, we thank you for the compliments. Yeah. A lot of makeup on this.
On behalf of America, Mr. Anderson.
The best of your best, they are extraordinary.
Just in the best of your institutions,
they mind boggling, and they also match them.
But the question people ask is,
how come that country, you know,
has put up two guys like that as alternatives
for the leadership of America?
I totally agree.
Where are the legendary Americans. This is the
great question of our time. You're absolutely right. This is
the great question of our time. So you're answering my Aussie
question with an American question. Yes.
Now high standards, not attractive high standards and high
expectations is not a popular philosophy today. But but but
how come because I make so many Americans do that.
Because leaders lost their backbone because leaders started appeasing to others on feeling
guilty for what it really took to win.
And the better way is, oh my gosh, I have to conform.
And historically, people eventually conform.
That's what most people eventually do.
They conform.
Very few people have a backbone that they stay forever.
It's not that many people.
It's not hard to take away people's backbone.
Just tell them how special they are.
Give them a little bit of their recognition,
you know, whether it's a nice place to live,
a nice book that becomes bestseller.
Give them a nice house, nice car,
a nice relationship, accolades,
respect, a couple articles right about them,
they'll conform very quickly.
There's very few people that are not turned on by those things.
They just think that's part of their life
and they still keep their backbone
and history doesn't like people like that,
but history desperately needs people like that.
Okay, next question.
I said in a study, fellow I know, and he got
some young Americans for me, other from all over the place in Washington, okay? And I looked
at them, I listened to them, I saw the passion, their eyes, the intelligence and the decency,
and I thought, what's gone wrong in our system? So I'm not going to single out America,
because we've got the same problem. What's gone wrong in our system that these people, even if they wanted to have a go, would feel that there was no pathway.
They're intelligent, they're driven, they understand freedom, they're committed to it.
Their ideal citizens are sort of thing that the founding fathers recognized was going to be needed in leadership in which we're all saying we want.
Do we want it enough to make pathways? Why can't they get through in this country? Because I can't, and I'll try to.
That's what they tell me.
What's stopping these young people from pursuing careers in leadership?
Meaning in politics?
Hmm.
I don't think they're stopping.
I will say there's more younger guys that are stepping up today that are being inspired
to go into politics.
There's a lot of good, strong, capitalist young guys.
The bench is a very, very deep bench,
but they're in their mid to late 20s, early 30s,
but it's not another decade.
There's gonna be a very, very massive, deep bench
of new superstars coming up with backbones.
It's gonna take about a decade or so for them to come.
And by the way, here's the part of that with the backbone situation.
On these guys coming up, most people, I got a conversation with a guy,
flew out and I sat down with him and I said,
listen, I think you got to run for office.
I think you got to run for governor.
And I had a meeting with him and his wife.
And I told them why I think you should run for office. And his wife says, tell me how bad it's going to be. And I said, very bad.
They're going to come after you. They're going to come after your kids. They're going to come after
your family. They're going to come after everything you've ever done. And some stuff's going to come
out. Well, then that's why I said, no, but you have to you have to understand that none of us walk on
water. Like if people come after you and the fear is that
they're gonna find something in your,
in your woody call it in your skeleton,
they can find some skeleton.
Okay, go ahead, find the skeletons of my closet.
Yeah, I'm out of, I'll give you a couple other bones.
Here's what you forgot about these two.
Bring these two up as well.
I'll do some research for you and you can, so now what?
So here's what you guys learned officially.
You learn, I don't walk on water,
you learn, I have a past, you learn, I have issues,
you learn, I'm not perfect, you learn all that stuff.
Now, how about I spend a half a million dollars
to investigate your past with your marriage,
your past with your ex, your past with your taxes,
your past with this.
Do you want me to do that?
How about I spend those resources on you?
Do you want me to put that on you as well?
No, no, no, no, no.
Well, how about a fire, some investigators to follow you for the next two months? I have the money to do it. How about I spend those resources on you? Do you want me to put that on you as well? No, no, no, no, no. How about a fire, some investigators to follow you
for the next two months?
I have the money to do it.
How about if I do it?
Then they say, well, no, that's not fair.
That's this, that's that.
No, then just means you don't walk on water.
I don't walk on water.
Do you like my policies?
Great vote for me.
You don't leave me the hell alone.
I'll go back to my life.
But we can't be like, well, what if they find out
what I did when I did
this?
Yeah, what if we all find out about what everybody did?
You know, it would be a very, if we all walked around with all three biggest sins shown
above our forehead, we would be very disappointed with people.
Jonathan Rebel Sacks was a member of the House of Lords in England, tragically died quite
recently, but I did a podcast with him, And he said that no, made the point that no family,
no community, no country can work
if you wash forgiveness out.
And that's one of the great marks
of the viciousness and nastiness of our society now.
We won't let bygones be bygones.
And it doesn't work in your personal life.
You know, you're gonna make a mess somewhere
in your marriage, you're gonna do something wrong.
You gotta say, I'm sorry, you're gonna do it with your kids.
You gotta say, I'm sorry. you're going to do it with your kids, you've got to say, I'm sorry.
The most powerful moment with one of my kids was, she was a very strong personality, a
little girl.
I said, sorry one day.
I said, Daddy, did you say sorry?
I said, yeah, I got that wrong.
Instant restoration, you know?
And he made the point that our culture now doesn't, particularly the left, this nasty
sensorial attitude that
if you've done one thing wrong, that's it, you can't...
You're on the way to the guillotine.
You're done.
And I said, well, what happens?
What can you hope for?
If there's no forgiveness, he said, maybe that people forget.
He said, well, that doesn't work either because now social media means they can bring up
anything from the past.
So maybe he had a point.
We need to learn to recognize that none of us perfect, and a little bit of forgiveness guys,
a long way.
Now that doesn't mean you go live a reckless life.
That doesn't mean you go live a,
hey, since I'm going to be forgiven,
I'm just going to go be super reckless and do whatever I want
to do and do whoever I want to do and, you know,
be that kind of a life.
That's also not the point.
My point is in that, my point is try to live a strong life,
back it up with honor, strong values, principles,
loyalty, dependability, reliability,
all of that stuff, but at the same time,
you're not gonna be expecting somebody to do it
that's gonna be walking on water.
I think we got plenty of people that should be running
that don't wanna run.
Are you following what's going on in Prague?
Are you following the story on what's going on in Prague
or not, do you hear about it?
No, I don't.
So tens of thousands of protests in Prague
against Czech government, EU and NATO.
This is a US news story from yesterday.
And estimated 70,000 people protested in Prague against the Czech government on Saturday,
calling on the ruling coalition to do more to control the soaring energy prices and voicing
oppositions of the EU and NATO.
Organizers of the demonstration for a number of far-right and fringe political groups, including
the Communist Party, said the Central European nation should be neutral,
military, and ensure direct contracts with gas suppliers,
including Russia,
police estimates to put the numbers of protesters
at around 70,000 by mid-afternoon.
The aim of our demonstration
is to demand change, mainly in solving the issue
of energy prices, especially
electricity and gas, which will destroy our economy this autumn.
Event, organized at Juro Havill told IDNES.cz news website, the protest, was held at a day after
the government survived a no confidence vote, amit opposition claims of inaction against inflation
and energy. By the way, this is going on in UK. This is going on in Europe.
UK price are up 89%.
Norway is saying to charge a Tesla today
is a hundred bucks just to charge a Tesla.
This is a real crisis that's going on in Europe.
What are your thoughts on this?
Well, how do you open this up?
This is extraordinary.
I mean, people genuinely worried about the planet,
about climate change.
On the other hand, ill-devised policies,
unrealistic expectations of others.
Nyeivity, if you like, placing our dependence on manufacturing
or energy sourcing or whatever from regimes
that are autocratic, us Germany. they put all their eggs in the basket
of trusting the Russians to supply them with energy.
Then you've got people like the Sri Lankans who said,
we'll be purer than pure and we'll phase out
or artificial fertilizers because it's a major emitter.
And now they people are starving and
writing in the streets. We've got a massive problem. This is a real issue. This is a
big issue. This is really big time. If badly designed policy will lead to massive
political unrest everywhere and if we're not careful it's going to do something
else, we will weaken our own economies massively whilst we might be
autocratic. So then this goes back to did we do the right thing to get into
a NATO constantly trying to get Ukraine to be a part of it to go against what Putin
was asking for because here's what we just said. This is a New York Post story.
Europe's energy fears mount as Russia keeps its gas pipeline closed.
The planned reopening of Russia's main gas pipeline to Germany was halted Saturday after
state energy from gas prong, said it found an oil leak in a turbine of north stream
one deepening fears of a winter energy crisis throughout Europe.
The announcement fueled accusations that Russia is seeking to weaponize its sway over
the world energy market, which would you be surprised I wouldn't be.
This was predictable, and it was predicted.
Former Secretary Mike Pompeo wrote on Saturday, I told you so tweet, I warned Germany not
to rely on Russian energy.
Energy security is national security, which is why we must reign our energy independence
president Zalinsky of Ukraine also took to social media to condemn the development when a state
turns energy poverty or hunger into a weapon it harms everyone in the world. Yeah, well, I mean,
these are these are the ripple effects of some decisions that you make. You're going to piss off
Putin and he can play this game. Two huge issues here for Western societies.
The first is naivety.
We've got to stop.
Leaders especially should not be naiv.
Whether it's the Chinese saying, no,
we won't militarize the South China seas.
And we say, oh, well, no, you're nice people.
You won't.
Or what do they do?
They do.
In the Middle East, don't cross this red line.
We cross the red line.
What happens?
Naivety is inexcusable in leadership.
That's the first point.
The second point is the massive dishonesty that pretends you can have your cake and you're
either too, we don't have the technologies yet to move to renew up to net zero.
We have neither a political nor a technological pathway to net zero by 2050.
Now, I happen to believe I'm not a climate change tonight. have neither a political nor a technological pathway to net zero by 2050.
Now I happen to believe I'm not a climate change tonight.
I believe we need to take these things seriously.
But I think we'll utterly, if we abandon our humanity
in terms of feeding people, if we hand over control
of the global architecture to the forces of darkness,
the rules based international system
that the Americans put in place,
the West put in place, as the victors after 1945
but the Americans drove and have upheld ever since.
If we're going to break those,
what we'll actually do by not being honest with ourselves
about the real policy options before us,
the real choices that have to be made,
we'll do the very thing I've touched on here. The very wealthy, the people pushing all this stuff,
leeing on governments, save Gaia.
I don't know if you have that expression here.
It's an old Roman thing, you know, the environment,
earthy's got, mother earth.
Now we all want a save Gaia.
I don't know too many people who want a damaged Gaia,
but there are other things that go with it.
And you have to be honest with people.
And if you're going to have all the tech billionaires and all those people who become so staggeringly wealthy,
telling governments that you've absolutely got to force everybody to buy a Tesla
and you've got to make them do all of these things in the name of climate change
without explaining the cost.
You're setting yourself up for the very destruction
of the trust-based political system,
like democracy.
John, question for you.
This may not even have anything to do with what we just
talked about, but maybe a little bit.
During the COVID lockdowns, when they did what they did
and a lot of the folks in Australia couldn't say anything.
They couldn't do anything.
Would anything have changed if the 1996 gun buybacks that they did, where they got a million of it, would they still have have changed if they the nineteen ninety six gun by backs that they did what it got a million of it
would they still have been able to push the people the way they did if
the australian people had the guns and it wasn't the way it was because you know
in america one the conversations right now is
you got some candidates that are talking about by backs as well
would it would have made a difference
do you know I genuinely
don't think so. I'd have to think longer and harder about it. But I genuinely don't think so.
I think something else has happened, particularly in our education system that has made people,
as I say, I don't think we can underestimate the comfort that we've lived in and the way it's satiated us and we've thought it'll, you've touched on it. And we haven't been alert
to the subversion of our core foundational beliefs, the ones that underpin freedom and individualism
as they've been eroded. And we haven't understood what that's done to our children and as our children of age comes through the system, our society.
And I'll tell you what I do think.
I think in Australia today, and some of my fellow Australians would disagree or think
I'm being too optimistic, I think a bit like China, you've had a giant wake up call and
people are becoming much more realistic and I don't think governments in Australia will
try to lock people down like that again.
You don't think so?
No, I don't think governments in Australia will try to lock people down like that again. You don't think so? No, I don't.
I think the Australian people started to say, you say they didn't have a voice,
I think it started to show up in the political party's research and so forth,
that Australians were starting to say, hang on, this is over the top.
They got there before the politicians did. This is not working.
We've got to open up our economy, we've got to go back to jobs.
I don't say it's been a completely healthy recovery. It hasn't. We've still got too many people
who don't want to go to work. We've got unbelievable levels of stress for people trying to find
enough workers. He's the irony. It's very different to the previous time we had inflation breaking
out because you had high unemployment. We've got almost no one unemployed in Australia at the
moment. It's incredible. And you've got very high employment here too.
I see, you know, driving around here, your suburbs, the shops have got, we're hiring
now signs out.
I don't know how common that was.
But in Australia, I haven't seen that for 20, 30, 40 years.
No one's talking about the fact that unemployment just hit 3.5%, which was basically the 50-year
lower Trump basically got it to in 2018.
So, unemployment, I mean, we're not talking about
how high inflation is and consumer price index.
And my point is what happens to the wage levels
as interest rates go up.
And the other worry I have is,
because nobody's talked about budgets.
You've got a $30 trillion public sector debt in Australia
in America, what happens when the interest rates start to rise? The cost of servicing that. What's that kind of mean for the other things? What's it going to mean for
you? What's it mean for you? Defense budget. What's it mean for your welfare budget? Because actually
people get the wrong idea about America. Your welfare expenditure is actually very high now.
You write a lot of checks for welfare in this country. It doesn't seem like it's slowing down anytime soon.
Anyways, Gank, this has been two hours.
I hope you've enjoyed this as much as we have.
John, appreciate you for coming out.
All the way from Australia, you came out
on page of inches to US, all over the place.
Folks, if you have not yet subscribed to John's podcast,
he's got a YouTube channel.
It's a very different perspective.
It's a perspective that we need to hear today. He interviews a lot of different personalities.
Jordan Peterson's there. I thought I saw a pitch and Hitchens brother on. Is that you?
Hitchens. He's very interesting Dave Rubin. Dave Rubin. A lot of different personalities
that have been on. But we're gonna put the link below,
Tyler, if we can put the link below in the chat
as well as in the description.
So people can go out there and subscribe.
Again, John Anderson, conversations,
go click subscribe to his podcast.
And once again, John, thank you so much for coming out
and being against on the podcast here.
I'm surprised you wanted me,
but I'm very honored and I've really enjoyed it.
I've enjoyed it way more than you've enjoyed it.
Again, learning from somebody like you from your
perspective sometimes allows us to see our blind spots on
what we're missing here.
So, appreciate your wisdom.
Thank you.
I'd like to thank you.
Take care everybody.
I don't think we're doing a podcast this week.
We got some special surprises that will be announced
in two very soon.
They're not going to like you.
Kind of got to love.
Maybe some of you guys are gonna hate this.
Many of you are gonna love it,
but we'll be back next week, stay tuned.
Bye bye, bye bye, bye bye.