The Chaser Report - EXTRA: The Shot Podcast - Dutton Becomes A Persecuted Minority

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

In case you haven't already started listening to The Shot Podcast, we've made it easier for you. You're welcome.Jo Dyer, Dave Milner, and Grace Tame dig through the Opposition's budget reply, Labor's continued disappointment, and even more Liberals departing from the sinking ship. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello, this is The Chaser Report with Charles and Dom. I'm neither of them. I'm Loughlin, the producer. I'm the one who tells them what to do, and then they don't do it. We've got a very special surprise for you on this lovely little weekend Chaser Report Extra, where we're actually going to be sharing another one of the podcasts that we have in the iconic last feed.

This time it's the shot podcast. Now, if you're already following The Chaser, there's a fair chance you know of the shot. It's our sister site where we publish articles that are a little more serious, but still have as many swear words in them as the funny ones. And what we thought we'd do is they've started a podcast with Joe Dyer, Dave Milner, and Grace Tame. Now, Charles is also in this podcast usually, but he's not in the most recent episode we shared this. week and so we thought as a as a little cleanser for you as a dear listener we would give you an episode that doesn't have the dulcet tones of charles henry bergman danger firth that's his full

name please enjoy this episode of the shop podcast and if you like it go and follow it on apple podcast spotify whatever podcast app you're using uh and make sure you give it a follow and a five-star review it really really helps and it's a good podcast grace Joe, Dave, the entire team are really putting effort into it. There'll be an episode next week with the amazing Ronnie Salt as well you can look out for. That's all from me. I'm going to let you have a nice little listen right after this. It's an ad.

I put the ads at the start now because it's better for you. You're welcome. Sorry. Okay, hello everybody and welcome back to the Shots podcast. I'm Jo Dahl. I'm delighted to be back with you after a week off. I am here with Dave Milner. Giday, Joe. Good to have you back. And with Grace Tane.

Giday. I have my pets here as well. You can't see them. Yes. So we've got extra bonus animals. Zappa the dog. He's playing the role of Charles Firf today. And we'll probably make as much sense when it comes down to it. Arguably more sense than Charles. No, well, that's uncarned. We can't take advantage of Charles's absence, just to dis him. No, we do that when he's here.

Now, it's been quite the week in politics. We've had a budget handed down. We've had a budget replied to in some way or another. What does that mean? What does that mean, Joe? Let's unpack that. Well, it wasn't really much of a reply, let's be honest. I mean, I think it is fair to say there was some commentary really on how ridiculous reply

speeches are. I think Rachel Withers wrote a good piece that it's not even good theatre. and it doesn't make any sense that it's the leader of the opposition that gives the reply to the budget rather than the shadow treasurer. I mean, why is it? No one pays any attention to what is actually in the opposition leader's reply speech. It is inherently ridiculous, isn't it? Because it's the government spent this time with all their numbers

and all the department's compiling this document, what's going on the next couple of years. And then the opposition leader just gets a turn to freestyle, distrack all the work that they've done. Wic-Wi-Wi-Wi! It is pointless. It is meaningless. And they've got essentially 48 hours to scrabble together something,

which makes them look like. And I think Rachel went through what the various points are, is that you have to sort of reach your hands across the chamber on a couple of very small points. So it makes it look as if you are actually operating in the spirit of bipartisanship and you're here for the country before you then just get like stuck in generally to everything that the government has said.

then you have a few little kind of thought bubble ideas at the bottom to show you really are very serious about policy. And that seems to be what we kind of get. But in this particular case, with one of the most spectacularly poor opposition leaders that we've had in some time, and that really is saying a lot, given the quality of some of our opposition leaders, it was particularly specious, I think. And ultimately ended up. What was that word, Joe?

Specious. Specious. Okay. When you were away last week, Grace said there were far fewer large words being used in this episode, and just proven that point. Specious is actually only two syllables. Yes, small word. True, good. It's fancy. It's fancy, though. That's the difference. It's a fancy pants word. Well, I think it is apt for dear old duts. But then, as has been pointed out by people like Sean Kelly, that because it was so empty and vacuous of really anything, there had to be the dog whistles. They had to be the. kind of let's rush to the bottom and let's remind everybody that I'm actually a racist asshole by talking about big Australia and how now those migrants are coming for your houses.

And, you know, the thing about it is, I guess, is that, you know, you could actually say, no, let's have a sensible debate about migration and population size and housing, or you could just blow a dog whistle. It's so funny when those figures like Peter Dutton, make those points without the full story behind those points. You mean the full story in terms of the fact that they had nine years and government. If they're going to make dog whistles like, now the migrants are coming for your houses.

Why not say things like will Gina Reinhardt and co want really cheap labour? And, you know, that's why there's lots of people coming for your houses. Well, the thing about it is, which apart from anything else, it's like ridiculously hypocritical because, as you say, when Dutton was talking to business forums, what at the end of last year, he was actually promoting the fact that we need to reopen the borders as quickly as possible to get those supplies of cheap labour coming in. And he was saying we need more migration and particularly short-term employment-based migration. So now, because it's politically expedient, and it is that thing, and Morrison did it, and it's interesting how much Dutton still seems to be shaping himself in the kind of Morrison's strategic form, disgustingly, that as if we're going to forget everything that was said in his history and only take on face value what he is saying today. So a few months ago, we need more migration. Now we need less regression. A few months ago, they were coming for you, the migrants were coming for your jobs.

Now they're coming for your houses. Yeah. It's also a dog whistle that doesn't, I mean, no dog whistle really helps solve a problem. This one, like muddies it and distracts from, you know, in a number of ways because it's a myth that it's just unskilled migration. We have, I was chatting to a friend that is a scientist in laboratory doing really fancy brainy stuff this week. And they're struggling to hire people that can do that in Australia. They need skilled migration at this level. It's not at all what Darden's framing it as.

Yeah, yeah. This isn't an Australian person's job that's missing. This is someone that need a unique skill set, and we need them from the rest of the world to help us make extraordinary stuff to make our country better. It's very funny. It's very funny, the Liberal Party, if you will, whatever it's, whatever it's morphed into or degenerated into, you know, because they sort of, I guess it's funny how they kind of associate themselves with

or traditionally associate themselves with like the kind of like the capitalist model. Like a classic example, I guess, is this sort of like new stadium that's being proposed in Tasmania, some Tasmanian. Oh yeah. So how's the mood down there on the issue of the stadium? Because we've had Jackie Lambie going that you've all had a gutful and they can stick the stadium up your bum in her indomidably eloquent way. What is Grace Tame, Tasmanian of the year, previously?

what is her take on the stadium in Tasmania? Well, it's quite a divisive issue, okay? So there's one thing, like, you know, the team is one thing. Yeah, no, the team is outrageous that people try and conflate these two things, that if you don't support the stadium, therefore you can't support the team or you don't support the team when clearly there are many people who support the idea of a Tasmanian AFL team who just go, but hey, why the hell do we need another stadium in a town the size of Hobar?

Well, okay, so we've got two stadiums, two big stadiums down here. You know, we've got Blonsten Arena and we don't actually, we don't, we don't, we rarely fill it to capacity. And the argument that was made by Jeremy Rockcliffe for having the stadium is that it would, you know, was for economic reasons, that it would be good economically. And that's sort of, you know, again, there's another myth here because, you know, like I just said, we don't fill it to capacity. And, you know, there's always this, this job creation line. Oh, it's good for jobs, good for jobs, good for jobs. But like you said before about, you know, skilled labor and to build a stadium that's not just classic um construction it's not just a

it's not just any old uh builder can come and build a stadium you're talking about a specific type of of labor that you need to build that you're also talking about specific types of engineers who would probably need to be um you know brought in from the mainland to build that and so you're not talking about local job creation there um and you know yeah this is like the you can't just instantly hire people from, from Tasmania, to build the stadium. And so they're sort of like to actually unpack all of the, you know, parts. Yeah. The other two kind of issues around it, though, as well is that it's like, you know,

even if you did need another stadium, why is it that the governments, both state and federal, are being asked to pay for it? and why isn't the AFL incredibly rich sporting body making a much more significant contribution because on the flip side, when it is governments being asked to pay for it, like the Tasmanian governments, the opportunity cost of everything else

that then is not being bought and paid for with that money that's going into the stadium. Again, why aren't the immediate problems being dealt with by both sides? This is not to hang on the Liberal Party or the Labour Party. you know both sides or both majors for decades have not pulled the appropriate levers and they both know this to deal with the crisis that we have at the moment and that is the housing crisis you know the rental crisis and we all know this you know

I mean it's worse than that they've been pulling the levers to actively make it worse yes yes yes yes and that's and that's like that's that's that's sort of a you know we've got all this, and we've talked about this life. We've got all this dead money. We've got all this dead money, this bad for the economy inside this bubble, this housing bubble. You know, we've got unused space inside these, you know, massive properties where there might be only one or two people who are, you know, they're aging, whatever, and they're not, they're not incentivised to get a smaller house, get smaller property, you know, and it's, it's like, that's what's bad for the economy. Well, both sides know it. But,

Both sides know it, but they don't want to... I mean, we had John on last week talking about his situation as a Zuma on Jobseeker looking for work. Every single extra dollar he gets, he will, he pumps it into the local, you know, supermarket, pumps it into all the surrounding infrastructure, keeps that floating. Someone with lots of money, retired, three investment properties negative the year, it's just completely different situations. Well, look, it is.

And then there's also the issue of kind of empty houses. And even here in New South Wales, there's this modest proposal that perhaps some empty, like if you leave your property vacant, then you have to pay tax on it. And you've got the real estate institute of New South Wales jumping up and down and saying, oh, no, that will encroach on property rights and that will impact on investment decisions. And seemingly missing the point that that's exactly what the tax would be designed to do. We keep talking about this industry as though it's an investment. but investments inherently come with risk.

And if you get it wrong, you do cop it in every other type of investment. Why is it this protected sanctity? Why is this a casino that the government will prop you up if you go down? This isn't how investments are meant to work, especially not when we're actually talking about a fundamental human right. It's perverse. It is interesting that coming out of the, well, it's not even coming out of the budget, but coming out of budget week, like the big first.

major policy clash where it looks like there is going to be impasse in the Senate and that the government won't get their way, at least not in the immediate to, short to medium term even, is on the issue of housing and that the Greens are drawing a line in the sand. Now, the opposition, yet again, irrelevant on this. So the coalition has yet again dealt themselves out of the policy debate. But there is a genuine policy debate happening led by the Greens and David Pocock on one side and the Labor Party really digging in around this issue of actually we're just going to invest $10 billion in the stock market

and when we make a bit of money from that, we'll invest that then in building new homes, community and social housing. And the Greens are going, no, actually we need to see a broader suite of issues. And the policy debate is again being, you know, now through our media, are only characterised in terms of the political risks that the Greens may face the, you know, the anti-housing coalition, as even Penny Wong is dubbing all of these people

who are raising what one might think of legitimate concerns about the way that this new housing stock is going to be paid for and the volume of it, i.e. the fact that it's very, very small. These are completely legitimate concerns to hold over policy that affects the livelihoods and well-being of many, many Australians, the idea that considering us, interrogating us, looking at case-by-case study across the world, we've seen many of these policies work and have negative effects in other countries previously.

And we don't get this discussion in Australia. We just get told that they're blocking things, that they're making things difficult, just get on with it kind of thing. It's a very strange framing. What will happen at the next election if they have to go to their electorate saying they blocked to this very poor housing policy being implemented.

I mean, our Oberton window really is much smaller when it comes to a whole range of things. And that, I guess, leads a bit into some of the points that Ronnie was making in her article for the shot this week is that we have a government which is manifestly better on a lot of things in a lot of ways. But they do refuse to kind of get in and tackle some of these really big issues,

whether it's a lack of political courage or they are now reaping the rewards, as it were, in an inverse sense from their lack of courage before the election. So now they're all about we're implementing this sort of small conservative suite of policies that we took to the election, even though clearly circumstances have changed and crises are growing. Well, they could. Yeah, yeah. They're taking the boot off your neck 10% kind of thing. And it is better.

It is absolutely better. And while they're doing this, they are, I mean, I think Ronnie's piece was quite sharp. in pointing out the difference between their actions and the techniques they are using similar to the techniques Scott Morrison's previous government used of meaningless nonsense in sound bite form that sounds deep but actually distracts and muddy's waters like no one left behind no one held back kind of thing it is it's have a go to get a go and the sooner everybody recognizes that and accepts it the better we can all be that's yeah and that's That's universal politics, though.

That's universal PR. That's sort of universal placating, appeasing language. It is. And can I also just say quickly, the sooner we accept that we're all susceptible to falling for this stuff, the better off we all are. It is not just something that, you know, the stupid people on the other side of politics fall for. We all do. We all have these weaknesses that are exploited.

It's basic human psychology. Well, yeah. We need. It's our job to look out for these instances, these blind spots. in ourselves that we haven't noticed yet. And this is the thing. The gulf between what is presented to the public and what is known by the people in power

is quite large. In order for them to main power, they have to withhold a degree of knowledge from the people that are consuming it. And so they have to, you know, they have to sort of understand, Well, they have to come up with some kind of strategy to translate their huge stock of information into a smaller watered down amount so that they can go on being ahead of the game.

They have to be ahead of us at all times. and so that you know it feels like secret keeping which personally I don't agree with and that's sort of why I've always sort of said to people like I just don't I don't like politics universally because for me I believe that if you have have knowledge about something you know especially when it comes to child protection it is the duty it is the responsibility to be able to communicate that as openly as possible as well as widely as possible, you know, because it's in secrecy and in silence that things are able to actually fester and to happen. And so to be able to, like, to stop that, that's how you, you know,

you communicate openly and widely. And so that spin-doctoring, that sort of veil of doubt, wherever there's doubt, wherever you look at a sentence and you go, oh, that's a bit ambiguous. Like, what does that actually mean? To me, that's where, like, I feel unsubtering. That's where, like, I feel unsafe. And like, you know, that sort of, again, that, you know, when you, like, if you teach a kid to, like, keep a secret or something like that, I'm just like, ooh, yeah. Well, it is interesting. I think one thing that we can note this week that did happen as a result of the Tasmanian Stadium communication debacle was that the Tasmanian government lost their majority. They had two members of the state parliament resign and

join the crossbench, which now means there is no majority government. of the Liberals anywhere in the country. So the Liberals are a persecuted minority now. That's ironic. I don't know if they're persecuted. We're on persecuting them. Yeah, but they receive just a program, I think, for things that they do. But I don't think that's persecution.

I think that's justice. Yeah, I agree. But also, not only did the Liberals lose their majority in the Tasmanian Parliament, but they lost or are about to lose will be imminently. with the departure from federal politics of brother Stewie. Joe, you sound like you're grieving. Our Hillsong, boy. I think, you know, it is a close race when it comes to the coalition front bench.

But I would have to say that he probably is the most corrupt. It's not a race, Joe. It's never a race. But he was one, I think, apart, so Angus Taylor is accused of, of behaving in ways and implement and, you know, exploiting his knowledge of various systems for personal enrichment through all of the Watergate scandals, which to actually personally was the scandal

that first brought Ronnie Salt to my attention with the work that she and Jomi had done on all of the East Asia, Eastern Asian Australian kind of Barnaby, Joyce, Angus Taylor, $80 million for nothing for floodwaters, all of that kind of thing. So, but at least when he got into Parliament, he stopped, you know, engaging in corporate behaviours that invict himself. We think so. We think so.

Whereas Stuart Robert actually just brazenly kept on going. And just even whilst he was in Parliament was engaging in all sorts of nefarious activities, which actually were well documented by Rick Morton in last week's Saturday paper or perhaps the week before was actually, I think it was last week, where he listed all of the scandals. And like Angus Taylor, they make for a long list. I'm surprised he could fit it all into the word count that the Saturday paper would have given me. You've got to admire staying true to yourself. He didn't let politics change him, you know? It's probably the best thing you could say about Stuart Roberts. He really did not. He really did not. But he left, so he has

announced his intention to resign from Parliament. And he hasn't actually done it so that he can still keep drawing the salary. But he's not coming back to Parliament. He was even prepared to miss the now postponed trip from Joe Biden in order to avoid having to come back into Parliament and face the latest round of accusations about personal enrichment through his parliamentary processes. And that really does seem to be the most clear cut in some ways that when he was doing his secret lobbying for a mate's consult. company, when hauled before the Senate committee, the Senate inquiry, the mate basically threw him under the bus and said, yes, monies that we were raising through this series of

consultancies and the government contracts that we were getting through a company known as Synergy 360 was passing money to a vehicle of Stuart Roberts. So I think it's the first time that we have now documented. and through witness statements that he was getting direct personal benefit from the secret lobbying that he was undertaking for his mates. Do you think his role in the Robo-Det inquiry had something to do with his downfall as well, do you? No, I don't actually.

I think that he was just going to brazen that out. I mean, I think that they just hoped that because there was sort of enough blame to go around, really, and he was just the last one standing with the exploding bomb in his hands when the music stopped. I don't think that actually, and he, you know, he's already spinning. It was, like, I was the one who stopped it against all of the other evidence from the senior public servants that he actually wanted to keep going even after the Solicitor General had said this thing's illegal and, you know, Porter had gone, yeah, mate, it is.

I think it is actually very much the personal, potential personal criminal liability, which he may be confronting if the allegations are found to be true. So that will be a sad day. Brother Stewie out the door. So there'll be another by-election. Because I'll just say this goes to one of the, you know, sub points in Ronnie's piece that as a population, as a country, as a democracy, we really do deserve better representatives than exactly this sort of person.

We really do. And look, and I think some of that was, some of it was what last year's election was about. And yet, I think by virtue of it being a majority Labor government rather than minority with a crossbench of independents and Greens holding their feed to the fire, we're missing out on some of the benefit of that in a big picture sense. I'm sure that all of the independents and Greens are doing great work for their electorate in on the committee systems and, you know, burrowing away into some of the kind of the policies and making amendments here and public statements there, but it isn't having quite the impact

that the balance of power would have had where the government wouldn't simply be able to pontificate about the anti-housing coalitions when they, if they didn't have a majority in the House of Reps as well. But there will be a by-election in Fatton. And then the big question is, is will the member for Cook also resign in time for there to be a by-election in Cook

on the same day as the by-election in Fatton, which is slated to be at some time in July? And look, I think the money was always on, well, maybe an even bet, but it just seems that poor old Scotty can't find himself a job. Nobody wants to employ him. I can't imagine why that would be. Always misspelled that one, member for cookers. But it is like the hilarious, I think the most hilarious thing that I've read this

like in a long time was, and admittedly this was written, like the story wasn't written, but the decision was, made prior to PWC's like imploding, like the spontaneous combustion that PWC Australia has been doing in slow motion over the last few months. But even they disgraced PWC Australia said that they couldn't take on Scott Morrison in an advisory role because of the reputational risk that that would pose. The fact that the most amoral, unethical and now disgraced organization in Australia. We can't have a former Prime Minister in our company. It's a really bad look. We just think. Plausibly

deniable until you're liable, eh? It's just so great. So he is left. And as we've discussed before, although, and this with Charles had the insight into this is that he did try out to be the kind of charismatic hill song leader in a national scale, but it turned out that as we could have told anybody who was this thing that he isn't actually charismatic enough to be a charismatic preacher. So that was another strike. It seems to, it is now all down to whether or not he can rustle up the job in the

Orkis space, as they say, along with all of the other ex-co coalition front benches who have their snout in that particular trough. And there seem to be many of them led, of course, by my fellow South Australian Christopher Pine. Oh, my God, that's bleak. The brothers in arms dealing. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But I can't imagine what, whoever this British company is.

So if it's BA.E, I mean, all they seem to be doing is just like spurting more money up against the wall. So I think we've now found, what is it? It's not the submarines. It's yet more of the hardware that we've been requiring from them is late, is doubling, tripling in price. So I guess Morrison's good at that kind of thing, going into organisations and make things fuck up. So they come late and they cost more. He has lots of experience ordering things slowly and inefficiently and getting them late. any vaccinated Australian will remember that one.

They certainly will, but it does seem, it seems odd to go on an international search for ex-prime ministers to have someone just to come in and be incompetent on your behalf. Well, it's a little bit like remember when the UK were putting out feelers and they ended up, you know, taking Tony Abbott into them to teach them about how to deal with Australia. And it's just a remarkably bad choice. And here we are a few years later and they're like harping on about how they

stop the boats and literally rerunning the exact same three-word slogans. It is interesting. I mean, the conservatives are in more hilarious disarray over in Britain than actually the coalition is here, it seems. And they're now kind of fighting amongst themselves. So let's... Perrift of any real ideas and any real vision, all you have is fear and different ways to stoke it.

This is where we get these uninspiring, corrupt assholes, just peddling these lines, dividing us. Let's talk about the, let's talk about not Scott Morrison's front-facing allies and talk about his covert power brokers behind the scenes. Oh, you mean the kind of the, the faceless men, and there are all men in Morrison's case. He literally had no kind of senior women at all in his kind of either, in his sort of closest circles, they were all men. Yeah. So what, tell us, Chris.

Well, like, yeah, you know, like his private secretary, like, like your Yaron Finkelstein's and, yeah, you know, you people like that. All of whom were kind of, it was between, they kind of came from the Crosby Texta kind of mold, from the Mineral Council of Australia Mold, you know, all of them kind of, that revolving door of that sort of. Who were also heavily involved in Boris Johnson's ascension to power. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, both, well, particularly even when he was mayor, that's where I think the Crosby-Texter connection first developed. And then they were using that whole, in fact, I think it was during, when he was doing analysis, was it, Texter was doing the, I know, Crosby, one of them, was doing the analysis of the victory in Boris Johnson's Merrilty campaign that the kind of throwing the dead cat on the table phrase first came into the public consciousness. It was clearly known as a strategy behind the scenes for,

long time but it wasn't until that moment that we all understood that that was the sort of the dirty distraction of you know and all of these women were used as dead cats all of these women that awful tabloid coverage of these women who he was associated with especially in the past because he had a lot of flings with women who were people who are people yes yeah who are people you know they're not objects they're people and a lot of them were and then whose careers were essentially destroyed they were followed you know and the daily male tapped their phones and some of them had some of them had miscarriages and abortions and do people like you know obviously people know like females know the experiences of these things but like they were dragged they were dragged through the mud and

yeah as somebody as somebody who's had their life since they were a child like from the age of 16, authored beyond their control, like, that experience is so horrific and you cannot do anything about it. And you shouldn't have to go out in the street and think, does this person have an opinion on me based on something I had nothing to do with the authorship of, you know, where somebody wasn't there? You know, and like there's always more complexity beyond what is seen in a reduced, you know, top-line article that has no nuance in it. And like, these are people who had, like, the ultimate invasion of privacy, their phones hacked, daily mail people, you know, follow them, stalk them, which is predatory in of itself. And, like, that is just, that, that is not a,

that is not a PR strategy. That is, like, organized crime. I'm, but, like, and we have the same machinations or similar machinations here in Australia and throughout my year as Australian of the year in 2021 I saw a lot of that too and it was horrendous it was horrendous and and what what has gone on behind the scenes um is is horrendous it's dirty it's dirty yeah yeah it does seem to be I mean there's both the filthy way that you know the media behaves in order to kind of get these stories. But it does seem to be that people like Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison and so on, it's like whoever they come into contact with,

they leave this sort of residue of filth and scandal. Because that's not politics, though. Because that's not politics. That's bullying. So the type of people they are. Yeah. Yeah. But, well, that's the way that so much political behaviours can morph into bullying

and where that line is, you know, that whole, this is just the robust give and take of political life being used as a shield or as an excuse for kind of poor behaviour and where that line is. And it's using, it's using outlets like, you know, your Murdoch outlets, like, Rupert Murdoch's outlets, like, you know, whoever they are. It's lucky because we could not get through our podcast without Rupert Murdoch coming in from. Sorry, but, I'm sorry. No, no, not at all.

Grace is. I'm just glad it was Grace that brought him up. but not me this time. It's, you know, because you wouldn't, and working for an organisation like Rupertick, you have to, like, you know, working for an organisation like that, you work for them because you wouldn't be able to get away

with a lot of the behaviour anywhere else. And, you know, you are working for, like, you know, and sort of enlisting, you know, enlisting and I guess you can call them agents like that or operatives like that as your personal shift, you know? Like, that's, that's really what that is. And it's almost like this hive mind kind of what isn't almost.

It is. And to go into that or to be, to enter into that from the outside or as like as somebody who is, you know, again, who's grown up with, I've had somebody who chased me home that's not to do with that, but to do with other things that I've experienced by virtue of like, you know, being abused by a child sex offender and there's other underbelly experiences that are separate to that. And then you bring all that into that context. Like, it's, it's pretty, yeah, it's pretty nasty stuff. You were saying before that it's a, it's a people thing. I wonder if there is a politics thing element to it because the system as it works does seem

to reward this type of personality and this type of psyche. It's blackmail. It's black. It's black Now, it's horse trading, it's gossip. It's a really awful thing. It's also like the rooflessness to pull yourself to the top, you know, without worrying who you're crushing on the way up. Those sorts of people do kind of make it to the top quite often. I mean, you see it in corporate America, you see it in politics, that your actual bona fide diagnosed psychopaths are overrepresented in these key roles at the top rungs of society because that is actually a trait rewarded by these systems, which I think the question needs to become, well, what about these systems needs to change so that we're not rewarding psychopaths

because we really don't want them. Well, not just our lives, but the destruction of our planet is now imminent because the psychopathy is such that it's, you know, it's all about the money and the shareholders and personal enrichment and ambition and fuck the rest of the world. And we are now reaping the consequences of that, too, with our planet disintegrates around us. Mm-hmm. Literally.

The devil. Like I mentioned before. Yeah, good times. The devil is cast a road. Happy Thursday morning, guys. Less than optimistic note this week. Look, you know, we've got another week to kind of bring ourselves back into the general feeling of Bonhamer and optimism that normally permeates these podcasts, I'm sure.

And also next week we have the fabulous Ronnie Salt joining us to talk a little bit more about her latest article for the shot and then just generally. I mean, I've got lots of questions still about the kind of just seemingly another gift that never stops giving, which is David Hurley's leadership forum and the ways that he and his personal private secretary just kept kind of navigating through that to get lots of money for this odd, strange networking circle, but was mostly to be hosted. It would seem a government house. So we can perhaps talk a little bit about that next week as well.

Well, David, David Hurley is ex. He's ex-military. isn't he? They're all ex-military. They're either ex-church, and look how well that worked out for John Howard and Hollandworth now finally having stepped down from officiating in a interest sense or military because that's who the conservative side of politics fetishise. This is what we've got to look at.

We've got to look at these hegemen's, you know, you've got the church, you've got military, I mean, but it's big business, really. It's big. It's these in, follow the money. Yeah, follow the money as ever. So we'll look forward to that discussion next week. Thank you for joining us today. Covert power is how big decisions are made, people.

Here we go. Get your tinfoil hats out for next week. Bring them out, bring them ready. We're on the devil's chessboard. See, I knew that. And the devil's chessboard. And our equipment is by, I don't have any equipment, so I won't feel in that sentence. Thank you, all for you.

much. Well, you'll hear from us next week. Dun-dun.