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Documentaries are about the people that you meet and the
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stories you can tell, stories of tragedy, laughter, hope and
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desperation across far away lands or right here in your
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own backyard. This podcast brings these stories to you, the listener,
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so that you can experience the adventures of documentary filmmaking
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and audio form while embarking on daily adventures of your own.
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Welcome to Barefoot Media, Stories within Stories podcast with your
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host Sam Holland. Today on the show, we talk to
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the remarkable Joe Valentine, a pioneer in the peace and
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environmental movements and one of Australia's most steadfast activists. No
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one for her relentless commitment to social justice. Joe was
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the first Australian parliamentarian elected on the anti nuclear platform,
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becoming a voice of conscience in the Senate and beyond.
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From marching against nuclear testing to standing up for First
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Nations rights, Joe's legacy spans decades and serves as a
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blueprint for effective, compassionate activism. Joe has proven for decades,
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but she is an unwavering champion for peaceful, sustainable Australia.
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Welcome to the show, Joe Valentine.
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Thanks Simon.
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Very excited to have you on here because I've heard
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you speak passionately about a number of causes over a
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number of years and doing research and talking to you.
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I didn't do much research. I'm assuming you're going to
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give me all the proper information. It's been fascinating, Janie.
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You've been doing this a long time.
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Yeah, about forty five years years.
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An activist is an interesting I've got to put one
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title on the show next to your name, and it
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might be activist.
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Yes, that's a good one.
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It's an interesting label though, because it's kind of you
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just doing something you're passionate about, and then other people
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give that label to you.
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Yeah, I mean something gets at you at some point.
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And certainly the whole nuclear issue picked me. I didn't
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pick it. It's a big one. It's a doozy. The
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only other more complicated issue I think that could have
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been chosen by an activist would be indigenous affairs because
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it's so complex. It's so filled with pain and suffering
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and lost opportunities but also fresh opportunities. So that's a
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hard one as well, and I've been on the edges
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of that one. But the nuclear industry in itself. It
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is mammoth. And the people in the nuclear industry are
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more loyal to each other than they are to their
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own countries. You know, the international consortia that work together
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for their own profit and regardless of national rules and regulations,
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they are above rules and regulations, so they talk to
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each other, they support each other, and the nuclear industry
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was one of the first of those to be on
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the job and having its tentacles absolutely everywhere.
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Do you remember, and it was there an exciting incident
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where you went, I'm going to write a letter to
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the held.
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Well, actually it really began for me. That's how I know.
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It was forty five years because that's the age of
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my first daughter, and I was pregnant and I heard
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Charlie Cork, the then Premier of Western Australia, as I
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was doing the dishes at the kitchen sink in Mount
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Lawy with my belly up against the sink. I just
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remember it's well and I heard him say Western Australia
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That's how he used to say, Western Australia will be
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the first date in Australia to have a nuclear power station.
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I thought, oh, I don't like the sound of that.
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I don't know much about it. I'd known about nuclear
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weapons because I'd already been standing on the street corner
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with Quakers for quite some time. They had a monthly
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vigil and it's their big banner said disarmament East and West. Well,
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I mean, you'd be pretty silly not to think that
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nuclear weapons are, you know, a bad idea? And I
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post war, this is obviously yes, And I didn't really
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This is nineteen seventy two. I started standing on the
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street corner with Quakers. They're nineteen seventy eight is when
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Charlie Court was trying to drum up business in Pennsylvania.
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He was over there trying to get investment in Western Australia,
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and he said, we'll have the first nuclear power station
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in Australia. Well, of course we still haven't got one,
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and may it never happen despite what Dunn is now
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trying to do. I went to the Environment Center because
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they all know something about this. And I trundled up
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the stairs at the Environment Center, which was in in
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Wellington Street, right opposite where the Bus Center is now,
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and there I met Annamel Newberry, who was coordinating the
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campaign against nuclear energy. Caine and you know, since I've
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discovered that link between nuclear weapons and nuclear power and
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uranium mining. At the beginning of it all, I mean,
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that was kind of like, it can't have this happening
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for this yet unborn child and future generations. Not on
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not fair, And.
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So what were you on track to do? You know,
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what was your life? Sort of pointing towards what had
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come before that sort of.
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Well, I'm a teacher, and I'd been teaching for quite
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some time. I'd done quite a lot of traveling, but
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at that stage I was looking forward to staying home
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with child number one and child number two. I thought
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it was really important to just be a mum for
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five or six years and to get children established, and
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once they're off to school then you could do something else.
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But I just thought I'd be going back to teaching,
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and then the nuclear issue got me in between, so
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there was no going back to teaching, going back to
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work in schools. Yes, I was part of a Commonwealth
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employment project. Back in those days. They were trying to
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help people get back into the workforce. So a couple
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of other young teachers and I, who all had young children,
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decided we would do a peace education project and we
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got support for that from influential people in the community
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to do peace education basically nonviolence in schools, and so
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we got a little bit of funding to do that.
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So that was my part time employment when this opportunity
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came up in nineteen eighty four to actually run for
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the Senate.
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Yeah, and what was I like, Well, that must have
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been a shocking conversation with your friends.
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That so I was thinking about, Well, I'd already been
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involved in the anti nuclear movement for a little while
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by that time, you know, from being pregnant to nineteen
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eighty four, so already had half a dozen years sort
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of under my belt trying to get the city of
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Stirling where I lived declared a nuclear free zone and
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so on. I learned a lot from that, even though
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it didn't actually work. Freemantle was one of the first
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places in Australia to declare itself a nuclear free zone. Incidentally,
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so that will bring us right back to the present.
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So I've worked on various things and when it was
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decided that we would run a campaign in nineteen eighty
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four in the general election, it was one time in
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my life when being a woman and being a youngish
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woman with two small children was actually an advantage because
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nineteen eighty four, remember, was when Ronald Reagan was the president.
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Seems like a harragon of virtue compared with what got
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coming up again now. But anyway, at that time we
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thought he was pretty awful because he was a big
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grade actor and he used to get things a bit
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mixed up in his mind and couldn't quite remember whether
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he was talking about a film that he'd been in
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or the reality. And at one stage, when he thought
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the microphones were off, he said, let's nuke the Ruskies.
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I mean, honestly, it scared the shit out of everybody
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his kind of approach and language, And it was women
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who thought that that was such a bad idea and
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we've got to do something about it. So when I
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entered the campaign, having been selected after a couple of
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other people were discounted, I mean, being a woman with
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young children was the go. That was the demographic that
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we were kind of after without realizing it, because it
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was women who ran the campaign. Women who are extraordinary
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when they decide that they can move beyond the prams
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and the dishes in the kitchen sink.
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Yeah, how you saw that during war? You know, they
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had to run a country when the men went off
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to war and the night is They called it the
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Oprah wintery effect because if you wanted to sell something
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or get something into the public persona you do it
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on that show, Yeah, it would you rip into it,
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and then the lady would whisper to the husband, you
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know when they go to bed. We're like, you know,
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did you ever think about it being a vegan or
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something or whatever that then was? You know?
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That's right?
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Yeah, so that it awful.
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It still has to come. I mean, it was just
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so amazing. I've noticed this with climate change that if
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a woman says something about climate change is often a
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bit dismissed. But if a man comes out and says it, oh,
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the men, other men will listen more. I mean, we've
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still got a problem with women being listened to, even
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by the men in their lives.
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Well, I think it took twenty years to figure out
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you should be careful of who you listen to, you know,
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just for me, you know, because I'm like, when I'm
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like fifteen playing football, Like I said, I was like
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talking to older guys and they're like, oh, just do
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this in your life, do you know like giving me
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the SIPs basic faith. Yeah, like infamy, because that's all
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guys do, give tips, right, you know, how to get
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the grass gone good or whatever, but they don't realize something.
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No one knows anything. I think that's the part of
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becoming an adult as you go and delving into this
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auchest thing and politics and international deals. I just realized,
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I don't think anyone really knows what they're doing. There's
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not a clear strategy. There's lots of overlapping confusion and strategy.
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And then on top of that, the guy that's sort
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of cut through is a guy like Trump or Done
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or someone they just really use. I guess they kind
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of manipulate with fear and it's a bit of a
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used car salesman approach to politics.
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Absolutely, it's fear and doubt. With doubt, you can do
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chief just about anything. So the seat of doubt. They
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did it during the referendum campaign last year.
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Doubt.
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So if you don't know, vote no. I mean it
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was a disgraceful slogan, but it worked. And so keep
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it simple and invoke fear and doubt and you're done. Well,
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that's what you can do. But if you really want
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to find out what's going on. It takes a bit
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of work. You've got to do a bit of homework.
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Why are Australian susceptible to this. We're pretty peace loving nation.
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I think we seem fairly chill.
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Yeah, fairly chill. That's interesting you say that because we
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just recently had the IPAN conference here, the Independent Peaceful
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Australian Network Conference, which happens every couple of years. It
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was perse turn and one of my takeaways from that
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was when Al Palazzo, a former military man who's now
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a war historian, said our politicians are lazy. And I thought, oh, well,
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I've been one of those. I don't think I was lazy.
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And I think most people go into politics really believe
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that they can make a change and do something for
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the community. And actually they work very hard, most of them,
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often on the wrong things. I would say, but never mind.
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I think they work hard. But he said they're lazy.
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And I listened and he said, especially in the Department
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of Defense, if they get something from the Americans, they
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take it as gospel. They do not drill down and
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look at the consequences, the unforeseen consequences, the unlikely but
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possible consequences of what they're doing. And that's what aucus
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is like. So there's a laziness that, you know, we
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just accept because we think the Americans are smarter than us.
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When we have a chat with friends, you know, just
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trying to get a beat on what my friends are thinking,
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social groups and stuff like that, a lot of what
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I hear is the same sentence, which is, Oh, it's done.
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Now what are we going to do about it? Do
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you hear that? Oh?
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Yeah, of course, And that's that's tragic. You know. We
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must not give up. We must not give up. There
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are some exit clauses from this debacle that we're involved
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in at the moment, but the way it's presented, you
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would think done deal. Can't do anything about it because
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the United States is so powerful, and of course they have.
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They've had us around their little fingers since the nineteen fifties,
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since they saved us from Japanese invasion. Well, actually nineteen
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forty two, the Japanese came to Northern Australia and even
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got a couple of mini subs into Sydney Harbor. But
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they realized looking at the landscape from Port Headlin Broom, Darwin,
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where they did some bombing, that they would die very soon.
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Unless they had a compliant local population or the Aboriginal
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people to show them where the water was, they would
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starve and die of dehydration. They went away, and the
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Japanese war documents show that they decided in nineteen forty two,
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forget Australia, forget the mainland. Not doable. But yet we
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still grow up. I certainly grew up with this idea
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that the Americans had saved us, and certainly the Battle
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of the Coral Sea was instrumental, and Papua New Guinea
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and so on. So there's an element of truth in that,
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as there is in everything. But we are an ireland nation.
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We are so blessed with a very long coastline. It's
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a natural barrier to invasion. The invasion happens with us culturally,
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which comes back to your notion that once something seems
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to have been decided, like it's done and we can't
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do anything about it. That's the notion that we have
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absorbed that the Americans since they got us into the
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Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, Mark one,
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Mark two, and Afghanistan. They don't win wars, but they
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create them, call them because it's good for business with
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weapons manufacturers. But actually we are following a very divided country,
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a very sad country on its knees. The empire is crumbling.
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We have to be ready to stand up and take
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charge of our own lives.
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And you can really see the effects of following America
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with the worthlessness of money these days. You know, what
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used to buy a house in Melville or something would
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be what thirty grand, forty grand, and now it's like
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a tip in a million, oh more than that. It's
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the same house. My house is from nineteen fifty three,
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at the same house. It's just cost this much more.
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Of the dollar is just so devalued.
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That is partly what Trump re elected last week, because
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people just thinking about their own shopping baskets, their own
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immediate costs. Of course they've gone up, but what he
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is suggesting will make things go up more. The tariffs
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that he wants to put on will increase prices out
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of all recognition, and people don't necessar think through the consequences.
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So perhaps al Palazzo could say about them too, they're lazy.
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You know, I think all of us are a bit
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lazy when it comes to accepting what is kind of
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dished out by the so called authorities. We live in
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relative democracies, and I always say Australia is a relative democracy,
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but it's in better shape in some ways than the
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American so called democracy. And yet how dare they they
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go and try and teach democracy to countries in the
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Middle East. It's not their culture. They're never going to
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do democracy the way the Americans would like them to
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do it.
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Yeah, with the president in a irrelevant position, like what
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power would a guy like that have? Surely it's like vanguardens,
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you know Stateside, all these big companies getting in their
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black rop.
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Oh. Sure, there are lots of lobbies. Absolutely, they're powerful.
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Trump has got control of the Senate in the United States,
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so I've now got fifty three senators on their side.
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They look like they might have control of the House
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of Representatives as well. He doesn't suffer fools. Gladly, he
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doesn't take advice. He will listen to lobbyists because it's
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transactional if there's some money in it. Yet Trump's there,
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so he listens to those people probably rather than political advisors. Well,
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a lot of his political advisors have called him out
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for being dangerous, and so he's going to be putting
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people who are going to just agree with him. There
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he will be able to do whatever he says he's
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going to do to some degree. I mean, as for
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getting rid of eleven million illegals as they call them
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in the United States, that would be a huge, huge undertaking,
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and it would unravel quite a lot of the status
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quo in the United States. Workers and so on would
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be vanishing. And how would they manage it that have
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to build these huge concentration camps near the border to
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take people back down south where Trump thinks they belong. So,
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I mean, he claims all sorts of things, and he
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will do as much of that as he can get
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away with.
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Yeah, I was looking. It was really interesting that one
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of the biggest voting demographics of him was Latis males.
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And you're thinking, but he's you know, he's surely that
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is at odds with what But I think that you know,
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maybe I don't know, you trying to close the door
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for more once you're in the gate or something. I'm
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not really too understanding what who why he was resonating
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with certain amounts of people, But it does feel like
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he's putting an awful lot on the credit card.
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Oh sure, absolutely. Once you're there, you think, okay, I'm safe.
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But they're not safe. They're not safe at all.
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So what's one of the ways that he can pay
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off this debt is to do deals with little countries
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like Australia that follow and one of the ones that
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we've been looking at here is the aucut one that
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you've particularly been working on. It's estimated price rates two
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hundred and thirty six to three hundred and eighty.
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Three hundred and sixty eight billion do ludo. Of course
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that will blow out all defense procurement, blows right out.
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It's usually two thirds more than the original price quoted
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for anything.
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Put that an equivalent with a population of what twenty
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seven twenty eight million, that's about one hundred and fifty
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thousand dollars per woman in child, every single person that
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is in Australia. So would you mind summing up? We
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don't you know, for people that might be hearing about
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this for the first time, which is entirely viable, I
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haven't been paying attention. What is orcas and what's the proposal?
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Well, Scott Morrison really got us into this when Boris
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Johnson was the Prime Minister of the UK, so Boris
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and Scomo and Biden met together, and it had been
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in train for quite some time. Andrew Fowler has written
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a book called newt which goes into quite a lot
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of the background about how long before the announcement was
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actually made, it had been talked about between those three
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countries and basically it is about getting nuclear submarines, nuclear
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powered submarines. I believe that they would possibly be nuclear armed,
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as well as that Virginia class submarines are capable of
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carrying nuclear weapons. Biden assures us that they won't initially,
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but nuclear powered submarines to come in and out of Australia.
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We would build new submarines scarper that deal with the French,
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who are going to build for US diesel powered can
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eventually powered submarines which are less dangerous, I would say,
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but submarines, I mean they're going to be obsolete before
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they ever arrived. Underwater craft that is all coming into
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being at the moment, So it's a furfee anyway. But
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Scomo announced it, and it wasn't long before the last election,
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and within twenty four hours alban Easy, then opposition leader,
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agreed to this deal, which wasn't really like a contract
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already signed. It was just a bit of a thought
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bubble at that stage. But it's got a lot more
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detail to it now. Pillar one, Pillar two. Pillar one
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is about the submarines. Pillar two is about all the
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technology that would go with a lot of AI, and
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that worries me as well. However, you know, if you
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want to be on the cutting edge of modern technology.
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Nuclear powered AI, just none of that sounds good. Oh god, no,
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it sounds very dodgy, sounds like interous. James Cameron's terminated too.
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We've seen this movie. We know how this goes.
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Oh I hadn't seen that movie. But anyway, I can't
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imagine how that future. And yeah, so it was announced
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and Scomo agreed to it without thinking and without even
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consulting his cabinet. Let alone the caucus, let alone the
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people of Australian no consultation whatsoever, because he was afraid
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that Scomo would wedge him in the election and say
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week on security. National security has to be number one,
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so the Defense Department is always assured of its funding,
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where other departments have to struggle and fight for every dollar.
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Defense just gets its money. And so albow to his shame,
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I would say, agreed to this. And he has never
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explained to the Australian people why this is good for Australia.
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He's never even attempted to do that. He just says, oh,
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the US have offered us this deal, and the UK, well,
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the United Kingdom, they kind of left the building in
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Elvis terms left the building in nineteen forty two with
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the fall of Singer. Or they haven't been militarily in
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this region, but suddenly they want to get into it.
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What is behind it, I believe is the formation of
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a NATO style organization alliance for the Asia Pacific region.
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That's why the Brits want to get in here, because there's,
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you know, maybe something for them. Rishi Sunak, when he
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was a Prime minister, announced that there would be a
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NATO office opening in Tokyo, a NATO office in Tokyo
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for goodness sake. Well, the Japanese, I think SIDNA don't
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like the idea of that at all, not in our interests.
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But you know there's that thinking behind it all. So
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get the Asia Pacific all lined up the way they've
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got NATO all lined up to contain China and the
400
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Soviet Union and North Korea.
401
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Well they've just formed, you know, so BRICKS has formed. Yeah,
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so that's an alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China and
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what's the yes. Well anyway, so Bricks, Brazil, Russia, India,
404
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China and s That does escaped my mind momentarily, and
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you know that is the opposite of orcs really, so
406
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you're looking at again a polarization of an alignment of sides,
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which seems like a very thrilly recipe for a large war.
408
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Well, unfortunately, UCUS is all about gearing up for war
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against China in defense of Taiwan. Now, Paul Keating said
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it's not in our interest to be defending Taiwan. But
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Joe Biden said, I think he said it's three times now.
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If Taiwan is attacked by China, will be there defending Taiwan,
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which means that Australia will automatically be involved. We are
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so enmeshed in the United States military and so there
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are lots of things wrong with that. I mean, China
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certainly wants to get Taiwan back, but they're not stupid
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enough to go in with the military to try and
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take it back because they know they'd be retaliation, so
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they want to do it with soft power and that's
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how they're operating. The long game is how they play it.
421
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And there you go. That's what I was really thinking
422
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in the back of my mind is that I think
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countries like China have an ability to plan over generations.
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Historically they've done it, you know, dynasty stuff, and so
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they might have a four hundred year plan in the
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best interest of the nations, whereas Australians just we don't
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seem to be able to plan like that.
428
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Oh, just go from one election to another.
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If you've ever done business in Africa, any of the
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countries in Africa, you can see what short term planning
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from the government does.
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You know.
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You just go over there and look at the Chinese
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work crews in exchange for minerals for ninety nine years
435
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or something. But the guy's driving to ben Lee and
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his kids go to Repton or something. Short term thinking
437
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seems to be the enemy of that. Is that something
438
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you've noticed in Australian culture and how can we sort
439
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of start to change.
440
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Well, I think it's to do with the places like
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the former Soviet Union and now Russia command economy and
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same in China. I mean, because they're not actual working
443
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democracies as we might like to think about democracy, which
444
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is you know, a bit far fetched anyway. But they
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can have better over everything, and so they can afford
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to have these long range plans. We don't do that.
447
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We're just looking at three year terms. I heard Prime
448
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Minister Albanezi on the radio this morning saying I'd like
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to have four year fixed terms. That would be a
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good step, you know, because now he's trying to change
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the Roger Cook here is trying to change the date
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of our state election so that he can get in
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before Albow, before the federal government, which might negatively impact
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on the great majority that the local Labor party has here.
455
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So short term thinking, yeah, it's a real problem because
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you know, in three years you don't really have enough
457
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time to put in place all the programs that you
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might have promised. So like Trump says, promises made, promises delivered,
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He's got four years and he will try and do that, and.
460
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Then three because that fourth year is campaigning. Oh Campa,
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ye did like twenty five percent lost pract to productivity.
462
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Yeah, that's true, but you know there'll be some sort
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of continuity there with the republic Can Party then in
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the hands of JD. E. Vans probably for the next time,
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because Trump, unless he manages to change the Constitution, which
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he might try to do, cannot run again. But by
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then surely he'll be too old and decrepit, you know
468
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to even think about it. But yeah, so limited terms
469
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are a good idea of fixed terms for the running
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of a parliament. A good idea helps people to you know,
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think into the future a little bit more constructively. At
472
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the moment, it's all just running on the running fast
473
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to try and just keep up. Because in the first
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year in government, the first year in any job, you're
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really just finding your feet. Second year you can begin
476
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to sort of lay some plans. By the third year
477
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you're into something, but you can really see that you're
478
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making a difference with whatever plans you're putting in place.
479
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But it's very short term thinking.
480
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Whereabouts are we with the Orcus plan? Like what for
481
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people if you're looking on like a graph of it's done,
482
00:24:56.400 --> 00:24:59.480
we've got summarines, we've got nuclear waste, and it was
483
00:24:59.519 --> 00:25:01.160
the idea whereabouts on the graph.
484
00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:04.640
Are we off fairly towards the beginning, fairly much. Yeah,
485
00:25:04.839 --> 00:25:08.200
still towards the beginning, although work has already started at
486
00:25:08.400 --> 00:25:12.680
Sterling Naval Base Meander Garden Island just south of here,
487
00:25:13.279 --> 00:25:16.640
so work has already started on building accommodation for seven
488
00:25:16.720 --> 00:25:20.039
hundred US Navy personnel. That'll be the singles living on
489
00:25:20.079 --> 00:25:23.119
the island. And then there'll be an enormous amount of
490
00:25:23.119 --> 00:25:27.200
pressure put on the facilities of Rockingham, Quanana and all
491
00:25:27.240 --> 00:25:31.640
of these councils along the strip for housing, road congestion,
492
00:25:31.880 --> 00:25:35.799
health education, so there'll be lots of families. But that
493
00:25:35.880 --> 00:25:39.880
hasn't actually started yet, but the infiltration of the Australian
494
00:25:39.960 --> 00:25:42.680
military has certainly started. We get a lot of ex
495
00:25:43.559 --> 00:25:47.839
US military people in top advisory positions in our Department
496
00:25:47.880 --> 00:25:51.559
of Defense, so they're already embedded. They're on the job
497
00:25:51.680 --> 00:25:54.759
making sure that ORCUS gets a good run with the
498
00:25:54.839 --> 00:26:02.359
Pollys in Canberra. We are a looking at thirty years
499
00:26:02.559 --> 00:26:06.200
for the delivery of the UCAS submarines, which will be
500
00:26:06.319 --> 00:26:11.279
designed in Britain like their Astute class submarines. In the meantime,
501
00:26:11.319 --> 00:26:15.200
the Americans are going to lend to us or loan
502
00:26:15.279 --> 00:26:17.519
to US or hire to us some of the clapped
503
00:26:17.519 --> 00:26:21.799
out Virginia class submarines. And you know, in thirty or
504
00:26:21.799 --> 00:26:24.519
forty years we might have a new fleet of submarines.
505
00:26:24.559 --> 00:26:27.759
But so many things can go wrong, as Hugh White,
506
00:26:27.759 --> 00:26:31.680
who's a defense commentator, says, so many moving parts, three
507
00:26:31.720 --> 00:26:35.920
different countries, three decades, lots of things can change in
508
00:26:36.079 --> 00:26:39.920
what could possibly go wrong, he says everything. And he
509
00:26:39.960 --> 00:26:42.759
also he's made this fantastic comment that I just love.
510
00:26:43.160 --> 00:26:46.400
He said Ucus is about as useful to Australia as
511
00:26:46.400 --> 00:26:51.039
a chocolate teapot. Now that usually takes a second for
512
00:26:51.079 --> 00:26:53.680
people to think chocolate teapot. Yeah, no good at all.
513
00:26:54.200 --> 00:26:56.279
So I can see a T shirt coming out. That
514
00:26:56.400 --> 00:26:58.799
was something that was told to us at the recent
515
00:26:58.880 --> 00:27:03.920
Hypan conference. A chocolate teapot dripping melting away. It might
516
00:27:04.039 --> 00:27:08.400
just melt away. Because in the United States Congress, they
517
00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:13.200
have the Congressional Research a team that presents information to
518
00:27:13.240 --> 00:27:16.240
Congress on a routine basis. Well, for about six months
519
00:27:16.359 --> 00:27:18.279
or so they have been saying, I think there have
520
00:27:18.359 --> 00:27:22.039
been three reports something like this. They've said, we should
521
00:27:22.039 --> 00:27:26.519
skip all of this detailed consultation with Australia so that
522
00:27:26.720 --> 00:27:29.559
the submarines that we lend to them or sell to
523
00:27:29.640 --> 00:27:32.799
them can have an Australian flag on top when it surfaces.
524
00:27:33.200 --> 00:27:35.680
You know, it's a bit complicated, you know, and Australia
525
00:27:35.720 --> 00:27:38.720
will have some conditions, like they would prefer not to
526
00:27:38.759 --> 00:27:42.240
have nuclear weapons on board. But the Americans have this
527
00:27:42.359 --> 00:27:45.359
history of neither confirming nor denying, so we never know.
528
00:27:46.160 --> 00:27:51.079
So in the Congressional Advice to the Research Advice to Congress,
529
00:27:51.240 --> 00:27:53.839
they have been saying for quite some time, really we
530
00:27:53.839 --> 00:27:57.160
should forget Pillar one and just make sure that we
531
00:27:57.240 --> 00:28:02.759
get our submarines on a rotating routine homeporting. In other words,
532
00:28:03.079 --> 00:28:07.000
at Sterling Naval Base, it's closer to China than anywhere
533
00:28:07.000 --> 00:28:08.920
else that they can put a whole lot of submarines.
534
00:28:09.279 --> 00:28:14.319
It makes sense for them to forget having joint custodianship,
535
00:28:14.400 --> 00:28:17.400
if you like, of these nuclear submarines and just have
536
00:28:17.480 --> 00:28:21.640
American submarines floating in and out all the time. That's
537
00:28:21.680 --> 00:28:24.079
what would suit them, that's what they really want, And
538
00:28:24.200 --> 00:28:28.279
Bob Carr said as much this morning on radio. He said,
539
00:28:28.519 --> 00:28:31.599
this is not in our interest. Trump could scarp of
540
00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:34.720
the whole thing because he doesn't like international treaties and
541
00:28:34.880 --> 00:28:37.920
so forth that mean America pays out, but actually, in
542
00:28:37.960 --> 00:28:41.519
this case Australia is paying out. We have already spent
543
00:28:41.880 --> 00:28:46.200
eleven billion dollars sending money to the shipyards and naval
544
00:28:46.200 --> 00:28:49.680
shipyards in the United States and to Barrow In Finesse
545
00:28:49.720 --> 00:28:52.799
in England for their shipbuilding. Three and a half billion
546
00:28:52.799 --> 00:28:57.759
dollars of Australia's taxpayers money has already gone no redress.
547
00:28:58.119 --> 00:29:02.160
Senator David Shoebridge, a Green senator who's very good. He's
548
00:29:02.200 --> 00:29:04.880
forensic on all of this stuff. He asks really good
549
00:29:04.960 --> 00:29:08.680
questions and he has had it confirmed that if the
550
00:29:08.720 --> 00:29:12.720
submarines never arrive, we don't get that money back. There's
551
00:29:12.759 --> 00:29:16.559
no redress. So it's a very very bad deal, which
552
00:29:16.599 --> 00:29:20.000
Paul Keating has said, Gareth Evans has said, Bob Carr
553
00:29:20.079 --> 00:29:23.880
has said, Carmen Lawrence has said, Peter Garrett has said.
554
00:29:24.119 --> 00:29:28.200
All these Labor Party luminaries are so upset with alban
555
00:29:28.279 --> 00:29:31.759
Easy because he just went into this pretty much blindly.
556
00:29:32.079 --> 00:29:35.359
And once a commitment has been made and the Americans
557
00:29:35.440 --> 00:29:37.240
keep patting you on the head and telling you how
558
00:29:37.279 --> 00:29:40.039
important you are and what great mates you are and
559
00:29:40.079 --> 00:29:42.920
how besties we are, they just want to go along
560
00:29:42.920 --> 00:29:46.079
with it. It's absolute madness.
561
00:29:45.799 --> 00:29:50.480
Because also a compounding additional package that's coming with we
562
00:29:50.599 --> 00:29:53.559
taking nuclear waste. Oh yes, so that that's the bit
563
00:29:53.599 --> 00:29:54.920
I thought you were going to be talking about. But
564
00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:56.359
that's true. Start about it.
565
00:29:56.640 --> 00:30:01.200
Oh that too because US and shipyards down south not
566
00:30:01.279 --> 00:30:04.359
far from where I live, act have been taken over
567
00:30:04.400 --> 00:30:08.160
by the Australian Submarine Authority. That's happening, so small businesses
568
00:30:08.240 --> 00:30:10.680
are scuttling, they're moving out of there because they can
569
00:30:10.720 --> 00:30:14.000
see the Navy is virtually taking over. They have got
570
00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:18.640
planned a new docking facility which will include dry docking
571
00:30:19.039 --> 00:30:22.680
for these Virginia class and Astute class and eventually Orchest
572
00:30:22.759 --> 00:30:26.279
class submarines a dry dock so full maintenance will be
573
00:30:26.319 --> 00:30:29.880
able to happen at Henderson. What do they do with
574
00:30:29.920 --> 00:30:34.799
the nuclear waste? This is a big issue in the plans.
575
00:30:35.319 --> 00:30:39.480
There is a controlled industrial facility being built on Garden
576
00:30:39.559 --> 00:30:43.079
Island which is meant to take the nuclear waste temporarily.
577
00:30:43.119 --> 00:30:45.000
And they say, oh, it's only low level waste or
578
00:30:45.039 --> 00:30:50.359
intermediate level waste. Well, it's actually highly enriched uranium that
579
00:30:50.440 --> 00:30:53.400
would come out of those reactors, not for a long time.
580
00:30:53.440 --> 00:30:55.599
This is why Richard Miles can blathely say oh, yes,
581
00:30:55.640 --> 00:30:57.519
we'll take the waist. Thirty years on. You see, he
582
00:30:57.599 --> 00:31:00.480
won't be around to have to deal with the fallout
583
00:31:00.480 --> 00:31:04.400
from that, literally radioact to fall out. Possibly. The Australian
584
00:31:04.440 --> 00:31:07.519
government has tried a number of times in here and
585
00:31:07.680 --> 00:31:10.599
Western Australia. Pangaea came in nineteen ninety nine and was
586
00:31:10.640 --> 00:31:14.839
sent packing in the Northern Territory, sent packing in South
587
00:31:14.880 --> 00:31:20.559
Australia sent packing. So there is no depository for high
588
00:31:20.640 --> 00:31:24.039
level or even intermediate level nuclear waste in this country.
589
00:31:24.279 --> 00:31:26.480
There are a couple of places out near Calgurley at
590
00:31:26.480 --> 00:31:29.759
Mount Walton, one government one private, which can take the
591
00:31:29.880 --> 00:31:35.440
low level hospital grade kind of contaminated waste. But the
592
00:31:35.559 --> 00:31:38.680
Government has been very mischievous in saying this is only
593
00:31:38.720 --> 00:31:41.559
low levelice. There only be things like gloves and gowns
594
00:31:41.559 --> 00:31:45.519
that will come out of a refit or a maintenance
595
00:31:45.759 --> 00:31:50.200
operation at the new Henderson base or at Garden Island itself.
596
00:31:50.640 --> 00:31:53.319
But the Medical Association for the Prevention of War has
597
00:31:53.400 --> 00:31:56.559
challenged that and said no, there are components of highly
598
00:31:56.640 --> 00:32:01.119
enriched uranium there weapons grade, but even below that, the
599
00:32:01.240 --> 00:32:06.720
intermediate level waste is very very dangerous. No radioactive waste
600
00:32:06.759 --> 00:32:10.920
is safe. Actually, we're very worried about how if they're
601
00:32:10.920 --> 00:32:15.920
doing maintenance job at Henderson, how do they ferry the
602
00:32:16.240 --> 00:32:20.359
waste down to this controlled industrial facility on Garden Island,
603
00:32:20.400 --> 00:32:22.799
which is temporary. I mean it's only a few miles,
604
00:32:22.839 --> 00:32:25.359
but it's across the water. Are they going to drone
605
00:32:25.359 --> 00:32:27.240
it across? They going to put it in rowing boats?
606
00:32:27.519 --> 00:32:29.640
What are they going to do to get the waste
607
00:32:29.880 --> 00:32:34.359
from where the boats are serviced to the controlled industrial
608
00:32:34.440 --> 00:32:37.319
facility which is only temporary, by the way, And we
609
00:32:37.400 --> 00:32:39.599
keep saying to the government, well, then what what's the
610
00:32:39.640 --> 00:32:40.079
next plan?
611
00:32:40.200 --> 00:32:40.279
What?
612
00:32:40.640 --> 00:32:45.160
There's no next plan. There's no next plan for the waste.
613
00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:48.880
It's a nightmare and it's not something the Australian government
614
00:32:48.880 --> 00:32:51.880
should be visiting on the Australian people. The other thing
615
00:32:52.000 --> 00:32:56.319
is that accidents do happen, fortunately not very often with
616
00:32:56.400 --> 00:33:01.200
the nuclear submarines. But there are already nine scuttled on
617
00:33:01.240 --> 00:33:06.359
the ocean's floors, five former Soviet Union, four American. They're
618
00:33:06.400 --> 00:33:11.319
already on the ocean floors and their containments are iron
619
00:33:11.440 --> 00:33:14.759
clad to keep their nuclear reactors safe when they're working.
620
00:33:14.920 --> 00:33:17.039
They'll eventually corrode saltwater does that.
621
00:33:17.279 --> 00:33:20.599
Yeah, and like a half life of a urinim issotopius
622
00:33:20.680 --> 00:33:22.839
like ten thousand years, So we're talking like twenty thousand
623
00:33:22.920 --> 00:33:25.839
years of slowly decay and giving off emitting.
624
00:33:26.039 --> 00:33:26.240
Yeah.
625
00:33:26.640 --> 00:33:28.720
But then the other part of this is that, yeah,
626
00:33:28.759 --> 00:33:30.839
sure that's the sor I heard that about their low
627
00:33:30.960 --> 00:33:33.960
level and intermediate stuff. But they said the cause of
628
00:33:33.960 --> 00:33:37.400
those submarines when they decay after ten years, that is
629
00:33:37.480 --> 00:33:40.359
the insane level radiactive and they don't have a plan
630
00:33:40.440 --> 00:33:40.920
for that yet.
631
00:33:41.400 --> 00:33:43.079
Well, I think that it's a bit longer than that.
632
00:33:43.200 --> 00:33:45.359
I think it's more like twenty five to thirty years.
633
00:33:45.519 --> 00:33:48.480
These submarines, the astute ones. I've been looking that up
634
00:33:48.519 --> 00:33:52.279
in detail, because the astute submarines, they can be underwater
635
00:33:52.359 --> 00:33:54.640
for a very long time. They don't have to surface
636
00:33:54.720 --> 00:33:58.079
so and they can keep going. They don't need their
637
00:33:58.279 --> 00:34:03.039
nuclear energy supply renovated or replaced for twenty five to
638
00:34:03.079 --> 00:34:06.039
thirty years. But that's what Males has said. After thirty years,
639
00:34:06.119 --> 00:34:09.159
that's okay, we'll take the way. We'll take the generators
640
00:34:09.480 --> 00:34:12.719
out of the submarines and deal with it here. Now,
641
00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:15.559
the thing is that the United Kingdom and the United
642
00:34:15.559 --> 00:34:19.159
States and all other nuclear nations, like France, which is
643
00:34:19.400 --> 00:34:23.199
still about seventy percent dependent on nuclear energy, they have
644
00:34:23.400 --> 00:34:27.679
huge duck piles of nuclear waste and nobody anywhere knows
645
00:34:27.719 --> 00:34:30.360
how to deal with it. The Fins are the closest.
646
00:34:30.360 --> 00:34:34.480
They've got this deep depository built right in underground, long
647
00:34:34.519 --> 00:34:38.320
long tunnel, very very deep, not finished, way over budget,
648
00:34:38.440 --> 00:34:40.880
way over time. And how do you prove that it's
649
00:34:40.920 --> 00:34:43.679
actually going to do the trick. What we should be
650
00:34:43.719 --> 00:34:47.559
doing is not making any more nuclear waste. Making more
651
00:34:47.599 --> 00:34:50.199
of it is a bad idea. And then the Brits
652
00:34:50.440 --> 00:34:53.760
and the Americans, if they see that Australia is stupid
653
00:34:53.880 --> 00:34:56.920
enough to take the nuclear reactors out of those submarines
654
00:34:56.960 --> 00:35:01.079
when their life is finished, they will the thin end
655
00:35:01.079 --> 00:35:02.960
of the wedge. They will then say, oh well, how
656
00:35:03.000 --> 00:35:05.280
about you take the rest of our nuclear waste. There's
657
00:35:05.320 --> 00:35:08.199
money in it for you, lots of money. That's what
658
00:35:08.280 --> 00:35:11.480
Pangaea offered when they came here in nineteen ninety nine.
659
00:35:12.159 --> 00:35:18.480
And between South Australia and Western Australia geologically stable, relatively
660
00:35:18.559 --> 00:35:21.800
politically stable, nobody out there, you know, no people to
661
00:35:21.840 --> 00:35:25.000
worry about. They thought that's where they wanted to put
662
00:35:25.119 --> 00:35:27.800
nuclear waste and they drew up plans which fortunately fell
663
00:35:27.840 --> 00:35:30.320
off the back of a truck in England and we
664
00:35:30.400 --> 00:35:34.119
heard about it. We created quite a campaign here. And
665
00:35:34.159 --> 00:35:37.840
then Richard Court, who was then the Liberal premier of
666
00:35:37.880 --> 00:35:41.320
this state, son of Charlie who got me going, he
667
00:35:41.400 --> 00:35:43.800
went to Britain to drum up a bit of business
668
00:35:43.840 --> 00:35:45.960
as they do, you know, like his dad drumming up
669
00:35:45.960 --> 00:35:49.920
a bit of investment business in Western Australia. And he thought, oh,
670
00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:53.480
I'll go and visit this British Nuclear Fuels Limited BNFL
671
00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:56.679
that we had been talking about here. They wanted to
672
00:35:56.760 --> 00:35:59.480
dump all their waist here. They've got masses of it.
673
00:36:00.199 --> 00:36:05.800
Went to their HQ and saw what was at waiting
674
00:36:05.960 --> 00:36:08.679
to be shipped somewhere anywhere to get rid of it.
675
00:36:09.440 --> 00:36:13.000
And he came back. This is a conservative liberal premier
676
00:36:13.199 --> 00:36:17.679
and he put forward legislation to ban the import of
677
00:36:18.119 --> 00:36:21.480
nuclear waste from other countries. So Richard Court did that.
678
00:36:21.880 --> 00:36:24.519
It was amazing and that's still in place. We do
679
00:36:24.679 --> 00:36:27.880
not want the nuclear waste from other countries to come here.
680
00:36:28.400 --> 00:36:31.519
But then some people would argue, well we're selling uranium.
681
00:36:31.920 --> 00:36:36.800
Our uranium was in the Fukushima set of reactors. That tumbled.
682
00:36:37.159 --> 00:36:40.920
When there's a huge tsunami in twenty eleven in Fukushima,
683
00:36:41.519 --> 00:36:45.400
Australian uranium was there. So how much responsibility do we
684
00:36:45.480 --> 00:36:48.119
have so to come full circle. That's why I've been
685
00:36:48.159 --> 00:36:51.760
involved in opposing uranium mining for forty five years.
686
00:36:52.679 --> 00:36:54.400
And it seems like, you know, that's the resource because
687
00:36:54.400 --> 00:36:57.000
if you look at the counter arguments and the benefits its,
688
00:36:57.639 --> 00:36:59.639
orcus can create a lot of jobs, that can create
689
00:36:59.679 --> 00:37:03.440
nucleus communities, and you know, uranium selling resources creates a
690
00:37:03.480 --> 00:37:05.119
lot of money for the economy. But then we go
691
00:37:05.159 --> 00:37:07.280
and waste it on this dumb shit, you know, and
692
00:37:07.320 --> 00:37:11.159
that seems like the biggest fallacy that we're wasted. We've
693
00:37:11.239 --> 00:37:13.440
just almost wasted the biggest spoom we've ever had, and
694
00:37:13.480 --> 00:37:15.039
what are the tangible benefits?
695
00:37:15.639 --> 00:37:18.599
Well, I think z that Dutton's plan to introduce nuclear
696
00:37:18.639 --> 00:37:21.360
reactors around Australia. He knows they'll never be built. He
697
00:37:21.440 --> 00:37:26.000
knows that because there's just antipathy towards nuclear reactors anyway.
698
00:37:26.440 --> 00:37:29.880
They're illegal in most states in Australia. There's there's a law,
699
00:37:30.039 --> 00:37:33.960
there are laws in place against having nuclear power stations.
700
00:37:33.960 --> 00:37:37.400
But it's all about what you just alluded to all
701
00:37:37.440 --> 00:37:40.280
the minerals that we have, the rare minerals, the critical
702
00:37:40.280 --> 00:37:43.559
minerals are now called for all of the technology that
703
00:37:43.639 --> 00:37:47.440
we need in our electric cars and so on. This
704
00:37:47.519 --> 00:37:49.880
is a big thing. China has the monopoly on that.
705
00:37:49.960 --> 00:37:52.320
At the moment, the United States wants to rob China
706
00:37:52.360 --> 00:37:55.239
of that monopoly. They want to get their hands on
707
00:37:55.840 --> 00:37:59.320
the rarest and the critical minerals here in Australia and
708
00:37:59.599 --> 00:38:01.159
stop them from going to China.
709
00:38:01.440 --> 00:38:03.440
Yeah, well, people need to go to Equatorial Guinea and
710
00:38:03.440 --> 00:38:06.119
see what's going on over there, like the mining for resources,
711
00:38:06.199 --> 00:38:08.679
go to anywhere in Africa, anywhere, and what that deal
712
00:38:08.719 --> 00:38:10.679
looks like. When you do I want to deal with
713
00:38:10.679 --> 00:38:13.079
one of these superpowers for your resources.
714
00:38:12.920 --> 00:38:16.320
It ends very badly for the local communities. Well, Australian
715
00:38:16.440 --> 00:38:18.840
uranium miners have been there too. When they realized that
716
00:38:18.880 --> 00:38:21.840
we were absolutely adamant about not having uranium mining in
717
00:38:21.880 --> 00:38:24.840
Western Australia. We've got heaps of uranium, of course, it's
718
00:38:24.840 --> 00:38:27.639
a big resource. They went and set up shop in
719
00:38:27.679 --> 00:38:30.639
Africa and they would go into a little place no
720
00:38:30.800 --> 00:38:33.679
rules and regulations, do what they like, involve a few
721
00:38:33.719 --> 00:38:36.559
of the locals with the menial jobs, so that then
722
00:38:36.599 --> 00:38:41.039
the locals become dependent on that mine, it's bills and
723
00:38:41.079 --> 00:38:45.079
so on. Notwithstanding, it's terrible, It is such exploitation.
724
00:38:45.679 --> 00:38:48.599
Anyone that's played like civilization a game or anything like
725
00:38:48.639 --> 00:38:50.719
that which is like we war, you know, anything where
726
00:38:50.719 --> 00:38:53.400
there's like superpowers interacting and stuff like that. I think
727
00:38:53.519 --> 00:38:55.199
China might have gotten onto the fact we're going to
728
00:38:55.199 --> 00:38:57.719
build these submarines in thirty years and just been all right, well,
729
00:38:57.760 --> 00:39:01.480
let's start building some anti nuclear submarine satellites or something
730
00:39:01.519 --> 00:39:03.599
like that. You know, like they'll be by the time
731
00:39:03.599 --> 00:39:05.760
this comes around. They're going to be so far ahead
732
00:39:05.760 --> 00:39:08.800
with their long term thinking. They can move a population
733
00:39:08.920 --> 00:39:11.320
in like you know, a school of fish because it's
734
00:39:11.320 --> 00:39:14.400
got that sort of power, and they've got the best
735
00:39:14.440 --> 00:39:17.440
manufacturing on the planet by a long shot. So whatever
736
00:39:17.519 --> 00:39:19.559
we do, surely they're going to be about ten steps
737
00:39:19.559 --> 00:39:20.800
ahead of it by the time we do it.
738
00:39:21.000 --> 00:39:23.400
I think that this is what the Americans are worried about.
739
00:39:23.519 --> 00:39:27.519
It's all about Americans retaining their supremacy in the world,
740
00:39:27.800 --> 00:39:32.360
their exceptionalism and aware part of it. So they're setting
741
00:39:32.440 --> 00:39:35.159
us up to be frontline if it comes to a
742
00:39:35.199 --> 00:39:39.639
war against China. Over Taiwan. They're setting Australia up to
743
00:39:39.719 --> 00:39:43.199
be front line. The only places that are closer for
744
00:39:43.320 --> 00:39:46.599
them that are useful to them are Guam and Okinawa
745
00:39:46.679 --> 00:39:50.159
and then Australia. But we have something that the others
746
00:39:50.199 --> 00:39:54.719
don't have, and that's Pine Gap. Pine Gap in the
747
00:39:54.719 --> 00:39:57.760
center of Australia, in the living heart of our magnificent desert.
748
00:39:58.079 --> 00:40:03.320
It is right now providing detailed targeting for the Israeli
749
00:40:03.360 --> 00:40:07.440
Defense Force. So all of these issues are connected Pine Gap.
750
00:40:07.800 --> 00:40:11.519
It has three huge satellites which cover the globe. Two
751
00:40:11.599 --> 00:40:16.239
of them overlap over Israel and Gaza overlap in that
752
00:40:16.280 --> 00:40:20.639
particular area. That's how they can find these particular people
753
00:40:20.920 --> 00:40:23.679
that they want to take out Pine Gap. We're helping
754
00:40:24.360 --> 00:40:25.159
and we shouldn't be.
755
00:40:25.559 --> 00:40:27.679
The people know this because I've heard pine Gap before,
756
00:40:27.679 --> 00:40:29.199
but that's the first time I've heard that. That's what
757
00:40:29.239 --> 00:40:30.280
that dart has been provided for.
758
00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:33.800
Well, it does, and it was very early on promoted
759
00:40:34.000 --> 00:40:38.079
as useful because it could trace nuclear weapons if they
760
00:40:38.079 --> 00:40:41.840
ever left their silos. So it's got tracking and targeting
761
00:40:42.079 --> 00:40:47.079
of nuclear weapons should they be launched. There's that, but
762
00:40:47.280 --> 00:40:51.039
mostly it's like a giant vacuum cleaner's sucking up information
763
00:40:51.400 --> 00:40:53.800
from all parts of the world that are useful to
764
00:40:53.840 --> 00:40:58.320
the American military, that zeroing in tracking and targeting of
765
00:40:58.519 --> 00:41:02.599
for targets that they would like to take out. So
766
00:41:02.719 --> 00:41:05.400
it's very dangerous and it's been upgraded over the years
767
00:41:05.480 --> 00:41:08.360
a number of times. I've also been into Northwest Cape,
768
00:41:08.400 --> 00:41:12.639
which is near Exmouth and liamonth Air Force Base has
769
00:41:12.679 --> 00:41:15.360
just been added to the list of designated sites to
770
00:41:15.400 --> 00:41:21.320
which the United States military has unfettered access unfettered access.
771
00:41:21.760 --> 00:41:24.960
So there's a list somewhere that we can't get hold of.
772
00:41:25.079 --> 00:41:28.320
Even David Shubridge, with all his good questions, cannot get
773
00:41:28.320 --> 00:41:31.159
hold of this list, which is under the Force Posture
774
00:41:31.199 --> 00:41:36.119
Agreement organized in twenty fourteen by the Abbott government put
775
00:41:36.119 --> 00:41:40.360
into operation twenty fifteen, which gives the United States. There
776
00:41:40.440 --> 00:41:42.599
is actually a document about that. You can look at
777
00:41:42.639 --> 00:41:45.480
that and see what's on offer if you like, or
778
00:41:45.480 --> 00:41:48.000
what we're giving to the Americans, not what they're giving
779
00:41:48.039 --> 00:41:50.639
to us, but what we're giving to the Americans, which
780
00:41:50.679 --> 00:41:53.960
is access to a lot of our military installations. The
781
00:41:53.960 --> 00:41:57.840
Force Posture Agreement should be canceled. It is so dangerous
782
00:41:57.880 --> 00:42:00.679
because the Americans can come in over the top of
783
00:42:00.760 --> 00:42:04.519
anything that the Australian government might decide. And I think
784
00:42:04.559 --> 00:42:07.719
one of the problems is that the Australian labor governments.
785
00:42:08.119 --> 00:42:11.239
Think back to nineteen seventy five when GoF Whitlam was sacked,
786
00:42:11.519 --> 00:42:15.400
partly due to US interference, and of course with the
787
00:42:15.440 --> 00:42:18.760
Crown involved as well. Somebody should have asked Bonnie Prince Charlie,
788
00:42:18.800 --> 00:42:21.320
when he was here, what about the advice you gave
789
00:42:21.360 --> 00:42:23.679
to John Kerr. He was just a young prince at
790
00:42:23.679 --> 00:42:26.880
the time, and he and John Kerr met in Papua
791
00:42:26.880 --> 00:42:29.920
New Guinea, I think walking the Kokoda Trail something like that,
792
00:42:30.719 --> 00:42:34.559
and they had a conversation. John Kerr intimated that he
793
00:42:34.679 --> 00:42:37.679
was thinking of using the power of the Governor General
794
00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:43.039
to sack Whitlam. Charlie went back told his mum okay Charteris,
795
00:42:43.039 --> 00:42:47.159
who was the Queen's major secretary at the time. They
796
00:42:47.360 --> 00:42:50.800
kind of okated, and after the deed was done and
797
00:42:50.800 --> 00:42:55.159
Whitlam was sacked, Prince Charles as he was then wrote
798
00:42:55.239 --> 00:42:59.440
to John Kerr, the Governor General, and said, hang in there, mate,
799
00:42:59.519 --> 00:43:03.239
you did the right thing. Actually those words, you did
800
00:43:03.400 --> 00:43:08.519
the right thing, that was sacking our democratically elected Prime Minister.
801
00:43:09.000 --> 00:43:12.039
So I think Labour governments ever since have been terrified
802
00:43:12.400 --> 00:43:14.800
that the same thing could happen because the CIA, of
803
00:43:14.840 --> 00:43:18.280
course have gott its tentacles everywhere. They know exactly what's
804
00:43:18.320 --> 00:43:21.559
going on, who's thinking this, who's challenging that? They know
805
00:43:21.719 --> 00:43:25.960
exactly what is going on in Australia visa VI. The
806
00:43:26.079 --> 00:43:30.320
very close relationship with our greatest friend and ally which incidentally,
807
00:43:30.360 --> 00:43:34.199
Malcolm Fraser not long before he died, he wrote a
808
00:43:34.199 --> 00:43:38.320
book called Dangerous Ally he's talking about the United States.
809
00:43:38.440 --> 00:43:42.199
Now that's a former Conservative Prime minister of this country.
810
00:43:42.360 --> 00:43:45.719
He could see that this alliance is actually dangerous for Australia.
811
00:43:46.320 --> 00:43:49.079
Now, you've seen a lot of politic eras of politics
812
00:43:49.119 --> 00:43:52.400
from inside and outside like that. What's one of the
813
00:43:52.400 --> 00:43:55.320
trends you've noticed, Because, like you said before, when Ronald
814
00:43:55.360 --> 00:43:57.920
Reagan was in, you're like, this guy's a nightmare, right,
815
00:43:58.159 --> 00:43:59.920
But then the next guy seems worse, and then you
816
00:44:00.159 --> 00:44:03.239
like George Bush, and then George W. Bush goes, you know,
817
00:44:03.280 --> 00:44:05.360
and it's just getting We're just like, what the hell now?
818
00:44:05.920 --> 00:44:08.840
I mean, it's gobsmacking we're at Trump and then it's
819
00:44:08.840 --> 00:44:13.239
gobsmacking that we've got guys like Peter Dutton taking the
820
00:44:13.239 --> 00:44:15.760
play for Honestly, these aren't the best candidates in any
821
00:44:15.800 --> 00:44:18.000
of these countries to run it. There's surely there's guys
822
00:44:18.039 --> 00:44:20.679
coming out of Harvard or MIT or something that aren't
823
00:44:20.679 --> 00:44:25.320
politicians or lawyers or political scientists or used car salesman
824
00:44:25.559 --> 00:44:27.360
or any of that kind of stuff. But like, where's
825
00:44:27.400 --> 00:44:30.400
the smart people that make good decisions and what the
826
00:44:30.400 --> 00:44:31.599
hell happened to them? Well?
827
00:44:31.599 --> 00:44:33.320
I think the US has been in decline for a
828
00:44:33.360 --> 00:44:38.599
long time. There was the Swedish professor of psychology, I think,
829
00:44:38.679 --> 00:44:42.000
and he had studied empires and their declines, and I
830
00:44:42.039 --> 00:44:45.440
remember hearing him speak probably about twenty years ago here
831
00:44:45.480 --> 00:44:49.119
when he was doing an international tour, and Johann Goldtung said,
832
00:44:49.320 --> 00:44:52.960
there are ten factors involved in the decline of empire,
833
00:44:53.239 --> 00:44:56.039
and guess how many of those are in play at
834
00:44:56.039 --> 00:45:00.280
the moment in the United States? Every single one. So
835
00:45:00.320 --> 00:45:02.559
he said it's a matter of time. And I do
836
00:45:02.599 --> 00:45:05.000
believe that it's a matter of time the United States
837
00:45:05.039 --> 00:45:08.840
will fall and crumble. I think if Carmala Harris had
838
00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:10.719
been elected, we would have had a bit more of
839
00:45:10.719 --> 00:45:15.159
a stay on it, you know, slight, you know, slightly better.
840
00:45:15.159 --> 00:45:19.119
But the Democratic Party lost the plot totally when they
841
00:45:19.280 --> 00:45:23.480
eliminated Bernie Sanders eight years ago because he had some ideas.
842
00:45:23.639 --> 00:45:25.599
I was going to say, you WEREMINMEI of Bernie Sanders,
843
00:45:25.800 --> 00:45:28.360
because I just think that you have a track record
844
00:45:28.400 --> 00:45:31.039
of doing it for so long, and you're saying, you know,
845
00:45:31.159 --> 00:45:32.840
we need to build on education, healthcare.
846
00:45:33.599 --> 00:45:37.000
Yeah, and Bernie Sanders knew that if a Democratic Party
847
00:45:37.039 --> 00:45:39.440
didn't turn around and really look after the working people,
848
00:45:39.559 --> 00:45:42.320
it would lose them. And what's happened. They've lost them,
849
00:45:42.360 --> 00:45:45.320
as you said, the lat Nino's voting for Trump. They've
850
00:45:45.360 --> 00:45:49.239
lost their base the working class because they have tried
851
00:45:49.280 --> 00:45:53.440
to accommodate the rich and powerful and stay with those
852
00:45:53.679 --> 00:45:56.679
lobbyists who stand to make a lot of money. Because
853
00:45:56.679 --> 00:45:57.960
if you're at the top of the parle in the
854
00:45:58.039 --> 00:46:01.119
United States, your life is very very comfortable, thank you
855
00:46:01.320 --> 00:46:04.000
very much. But if you're on the bottom end, not
856
00:46:04.119 --> 00:46:06.599
so much. And the bottom ends like ninety six percent
857
00:46:06.679 --> 00:46:07.280
of the population.
858
00:46:07.400 --> 00:46:08.920
Yeah. But I read a really good book this sort
859
00:46:08.920 --> 00:46:11.599
of echoes what you said. It was Jared Diamond Collapse,
860
00:46:12.519 --> 00:46:15.320
such a good writer us. But he goes through all
861
00:46:15.360 --> 00:46:18.039
the you know, the Mayan empire and goes through and
862
00:46:18.119 --> 00:46:20.280
sort of shows all the things that felt the great
863
00:46:20.320 --> 00:46:23.079
you know, what was in play that led to the
864
00:46:23.119 --> 00:46:25.519
collapse of that empire. Because we think there's a meme
865
00:46:25.559 --> 00:46:27.880
going around on the internet about what does this guy think?
866
00:46:27.920 --> 00:46:29.639
You know, what is my husband thinking? And it's like
867
00:46:29.840 --> 00:46:32.039
him thinking about the Roman Empire and it's like ninety
868
00:46:32.119 --> 00:46:34.880
nine percent of the time accurate, and so like, ask
869
00:46:34.920 --> 00:46:37.000
your husband what you're thinking. He's like, oh, did Julius
870
00:46:37.239 --> 00:46:39.559
you know? And so you look at that. So they
871
00:46:39.599 --> 00:46:42.320
came the closest to getting the world right and then
872
00:46:42.480 --> 00:46:44.760
they collapsed from the inside. And there were certain factors
873
00:46:44.760 --> 00:46:47.880
in play, and exactly America has all of those factors
874
00:46:47.920 --> 00:46:50.639
currently in play at like eleven fifty nine on the clock.
875
00:46:51.960 --> 00:46:56.599
Exactly. Yeah, So we are witnessing probably the decline of empire,
876
00:46:57.199 --> 00:47:00.559
but we shouldn't be taken down with it. We've got
877
00:47:00.639 --> 00:47:05.639
so many resources, not least of which should be some
878
00:47:05.679 --> 00:47:08.519
smart people who decide that we're not going to keep
879
00:47:08.840 --> 00:47:14.239
blindly following into more wars or more weapons manufacturing, which
880
00:47:14.239 --> 00:47:17.599
is where they make their money. But Australia, oh, I know,
881
00:47:17.679 --> 00:47:22.239
the other part of that Congressional research document said forget
882
00:47:22.239 --> 00:47:26.760
about pillar one, you know, submarine, the Virginia class submarines
883
00:47:26.840 --> 00:47:29.519
going to Australian ports, you know, for a certain length
884
00:47:29.599 --> 00:47:31.599
of time until the orchest ones are built. Forget that.
885
00:47:31.719 --> 00:47:34.119
Let's just homeport them. And they went on to say,
886
00:47:34.639 --> 00:47:39.559
let the Australians buy other materials from us that are
887
00:47:39.679 --> 00:47:42.880
useful to us. And what have we just done? Signed
888
00:47:42.920 --> 00:47:47.360
a seven billion, seven billion contract for long range missiles?
889
00:47:47.679 --> 00:47:50.559
Now what do we need long range missiles for? Australia
890
00:47:50.599 --> 00:47:54.480
has no natural enemies. We have no enemies of our
891
00:47:54.519 --> 00:47:58.440
own making. None. We should be good neighbors and have
892
00:47:58.519 --> 00:48:01.800
good relationships with every body in the Asia Pacific region.
893
00:48:01.840 --> 00:48:04.400
And Paul Keating was right about that years ago when
894
00:48:04.400 --> 00:48:07.599
he said our eyes should be looking towards Asia. We
895
00:48:07.679 --> 00:48:09.800
are the white fellas here a kind of in the
896
00:48:09.800 --> 00:48:13.639
wrong place. It's not our culture. We rob that from
897
00:48:13.719 --> 00:48:17.000
the indigenous people. Our skin is light colored and we
898
00:48:17.039 --> 00:48:19.760
all get blotches and cancers. You know, we're not really
899
00:48:19.800 --> 00:48:25.119
in the right place. And that idea that we could
900
00:48:25.199 --> 00:48:29.280
be independent, you know, is it's not a new idea.
901
00:48:29.400 --> 00:48:32.800
But we really wanted to take currency, We really wanted
902
00:48:32.840 --> 00:48:36.360
to gain something. So the independent, peaceful Australian Network that
903
00:48:36.400 --> 00:48:38.920
I mentioned a little while ago, with its conference here
904
00:48:39.119 --> 00:48:42.760
put out a document charting our own course a couple
905
00:48:42.800 --> 00:48:44.400
of years ago. Actually, I've got a copy of it
906
00:48:44.440 --> 00:48:46.880
here I can leave with you. It is just so
907
00:48:47.119 --> 00:48:52.679
good because it goes through the absolutely amazing capacity that
908
00:48:52.719 --> 00:48:57.199
we have and we are squandering the opportunities that we
909
00:48:57.320 --> 00:49:00.719
have by blindly following the Americans into war after war
910
00:49:00.840 --> 00:49:01.679
after war.
911
00:49:01.719 --> 00:49:04.320
Also following into their culture, because I think just picking
912
00:49:04.400 --> 00:49:07.599
red or blue isn't really, this isn't really. That's like
913
00:49:07.679 --> 00:49:09.679
the game when you go to casino, you know, they
914
00:49:09.719 --> 00:49:10.920
say do you want to put it on red or
915
00:49:10.920 --> 00:49:12.000
do you want to put it on black? And it's
916
00:49:12.000 --> 00:49:13.920
fifty to fifty, But then there's this green zero that
917
00:49:13.960 --> 00:49:16.960
will here we go. But but like that's the polarization
918
00:49:17.039 --> 00:49:20.320
and the tribe dividing, you know, dividing, dividing and conquering
919
00:49:20.320 --> 00:49:23.000
it stuff. We can sit here. Australians are very good
920
00:49:23.000 --> 00:49:25.280
at speaking their mind, but they don't have the information
921
00:49:25.360 --> 00:49:27.480
to say anything meaningful at the moment, I don't think,
922
00:49:27.960 --> 00:49:30.360
And so a big part of that is that we
923
00:49:30.400 --> 00:49:32.440
should be able to sit here in the region because
924
00:49:32.480 --> 00:49:35.760
when other works extensively in China and in America, and
925
00:49:36.079 --> 00:49:38.039
they're the two of the most hospital nations I've ever
926
00:49:38.039 --> 00:49:40.719
been to. Like on the ground, friendly people, the Chinese
927
00:49:41.400 --> 00:49:44.440
hilarious and really nice and cooking dinner and sharing, and
928
00:49:44.480 --> 00:49:46.599
I reckon they'd get along really well. It's just that
929
00:49:46.639 --> 00:49:50.320
the interests of the government direction sort of misalign and
930
00:49:50.360 --> 00:49:52.840
then Australians kind of go, well, what team were going
931
00:49:52.880 --> 00:49:56.000
on in the world, And that's the mistake. The game
932
00:49:56.079 --> 00:49:57.800
is that there's more than two options.
933
00:49:58.239 --> 00:50:01.079
We shouldn't have to choose between one or the other.
934
00:50:01.239 --> 00:50:05.800
That's absolutely right. Alan Beem, who works for the Australian Institute,
935
00:50:05.840 --> 00:50:09.000
wrote a really interesting book recently called The Odd Couple.
936
00:50:09.320 --> 00:50:11.840
So it's got the Statue of Liberty all dressed up
937
00:50:11.840 --> 00:50:15.360
and looking very severe, and then beside the Statue of
938
00:50:15.360 --> 00:50:18.679
Liberty there's an Australian farmer, you know, with his kubra,
939
00:50:18.880 --> 00:50:22.559
and it's called the Odd Couple, and he says, basically, yeah,
940
00:50:22.599 --> 00:50:25.400
we're in a relationship with the United States, but this
941
00:50:25.480 --> 00:50:29.039
couple they need therapy, they need help. And he also
942
00:50:29.239 --> 00:50:33.920
says that Australia has a lot more clout than we
943
00:50:34.280 --> 00:50:38.679
actually use in America. This is one thing I got
944
00:50:38.679 --> 00:50:40.320
out of his book. Usually and I read a book,
945
00:50:40.360 --> 00:50:42.719
I get one good new idea out of it. This
946
00:50:42.760 --> 00:50:46.280
one was not just that they need therapy. That's true.
947
00:50:46.320 --> 00:50:49.239
In fact, I think we should, you know, divorce, separate
948
00:50:49.639 --> 00:50:53.719
the relationship. Actually, he said, Australia is one of the
949
00:50:53.760 --> 00:50:57.800
biggest investors in the United States. We send a lot
950
00:50:57.880 --> 00:50:59.760
of money to the United States. And how do we
951
00:50:59.760 --> 00:51:03.760
do that through our superannuation funds. A lot of those
952
00:51:03.800 --> 00:51:08.480
are invested in America, bilions in America. And what do
953
00:51:08.559 --> 00:51:10.679
they use for? Mostly what are the two biggest growth
954
00:51:10.719 --> 00:51:15.480
industries in the United States? Weapons prisons. And I'm thinking,
955
00:51:15.599 --> 00:51:17.960
oh my god, do we really want to support the
956
00:51:18.000 --> 00:51:21.880
Americans with their weapons manufacturing and making more prisons to
957
00:51:21.960 --> 00:51:26.239
incarcerate poor people who aren't managing in their crumbling economy,
958
00:51:26.519 --> 00:51:30.280
in their crumbling empire. It's terrible. So he says we
959
00:51:30.280 --> 00:51:34.239
should use our influence. We should say, hey, United States,
960
00:51:34.239 --> 00:51:36.880
look we've got this, We've got that, we've got something else.
961
00:51:36.880 --> 00:51:38.920
We're sending a lot of money in your direction, but
962
00:51:39.000 --> 00:51:42.599
we don't like the idea of being used as a
963
00:51:42.639 --> 00:51:48.880
homeport for your long range attack Tomahawk cruise, missile miss
964
00:51:48.960 --> 00:51:52.599
nuclear submarines. Joe Biden was very careful to say that
965
00:51:52.639 --> 00:51:56.039
they would not be nuclear armed. But I have history
966
00:51:56.079 --> 00:52:00.840
here with a former US Navy admiral here retired, and
967
00:52:00.960 --> 00:52:04.920
often military people when they retire, they make very good sense,
968
00:52:04.960 --> 00:52:07.679
as did Mount Baton in England. He said, nuclear weapons
969
00:52:07.679 --> 00:52:10.519
take us to the edge of the precipice, you know,
970
00:52:10.920 --> 00:52:14.159
need to get rid of them, Basically Mount Batton and
971
00:52:14.719 --> 00:52:18.320
this man, Jean Lorock was his name, and I remember
972
00:52:18.360 --> 00:52:21.239
meeting him when I was in the Senate at an
973
00:52:21.320 --> 00:52:25.480
inquiry of some sort, and he said, if a US
974
00:52:26.599 --> 00:52:34.760
military platform is nuclear weapons capable, it will be nuclear armed.
975
00:52:34.760 --> 00:52:37.280
And he's doing this with his finger on the table
976
00:52:37.280 --> 00:52:41.320
for emphasis, will be nuclear armed if it's nuclear weapons capable.
977
00:52:41.519 --> 00:52:43.480
They're not going to have platforms that they don't put
978
00:52:43.599 --> 00:52:46.840
nuclear weapons on, no way. So what are they going
979
00:52:46.920 --> 00:52:49.280
to do when these Virginia Class That's why they want
980
00:52:49.280 --> 00:52:52.360
to homeport them here because there will be less oversight,
981
00:52:52.679 --> 00:52:55.920
there will be less consultation that has to happen, and
982
00:52:56.000 --> 00:52:59.320
they will bring in those Virginia class submarines armed with
983
00:52:59.360 --> 00:53:03.960
their Tomahawk cruise missiles, long range nuclear That's what I'm
984
00:53:04.119 --> 00:53:05.880
thinking is their main game.
985
00:53:06.159 --> 00:53:07.840
I was going to end this by asking you a
986
00:53:07.880 --> 00:53:09.880
strategy for people to do it, but you just sort
987
00:53:09.880 --> 00:53:11.400
of kind of said, you know, hit and where it
988
00:53:11.480 --> 00:53:14.320
hurts with the money. Australia is the biggest investors of
989
00:53:14.360 --> 00:53:16.519
superannuation and the planet. I'm pretty sure something like that
990
00:53:16.559 --> 00:53:19.440
per capita. And so you can look where you're putting
991
00:53:19.480 --> 00:53:21.800
your superannuation, who owns it, where's it going and if
992
00:53:21.800 --> 00:53:23.480
it's all ably actually vote with your dollars.
993
00:53:24.159 --> 00:53:27.440
Yes, that's a really good ideas and we've got to
994
00:53:27.440 --> 00:53:31.239
thank Paul Keating for the superannuation thing, which is basically
995
00:53:31.239 --> 00:53:33.199
a good idea. But where does the money go? What
996
00:53:34.079 --> 00:53:37.440
is it assisting? If there's evil on the planet. And
997
00:53:37.519 --> 00:53:39.840
I like to think of things in positive terms, you know,
998
00:53:39.880 --> 00:53:42.000
as a Quaker, I like to see the goodness in
999
00:53:42.119 --> 00:53:47.000
everybody in every situation, build on goodness. But if there's
1000
00:53:47.039 --> 00:53:49.679
evil in the world, I think it's nuclear weapons manual
1001
00:53:49.880 --> 00:53:53.639
not just nuclear weapons, but all weapons manufacturers. They don't
1002
00:53:53.679 --> 00:53:56.239
care who they sell to. They will sell to both
1003
00:53:56.280 --> 00:53:59.440
sides in the same conflicts. They will actually generate conflicts
1004
00:53:59.559 --> 00:54:03.079
because it's good for business. So there's evil. They're people
1005
00:54:03.159 --> 00:54:07.719
making money out of other people suffering very directly. It
1006
00:54:07.800 --> 00:54:11.159
makes me feel absolutely sick. And recently when we had
1007
00:54:11.239 --> 00:54:14.599
the disrupt Land Forces efforts in Melbourne when there was
1008
00:54:14.599 --> 00:54:19.320
a huge arms bizarre, it's bi doubles, biza double are
1009
00:54:19.480 --> 00:54:23.280
as well as a bizarre like a selling place. They
1010
00:54:23.360 --> 00:54:29.119
got hammered, you know, and they're considered as a terrorist.
1011
00:54:29.360 --> 00:54:36.079
Disrupting the Landforces disrupting a weapons manufacturing exhibition is a
1012
00:54:36.119 --> 00:54:39.280
good thing to do. We need to be aware that
1013
00:54:39.320 --> 00:54:44.559
this is where evil is residing and being visited upon us.
1014
00:54:44.880 --> 00:54:48.559
We buy stuff that we don't need in military terms,
1015
00:54:48.840 --> 00:54:51.440
we bought from the United States. Again, they're clapped out.
1016
00:54:51.480 --> 00:54:55.079
Abram's tanks. They couldn't go over any bridges in Australia.
1017
00:54:55.079 --> 00:54:58.119
They were too heavy. You know, the engineering hadn't been
1018
00:54:58.159 --> 00:55:00.880
ready a look at this is where alphaland so it
1019
00:55:00.960 --> 00:55:04.639
was right lazy, not looking at the detail, not going
1020
00:55:04.679 --> 00:55:06.679
into the consequences.
1021
00:55:06.280 --> 00:55:09.440
Bringing in rabbits, bringing in cane, bloody emu or you name.
1022
00:55:09.519 --> 00:55:12.480
It's like just another frickin. Yeah. Well, hopefully we just
1023
00:55:12.599 --> 00:55:15.159
learned something like we hear voices like yours and we
1024
00:55:15.239 --> 00:55:18.320
put some proper information into context and we make decisions
1025
00:55:18.360 --> 00:55:20.679
on our own and that's kind of the hope for Australia. Yeah. Yeah,
1026
00:55:20.719 --> 00:55:23.199
people would like to get involved with you. Where you
1027
00:55:23.199 --> 00:55:25.880
know and your causes. Where can they find more information?
1028
00:55:26.000 --> 00:55:29.239
Well, there is stop orcus WA. There's a website and
1029
00:55:29.320 --> 00:55:32.239
people can tap into that. We have an amazing group
1030
00:55:32.280 --> 00:55:35.199
of people. We meet mostly by zoom and then just
1031
00:55:35.199 --> 00:55:42.519
see each other at events that we create. We've got unionists, socialists, communists, Greens, students,
1032
00:55:42.639 --> 00:55:47.039
a nice conglomerate of people and luckily in Perth we're
1033
00:55:47.039 --> 00:55:48.960
small enough that we kind of know each other, so
1034
00:55:49.000 --> 00:55:52.840
there's trust. We're all on the same page working against
1035
00:55:52.880 --> 00:55:55.519
this aucust thing. People need to if they live in
1036
00:55:55.519 --> 00:55:58.719
this area down the coastal strippy and challenge their local
1037
00:55:58.719 --> 00:56:02.280
government authorities who are keen as mustard to get the
1038
00:56:02.320 --> 00:56:06.280
financial crumbs from the table. And again they're not looking
1039
00:56:06.360 --> 00:56:10.000
at the costs. There will be some benefits, but the
1040
00:56:10.039 --> 00:56:13.400
costs will far outweigh the benefits. So we need people
1041
00:56:13.440 --> 00:56:16.519
to get involved at the local level because it's not
1042
00:56:16.519 --> 00:56:18.920
really a local government issue. This is a federal issue.
1043
00:56:18.960 --> 00:56:22.320
So people need to write to their federal members and
1044
00:56:22.400 --> 00:56:26.440
say what are you doing this aucusing? Please explain why
1045
00:56:26.639 --> 00:56:30.599
is this thing this aucusing good for Australia. Incidentally, one
1046
00:56:30.639 --> 00:56:33.840
other final point is that either the United Kingdom or
1047
00:56:33.880 --> 00:56:37.119
the United States can pull out at any time twelve
1048
00:56:37.199 --> 00:56:39.960
months notice. In writing, they can pull out. That's my
1049
00:56:40.079 --> 00:56:41.960
hope for Trump. I've been saying for a couple of
1050
00:56:42.079 --> 00:56:44.960
years not wanting Trump to get reelected, but if he does,
1051
00:56:45.000 --> 00:56:47.639
this could be the silver lining. He could pull the
1052
00:56:47.719 --> 00:56:52.159
pin on orcas. The United Kingdom's economy is in big trouble.
1053
00:56:52.159 --> 00:56:55.440
They're shipbuilding yards are in big trouble. They could pull
1054
00:56:55.440 --> 00:56:57.920
the pin, but that is not something that is afforded
1055
00:56:57.960 --> 00:57:01.599
to Australia. We can't pull out, but they can. I mean,
1056
00:57:01.599 --> 00:57:04.599
what sort of deal is this? It's just bananas.
1057
00:57:04.719 --> 00:57:07.719
Yeah, thank you so much for your time. Thanks Simon,
1058
00:57:14.719 --> 00:57:17.440
Thank you for listening to the Stories within Stories podcast.
1059
00:57:17.960 --> 00:57:20.760
We hope you've enjoyed this show. For more stories like this,
1060
00:57:20.840 --> 00:57:40.079
head to Bear for media do SA
1
00:00:05.519 --> 00:00:07.879
Documentaries are about the people that you meet and the
2
00:00:07.919 --> 00:00:12.519
stories you can tell, stories of tragedy, laughter, hope and
3
00:00:12.599 --> 00:00:15.720
desperation across far away lands or right here in your
4
00:00:15.720 --> 00:00:20.359
own backyard. This podcast brings these stories to you, the listener,
5
00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:23.839
so that you can experience the adventures of documentary filmmaking
6
00:00:23.839 --> 00:00:26.920
and audio form while embarking on daily adventures of your own.
7
00:00:27.800 --> 00:00:31.519
Welcome to Barefoot Media, Stories within Stories podcast with your
8
00:00:31.519 --> 00:00:49.240
host Sam Holland. Today on the show, we talk to
9
00:00:49.280 --> 00:00:52.439
the remarkable Joe Valentine, a pioneer in the peace and
10
00:00:52.520 --> 00:00:56.399
environmental movements and one of Australia's most steadfast activists. No
11
00:00:56.520 --> 00:00:59.640
one for her relentless commitment to social justice. Joe was
12
00:00:59.640 --> 00:01:03.079
the first Australian parliamentarian elected on the anti nuclear platform,
13
00:01:03.159 --> 00:01:06.120
becoming a voice of conscience in the Senate and beyond.
14
00:01:06.719 --> 00:01:09.560
From marching against nuclear testing to standing up for First
15
00:01:09.640 --> 00:01:12.840
Nations rights, Joe's legacy spans decades and serves as a
16
00:01:12.840 --> 00:01:17.480
blueprint for effective, compassionate activism. Joe has proven for decades,
17
00:01:17.640 --> 00:01:21.200
but she is an unwavering champion for peaceful, sustainable Australia.
18
00:01:21.280 --> 00:01:22.959
Welcome to the show, Joe Valentine.
19
00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:23.680
Thanks Simon.
20
00:01:24.319 --> 00:01:26.319
Very excited to have you on here because I've heard
21
00:01:26.319 --> 00:01:31.120
you speak passionately about a number of causes over a
22
00:01:31.159 --> 00:01:33.400
number of years and doing research and talking to you.
23
00:01:33.400 --> 00:01:35.519
I didn't do much research. I'm assuming you're going to
24
00:01:35.519 --> 00:01:39.400
give me all the proper information. It's been fascinating, Janie.
25
00:01:39.400 --> 00:01:40.959
You've been doing this a long time.
26
00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:44.040
Yeah, about forty five years years.
27
00:01:44.319 --> 00:01:46.920
An activist is an interesting I've got to put one
28
00:01:46.959 --> 00:01:49.120
title on the show next to your name, and it
29
00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:50.000
might be activist.
30
00:01:50.159 --> 00:01:51.239
Yes, that's a good one.
31
00:01:52.159 --> 00:01:54.959
It's an interesting label though, because it's kind of you
32
00:01:55.120 --> 00:01:57.439
just doing something you're passionate about, and then other people
33
00:01:57.480 --> 00:01:58.319
give that label to you.
34
00:01:58.680 --> 00:02:02.319
Yeah, I mean something gets at you at some point.
35
00:02:02.400 --> 00:02:05.200
And certainly the whole nuclear issue picked me. I didn't
36
00:02:05.200 --> 00:02:08.680
pick it. It's a big one. It's a doozy. The
37
00:02:08.719 --> 00:02:11.919
only other more complicated issue I think that could have
38
00:02:12.039 --> 00:02:15.280
been chosen by an activist would be indigenous affairs because
39
00:02:15.280 --> 00:02:20.120
it's so complex. It's so filled with pain and suffering
40
00:02:20.199 --> 00:02:24.080
and lost opportunities but also fresh opportunities. So that's a
41
00:02:24.199 --> 00:02:26.879
hard one as well, and I've been on the edges
42
00:02:26.919 --> 00:02:30.719
of that one. But the nuclear industry in itself. It
43
00:02:30.800 --> 00:02:33.960
is mammoth. And the people in the nuclear industry are
44
00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:36.080
more loyal to each other than they are to their
45
00:02:36.080 --> 00:02:40.240
own countries. You know, the international consortia that work together
46
00:02:40.840 --> 00:02:46.560
for their own profit and regardless of national rules and regulations,
47
00:02:46.639 --> 00:02:49.560
they are above rules and regulations, so they talk to
48
00:02:49.599 --> 00:02:53.080
each other, they support each other, and the nuclear industry
49
00:02:53.199 --> 00:02:56.120
was one of the first of those to be on
50
00:02:56.159 --> 00:02:59.360
the job and having its tentacles absolutely everywhere.
51
00:02:59.719 --> 00:03:02.159
Do you remember, and it was there an exciting incident
52
00:03:02.159 --> 00:03:03.520
where you went, I'm going to write a letter to
53
00:03:03.520 --> 00:03:03.879
the held.
54
00:03:04.240 --> 00:03:07.400
Well, actually it really began for me. That's how I know.
55
00:03:07.439 --> 00:03:09.759
It was forty five years because that's the age of
56
00:03:09.800 --> 00:03:13.120
my first daughter, and I was pregnant and I heard
57
00:03:13.240 --> 00:03:16.639
Charlie Cork, the then Premier of Western Australia, as I
58
00:03:16.680 --> 00:03:18.719
was doing the dishes at the kitchen sink in Mount
59
00:03:18.800 --> 00:03:21.479
Lawy with my belly up against the sink. I just
60
00:03:21.560 --> 00:03:25.520
remember it's well and I heard him say Western Australia
61
00:03:25.599 --> 00:03:28.199
That's how he used to say, Western Australia will be
62
00:03:28.240 --> 00:03:30.759
the first date in Australia to have a nuclear power station.
63
00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:33.280
I thought, oh, I don't like the sound of that.
64
00:03:33.400 --> 00:03:35.639
I don't know much about it. I'd known about nuclear
65
00:03:35.680 --> 00:03:38.599
weapons because I'd already been standing on the street corner
66
00:03:38.599 --> 00:03:41.240
with Quakers for quite some time. They had a monthly
67
00:03:41.319 --> 00:03:46.000
vigil and it's their big banner said disarmament East and West. Well,
68
00:03:46.039 --> 00:03:47.840
I mean, you'd be pretty silly not to think that
69
00:03:47.919 --> 00:03:51.759
nuclear weapons are, you know, a bad idea? And I
70
00:03:52.080 --> 00:03:54.639
post war, this is obviously yes, And I didn't really
71
00:03:54.800 --> 00:03:57.719
This is nineteen seventy two. I started standing on the
72
00:03:57.719 --> 00:04:00.719
street corner with Quakers. They're nineteen seventy eight is when
73
00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:04.120
Charlie Court was trying to drum up business in Pennsylvania.
74
00:04:04.159 --> 00:04:08.960
He was over there trying to get investment in Western Australia,
75
00:04:09.280 --> 00:04:11.560
and he said, we'll have the first nuclear power station
76
00:04:11.639 --> 00:04:13.759
in Australia. Well, of course we still haven't got one,
77
00:04:14.199 --> 00:04:17.000
and may it never happen despite what Dunn is now
78
00:04:17.040 --> 00:04:19.720
trying to do. I went to the Environment Center because
79
00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:23.000
they all know something about this. And I trundled up
80
00:04:23.040 --> 00:04:25.079
the stairs at the Environment Center, which was in in
81
00:04:25.120 --> 00:04:28.000
Wellington Street, right opposite where the Bus Center is now,
82
00:04:28.120 --> 00:04:31.680
and there I met Annamel Newberry, who was coordinating the
83
00:04:31.759 --> 00:04:37.000
campaign against nuclear energy. Caine and you know, since I've
84
00:04:37.120 --> 00:04:40.439
discovered that link between nuclear weapons and nuclear power and
85
00:04:40.600 --> 00:04:43.279
uranium mining. At the beginning of it all, I mean,
86
00:04:43.360 --> 00:04:46.199
that was kind of like, it can't have this happening
87
00:04:46.240 --> 00:04:51.360
for this yet unborn child and future generations. Not on
88
00:04:51.639 --> 00:04:53.040
not fair, And.
89
00:04:52.959 --> 00:04:54.839
So what were you on track to do? You know,
90
00:04:54.879 --> 00:04:57.600
what was your life? Sort of pointing towards what had
91
00:04:57.720 --> 00:04:58.920
come before that sort of.
92
00:04:59.720 --> 00:05:03.000
Well, I'm a teacher, and I'd been teaching for quite
93
00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:05.480
some time. I'd done quite a lot of traveling, but
94
00:05:05.560 --> 00:05:08.759
at that stage I was looking forward to staying home
95
00:05:08.800 --> 00:05:11.120
with child number one and child number two. I thought
96
00:05:11.160 --> 00:05:13.279
it was really important to just be a mum for
97
00:05:13.360 --> 00:05:17.399
five or six years and to get children established, and
98
00:05:17.600 --> 00:05:19.879
once they're off to school then you could do something else.
99
00:05:19.920 --> 00:05:22.160
But I just thought I'd be going back to teaching,
100
00:05:22.639 --> 00:05:25.560
and then the nuclear issue got me in between, so
101
00:05:25.639 --> 00:05:28.480
there was no going back to teaching, going back to
102
00:05:28.600 --> 00:05:32.120
work in schools. Yes, I was part of a Commonwealth
103
00:05:32.160 --> 00:05:35.560
employment project. Back in those days. They were trying to
104
00:05:35.600 --> 00:05:37.879
help people get back into the workforce. So a couple
105
00:05:37.879 --> 00:05:40.959
of other young teachers and I, who all had young children,
106
00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:44.399
decided we would do a peace education project and we
107
00:05:44.560 --> 00:05:48.360
got support for that from influential people in the community
108
00:05:48.439 --> 00:05:53.560
to do peace education basically nonviolence in schools, and so
109
00:05:53.600 --> 00:05:55.160
we got a little bit of funding to do that.
110
00:05:55.279 --> 00:05:58.480
So that was my part time employment when this opportunity
111
00:05:58.560 --> 00:06:02.000
came up in nineteen eighty four to actually run for
112
00:06:02.079 --> 00:06:02.560
the Senate.
113
00:06:03.079 --> 00:06:05.000
Yeah, and what was I like, Well, that must have
114
00:06:05.040 --> 00:06:06.839
been a shocking conversation with your friends.
115
00:06:06.639 --> 00:06:11.040
That so I was thinking about, Well, I'd already been
116
00:06:11.079 --> 00:06:14.560
involved in the anti nuclear movement for a little while
117
00:06:14.600 --> 00:06:17.480
by that time, you know, from being pregnant to nineteen
118
00:06:17.560 --> 00:06:20.399
eighty four, so already had half a dozen years sort
119
00:06:20.439 --> 00:06:22.519
of under my belt trying to get the city of
120
00:06:22.519 --> 00:06:25.439
Stirling where I lived declared a nuclear free zone and
121
00:06:25.519 --> 00:06:27.360
so on. I learned a lot from that, even though
122
00:06:27.360 --> 00:06:30.519
it didn't actually work. Freemantle was one of the first
123
00:06:30.519 --> 00:06:34.079
places in Australia to declare itself a nuclear free zone. Incidentally,
124
00:06:34.120 --> 00:06:36.279
so that will bring us right back to the present.
125
00:06:37.600 --> 00:06:41.439
So I've worked on various things and when it was
126
00:06:41.519 --> 00:06:44.439
decided that we would run a campaign in nineteen eighty
127
00:06:44.439 --> 00:06:47.920
four in the general election, it was one time in
128
00:06:47.959 --> 00:06:51.360
my life when being a woman and being a youngish
129
00:06:51.519 --> 00:06:55.519
woman with two small children was actually an advantage because
130
00:06:55.600 --> 00:06:59.120
nineteen eighty four, remember, was when Ronald Reagan was the president.
131
00:06:59.240 --> 00:07:02.040
Seems like a harragon of virtue compared with what got
132
00:07:02.360 --> 00:07:05.360
coming up again now. But anyway, at that time we
133
00:07:05.399 --> 00:07:07.160
thought he was pretty awful because he was a big
134
00:07:07.160 --> 00:07:08.879
grade actor and he used to get things a bit
135
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mixed up in his mind and couldn't quite remember whether
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he was talking about a film that he'd been in
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or the reality. And at one stage, when he thought
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the microphones were off, he said, let's nuke the Ruskies.
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I mean, honestly, it scared the shit out of everybody
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his kind of approach and language, And it was women
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who thought that that was such a bad idea and
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we've got to do something about it. So when I
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entered the campaign, having been selected after a couple of
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other people were discounted, I mean, being a woman with
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young children was the go. That was the demographic that
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we were kind of after without realizing it, because it
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was women who ran the campaign. Women who are extraordinary
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when they decide that they can move beyond the prams
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and the dishes in the kitchen sink.
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Yeah, how you saw that during war? You know, they
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had to run a country when the men went off
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to war and the night is They called it the
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Oprah wintery effect because if you wanted to sell something
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or get something into the public persona you do it
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on that show, Yeah, it would you rip into it,
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and then the lady would whisper to the husband, you
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know when they go to bed. We're like, you know,
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did you ever think about it being a vegan or
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something or whatever that then was? You know?
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That's right?
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Yeah, so that it awful.
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It still has to come. I mean, it was just
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so amazing. I've noticed this with climate change that if
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a woman says something about climate change is often a
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bit dismissed. But if a man comes out and says it, oh,
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the men, other men will listen more. I mean, we've
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still got a problem with women being listened to, even
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by the men in their lives.
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Well, I think it took twenty years to figure out
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you should be careful of who you listen to, you know,
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just for me, you know, because I'm like, when I'm
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like fifteen playing football, Like I said, I was like
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talking to older guys and they're like, oh, just do
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this in your life, do you know like giving me
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the SIPs basic faith. Yeah, like infamy, because that's all
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guys do, give tips, right, you know, how to get
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the grass gone good or whatever, but they don't realize something.
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No one knows anything. I think that's the part of
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becoming an adult as you go and delving into this
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auchest thing and politics and international deals. I just realized,
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I don't think anyone really knows what they're doing. There's
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not a clear strategy. There's lots of overlapping confusion and strategy.
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And then on top of that, the guy that's sort
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of cut through is a guy like Trump or Done
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or someone they just really use. I guess they kind
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of manipulate with fear and it's a bit of a
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used car salesman approach to politics.
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Absolutely, it's fear and doubt. With doubt, you can do
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chief just about anything. So the seat of doubt. They
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did it during the referendum campaign last year.
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Doubt.
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So if you don't know, vote no. I mean it
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was a disgraceful slogan, but it worked. And so keep
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it simple and invoke fear and doubt and you're done. Well,
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that's what you can do. But if you really want
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to find out what's going on. It takes a bit
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of work. You've got to do a bit of homework.
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Why are Australian susceptible to this. We're pretty peace loving nation.
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I think we seem fairly chill.
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Yeah, fairly chill. That's interesting you say that because we
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just recently had the IPAN conference here, the Independent Peaceful
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Australian Network Conference, which happens every couple of years. It
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was perse turn and one of my takeaways from that
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was when Al Palazzo, a former military man who's now
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a war historian, said our politicians are lazy. And I thought, oh, well,
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I've been one of those. I don't think I was lazy.
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And I think most people go into politics really believe
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that they can make a change and do something for
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the community. And actually they work very hard, most of them,
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often on the wrong things. I would say, but never mind.
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I think they work hard. But he said they're lazy.
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And I listened and he said, especially in the Department
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of Defense, if they get something from the Americans, they
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take it as gospel. They do not drill down and
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look at the consequences, the unforeseen consequences, the unlikely but
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possible consequences of what they're doing. And that's what aucus
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is like. So there's a laziness that, you know, we
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just accept because we think the Americans are smarter than us.
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When we have a chat with friends, you know, just
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trying to get a beat on what my friends are thinking,
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social groups and stuff like that, a lot of what
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I hear is the same sentence, which is, Oh, it's done.
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Now what are we going to do about it? Do
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you hear that? Oh?
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Yeah, of course, And that's that's tragic. You know. We
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must not give up. We must not give up. There
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are some exit clauses from this debacle that we're involved
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in at the moment, but the way it's presented, you
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would think done deal. Can't do anything about it because
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the United States is so powerful, and of course they have.
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They've had us around their little fingers since the nineteen fifties,
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since they saved us from Japanese invasion. Well, actually nineteen
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forty two, the Japanese came to Northern Australia and even
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got a couple of mini subs into Sydney Harbor. But
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they realized looking at the landscape from Port Headlin Broom, Darwin,
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where they did some bombing, that they would die very soon.
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Unless they had a compliant local population or the Aboriginal
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people to show them where the water was, they would
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starve and die of dehydration. They went away, and the
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Japanese war documents show that they decided in nineteen forty two,
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forget Australia, forget the mainland. Not doable. But yet we
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still grow up. I certainly grew up with this idea
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that the Americans had saved us, and certainly the Battle
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of the Coral Sea was instrumental, and Papua New Guinea
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and so on. So there's an element of truth in that,
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as there is in everything. But we are an ireland nation.
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We are so blessed with a very long coastline. It's
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a natural barrier to invasion. The invasion happens with us culturally,
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which comes back to your notion that once something seems
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to have been decided, like it's done and we can't
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do anything about it. That's the notion that we have
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absorbed that the Americans since they got us into the
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Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, Mark one,
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Mark two, and Afghanistan. They don't win wars, but they
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create them, call them because it's good for business with
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weapons manufacturers. But actually we are following a very divided country,
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a very sad country on its knees. The empire is crumbling.
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We have to be ready to stand up and take
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charge of our own lives.
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And you can really see the effects of following America
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with the worthlessness of money these days. You know, what
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used to buy a house in Melville or something would
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be what thirty grand, forty grand, and now it's like
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a tip in a million, oh more than that. It's
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the same house. My house is from nineteen fifty three,
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at the same house. It's just cost this much more.
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Of the dollar is just so devalued.
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That is partly what Trump re elected last week, because
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people just thinking about their own shopping baskets, their own
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immediate costs. Of course they've gone up, but what he
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is suggesting will make things go up more. The tariffs
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that he wants to put on will increase prices out
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of all recognition, and people don't necessar think through the consequences.
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So perhaps al Palazzo could say about them too, they're lazy.
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You know, I think all of us are a bit
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lazy when it comes to accepting what is kind of
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dished out by the so called authorities. We live in
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relative democracies, and I always say Australia is a relative democracy,
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but it's in better shape in some ways than the
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American so called democracy. And yet how dare they they
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go and try and teach democracy to countries in the
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Middle East. It's not their culture. They're never going to
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do democracy the way the Americans would like them to
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do it.
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Yeah, with the president in a irrelevant position, like what
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power would a guy like that have? Surely it's like vanguardens,
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you know Stateside, all these big companies getting in their
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black rop.
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Oh. Sure, there are lots of lobbies. Absolutely, they're powerful.
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Trump has got control of the Senate in the United States,
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so I've now got fifty three senators on their side.
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They look like they might have control of the House
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of Representatives as well. He doesn't suffer fools. Gladly, he
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doesn't take advice. He will listen to lobbyists because it's
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transactional if there's some money in it. Yet Trump's there,
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so he listens to those people probably rather than political advisors. Well,
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a lot of his political advisors have called him out
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for being dangerous, and so he's going to be putting
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people who are going to just agree with him. There
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he will be able to do whatever he says he's
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going to do to some degree. I mean, as for
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getting rid of eleven million illegals as they call them
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in the United States, that would be a huge, huge undertaking,
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and it would unravel quite a lot of the status
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quo in the United States. Workers and so on would
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be vanishing. And how would they manage it that have
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to build these huge concentration camps near the border to
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take people back down south where Trump thinks they belong. So,
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I mean, he claims all sorts of things, and he
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will do as much of that as he can get
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away with.
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Yeah, I was looking. It was really interesting that one
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of the biggest voting demographics of him was Latis males.
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And you're thinking, but he's you know, he's surely that
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is at odds with what But I think that you know,
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maybe I don't know, you trying to close the door
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for more once you're in the gate or something. I'm
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not really too understanding what who why he was resonating
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with certain amounts of people, But it does feel like
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he's putting an awful lot on the credit card.
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Oh sure, absolutely. Once you're there, you think, okay, I'm safe.
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But they're not safe. They're not safe at all.
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So what's one of the ways that he can pay
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off this debt is to do deals with little countries
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like Australia that follow and one of the ones that
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we've been looking at here is the aucut one that
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you've particularly been working on. It's estimated price rates two
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hundred and thirty six to three hundred and eighty.
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Three hundred and sixty eight billion do ludo. Of course
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that will blow out all defense procurement, blows right out.
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It's usually two thirds more than the original price quoted
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for anything.
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Put that an equivalent with a population of what twenty
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seven twenty eight million, that's about one hundred and fifty
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thousand dollars per woman in child, every single person that
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is in Australia. So would you mind summing up? We
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don't you know, for people that might be hearing about
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this for the first time, which is entirely viable, I
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haven't been paying attention. What is orcas and what's the proposal?
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Well, Scott Morrison really got us into this when Boris
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Johnson was the Prime Minister of the UK, so Boris
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and Scomo and Biden met together, and it had been
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in train for quite some time. Andrew Fowler has written
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a book called newt which goes into quite a lot
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of the background about how long before the announcement was
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actually made, it had been talked about between those three
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countries and basically it is about getting nuclear submarines, nuclear
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powered submarines. I believe that they would possibly be nuclear armed,
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as well as that Virginia class submarines are capable of
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carrying nuclear weapons. Biden assures us that they won't initially,
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but nuclear powered submarines to come in and out of Australia.
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We would build new submarines scarper that deal with the French,
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who are going to build for US diesel powered can
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eventually powered submarines which are less dangerous, I would say,
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but submarines, I mean they're going to be obsolete before
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they ever arrived. Underwater craft that is all coming into
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being at the moment, So it's a furfee anyway. But
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Scomo announced it, and it wasn't long before the last election,
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and within twenty four hours alban Easy, then opposition leader,
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agreed to this deal, which wasn't really like a contract
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already signed. It was just a bit of a thought
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bubble at that stage. But it's got a lot more
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detail to it now. Pillar one, Pillar two. Pillar one
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is about the submarines. Pillar two is about all the
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technology that would go with a lot of AI, and
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that worries me as well. However, you know, if you
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want to be on the cutting edge of modern technology.
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Nuclear powered AI, just none of that sounds good. Oh god, no,
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it sounds very dodgy, sounds like interous. James Cameron's terminated too.
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We've seen this movie. We know how this goes.
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Oh I hadn't seen that movie. But anyway, I can't
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imagine how that future. And yeah, so it was announced
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and Scomo agreed to it without thinking and without even
374
00:19:12.519 --> 00:19:16.079
consulting his cabinet. Let alone the caucus, let alone the
375
00:19:16.079 --> 00:19:21.359
people of Australian no consultation whatsoever, because he was afraid
376
00:19:21.400 --> 00:19:24.200
that Scomo would wedge him in the election and say
377
00:19:24.319 --> 00:19:27.599
week on security. National security has to be number one,
378
00:19:27.720 --> 00:19:31.640
so the Defense Department is always assured of its funding,
379
00:19:31.880 --> 00:19:35.359
where other departments have to struggle and fight for every dollar.
380
00:19:35.519 --> 00:19:40.480
Defense just gets its money. And so albow to his shame,
381
00:19:40.680 --> 00:19:43.440
I would say, agreed to this. And he has never
382
00:19:43.880 --> 00:19:47.039
explained to the Australian people why this is good for Australia.
383
00:19:47.079 --> 00:19:49.839
He's never even attempted to do that. He just says, oh,
384
00:19:49.839 --> 00:19:53.240
the US have offered us this deal, and the UK, well,
385
00:19:53.480 --> 00:19:55.960
the United Kingdom, they kind of left the building in
386
00:19:56.039 --> 00:19:59.200
Elvis terms left the building in nineteen forty two with
387
00:19:59.279 --> 00:20:02.880
the fall of Singer. Or they haven't been militarily in
388
00:20:02.920 --> 00:20:05.680
this region, but suddenly they want to get into it.
389
00:20:06.279 --> 00:20:09.720
What is behind it, I believe is the formation of
390
00:20:09.759 --> 00:20:15.359
a NATO style organization alliance for the Asia Pacific region.
391
00:20:15.720 --> 00:20:18.680
That's why the Brits want to get in here, because there's,
392
00:20:18.839 --> 00:20:22.000
you know, maybe something for them. Rishi Sunak, when he
393
00:20:22.079 --> 00:20:25.319
was a Prime minister, announced that there would be a
394
00:20:25.440 --> 00:20:30.119
NATO office opening in Tokyo, a NATO office in Tokyo
395
00:20:30.160 --> 00:20:33.480
for goodness sake. Well, the Japanese, I think SIDNA don't
396
00:20:33.559 --> 00:20:36.599
like the idea of that at all, not in our interests.
397
00:20:37.079 --> 00:20:40.200
But you know there's that thinking behind it all. So
398
00:20:40.319 --> 00:20:43.240
get the Asia Pacific all lined up the way they've
399
00:20:43.240 --> 00:20:47.039
got NATO all lined up to contain China and the
400
00:20:47.079 --> 00:20:49.480
Soviet Union and North Korea.
401
00:20:50.119 --> 00:20:53.359
Well they've just formed, you know, so BRICKS has formed. Yeah,
402
00:20:53.440 --> 00:20:57.200
so that's an alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China and
403
00:20:57.880 --> 00:21:00.920
what's the yes. Well anyway, so Bricks, Brazil, Russia, India,
404
00:21:01.039 --> 00:21:04.839
China and s That does escaped my mind momentarily, and
405
00:21:05.079 --> 00:21:07.119
you know that is the opposite of orcs really, so
406
00:21:07.160 --> 00:21:11.440
you're looking at again a polarization of an alignment of sides,
407
00:21:11.759 --> 00:21:14.400
which seems like a very thrilly recipe for a large war.
408
00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:20.119
Well, unfortunately, UCUS is all about gearing up for war
409
00:21:20.400 --> 00:21:23.880
against China in defense of Taiwan. Now, Paul Keating said
410
00:21:24.559 --> 00:21:27.440
it's not in our interest to be defending Taiwan. But
411
00:21:27.559 --> 00:21:30.400
Joe Biden said, I think he said it's three times now.
412
00:21:30.440 --> 00:21:34.240
If Taiwan is attacked by China, will be there defending Taiwan,
413
00:21:34.319 --> 00:21:37.240
which means that Australia will automatically be involved. We are
414
00:21:37.319 --> 00:21:41.519
so enmeshed in the United States military and so there
415
00:21:41.519 --> 00:21:43.559
are lots of things wrong with that. I mean, China
416
00:21:43.880 --> 00:21:46.920
certainly wants to get Taiwan back, but they're not stupid
417
00:21:47.039 --> 00:21:50.519
enough to go in with the military to try and
418
00:21:50.559 --> 00:21:53.279
take it back because they know they'd be retaliation, so
419
00:21:53.359 --> 00:21:55.599
they want to do it with soft power and that's
420
00:21:55.680 --> 00:21:59.119
how they're operating. The long game is how they play it.
421
00:21:59.279 --> 00:22:00.960
And there you go. That's what I was really thinking
422
00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:02.559
in the back of my mind is that I think
423
00:22:02.640 --> 00:22:06.160
countries like China have an ability to plan over generations.
424
00:22:06.240 --> 00:22:09.359
Historically they've done it, you know, dynasty stuff, and so
425
00:22:09.599 --> 00:22:11.759
they might have a four hundred year plan in the
426
00:22:11.759 --> 00:22:14.240
best interest of the nations, whereas Australians just we don't
427
00:22:14.440 --> 00:22:15.680
seem to be able to plan like that.
428
00:22:15.759 --> 00:22:17.480
Oh, just go from one election to another.
429
00:22:17.559 --> 00:22:19.920
If you've ever done business in Africa, any of the
430
00:22:19.920 --> 00:22:22.599
countries in Africa, you can see what short term planning
431
00:22:22.720 --> 00:22:23.880
from the government does.
432
00:22:24.279 --> 00:22:24.480
You know.
433
00:22:24.519 --> 00:22:26.759
You just go over there and look at the Chinese
434
00:22:26.799 --> 00:22:29.279
work crews in exchange for minerals for ninety nine years
435
00:22:29.359 --> 00:22:31.359
or something. But the guy's driving to ben Lee and
436
00:22:31.400 --> 00:22:34.440
his kids go to Repton or something. Short term thinking
437
00:22:34.480 --> 00:22:36.920
seems to be the enemy of that. Is that something
438
00:22:36.960 --> 00:22:39.400
you've noticed in Australian culture and how can we sort
439
00:22:39.440 --> 00:22:40.920
of start to change.
440
00:22:40.799 --> 00:22:43.559
Well, I think it's to do with the places like
441
00:22:43.880 --> 00:22:47.519
the former Soviet Union and now Russia command economy and
442
00:22:47.640 --> 00:22:50.680
same in China. I mean, because they're not actual working
443
00:22:50.720 --> 00:22:53.920
democracies as we might like to think about democracy, which
444
00:22:54.000 --> 00:22:58.440
is you know, a bit far fetched anyway. But they
445
00:22:58.559 --> 00:23:03.200
can have better over everything, and so they can afford
446
00:23:03.359 --> 00:23:05.799
to have these long range plans. We don't do that.
447
00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:08.759
We're just looking at three year terms. I heard Prime
448
00:23:08.759 --> 00:23:11.880
Minister Albanezi on the radio this morning saying I'd like
449
00:23:11.920 --> 00:23:14.640
to have four year fixed terms. That would be a
450
00:23:14.680 --> 00:23:17.279
good step, you know, because now he's trying to change
451
00:23:17.279 --> 00:23:19.759
the Roger Cook here is trying to change the date
452
00:23:19.799 --> 00:23:22.079
of our state election so that he can get in
453
00:23:22.160 --> 00:23:27.440
before Albow, before the federal government, which might negatively impact
454
00:23:27.480 --> 00:23:30.440
on the great majority that the local Labor party has here.
455
00:23:31.039 --> 00:23:34.480
So short term thinking, yeah, it's a real problem because
456
00:23:34.880 --> 00:23:37.960
you know, in three years you don't really have enough
457
00:23:38.000 --> 00:23:41.400
time to put in place all the programs that you
458
00:23:41.519 --> 00:23:47.039
might have promised. So like Trump says, promises made, promises delivered,
459
00:23:47.160 --> 00:23:49.839
He's got four years and he will try and do that, and.
460
00:23:49.799 --> 00:23:53.160
Then three because that fourth year is campaigning. Oh Campa,
461
00:23:53.319 --> 00:23:56.480
ye did like twenty five percent lost pract to productivity.
462
00:23:56.000 --> 00:23:58.359
Yeah, that's true, but you know there'll be some sort
463
00:23:58.359 --> 00:24:02.160
of continuity there with the republic Can Party then in
464
00:24:02.200 --> 00:24:05.240
the hands of JD. E. Vans probably for the next time,
465
00:24:05.240 --> 00:24:08.160
because Trump, unless he manages to change the Constitution, which
466
00:24:08.200 --> 00:24:11.559
he might try to do, cannot run again. But by
467
00:24:11.599 --> 00:24:14.880
then surely he'll be too old and decrepit, you know
468
00:24:15.440 --> 00:24:18.720
to even think about it. But yeah, so limited terms
469
00:24:18.720 --> 00:24:21.559
are a good idea of fixed terms for the running
470
00:24:21.599 --> 00:24:25.599
of a parliament. A good idea helps people to you know,
471
00:24:25.720 --> 00:24:29.519
think into the future a little bit more constructively. At
472
00:24:29.559 --> 00:24:34.039
the moment, it's all just running on the running fast
473
00:24:34.200 --> 00:24:36.119
to try and just keep up. Because in the first
474
00:24:36.240 --> 00:24:38.640
year in government, the first year in any job, you're
475
00:24:38.680 --> 00:24:41.200
really just finding your feet. Second year you can begin
476
00:24:41.240 --> 00:24:43.119
to sort of lay some plans. By the third year
477
00:24:43.160 --> 00:24:45.519
you're into something, but you can really see that you're
478
00:24:45.559 --> 00:24:48.200
making a difference with whatever plans you're putting in place.
479
00:24:48.440 --> 00:24:50.519
But it's very short term thinking.
480
00:24:50.480 --> 00:24:53.880
Whereabouts are we with the Orcus plan? Like what for
481
00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:56.359
people if you're looking on like a graph of it's done,
482
00:24:56.400 --> 00:24:59.480
we've got summarines, we've got nuclear waste, and it was
483
00:24:59.519 --> 00:25:01.160
the idea whereabouts on the graph.
484
00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:04.640
Are we off fairly towards the beginning, fairly much. Yeah,
485
00:25:04.839 --> 00:25:08.200
still towards the beginning, although work has already started at
486
00:25:08.400 --> 00:25:12.680
Sterling Naval Base Meander Garden Island just south of here,
487
00:25:13.279 --> 00:25:16.640
so work has already started on building accommodation for seven
488
00:25:16.720 --> 00:25:20.039
hundred US Navy personnel. That'll be the singles living on
489
00:25:20.079 --> 00:25:23.119
the island. And then there'll be an enormous amount of
490
00:25:23.119 --> 00:25:27.200
pressure put on the facilities of Rockingham, Quanana and all
491
00:25:27.240 --> 00:25:31.640
of these councils along the strip for housing, road congestion,
492
00:25:31.880 --> 00:25:35.799
health education, so there'll be lots of families. But that
493
00:25:35.880 --> 00:25:39.880
hasn't actually started yet, but the infiltration of the Australian
494
00:25:39.960 --> 00:25:42.680
military has certainly started. We get a lot of ex
495
00:25:43.559 --> 00:25:47.839
US military people in top advisory positions in our Department
496
00:25:47.880 --> 00:25:51.559
of Defense, so they're already embedded. They're on the job
497
00:25:51.680 --> 00:25:54.759
making sure that ORCUS gets a good run with the
498
00:25:54.839 --> 00:26:02.359
Pollys in Canberra. We are a looking at thirty years
499
00:26:02.559 --> 00:26:06.200
for the delivery of the UCAS submarines, which will be
500
00:26:06.319 --> 00:26:11.279
designed in Britain like their Astute class submarines. In the meantime,
501
00:26:11.319 --> 00:26:15.200
the Americans are going to lend to us or loan
502
00:26:15.279 --> 00:26:17.519
to US or hire to us some of the clapped
503
00:26:17.519 --> 00:26:21.799
out Virginia class submarines. And you know, in thirty or
504
00:26:21.799 --> 00:26:24.519
forty years we might have a new fleet of submarines.
505
00:26:24.559 --> 00:26:27.759
But so many things can go wrong, as Hugh White,
506
00:26:27.759 --> 00:26:31.680
who's a defense commentator, says, so many moving parts, three
507
00:26:31.720 --> 00:26:35.920
different countries, three decades, lots of things can change in
508
00:26:36.079 --> 00:26:39.920
what could possibly go wrong, he says everything. And he
509
00:26:39.960 --> 00:26:42.759
also he's made this fantastic comment that I just love.
510
00:26:43.160 --> 00:26:46.400
He said Ucus is about as useful to Australia as
511
00:26:46.400 --> 00:26:51.039
a chocolate teapot. Now that usually takes a second for
512
00:26:51.079 --> 00:26:53.680
people to think chocolate teapot. Yeah, no good at all.
513
00:26:54.200 --> 00:26:56.279
So I can see a T shirt coming out. That
514
00:26:56.400 --> 00:26:58.799
was something that was told to us at the recent
515
00:26:58.880 --> 00:27:03.920
Hypan conference. A chocolate teapot dripping melting away. It might
516
00:27:04.039 --> 00:27:08.400
just melt away. Because in the United States Congress, they
517
00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:13.200
have the Congressional Research a team that presents information to
518
00:27:13.240 --> 00:27:16.240
Congress on a routine basis. Well, for about six months
519
00:27:16.359 --> 00:27:18.279
or so they have been saying, I think there have
520
00:27:18.359 --> 00:27:22.039
been three reports something like this. They've said, we should
521
00:27:22.039 --> 00:27:26.519
skip all of this detailed consultation with Australia so that
522
00:27:26.720 --> 00:27:29.559
the submarines that we lend to them or sell to
523
00:27:29.640 --> 00:27:32.799
them can have an Australian flag on top when it surfaces.
524
00:27:33.200 --> 00:27:35.680
You know, it's a bit complicated, you know, and Australia
525
00:27:35.720 --> 00:27:38.720
will have some conditions, like they would prefer not to
526
00:27:38.759 --> 00:27:42.240
have nuclear weapons on board. But the Americans have this
527
00:27:42.359 --> 00:27:45.359
history of neither confirming nor denying, so we never know.
528
00:27:46.160 --> 00:27:51.079
So in the Congressional Advice to the Research Advice to Congress,
529
00:27:51.240 --> 00:27:53.839
they have been saying for quite some time, really we
530
00:27:53.839 --> 00:27:57.160
should forget Pillar one and just make sure that we
531
00:27:57.240 --> 00:28:02.759
get our submarines on a rotating routine homeporting. In other words,
532
00:28:03.079 --> 00:28:07.000
at Sterling Naval Base, it's closer to China than anywhere
533
00:28:07.000 --> 00:28:08.920
else that they can put a whole lot of submarines.
534
00:28:09.279 --> 00:28:14.319
It makes sense for them to forget having joint custodianship,
535
00:28:14.400 --> 00:28:17.400
if you like, of these nuclear submarines and just have
536
00:28:17.480 --> 00:28:21.640
American submarines floating in and out all the time. That's
537
00:28:21.680 --> 00:28:24.079
what would suit them, that's what they really want, And
538
00:28:24.200 --> 00:28:28.279
Bob Carr said as much this morning on radio. He said,
539
00:28:28.519 --> 00:28:31.599
this is not in our interest. Trump could scarp of
540
00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:34.720
the whole thing because he doesn't like international treaties and
541
00:28:34.880 --> 00:28:37.920
so forth that mean America pays out, but actually, in
542
00:28:37.960 --> 00:28:41.519
this case Australia is paying out. We have already spent
543
00:28:41.880 --> 00:28:46.200
eleven billion dollars sending money to the shipyards and naval
544
00:28:46.200 --> 00:28:49.680
shipyards in the United States and to Barrow In Finesse
545
00:28:49.720 --> 00:28:52.799
in England for their shipbuilding. Three and a half billion
546
00:28:52.799 --> 00:28:57.759
dollars of Australia's taxpayers money has already gone no redress.
547
00:28:58.119 --> 00:29:02.160
Senator David Shoebridge, a Green senator who's very good. He's
548
00:29:02.200 --> 00:29:04.880
forensic on all of this stuff. He asks really good
549
00:29:04.960 --> 00:29:08.680
questions and he has had it confirmed that if the
550
00:29:08.720 --> 00:29:12.720
submarines never arrive, we don't get that money back. There's
551
00:29:12.759 --> 00:29:16.559
no redress. So it's a very very bad deal, which
552
00:29:16.599 --> 00:29:20.000
Paul Keating has said, Gareth Evans has said, Bob Carr
553
00:29:20.079 --> 00:29:23.880
has said, Carmen Lawrence has said, Peter Garrett has said.
554
00:29:24.119 --> 00:29:28.200
All these Labor Party luminaries are so upset with alban
555
00:29:28.279 --> 00:29:31.759
Easy because he just went into this pretty much blindly.
556
00:29:32.079 --> 00:29:35.359
And once a commitment has been made and the Americans
557
00:29:35.440 --> 00:29:37.240
keep patting you on the head and telling you how
558
00:29:37.279 --> 00:29:40.039
important you are and what great mates you are and
559
00:29:40.079 --> 00:29:42.920
how besties we are, they just want to go along
560
00:29:42.920 --> 00:29:46.079
with it. It's absolute madness.
561
00:29:45.799 --> 00:29:50.480
Because also a compounding additional package that's coming with we
562
00:29:50.599 --> 00:29:53.559
taking nuclear waste. Oh yes, so that that's the bit
563
00:29:53.599 --> 00:29:54.920
I thought you were going to be talking about. But
564
00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:56.359
that's true. Start about it.
565
00:29:56.640 --> 00:30:01.200
Oh that too because US and shipyards down south not
566
00:30:01.279 --> 00:30:04.359
far from where I live, act have been taken over
567
00:30:04.400 --> 00:30:08.160
by the Australian Submarine Authority. That's happening, so small businesses
568
00:30:08.240 --> 00:30:10.680
are scuttling, they're moving out of there because they can
569
00:30:10.720 --> 00:30:14.000
see the Navy is virtually taking over. They have got
570
00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:18.640
planned a new docking facility which will include dry docking
571
00:30:19.039 --> 00:30:22.680
for these Virginia class and Astute class and eventually Orchest
572
00:30:22.759 --> 00:30:26.279
class submarines a dry dock so full maintenance will be
573
00:30:26.319 --> 00:30:29.880
able to happen at Henderson. What do they do with
574
00:30:29.920 --> 00:30:34.799
the nuclear waste? This is a big issue in the plans.
575
00:30:35.319 --> 00:30:39.480
There is a controlled industrial facility being built on Garden
576
00:30:39.559 --> 00:30:43.079
Island which is meant to take the nuclear waste temporarily.
577
00:30:43.119 --> 00:30:45.000
And they say, oh, it's only low level waste or
578
00:30:45.039 --> 00:30:50.359
intermediate level waste. Well, it's actually highly enriched uranium that
579
00:30:50.440 --> 00:30:53.400
would come out of those reactors, not for a long time.
580
00:30:53.440 --> 00:30:55.599
This is why Richard Miles can blathely say oh, yes,
581
00:30:55.640 --> 00:30:57.519
we'll take the waist. Thirty years on. You see, he
582
00:30:57.599 --> 00:31:00.480
won't be around to have to deal with the fallout
583
00:31:00.480 --> 00:31:04.400
from that, literally radioact to fall out. Possibly. The Australian
584
00:31:04.440 --> 00:31:07.519
government has tried a number of times in here and
585
00:31:07.680 --> 00:31:10.599
Western Australia. Pangaea came in nineteen ninety nine and was
586
00:31:10.640 --> 00:31:14.839
sent packing in the Northern Territory, sent packing in South
587
00:31:14.880 --> 00:31:20.559
Australia sent packing. So there is no depository for high
588
00:31:20.640 --> 00:31:24.039
level or even intermediate level nuclear waste in this country.
589
00:31:24.279 --> 00:31:26.480
There are a couple of places out near Calgurley at
590
00:31:26.480 --> 00:31:29.759
Mount Walton, one government one private, which can take the
591
00:31:29.880 --> 00:31:35.440
low level hospital grade kind of contaminated waste. But the
592
00:31:35.559 --> 00:31:38.680
Government has been very mischievous in saying this is only
593
00:31:38.720 --> 00:31:41.559
low levelice. There only be things like gloves and gowns
594
00:31:41.559 --> 00:31:45.519
that will come out of a refit or a maintenance
595
00:31:45.759 --> 00:31:50.200
operation at the new Henderson base or at Garden Island itself.
596
00:31:50.640 --> 00:31:53.319
But the Medical Association for the Prevention of War has
597
00:31:53.400 --> 00:31:56.559
challenged that and said no, there are components of highly
598
00:31:56.640 --> 00:32:01.119
enriched uranium there weapons grade, but even below that, the
599
00:32:01.240 --> 00:32:06.720
intermediate level waste is very very dangerous. No radioactive waste
600
00:32:06.759 --> 00:32:10.920
is safe. Actually, we're very worried about how if they're
601
00:32:10.920 --> 00:32:15.920
doing maintenance job at Henderson, how do they ferry the
602
00:32:16.240 --> 00:32:20.359
waste down to this controlled industrial facility on Garden Island,
603
00:32:20.400 --> 00:32:22.799
which is temporary. I mean it's only a few miles,
604
00:32:22.839 --> 00:32:25.359
but it's across the water. Are they going to drone
605
00:32:25.359 --> 00:32:27.240
it across? They going to put it in rowing boats?
606
00:32:27.519 --> 00:32:29.640
What are they going to do to get the waste
607
00:32:29.880 --> 00:32:34.359
from where the boats are serviced to the controlled industrial
608
00:32:34.440 --> 00:32:37.319
facility which is only temporary, by the way, And we
609
00:32:37.400 --> 00:32:39.599
keep saying to the government, well, then what what's the
610
00:32:39.640 --> 00:32:40.079
next plan?
611
00:32:40.200 --> 00:32:40.279
What?
612
00:32:40.640 --> 00:32:45.160
There's no next plan. There's no next plan for the waste.
613
00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:48.880
It's a nightmare and it's not something the Australian government
614
00:32:48.880 --> 00:32:51.880
should be visiting on the Australian people. The other thing
615
00:32:52.000 --> 00:32:56.319
is that accidents do happen, fortunately not very often with
616
00:32:56.400 --> 00:33:01.200
the nuclear submarines. But there are already nine scuttled on
617
00:33:01.240 --> 00:33:06.359
the ocean's floors, five former Soviet Union, four American. They're
618
00:33:06.400 --> 00:33:11.319
already on the ocean floors and their containments are iron
619
00:33:11.440 --> 00:33:14.759
clad to keep their nuclear reactors safe when they're working.
620
00:33:14.920 --> 00:33:17.039
They'll eventually corrode saltwater does that.
621
00:33:17.279 --> 00:33:20.599
Yeah, and like a half life of a urinim issotopius
622
00:33:20.680 --> 00:33:22.839
like ten thousand years, So we're talking like twenty thousand
623
00:33:22.920 --> 00:33:25.839
years of slowly decay and giving off emitting.
624
00:33:26.039 --> 00:33:26.240
Yeah.
625
00:33:26.640 --> 00:33:28.720
But then the other part of this is that, yeah,
626
00:33:28.759 --> 00:33:30.839
sure that's the sor I heard that about their low
627
00:33:30.960 --> 00:33:33.960
level and intermediate stuff. But they said the cause of
628
00:33:33.960 --> 00:33:37.400
those submarines when they decay after ten years, that is
629
00:33:37.480 --> 00:33:40.359
the insane level radiactive and they don't have a plan
630
00:33:40.440 --> 00:33:40.920
for that yet.
631
00:33:41.400 --> 00:33:43.079
Well, I think that it's a bit longer than that.
632
00:33:43.200 --> 00:33:45.359
I think it's more like twenty five to thirty years.
633
00:33:45.519 --> 00:33:48.480
These submarines, the astute ones. I've been looking that up
634
00:33:48.519 --> 00:33:52.279
in detail, because the astute submarines, they can be underwater
635
00:33:52.359 --> 00:33:54.640
for a very long time. They don't have to surface
636
00:33:54.720 --> 00:33:58.079
so and they can keep going. They don't need their
637
00:33:58.279 --> 00:34:03.039
nuclear energy supply renovated or replaced for twenty five to
638
00:34:03.079 --> 00:34:06.039
thirty years. But that's what Males has said. After thirty years,
639
00:34:06.119 --> 00:34:09.159
that's okay, we'll take the way. We'll take the generators
640
00:34:09.480 --> 00:34:12.719
out of the submarines and deal with it here. Now,
641
00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:15.559
the thing is that the United Kingdom and the United
642
00:34:15.559 --> 00:34:19.159
States and all other nuclear nations, like France, which is
643
00:34:19.400 --> 00:34:23.199
still about seventy percent dependent on nuclear energy, they have
644
00:34:23.400 --> 00:34:27.679
huge duck piles of nuclear waste and nobody anywhere knows
645
00:34:27.719 --> 00:34:30.360
how to deal with it. The Fins are the closest.
646
00:34:30.360 --> 00:34:34.480
They've got this deep depository built right in underground, long
647
00:34:34.519 --> 00:34:38.320
long tunnel, very very deep, not finished, way over budget,
648
00:34:38.440 --> 00:34:40.880
way over time. And how do you prove that it's
649
00:34:40.920 --> 00:34:43.679
actually going to do the trick. What we should be
650
00:34:43.719 --> 00:34:47.559
doing is not making any more nuclear waste. Making more
651
00:34:47.599 --> 00:34:50.199
of it is a bad idea. And then the Brits
652
00:34:50.440 --> 00:34:53.760
and the Americans, if they see that Australia is stupid
653
00:34:53.880 --> 00:34:56.920
enough to take the nuclear reactors out of those submarines
654
00:34:56.960 --> 00:35:01.079
when their life is finished, they will the thin end
655
00:35:01.079 --> 00:35:02.960
of the wedge. They will then say, oh well, how
656
00:35:03.000 --> 00:35:05.280
about you take the rest of our nuclear waste. There's
657
00:35:05.320 --> 00:35:08.199
money in it for you, lots of money. That's what
658
00:35:08.280 --> 00:35:11.480
Pangaea offered when they came here in nineteen ninety nine.
659
00:35:12.159 --> 00:35:18.480
And between South Australia and Western Australia geologically stable, relatively
660
00:35:18.559 --> 00:35:21.800
politically stable, nobody out there, you know, no people to
661
00:35:21.840 --> 00:35:25.000
worry about. They thought that's where they wanted to put
662
00:35:25.119 --> 00:35:27.800
nuclear waste and they drew up plans which fortunately fell
663
00:35:27.840 --> 00:35:30.320
off the back of a truck in England and we
664
00:35:30.400 --> 00:35:34.119
heard about it. We created quite a campaign here. And
665
00:35:34.159 --> 00:35:37.840
then Richard Court, who was then the Liberal premier of
666
00:35:37.880 --> 00:35:41.320
this state, son of Charlie who got me going, he
667
00:35:41.400 --> 00:35:43.800
went to Britain to drum up a bit of business
668
00:35:43.840 --> 00:35:45.960
as they do, you know, like his dad drumming up
669
00:35:45.960 --> 00:35:49.920
a bit of investment business in Western Australia. And he thought, oh,
670
00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:53.480
I'll go and visit this British Nuclear Fuels Limited BNFL
671
00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:56.679
that we had been talking about here. They wanted to
672
00:35:56.760 --> 00:35:59.480
dump all their waist here. They've got masses of it.
673
00:36:00.199 --> 00:36:05.800
Went to their HQ and saw what was at waiting
674
00:36:05.960 --> 00:36:08.679
to be shipped somewhere anywhere to get rid of it.
675
00:36:09.440 --> 00:36:13.000
And he came back. This is a conservative liberal premier
676
00:36:13.199 --> 00:36:17.679
and he put forward legislation to ban the import of
677
00:36:18.119 --> 00:36:21.480
nuclear waste from other countries. So Richard Court did that.
678
00:36:21.880 --> 00:36:24.519
It was amazing and that's still in place. We do
679
00:36:24.679 --> 00:36:27.880
not want the nuclear waste from other countries to come here.
680
00:36:28.400 --> 00:36:31.519
But then some people would argue, well we're selling uranium.
681
00:36:31.920 --> 00:36:36.800
Our uranium was in the Fukushima set of reactors. That tumbled.
682
00:36:37.159 --> 00:36:40.920
When there's a huge tsunami in twenty eleven in Fukushima,
683
00:36:41.519 --> 00:36:45.400
Australian uranium was there. So how much responsibility do we
684
00:36:45.480 --> 00:36:48.119
have so to come full circle. That's why I've been
685
00:36:48.159 --> 00:36:51.760
involved in opposing uranium mining for forty five years.
686
00:36:52.679 --> 00:36:54.400
And it seems like, you know, that's the resource because
687
00:36:54.400 --> 00:36:57.000
if you look at the counter arguments and the benefits its,
688
00:36:57.639 --> 00:36:59.639
orcus can create a lot of jobs, that can create
689
00:36:59.679 --> 00:37:03.440
nucleus communities, and you know, uranium selling resources creates a
690
00:37:03.480 --> 00:37:05.119
lot of money for the economy. But then we go
691
00:37:05.159 --> 00:37:07.280
and waste it on this dumb shit, you know, and
692
00:37:07.320 --> 00:37:11.159
that seems like the biggest fallacy that we're wasted. We've
693
00:37:11.239 --> 00:37:13.440
just almost wasted the biggest spoom we've ever had, and
694
00:37:13.480 --> 00:37:15.039
what are the tangible benefits?
695
00:37:15.639 --> 00:37:18.599
Well, I think z that Dutton's plan to introduce nuclear
696
00:37:18.639 --> 00:37:21.360
reactors around Australia. He knows they'll never be built. He
697
00:37:21.440 --> 00:37:26.000
knows that because there's just antipathy towards nuclear reactors anyway.
698
00:37:26.440 --> 00:37:29.880
They're illegal in most states in Australia. There's there's a law,
699
00:37:30.039 --> 00:37:33.960
there are laws in place against having nuclear power stations.
700
00:37:33.960 --> 00:37:37.400
But it's all about what you just alluded to all
701
00:37:37.440 --> 00:37:40.280
the minerals that we have, the rare minerals, the critical
702
00:37:40.280 --> 00:37:43.559
minerals are now called for all of the technology that
703
00:37:43.639 --> 00:37:47.440
we need in our electric cars and so on. This
704
00:37:47.519 --> 00:37:49.880
is a big thing. China has the monopoly on that.
705
00:37:49.960 --> 00:37:52.320
At the moment, the United States wants to rob China
706
00:37:52.360 --> 00:37:55.239
of that monopoly. They want to get their hands on
707
00:37:55.840 --> 00:37:59.320
the rarest and the critical minerals here in Australia and
708
00:37:59.599 --> 00:38:01.159
stop them from going to China.
709
00:38:01.440 --> 00:38:03.440
Yeah, well, people need to go to Equatorial Guinea and
710
00:38:03.440 --> 00:38:06.119
see what's going on over there, like the mining for resources,
711
00:38:06.199 --> 00:38:08.679
go to anywhere in Africa, anywhere, and what that deal
712
00:38:08.719 --> 00:38:10.679
looks like. When you do I want to deal with
713
00:38:10.679 --> 00:38:13.079
one of these superpowers for your resources.
714
00:38:12.920 --> 00:38:16.320
It ends very badly for the local communities. Well, Australian
715
00:38:16.440 --> 00:38:18.840
uranium miners have been there too. When they realized that
716
00:38:18.880 --> 00:38:21.840
we were absolutely adamant about not having uranium mining in
717
00:38:21.880 --> 00:38:24.840
Western Australia. We've got heaps of uranium, of course, it's
718
00:38:24.840 --> 00:38:27.639
a big resource. They went and set up shop in
719
00:38:27.679 --> 00:38:30.639
Africa and they would go into a little place no
720
00:38:30.800 --> 00:38:33.679
rules and regulations, do what they like, involve a few
721
00:38:33.719 --> 00:38:36.559
of the locals with the menial jobs, so that then
722
00:38:36.599 --> 00:38:41.039
the locals become dependent on that mine, it's bills and
723
00:38:41.079 --> 00:38:45.079
so on. Notwithstanding, it's terrible, It is such exploitation.
724
00:38:45.679 --> 00:38:48.599
Anyone that's played like civilization a game or anything like
725
00:38:48.639 --> 00:38:50.719
that which is like we war, you know, anything where
726
00:38:50.719 --> 00:38:53.400
there's like superpowers interacting and stuff like that. I think
727
00:38:53.519 --> 00:38:55.199
China might have gotten onto the fact we're going to
728
00:38:55.199 --> 00:38:57.719
build these submarines in thirty years and just been all right, well,
729
00:38:57.760 --> 00:39:01.480
let's start building some anti nuclear submarine satellites or something
730
00:39:01.519 --> 00:39:03.599
like that. You know, like they'll be by the time
731
00:39:03.599 --> 00:39:05.760
this comes around. They're going to be so far ahead
732
00:39:05.760 --> 00:39:08.800
with their long term thinking. They can move a population
733
00:39:08.920 --> 00:39:11.320
in like you know, a school of fish because it's
734
00:39:11.320 --> 00:39:14.400
got that sort of power, and they've got the best
735
00:39:14.440 --> 00:39:17.440
manufacturing on the planet by a long shot. So whatever
736
00:39:17.519 --> 00:39:19.559
we do, surely they're going to be about ten steps
737
00:39:19.559 --> 00:39:20.800
ahead of it by the time we do it.
738
00:39:21.000 --> 00:39:23.400
I think that this is what the Americans are worried about.
739
00:39:23.519 --> 00:39:27.519
It's all about Americans retaining their supremacy in the world,
740
00:39:27.800 --> 00:39:32.360
their exceptionalism and aware part of it. So they're setting
741
00:39:32.440 --> 00:39:35.159
us up to be frontline if it comes to a
742
00:39:35.199 --> 00:39:39.639
war against China. Over Taiwan. They're setting Australia up to
743
00:39:39.719 --> 00:39:43.199
be front line. The only places that are closer for
744
00:39:43.320 --> 00:39:46.599
them that are useful to them are Guam and Okinawa
745
00:39:46.679 --> 00:39:50.159
and then Australia. But we have something that the others
746
00:39:50.199 --> 00:39:54.719
don't have, and that's Pine Gap. Pine Gap in the
747
00:39:54.719 --> 00:39:57.760
center of Australia, in the living heart of our magnificent desert.
748
00:39:58.079 --> 00:40:03.320
It is right now providing detailed targeting for the Israeli
749
00:40:03.360 --> 00:40:07.440
Defense Force. So all of these issues are connected Pine Gap.
750
00:40:07.800 --> 00:40:11.519
It has three huge satellites which cover the globe. Two
751
00:40:11.599 --> 00:40:16.239
of them overlap over Israel and Gaza overlap in that
752
00:40:16.280 --> 00:40:20.639
particular area. That's how they can find these particular people
753
00:40:20.920 --> 00:40:23.679
that they want to take out Pine Gap. We're helping
754
00:40:24.360 --> 00:40:25.159
and we shouldn't be.
755
00:40:25.559 --> 00:40:27.679
The people know this because I've heard pine Gap before,
756
00:40:27.679 --> 00:40:29.199
but that's the first time I've heard that. That's what
757
00:40:29.239 --> 00:40:30.280
that dart has been provided for.
758
00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:33.800
Well, it does, and it was very early on promoted
759
00:40:34.000 --> 00:40:38.079
as useful because it could trace nuclear weapons if they
760
00:40:38.079 --> 00:40:41.840
ever left their silos. So it's got tracking and targeting
761
00:40:42.079 --> 00:40:47.079
of nuclear weapons should they be launched. There's that, but
762
00:40:47.280 --> 00:40:51.039
mostly it's like a giant vacuum cleaner's sucking up information
763
00:40:51.400 --> 00:40:53.800
from all parts of the world that are useful to
764
00:40:53.840 --> 00:40:58.320
the American military, that zeroing in tracking and targeting of
765
00:40:58.519 --> 00:41:02.599
for targets that they would like to take out. So
766
00:41:02.719 --> 00:41:05.400
it's very dangerous and it's been upgraded over the years
767
00:41:05.480 --> 00:41:08.360
a number of times. I've also been into Northwest Cape,
768
00:41:08.400 --> 00:41:12.639
which is near Exmouth and liamonth Air Force Base has
769
00:41:12.679 --> 00:41:15.360
just been added to the list of designated sites to
770
00:41:15.400 --> 00:41:21.320
which the United States military has unfettered access unfettered access.
771
00:41:21.760 --> 00:41:24.960
So there's a list somewhere that we can't get hold of.
772
00:41:25.079 --> 00:41:28.320
Even David Shubridge, with all his good questions, cannot get
773
00:41:28.320 --> 00:41:31.159
hold of this list, which is under the Force Posture
774
00:41:31.199 --> 00:41:36.119
Agreement organized in twenty fourteen by the Abbott government put
775
00:41:36.119 --> 00:41:40.360
into operation twenty fifteen, which gives the United States. There
776
00:41:40.440 --> 00:41:42.599
is actually a document about that. You can look at
777
00:41:42.639 --> 00:41:45.480
that and see what's on offer if you like, or
778
00:41:45.480 --> 00:41:48.000
what we're giving to the Americans, not what they're giving
779
00:41:48.039 --> 00:41:50.639
to us, but what we're giving to the Americans, which
780
00:41:50.679 --> 00:41:53.960
is access to a lot of our military installations. The
781
00:41:53.960 --> 00:41:57.840
Force Posture Agreement should be canceled. It is so dangerous
782
00:41:57.880 --> 00:42:00.679
because the Americans can come in over the top of
783
00:42:00.760 --> 00:42:04.519
anything that the Australian government might decide. And I think
784
00:42:04.559 --> 00:42:07.719
one of the problems is that the Australian labor governments.
785
00:42:08.119 --> 00:42:11.239
Think back to nineteen seventy five when GoF Whitlam was sacked,
786
00:42:11.519 --> 00:42:15.400
partly due to US interference, and of course with the
787
00:42:15.440 --> 00:42:18.760
Crown involved as well. Somebody should have asked Bonnie Prince Charlie,
788
00:42:18.800 --> 00:42:21.320
when he was here, what about the advice you gave
789
00:42:21.360 --> 00:42:23.679
to John Kerr. He was just a young prince at
790
00:42:23.679 --> 00:42:26.880
the time, and he and John Kerr met in Papua
791
00:42:26.880 --> 00:42:29.920
New Guinea, I think walking the Kokoda Trail something like that,
792
00:42:30.719 --> 00:42:34.559
and they had a conversation. John Kerr intimated that he
793
00:42:34.679 --> 00:42:37.679
was thinking of using the power of the Governor General
794
00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:43.039
to sack Whitlam. Charlie went back told his mum okay Charteris,
795
00:42:43.039 --> 00:42:47.159
who was the Queen's major secretary at the time. They
796
00:42:47.360 --> 00:42:50.800
kind of okated, and after the deed was done and
797
00:42:50.800 --> 00:42:55.159
Whitlam was sacked, Prince Charles as he was then wrote
798
00:42:55.239 --> 00:42:59.440
to John Kerr, the Governor General, and said, hang in there, mate,
799
00:42:59.519 --> 00:43:03.239
you did the right thing. Actually those words, you did
800
00:43:03.400 --> 00:43:08.519
the right thing, that was sacking our democratically elected Prime Minister.
801
00:43:09.000 --> 00:43:12.039
So I think Labour governments ever since have been terrified
802
00:43:12.400 --> 00:43:14.800
that the same thing could happen because the CIA, of
803
00:43:14.840 --> 00:43:18.280
course have gott its tentacles everywhere. They know exactly what's
804
00:43:18.320 --> 00:43:21.559
going on, who's thinking this, who's challenging that? They know
805
00:43:21.719 --> 00:43:25.960
exactly what is going on in Australia visa VI. The
806
00:43:26.079 --> 00:43:30.320
very close relationship with our greatest friend and ally which incidentally,
807
00:43:30.360 --> 00:43:34.199
Malcolm Fraser not long before he died, he wrote a
808
00:43:34.199 --> 00:43:38.320
book called Dangerous Ally he's talking about the United States.
809
00:43:38.440 --> 00:43:42.199
Now that's a former Conservative Prime minister of this country.
810
00:43:42.360 --> 00:43:45.719
He could see that this alliance is actually dangerous for Australia.
811
00:43:46.320 --> 00:43:49.079
Now, you've seen a lot of politic eras of politics
812
00:43:49.119 --> 00:43:52.400
from inside and outside like that. What's one of the
813
00:43:52.400 --> 00:43:55.320
trends you've noticed, Because, like you said before, when Ronald
814
00:43:55.360 --> 00:43:57.920
Reagan was in, you're like, this guy's a nightmare, right,
815
00:43:58.159 --> 00:43:59.920
But then the next guy seems worse, and then you
816
00:44:00.159 --> 00:44:03.239
like George Bush, and then George W. Bush goes, you know,
817
00:44:03.280 --> 00:44:05.360
and it's just getting We're just like, what the hell now?
818
00:44:05.920 --> 00:44:08.840
I mean, it's gobsmacking we're at Trump and then it's
819
00:44:08.840 --> 00:44:13.239
gobsmacking that we've got guys like Peter Dutton taking the
820
00:44:13.239 --> 00:44:15.760
play for Honestly, these aren't the best candidates in any
821
00:44:15.800 --> 00:44:18.000
of these countries to run it. There's surely there's guys
822
00:44:18.039 --> 00:44:20.679
coming out of Harvard or MIT or something that aren't
823
00:44:20.679 --> 00:44:25.320
politicians or lawyers or political scientists or used car salesman
824
00:44:25.559 --> 00:44:27.360
or any of that kind of stuff. But like, where's
825
00:44:27.400 --> 00:44:30.400
the smart people that make good decisions and what the
826
00:44:30.400 --> 00:44:31.599
hell happened to them? Well?
827
00:44:31.599 --> 00:44:33.320
I think the US has been in decline for a
828
00:44:33.360 --> 00:44:38.599
long time. There was the Swedish professor of psychology, I think,
829
00:44:38.679 --> 00:44:42.000
and he had studied empires and their declines, and I
830
00:44:42.039 --> 00:44:45.440
remember hearing him speak probably about twenty years ago here
831
00:44:45.480 --> 00:44:49.119
when he was doing an international tour, and Johann Goldtung said,
832
00:44:49.320 --> 00:44:52.960
there are ten factors involved in the decline of empire,
833
00:44:53.239 --> 00:44:56.039
and guess how many of those are in play at
834
00:44:56.039 --> 00:45:00.280
the moment in the United States? Every single one. So
835
00:45:00.320 --> 00:45:02.559
he said it's a matter of time. And I do
836
00:45:02.599 --> 00:45:05.000
believe that it's a matter of time the United States
837
00:45:05.039 --> 00:45:08.840
will fall and crumble. I think if Carmala Harris had
838
00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:10.719
been elected, we would have had a bit more of
839
00:45:10.719 --> 00:45:15.159
a stay on it, you know, slight, you know, slightly better.
840
00:45:15.159 --> 00:45:19.119
But the Democratic Party lost the plot totally when they
841
00:45:19.280 --> 00:45:23.480
eliminated Bernie Sanders eight years ago because he had some ideas.
842
00:45:23.639 --> 00:45:25.599
I was going to say, you WEREMINMEI of Bernie Sanders,
843
00:45:25.800 --> 00:45:28.360
because I just think that you have a track record
844
00:45:28.400 --> 00:45:31.039
of doing it for so long, and you're saying, you know,
845
00:45:31.159 --> 00:45:32.840
we need to build on education, healthcare.
846
00:45:33.599 --> 00:45:37.000
Yeah, and Bernie Sanders knew that if a Democratic Party
847
00:45:37.039 --> 00:45:39.440
didn't turn around and really look after the working people,
848
00:45:39.559 --> 00:45:42.320
it would lose them. And what's happened. They've lost them,
849
00:45:42.360 --> 00:45:45.320
as you said, the lat Nino's voting for Trump. They've
850
00:45:45.360 --> 00:45:49.239
lost their base the working class because they have tried
851
00:45:49.280 --> 00:45:53.440
to accommodate the rich and powerful and stay with those
852
00:45:53.679 --> 00:45:56.679
lobbyists who stand to make a lot of money. Because
853
00:45:56.679 --> 00:45:57.960
if you're at the top of the parle in the
854
00:45:58.039 --> 00:46:01.119
United States, your life is very very comfortable, thank you
855
00:46:01.320 --> 00:46:04.000
very much. But if you're on the bottom end, not
856
00:46:04.119 --> 00:46:06.599
so much. And the bottom ends like ninety six percent
857
00:46:06.679 --> 00:46:07.280
of the population.
858
00:46:07.400 --> 00:46:08.920
Yeah. But I read a really good book this sort
859
00:46:08.920 --> 00:46:11.599
of echoes what you said. It was Jared Diamond Collapse,
860
00:46:12.519 --> 00:46:15.320
such a good writer us. But he goes through all
861
00:46:15.360 --> 00:46:18.039
the you know, the Mayan empire and goes through and
862
00:46:18.119 --> 00:46:20.280
sort of shows all the things that felt the great
863
00:46:20.320 --> 00:46:23.079
you know, what was in play that led to the
864
00:46:23.119 --> 00:46:25.519
collapse of that empire. Because we think there's a meme
865
00:46:25.559 --> 00:46:27.880
going around on the internet about what does this guy think?
866
00:46:27.920 --> 00:46:29.639
You know, what is my husband thinking? And it's like
867
00:46:29.840 --> 00:46:32.039
him thinking about the Roman Empire and it's like ninety
868
00:46:32.119 --> 00:46:34.880
nine percent of the time accurate, and so like, ask
869
00:46:34.920 --> 00:46:37.000
your husband what you're thinking. He's like, oh, did Julius
870
00:46:37.239 --> 00:46:39.559
you know? And so you look at that. So they
871
00:46:39.599 --> 00:46:42.320
came the closest to getting the world right and then
872
00:46:42.480 --> 00:46:44.760
they collapsed from the inside. And there were certain factors
873
00:46:44.760 --> 00:46:47.880
in play, and exactly America has all of those factors
874
00:46:47.920 --> 00:46:50.639
currently in play at like eleven fifty nine on the clock.
875
00:46:51.960 --> 00:46:56.599
Exactly. Yeah, So we are witnessing probably the decline of empire,
876
00:46:57.199 --> 00:47:00.559
but we shouldn't be taken down with it. We've got
877
00:47:00.639 --> 00:47:05.639
so many resources, not least of which should be some
878
00:47:05.679 --> 00:47:08.519
smart people who decide that we're not going to keep
879
00:47:08.840 --> 00:47:14.239
blindly following into more wars or more weapons manufacturing, which
880
00:47:14.239 --> 00:47:17.599
is where they make their money. But Australia, oh, I know,
881
00:47:17.679 --> 00:47:22.239
the other part of that Congressional research document said forget
882
00:47:22.239 --> 00:47:26.760
about pillar one, you know, submarine, the Virginia class submarines
883
00:47:26.840 --> 00:47:29.519
going to Australian ports, you know, for a certain length
884
00:47:29.599 --> 00:47:31.599
of time until the orchest ones are built. Forget that.
885
00:47:31.719 --> 00:47:34.119
Let's just homeport them. And they went on to say,
886
00:47:34.639 --> 00:47:39.559
let the Australians buy other materials from us that are
887
00:47:39.679 --> 00:47:42.880
useful to us. And what have we just done? Signed
888
00:47:42.920 --> 00:47:47.360
a seven billion, seven billion contract for long range missiles?
889
00:47:47.679 --> 00:47:50.559
Now what do we need long range missiles for? Australia
890
00:47:50.599 --> 00:47:54.480
has no natural enemies. We have no enemies of our
891
00:47:54.519 --> 00:47:58.440
own making. None. We should be good neighbors and have
892
00:47:58.519 --> 00:48:01.800
good relationships with every body in the Asia Pacific region.
893
00:48:01.840 --> 00:48:04.400
And Paul Keating was right about that years ago when
894
00:48:04.400 --> 00:48:07.599
he said our eyes should be looking towards Asia. We
895
00:48:07.679 --> 00:48:09.800
are the white fellas here a kind of in the
896
00:48:09.800 --> 00:48:13.639
wrong place. It's not our culture. We rob that from
897
00:48:13.719 --> 00:48:17.000
the indigenous people. Our skin is light colored and we
898
00:48:17.039 --> 00:48:19.760
all get blotches and cancers. You know, we're not really
899
00:48:19.800 --> 00:48:25.119
in the right place. And that idea that we could
900
00:48:25.199 --> 00:48:29.280
be independent, you know, is it's not a new idea.
901
00:48:29.400 --> 00:48:32.800
But we really wanted to take currency, We really wanted
902
00:48:32.840 --> 00:48:36.360
to gain something. So the independent, peaceful Australian Network that
903
00:48:36.400 --> 00:48:38.920
I mentioned a little while ago, with its conference here
904
00:48:39.119 --> 00:48:42.760
put out a document charting our own course a couple
905
00:48:42.800 --> 00:48:44.400
of years ago. Actually, I've got a copy of it
906
00:48:44.440 --> 00:48:46.880
here I can leave with you. It is just so
907
00:48:47.119 --> 00:48:52.679
good because it goes through the absolutely amazing capacity that
908
00:48:52.719 --> 00:48:57.199
we have and we are squandering the opportunities that we
909
00:48:57.320 --> 00:49:00.719
have by blindly following the Americans into war after war
910
00:49:00.840 --> 00:49:01.679
after war.
911
00:49:01.719 --> 00:49:04.320
Also following into their culture, because I think just picking
912
00:49:04.400 --> 00:49:07.599
red or blue isn't really, this isn't really. That's like
913
00:49:07.679 --> 00:49:09.679
the game when you go to casino, you know, they
914
00:49:09.719 --> 00:49:10.920
say do you want to put it on red or
915
00:49:10.920 --> 00:49:12.000
do you want to put it on black? And it's
916
00:49:12.000 --> 00:49:13.920
fifty to fifty, But then there's this green zero that
917
00:49:13.960 --> 00:49:16.960
will here we go. But but like that's the polarization
918
00:49:17.039 --> 00:49:20.320
and the tribe dividing, you know, dividing, dividing and conquering
919
00:49:20.320 --> 00:49:23.000
it stuff. We can sit here. Australians are very good
920
00:49:23.000 --> 00:49:25.280
at speaking their mind, but they don't have the information
921
00:49:25.360 --> 00:49:27.480
to say anything meaningful at the moment, I don't think,
922
00:49:27.960 --> 00:49:30.360
And so a big part of that is that we
923
00:49:30.400 --> 00:49:32.440
should be able to sit here in the region because
924
00:49:32.480 --> 00:49:35.760
when other works extensively in China and in America, and
925
00:49:36.079 --> 00:49:38.039
they're the two of the most hospital nations I've ever
926
00:49:38.039 --> 00:49:40.719
been to. Like on the ground, friendly people, the Chinese
927
00:49:41.400 --> 00:49:44.440
hilarious and really nice and cooking dinner and sharing, and
928
00:49:44.480 --> 00:49:46.599
I reckon they'd get along really well. It's just that
929
00:49:46.639 --> 00:49:50.320
the interests of the government direction sort of misalign and
930
00:49:50.360 --> 00:49:52.840
then Australians kind of go, well, what team were going
931
00:49:52.880 --> 00:49:56.000
on in the world, And that's the mistake. The game
932
00:49:56.079 --> 00:49:57.800
is that there's more than two options.
933
00:49:58.239 --> 00:50:01.079
We shouldn't have to choose between one or the other.
934
00:50:01.239 --> 00:50:05.800
That's absolutely right. Alan Beem, who works for the Australian Institute,
935
00:50:05.840 --> 00:50:09.000
wrote a really interesting book recently called The Odd Couple.
936
00:50:09.320 --> 00:50:11.840
So it's got the Statue of Liberty all dressed up
937
00:50:11.840 --> 00:50:15.360
and looking very severe, and then beside the Statue of
938
00:50:15.360 --> 00:50:18.679
Liberty there's an Australian farmer, you know, with his kubra,
939
00:50:18.880 --> 00:50:22.559
and it's called the Odd Couple, and he says, basically, yeah,
940
00:50:22.599 --> 00:50:25.400
we're in a relationship with the United States, but this
941
00:50:25.480 --> 00:50:29.039
couple they need therapy, they need help. And he also
942
00:50:29.239 --> 00:50:33.920
says that Australia has a lot more clout than we
943
00:50:34.280 --> 00:50:38.679
actually use in America. This is one thing I got
944
00:50:38.679 --> 00:50:40.320
out of his book. Usually and I read a book,
945
00:50:40.360 --> 00:50:42.719
I get one good new idea out of it. This
946
00:50:42.760 --> 00:50:46.280
one was not just that they need therapy. That's true.
947
00:50:46.320 --> 00:50:49.239
In fact, I think we should, you know, divorce, separate
948
00:50:49.639 --> 00:50:53.719
the relationship. Actually, he said, Australia is one of the
949
00:50:53.760 --> 00:50:57.800
biggest investors in the United States. We send a lot
950
00:50:57.880 --> 00:50:59.760
of money to the United States. And how do we
951
00:50:59.760 --> 00:51:03.760
do that through our superannuation funds. A lot of those
952
00:51:03.800 --> 00:51:08.480
are invested in America, bilions in America. And what do
953
00:51:08.559 --> 00:51:10.679
they use for? Mostly what are the two biggest growth
954
00:51:10.719 --> 00:51:15.480
industries in the United States? Weapons prisons. And I'm thinking,
955
00:51:15.599 --> 00:51:17.960
oh my god, do we really want to support the
956
00:51:18.000 --> 00:51:21.880
Americans with their weapons manufacturing and making more prisons to
957
00:51:21.960 --> 00:51:26.239
incarcerate poor people who aren't managing in their crumbling economy,
958
00:51:26.519 --> 00:51:30.280
in their crumbling empire. It's terrible. So he says we
959
00:51:30.280 --> 00:51:34.239
should use our influence. We should say, hey, United States,
960
00:51:34.239 --> 00:51:36.880
look we've got this, We've got that, we've got something else.
961
00:51:36.880 --> 00:51:38.920
We're sending a lot of money in your direction, but
962
00:51:39.000 --> 00:51:42.599
we don't like the idea of being used as a
963
00:51:42.639 --> 00:51:48.880
homeport for your long range attack Tomahawk cruise, missile miss
964
00:51:48.960 --> 00:51:52.599
nuclear submarines. Joe Biden was very careful to say that
965
00:51:52.639 --> 00:51:56.039
they would not be nuclear armed. But I have history
966
00:51:56.079 --> 00:52:00.840
here with a former US Navy admiral here retired, and
967
00:52:00.960 --> 00:52:04.920
often military people when they retire, they make very good sense,
968
00:52:04.960 --> 00:52:07.679
as did Mount Baton in England. He said, nuclear weapons
969
00:52:07.679 --> 00:52:10.519
take us to the edge of the precipice, you know,
970
00:52:10.920 --> 00:52:14.159
need to get rid of them, Basically Mount Batton and
971
00:52:14.719 --> 00:52:18.320
this man, Jean Lorock was his name, and I remember
972
00:52:18.360 --> 00:52:21.239
meeting him when I was in the Senate at an
973
00:52:21.320 --> 00:52:25.480
inquiry of some sort, and he said, if a US
974
00:52:26.599 --> 00:52:34.760
military platform is nuclear weapons capable, it will be nuclear armed.
975
00:52:34.760 --> 00:52:37.280
And he's doing this with his finger on the table
976
00:52:37.280 --> 00:52:41.320
for emphasis, will be nuclear armed if it's nuclear weapons capable.
977
00:52:41.519 --> 00:52:43.480
They're not going to have platforms that they don't put
978
00:52:43.599 --> 00:52:46.840
nuclear weapons on, no way. So what are they going
979
00:52:46.920 --> 00:52:49.280
to do when these Virginia Class That's why they want
980
00:52:49.280 --> 00:52:52.360
to homeport them here because there will be less oversight,
981
00:52:52.679 --> 00:52:55.920
there will be less consultation that has to happen, and
982
00:52:56.000 --> 00:52:59.320
they will bring in those Virginia class submarines armed with
983
00:52:59.360 --> 00:53:03.960
their Tomahawk cruise missiles, long range nuclear That's what I'm
984
00:53:04.119 --> 00:53:05.880
thinking is their main game.
985
00:53:06.159 --> 00:53:07.840
I was going to end this by asking you a
986
00:53:07.880 --> 00:53:09.880
strategy for people to do it, but you just sort
987
00:53:09.880 --> 00:53:11.400
of kind of said, you know, hit and where it
988
00:53:11.480 --> 00:53:14.320
hurts with the money. Australia is the biggest investors of
989
00:53:14.360 --> 00:53:16.519
superannuation and the planet. I'm pretty sure something like that
990
00:53:16.559 --> 00:53:19.440
per capita. And so you can look where you're putting
991
00:53:19.480 --> 00:53:21.800
your superannuation, who owns it, where's it going and if
992
00:53:21.800 --> 00:53:23.480
it's all ably actually vote with your dollars.
993
00:53:24.159 --> 00:53:27.440
Yes, that's a really good ideas and we've got to
994
00:53:27.440 --> 00:53:31.239
thank Paul Keating for the superannuation thing, which is basically
995
00:53:31.239 --> 00:53:33.199
a good idea. But where does the money go? What
996
00:53:34.079 --> 00:53:37.440
is it assisting? If there's evil on the planet. And
997
00:53:37.519 --> 00:53:39.840
I like to think of things in positive terms, you know,
998
00:53:39.880 --> 00:53:42.000
as a Quaker, I like to see the goodness in
999
00:53:42.119 --> 00:53:47.000
everybody in every situation, build on goodness. But if there's
1000
00:53:47.039 --> 00:53:49.679
evil in the world, I think it's nuclear weapons manual
1001
00:53:49.880 --> 00:53:53.639
not just nuclear weapons, but all weapons manufacturers. They don't
1002
00:53:53.679 --> 00:53:56.239
care who they sell to. They will sell to both
1003
00:53:56.280 --> 00:53:59.440
sides in the same conflicts. They will actually generate conflicts
1004
00:53:59.559 --> 00:54:03.079
because it's good for business. So there's evil. They're people
1005
00:54:03.159 --> 00:54:07.719
making money out of other people suffering very directly. It
1006
00:54:07.800 --> 00:54:11.159
makes me feel absolutely sick. And recently when we had
1007
00:54:11.239 --> 00:54:14.599
the disrupt Land Forces efforts in Melbourne when there was
1008
00:54:14.599 --> 00:54:19.320
a huge arms bizarre, it's bi doubles, biza double are
1009
00:54:19.480 --> 00:54:23.280
as well as a bizarre like a selling place. They
1010
00:54:23.360 --> 00:54:29.119
got hammered, you know, and they're considered as a terrorist.
1011
00:54:29.360 --> 00:54:36.079
Disrupting the Landforces disrupting a weapons manufacturing exhibition is a
1012
00:54:36.119 --> 00:54:39.280
good thing to do. We need to be aware that
1013
00:54:39.320 --> 00:54:44.559
this is where evil is residing and being visited upon us.
1014
00:54:44.880 --> 00:54:48.559
We buy stuff that we don't need in military terms,
1015
00:54:48.840 --> 00:54:51.440
we bought from the United States. Again, they're clapped out.
1016
00:54:51.480 --> 00:54:55.079
Abram's tanks. They couldn't go over any bridges in Australia.
1017
00:54:55.079 --> 00:54:58.119
They were too heavy. You know, the engineering hadn't been
1018
00:54:58.159 --> 00:55:00.880
ready a look at this is where alphaland so it
1019
00:55:00.960 --> 00:55:04.639
was right lazy, not looking at the detail, not going
1020
00:55:04.679 --> 00:55:06.679
into the consequences.
1021
00:55:06.280 --> 00:55:09.440
Bringing in rabbits, bringing in cane, bloody emu or you name.
1022
00:55:09.519 --> 00:55:12.480
It's like just another frickin. Yeah. Well, hopefully we just
1023
00:55:12.599 --> 00:55:15.159
learned something like we hear voices like yours and we
1024
00:55:15.239 --> 00:55:18.320
put some proper information into context and we make decisions
1025
00:55:18.360 --> 00:55:20.679
on our own and that's kind of the hope for Australia. Yeah. Yeah,
1026
00:55:20.719 --> 00:55:23.199
people would like to get involved with you. Where you
1027
00:55:23.199 --> 00:55:25.880
know and your causes. Where can they find more information?
1028
00:55:26.000 --> 00:55:29.239
Well, there is stop orcus WA. There's a website and
1029
00:55:29.320 --> 00:55:32.239
people can tap into that. We have an amazing group
1030
00:55:32.280 --> 00:55:35.199
of people. We meet mostly by zoom and then just
1031
00:55:35.199 --> 00:55:42.519
see each other at events that we create. We've got unionists, socialists, communists, Greens, students,
1032
00:55:42.639 --> 00:55:47.039
a nice conglomerate of people and luckily in Perth we're
1033
00:55:47.039 --> 00:55:48.960
small enough that we kind of know each other, so
1034
00:55:49.000 --> 00:55:52.840
there's trust. We're all on the same page working against
1035
00:55:52.880 --> 00:55:55.519
this aucust thing. People need to if they live in
1036
00:55:55.519 --> 00:55:58.719
this area down the coastal strippy and challenge their local
1037
00:55:58.719 --> 00:56:02.280
government authorities who are keen as mustard to get the
1038
00:56:02.320 --> 00:56:06.280
financial crumbs from the table. And again they're not looking
1039
00:56:06.360 --> 00:56:10.000
at the costs. There will be some benefits, but the
1040
00:56:10.039 --> 00:56:13.400
costs will far outweigh the benefits. So we need people
1041
00:56:13.440 --> 00:56:16.519
to get involved at the local level because it's not
1042
00:56:16.519 --> 00:56:18.920
really a local government issue. This is a federal issue.
1043
00:56:18.960 --> 00:56:22.320
So people need to write to their federal members and
1044
00:56:22.400 --> 00:56:26.440
say what are you doing this aucusing? Please explain why
1045
00:56:26.639 --> 00:56:30.599
is this thing this aucusing good for Australia. Incidentally, one
1046
00:56:30.639 --> 00:56:33.840
other final point is that either the United Kingdom or
1047
00:56:33.880 --> 00:56:37.119
the United States can pull out at any time twelve
1048
00:56:37.199 --> 00:56:39.960
months notice. In writing, they can pull out. That's my
1049
00:56:40.079 --> 00:56:41.960
hope for Trump. I've been saying for a couple of
1050
00:56:42.079 --> 00:56:44.960
years not wanting Trump to get reelected, but if he does,
1051
00:56:45.000 --> 00:56:47.639
this could be the silver lining. He could pull the
1052
00:56:47.719 --> 00:56:52.159
pin on orcas. The United Kingdom's economy is in big trouble.
1053
00:56:52.159 --> 00:56:55.440
They're shipbuilding yards are in big trouble. They could pull
1054
00:56:55.440 --> 00:56:57.920
the pin, but that is not something that is afforded
1055
00:56:57.960 --> 00:57:01.599
to Australia. We can't pull out, but they can. I mean,
1056
00:57:01.599 --> 00:57:04.599
what sort of deal is this? It's just bananas.
1057
00:57:04.719 --> 00:57:07.719
Yeah, thank you so much for your time. Thanks Simon,
1058
00:57:14.719 --> 00:57:17.440
Thank you for listening to the Stories within Stories podcast.
1059
00:57:17.960 --> 00:57:20.760
We hope you've enjoyed this show. For more stories like this,
1060
00:57:20.840 --> 00:57:40.079
head to Bear for media do SA