Nights with John Stanley

00:07 Across Australia, this is Knights with John Stanley. 00:12 Good evening, everyone. Welcome along. Welcome to Wednesday night. There's a lot ahead of us tonight. We'll talk cars in the next hour. We've got a little bit of nostalgia for you, as we always do, on a Wednesday night. And we have a news hour guest tonight that can be across, well, everything. Political commentator. She might be able to give us an insight of the big racing coming up this weekend. There's actually a lot we'll be able to talk about in this next hour and a lot has been happening in Canberra today on a number of different fronts. The ongoing problems the government's having with small business and grappling with small business legislation. 00:44 You've had this move and again I've been highlighting this to you over the last six months that the Minns government doing everything it can to be different to the federal government. And so now they're saying they're going to waive stamp duty on individuals and businesses. You heard this, and the New South Wales Treasurer was on our Money News program announcing all of this. So people have to restructure their trust arrangements. following the changes to the trust laws introduced by the government that they won't have to pay New South Wales stamp duty. 01:16 And I'm not sure what sort of a hit that's going to be because governments are reliant on stamp duty. But again, there's that one. And then you've had this quite extraordinary story today as both the Treasurer and the Prime Minister seem to be at odds as to who made the decision to backflip on the tax office imposing the surcharge on people paying their taxes to the tax office. And it's not getting away from the broader question of the surcharges, the impact, the rising prices. 01:46 And we said last night, you have got this situation now where the surcharge has gone. A lot of you are saying, well, there are businesses that might have been imposing a surcharge of, say, 1.5%, but their price has gone up by 10%. And the reply to that would seem to be, from anecdotal evidence and from business lobby groups and umbrella groups, These are businesses that have been absorbing increases left, right and centre for some years. Inflationary impacts, energy costs going up, delivery costs going up, all the things that they have, all their inputs have gone up and they've absorbed them. 02:23 And now they've figured, well, this is where we can get some of that back to try and keep our heads above water. And then you've got this... I'm not sure this is such a surprise. What is surprising about it, and we flagged this for you last week, what is a surprise is that the Greens have got involved in killing off this over-65s health rebate. Now, if you'll remember... 02:49 The day after the budget, we talked about this on our program because it was actually devised by one of our News Hour guests, Terry Barnes, when he was working with the Howard government going all the way back then. 03:00 And it was devised as an opportunity for the 30% rebate that people get. So public private health insurance is 30% subsidised by the taxpayer. 03:11 And the idea was that once you get to 65 above that, the rebate goes up as you get older. And so the people, as they get older and their income starts to slim down and they're essentially trying to make ends meet, they want to hang on to their private health cover. And so anyone who applied any ounce of brains to this knew that it was not going to be saving the taxpayer money because if you're paying less of a rebate, a lot of those people are going to be switching over to the public hospital system when they give up their private health cover. 03:43 And that's where they'll be going. The argument is, in fact, you'd be paying the taxpayer even more. So it's now been killed off. But it is extraordinary that it's the coalition lining up with the Greens who to stop this going through. The Greens have always been opposed to the notion of private health cover, but they've also been talking about the number of people on very low incomes who are gonna be affected by this, numbers that came out from the health department. And so all of that has happened today. The question of, where the government is on the issue of anti-Semitism. 04:15 And then in New South Wales, we have this extraordinary 24 hours where there was a $300,000 plus grant discovered to an organisation that was preaching some pretty miserable stuff. 04:29 And... 04:31 Following pressure, front page story in the Telegraph today, the Minister, midway through today, decided that the funding's being pulled. It still raises questions about that whole program. We'll look at that with our News Hour guest as well. You want to be part of it, you're welcome to give us a call, 131873. You can send us a Text on our feedback line 0460 873 873. And of course, if there's something you think we should be talking about that you haven't heard right through the day, you're welcome to bowl it up to us over the next hour or so in our news hour. 05:02 12 past eight past seven if you're in Queensland. 05:06 Quarter past eight is the time, 131873. Just a note here, one of our listeners making the point, I talked about the Greens. The Greens, the Coalition and all the crossbenchers have all got together in the Senate and opposed the decision to scrap the over 65 health rebate, the higher health rebate. If you go back to when this was first announced earlier in the year, we had Terry Barnes here who devised the policy. And Terry was... very, very sceptical that there'd be any way of it not going through because he was saying, well, there's all this other stuff creating all this hullabaloo. 05:41 And the government's view is, well, these are just older people that don't vote for them anyway. And I said, well, what about the crossbenchers? Well, they don't vote for them either. So the view was that, you know, people would be very cynical and go, well, we don't need their votes. We'll let it through. But what's happened is crossbenchers, Greens, Coalition have all gone, no, this is wrong. And they've looked at it and it's wrong. Jamie Rogers is our Wednesday night news hour guest. She has her own program, of course, on Sunday nights on News 24. 06:12 She's a political journalist, commentator. She's on the board of the North Sydney Bears in Sydney, but she's also part of the Bears organisation. Of course, it's coming to the rugby league. So you've got a lot of irons and a lot of fires and you're also someone who knows a bit about horse racing. We'll borrow that knowledge later. Jamie, good evening. 06:31 Good evening, John, and good evening to all of your listeners. 06:33 Just on the health rebate, it's one of those ones that isn't all that sexy and wasn't really as big and didn't get as much coverage as all of the other stories out of the budget. But you did it on your show, we did it on our show, and when you do it, you start to get the feedback from the people who've done their sums and worked out that's going to... 06:51 torpedo their chances of sticking with their private health cover well that was the concern for me john is that first of all older australians have done everything they've been told to do throughout their life have your private health insurance and at the time that you need it the most is when the rebates were going to be getting cut back and it was going to save the budget around three billion dollars over four years but the issue that i had with this is the government are trying to find savings That's not finding savings. It is literally shifting one cost into just another area onto older Australians. 07:26 If you're trying to find savings, go and cut the government waste. And so I just kept thinking, you're just literally putting this issue onto older Australians. You're expecting them to pick up the brunt of your reckless spending. So I think that this is a really good move that the Greens and Coalition, along with the likes of Jackie Lambie... have worked together to effectively throw out this idea of the private health changes. In saying that though, according to an article I was reading before with the ABC, Mark Butler is going to continue pushing for this legislation and he will likely try and put it forward again tomorrow. 08:03 One of the worrying parts of this is that they're saying the money that they'd save would be going into aged care. Now, as we've said, it's not going to save taxpayers any money because people who drop their private health cover will move into the public hospital system and that's being funded by the states and that's already overflowing. It's that old thing of the federal and state governments going back and forth on this. And the thing that also worries me is if you're saying, all right, well, we won't put this extra money into aged care Until you pay for this. Well, there are people in limbo in hospital beds who should be in aged care. 08:37 There are people who can't. 08:38 People are dying waiting for their aged care packages. 08:41 And every week for those people is crucial. And every week someone waits on the wait list for home care. That's a week that maybe puts them over the edge and they can't stay in their home. It's just wrong. 08:52 It's wrong and it's an absolute mess. And I've called this out on my program before in Where Is Sam Ray? He is the Minister for Aged Care. He needs to be standing up and sorting out what's going on. Because there's been articles in the Daily Telegraph where... 09:09 people are getting care over in places like Thailand and Bali versus waiting in Australia because the wait could be 12 months to be getting your aged care package or to be going into an aged care service and you're better off just fleeing Australia and going overseas. That's not a solution either. That's not how it should be working in Australia. So it's a huge mess and I think it is the right thing to make sure that these private health changes don't go through because to your point, They'll stop having their private health cover and end up going into what's already an extremely overstretched public system. 09:42 And that's not going to be viable either. 09:44 And I did mention this last night, but I'm loathe to raise it again, because when you've heard year after year going all the way back, they say, we need to do something about the way we fund health in this country, where you've got the federal government, state government, they're... 09:58 shifting the blame back and forth, shifting the costs back and forth. And they talk about trying to rationalise it. Kevin Rudd talked about it. Tony Abbott talked about it. Malcolm Turnbull talked about it. For various reasons, it's never happened. And so you wonder if we could ever resolve it because it's a real mess. 10:12 Well, especially New South Wales, the spotlight's really been on at the moment. And 2GB's been really good covering it because a lot of your listeners are calling in after being in the waiting room for 24, 48 hours. And... 10:24 There was just recently that story where the federal government had withdrawn some of the funding that was going to be allocated to more beds in New South Wales. And so then the state government are left scrambling to try and solve that gap there. And so you're right, it is a complex issue that needs to be sorted out. 10:40 I do remember, and again, I think we're probably, we might talk about it later in the hour, we're getting to a more rational discussion about immigration. It's about simply numbers and how we can accommodate people and having people in the right place, because the country's been built on immigration. But I remember when Bob Carr was Premier and I remember Bob Carr 25 years ago was saying, Sydney is full. And he was being criticised for saying, well, you're using that as an excuse for the hospitals. At that time, the hospitals were struggling. But I looked and pretty well every hospital was being upgraded, expanded, but could only be expanded enough to deal with the increase in the number of people using the hospital. 11:21 And so that's the game, isn't it? 11:23 What we're seeing now, John, is mass immigration and the lack of planning around it playing out in real life. We're seeing public schools are stretched to capacity where kids are having to get on the bus and going to other suburbs because their local schools are full. Hospitals are full. There are wait times that are through the roof. Traffic on the road is constantly congested. And this is what happens when you bring a mass influx of people into the country and don't plan appropriately for it. We see queues of people waiting to go and look at rental apartments. 11:56 We've got a housing supply shortage, which I know also there's other issues with that too. But this is what's happening when you bring in way too many people than what you've planned for. 12:06 Yeah. One through. I want to get to that because there's been an entry to the immigration debate by the Australian Hotels Association which represents the hospitality industry. I want to get to that a bit later on because I think it's a nuanced campaign but the ad they've run is actually very much in your face but Rod's called in with a thought on private health cover. Hello Rod. 12:30 Yeah, look, I just want to make a comment about private health. To me, there should be an incentive-based system. Obviously, a lot of people, unless you have an accident or misfortune, you don't use your private health. I've been in private health for years. I didn't use it much in my 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s. And it should roll over like a super fund where it obviously accumulates. And as you get older, the fund's growing. So when you get to old age, there's funds available to look after your health. And not only if you have an incentive-based system, you go to the doctor each year and get all of your health, get a basic health check, you know, your blood pressure, your BMI. 13:06 And not only are you encouraging people to look after their health, if you get a tick in the box, maybe your premiums are actually lower. They should roll over each year as you don't use it and it accumulates. And when you get to old age, you've been drawn and you wouldn't be having this issue that they currently have. 13:22 Yeah. It's an interesting point because you have this idea, and I might actually talk to Terry's, you know, it's so complicated. And Terry's with us tomorrow night, but they have this notion that you don't discriminate. So you have to, you can't say, well, this person gets charged a higher premium because they're a smoker or whatever it is. So you have this notion. And I guess what he's saying there is if you've got to the age of 60, you've put all this money into your private health cover and you haven't used it. You'd have lower premiums, but then the person who has been using it is probably going to use it more once they get to 60. 13:55 It's really problematic. 13:57 It is problematic. And to Rod's point, we do have private health insurance and don't tend to use it as much as you would in the younger stages. I mean, we use it for the dentist and all those sort of things, but you certainly need to be tapping into it as you get older in your life. 14:12 Yeah, and the other thing is, and it's about preventive health and actually putting more money into GPs and actually getting people checked out so that when they're younger, they actually look after their health. 14:26 Which is extremely important. You know, Healthy Harold was at my kids' school yesterday to try and teach all of those healthy habits and healthy eating, which is all things that we should be taught at home anyway, because that also can help you later on. 14:38 Because we always talk, I talk to people about this and say, oh, it's not a bad idea. You have all these campaigns that you've got to save for your retirement in terms of money. This is what you've got to do, you save for your retirement. We never do enough to say, well, look, when you're in your 40s, when you start working on your super, you should also start working on your health. Because when you get to 60, 70 and you decide to retire and you think, I've got all this money, if you can't move around and you're not feeling very well, I mean, get your health in order as well. Yeah. So you can enjoy it, I would have thought. Yeah. 15:05 Isn't there a campaign that's going on around now with a former Olympian that's telling everyone to eat healthier, be fitter, to try and encourage that longevity? 15:14 Duncan Armstrong, who actually had a heart issue, he's one of our great Olympians. I want to talk to you about that because that's another of your bows that I'm going to tap into. You're passionate about that as well in terms of people remaining healthy. Let's just look at 26 past eight. There's so many things to talk about here. We've got this $38,000 grant given to a Western Sydney Islamic media organisation, One Path, that was on the front page of the Sydney Daily Telegraph today. Now, by the time we got to lunchtime today, the Minister, Anne Arley, confirmed that they'd... 15:51 They've given the organisation a notice of intention to terminate. They're in the process of revoking the grant. I think there is all these grants. We talk about the grants for the golf clubs, all these grants that are being sprayed around the place. I reckon people are now at a point where they're thinking, we've got to do something about this stuff. Why are they given? What's the basis? Can we play a bit of Alex Rifkin from the Executive Council of Australian Jury? He was on with James Willis on The Drive Show early today on this one. Have a listen. 16:18 The minister has done the right thing and we commend her for acting so quickly after seeing the fantastic reporting by the Daily Telegraph. But this should never have happened. To have a sum of this vastness given to an organisation that's been responsible for torpedoing social cohesion in this country. And then, of course, more funds are needed to unpack all that and to stitch society back together. So on the one hand, you have the government financing this disinformation and conspiracy theories, which makes us all unsafe as a society. 16:49 And then the government has to then fund social cohesion problems to make us whole and better again. And this is really the tip of the iceberg. There's been this wave of what they call independent journalists that trade in these sorts of lewd conspiracy theories and denial of anti-Semitism. and some of them are receiving government funding. So we hope this will serve as a massive wake-up call and will lead to a prompt investigation and the revocation of other funds given to those bad actors in the field. 17:16 Yeah. When you've got funding, and I know going all the way back when Malcolm Fraser was... I think it was the Fraser government set up SBS, and SBS provided English language programs which then do help people in this country, and I think it's actually been a real positive, but... 17:33 You look at these programs and these grants, especially today, when it's pretty easy to get your message out, you know, your government funding data, you can set yourself up and put yourself up there and the stuff is pretty ordinary stuff. 17:49 The stuff is horrendous and I think it just puts all the cultural grants need to be in the spotlight or to your point, every single grant because this is taxpayer money and at a time when people, we're all having to tighten our belts and then you look at the government, there's just splashing the cash as if it's monopoly money and even Chris Minns has come out saying that the government needs to be spending it on organisations that bring society together and not ones that go and actually cause an issue within society. But some of the stuff that this group was coming out saying was done before they were given these grants. 18:25 So all it would have taken is for the minister, because Jason Morrison, who's the one that had broken this story on the front page of the Daily Telly, he said that they'd spent 20 minutes and uncovered so much information about what this organisation had done and said. Yeah. So surely someone in the government does like a quick little Google search on a business before providing $308,000. 18:44 Well, seemingly not because – and you've got to go back to – remember there were controversies over bookshops in parts of Sydney and so you'd have to find out who'd been borrowing the stuff and the trail was pretty hard. These days, as you say, you do a quick – 19:02 And, John, with the amount of people that are now hired by the government, someone can go and do that. Albo himself has a team of 60 staff and they still can't get the policy right. You know, they've got lots of staff, so it's not like they've got lack of manpower to be able to sit down and investigate. So, you know, it is a win and it is good that Anne Ali did come out and say, look, we have in the process of revoking the grant... But it should just never have happened. It shouldn't have gotten to the point where it was up to the Daily Telegraph to uncover this. 19:32 Yeah, and the extremes, and I know people of the Islamic faith who've been fighting this stuff for years and asking for help in fighting this stuff, hate preachers and others, because it's a real problem and we don't talk about it enough. 19:51 And then to have this stuff being funded... Is extraordinary, as you say. 19:56 It's extraordinary. 19:58 So I guess the question now is, everything's got left to trail these days. You don't think there's more keys being tapped over at the telegraph to investigate now and find out what else is going on? Are they doing it in the government to try and get ahead of it? Probably not. I guess we'll find out. There's also at 8.30, just after 7.30, if you're in Queensland, one of these ongoing stories in relation to the gold mine in the central west of New South Wales, this Aboriginal dreaming story. 20:29 There were conflicting stories about which Aboriginal group was believed in the story or 20:37 Did it actually, yes. 20:38 It was a really bizarre story. 20:41 And the Heritage Protection Order has now been lifted. The federal court's overturned its decision. And this is Stephen Gallilee. He was on with the James Willis Drive Time program in Sydney this afternoon talking about this one as well. Just have a listen to what he had to say. 20:55 Well, it's a good outcome, but it's bittersweet because it just shows how many opportunities there are for people to game the system and for activists to lodge objections and challenges to these sorts of approvals. And when we think about what has been lost, I mean... This has taken two years and the mine was actually approved three years ago in New South Wales and without the Minister's intervention, which today has been found to have lacked procedural fairness, I think that was pretty self-evident at the time to almost everyone else, we would have now a billion dollar gold mine producing in New South Wales, paying taxes and royalties, employing hundreds of people and spending money in that region. 21:34 So While we hope the mine will eventually proceed, this is what the activists do, James. They disrupt and delay these projects. And we've seen it once again in the case of this mine. 21:44 Yeah. The court, though, upholding that decision. And this is one of the problems, isn't it? Regardless of your position on anything, to get anything done. It's slow. It's really slow. 21:55 But this also highlights another issue that we were just talking about when it comes to aged care as in the federal versus state because this is a perfect example where Chris Minns had openly criticised the federal government's decision and he said that New South Wales needed that investment and he was very much saying that Tanya Plibersek had made the wrong call so he was up against it fighting his federal colleagues with that. And it was approximately a $1.3 billion proposed investment when it came to this gold mine. 22:26 But you have to also ask, you know, where is the accountability? What follows when a major ministerial decision is overturned because a proper legal process wasn't followed? Tanya did not, according to the court, follow the correct process. We've now wasted two years going through the courts. We could have had a gold mine up and running, making the most of how high the price is of gold right now. So where's the accountability? And this is what I think we find really frustrating with government is that they can do a really bad job or make these mistakes and then it's just like, oh, well, we can just move on to the next thing. 23:01 Move on to something else. But I think it's probably going to cause another headache for Anthony Albanese, though, because... At the moment, he's got a lot of his MPs in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Let's not forget Annika Wells was back in the other day for more spending. Matt Keough, he should be standing down. Jim Chalmers, there's lots of rumours and sharks circling him that he should be standing down. And Ali, like it's just one thing after another at the moment. And now Tanya Plibersek can be added to that list. Yeah. 23:26 There's a line of them. And then, see, I keep hearing people talking about the notion of Anthony Albanese. He could be in some political trouble in terms of his position. But there's no one there. There's no one there that you'd... It's not like in the UK they brought in a popular mayor of Manchester who's actually lifted them in the polls, whether that'll hold. But there isn't really... The only options for the Labor Party if they're going to change leader would be... 23:51 Minz or Malinowskis, you think, from the outside. 23:54 Yes. 23:55 But I can't see anyone inside that you're going to see change. 23:59 And they're still leading in the polls. Go figure, but they are. 24:02 They're leading in the polls. They are. But the polls aren't changing that much. I think what we're seeing now is just a real set in for the numbers. But what's interesting, though, John, is when you look at the preferred Prime Minister and the popularity and where people are seeing Labor doing well, now it's the only area that they think Labor's doing best in is health care. everything else is trickling away. So whilst they're still doing well in the polls, everything else around it is showing that they are struggling. 24:27 And the healthcare issue is just a bit, is wobbling, if we could put it that way. 25 minutes to nine, still a lot to cover, including we're going to get your thoughts on horse racing. And I don't know if you've done a lot in the media, but I don't know if you've sat on one of those talent quests and held up a score or something. 24:46 No, no. 24:47 We might have a little mini talent quest in a moment and see who's the best singer out of a couple of potential starters. I'm not involved. At 25 to 9 or 8 in Queensland. 24:58 21 minutes to 9 to 8 in Queensland. 25:02 One of our texts is saying to have a primary vote in the high 20s, shifting only within the margin of never. It's not correct to say Labor's doing well in the polls. Didn't say that. We're saying they're ahead in the polls and all of the polls are saying and that's where they ask people where their preferences are going and there's a presumption that a lot of the One Nation votes, enough of them, will be giving their preferences to Labor in an election. We'll find out in Victoria at the end of November because everyone has to distribute all their preferences so we'll find out where the One Nation preferences are going when we get to Victoria. 25:35 Yeah, and depending on whichever way you vote, if you don't want Labor to get back into government, then you just have to make sure that you put them last and then you don't need to worry about figuring out your preferences. 25:46 It is going to be a fascinating election because in Victoria you've got people drifting away from Labor but the Green vote's going up. Up around 15% or more. And the Greens, some of the things they've done like in the private health insurance, they're looking at a few areas where Anthony Albanese is trying to position himself in the centre and everyone's upset with him. So that could be a real problem. 26:14 Look, it's going to be an interesting one that we will continue to watch and talk about until the next federal election, but you are right. It'll be interesting to see what happens in Victoria, but also in New South Wales, because recent internal Labor polling that was leaked last week showed that One Nation was going to be the official opposition and that Minns would still win, but that it would be Mike Newman as the official opposition leader. 26:35 I've got just something on that at 19 minutes to 9 or 8 in Queensland because Mike Newman was actually in the parliament today and he was actually on the floor of the parliament and he was removed. Now, the nation that One Nation, because at the moment there's only three candidates in New South Wales and there's a conga line of people who are putting their hand up because they know they might get elected. But in New South Wales, it's optional preferential. So a lot of those One Nation votes won't give any preferences. And that's why there's a view that probably wins easily. 27:06 But if One Nation, say, was elected, say their vote kept going up and they got elected and they had a parliament of people no one had ever heard of, bob carr pointed this out a few years ago he said under the new south wales constitution you don't actually have to be in the parliament to be a minister in in canberra you do but in the new south wales and he talked about how you might just have a premier treasurer maybe a finance minister and a lot of these other portfolios like someone play police minister you find someone who's um who can be the police minister maybe you bring people in from private interest like they do in america And he was saying under the Constitution, they'd have to turn up to Parliament and answer at question time, maybe stand behind a bar or something to answer the questions. 27:50 But it's interesting, we are in quite weird times where anything's possible. 27:53 But I must say, I did think that the recruitment of Mike Newman to be the leader of the... New South Wales for One Nation was very smart on their behalf because I'd actually had Mike Newman on my program quite a few times before he put his hand up to run for One Nation. And he's incredibly intelligent, former investment banker. He's bilingual in Japanese. But it was also interesting when he did his press conference. We're going back a few months ago now. But when he was announced, immigration wasn't even mentioned. It was all around the economy, how to make New South Wales growing again, how to be the productivity to increase. 28:30 And so the whole narrative changed around One Nation and what they're offering is. And he's looking at addressing payroll tax, which so is Kelly Sloan with the Liberals as well. But he's very much economy focused. And I think that was just a stroke of genius for One Nation. 28:46 And people might say, oh, well, he'd go into the parliament. Could he, you know, what's his background? Well, no one had ever heard of Chris Minns, really. Most people hadn't heard of Chris Minns before he ran... in an election campaign. And we all think that everyone's following politics really closely. But he was the opposition leader. And I think he had an approval rating of, I think when they asked for preferred premier, he was getting a 20 or 25. And there was a 20 or 25 for the, I think, Dominic Perrottet. 50% of people... 29:17 I mean, Chris Minns did handle the situation quite well today when he said, oh, Mike Newman must have got the tip off from that. You remember the protester yesterday? He goes, oh, he must have seen how the protester got in here yesterday and that's how Mike Newman managed to figure in how to get in here when he wasn't supposed to be. 29:34 I've got this one here saying, if I vote One Nation first, Liberals second, and definitely vote Labor last at the Victorian election, how does my vote end up with Labor? Well, see, I think people don't understand. You distribute your preferences. So a lot of One Nation people are saying when they're asked for their preference, they're actually going to preference Labor over the coalition because they're former Labor voters who are jacked off and they think, well, I'm going to vote for them. Yes. So there's enough of them. But I think people think that their preference is being distributed for them. 30:07 They're not. 30:08 No. 30:08 They're not. 30:09 That's why it's important to follow the how to vote card. 30:12 Well, yeah, but you don't have to. That's the point. No, no, you don't have to. 30:15 You don't have to. 30:16 And a lot of people won't. That's the point, isn't it? 30:18 Which is why the messaging should just be, if you want to get rid of Labor, put Greens and Labor last. 30:23 Yeah, well, let's wait and see. It'd be very interesting to see what happens. There's actually another aspect I'll raise with you in a moment at 16 to 9. Just on immigration, the Australian Hotels Association, they've put together an ad. It's just started, I think it was launched last night, this ad. 30:39 And I heard, in fact, it was being discussed by Tom Elliott in Melbourne earlier today. So this is the ad that they're running, which is pretty well in your face. I think it's modelled on some ads that are running in other parts of the world as well. Have a listen. What's a bloke have to do to get a coffee around here? 30:55 Where's Sven? 30:56 Gone back to Sweden. Half the kitchen too. 30:58 Where the hell's all the fruit? Still on the trees. 31:00 Pop, can I get an apple? 31:02 Maybe for Christmas. Kitchen open? Yep. 31:05 Through there. You want me to cook it? 31:07 Yep. What do you mean my room isn't clean? We're short-staffed. You'll need to clean it yourself. Room 508. Good luck. Hi, Mum. 31:15 Oh good. Can you give me a hand? 31:17 Yeah, what with? 31:18 The nurse has gone home. Be a love and wipe my bottom. 31:23 That's the Australian Hotels Association. Their national boss is Stephen Ferguson. So he appeared in Melbourne on our sister station today. And this is a little bit of what he had to say about the ad and what their motivation is. Just have a listen. 31:35 First thing I'd say is nearly every employer I talk to wants to hire Australians first. 31:40 It's so much easier for us to bring in a chef or any skilled worker for any business in Australia costs about $35,000 to land them here and takes 12 months. So if you can find someone locally to do the job and start tomorrow, that's our preference every day of the week. I can tell you that any unemployed person that wants a job, if they went to their local pub, club, cafe, restaurant, Meat works, farm, nursing home, they'd be able to get a job. We don't control people's motivation and businesses, you know, we don't control the unemployment benefit rules if they're the ones that are sort of, you know, people are thinking that people are getting paid too much to stay at home. 32:19 We can only play the game that's in front of us. There's plenty of jobs out there, especially in the hospitality industry and a stack of other industries as well, Tom. Where we struggle, and working holidaymakers are a great example where the government wants to chop 40,000 of those back. 32:34 We need those people in seasonal areas, especially in places like far north Queensland. and they'll go up there to work in hospitality when the sort of tourist season's on, or they'll go up there to help pick avocados and mangoes. And that's real. I was with people from far north Queensland in Canberra yesterday talking to parliamentarians. They're really, really worried about what they're going to do for workers. 32:55 Yeah. So, look, that's some of the interview. And you can find it up on the 3RW in Melbourne, their website, the interview. And I might play a bit more of it later in the program. But it's interesting because he's saying that there are workers they need and there are people not prepared to do it here. 33:10 And I've heard this before. There was Drake's supermarket CEO. He was on Kenny's program a couple of months ago. And he had a similar story where he was bringing in workers from Vanuatu because he said locals didn't want the job, that he would hire an Australian and then they would figure out and say to him, oh, actually, no, you know what? I get paid more on the dole. I'm not going to come in and do that job. So he was having to fly workers in. Look, we have to do something, John, about immigration. 33:40 It's an extremely contentious issue. It is coming up all the time that people are genuinely concerned about the numbers that are coming through. It's just incredibly important that we ensure that the skilled workers are the focus that are coming through in the immigration policy, which is something that the coalition have said that they will be looking at and addressing. But I also think we need to be changing the welfare system to ensure that there's an incentive, you know, whether it's go back to work for the dole or just ensure that you're not getting paid more to stay at home than to go get a job. 34:13 That's another fundamental issue. 34:15 It is problematic. I don't know how it's worked in the past, but you think of someone who's running a really – really quality business hospitality, but they need, and you know how it works in hospitality, your staff, they're advertising what you do. That's why people come. So if someone's there because they have to be there to get the dole or whatever it might be, you wonder whether that's the... 34:40 I remember all the uni students. Remember when I was at uni, all the uni students were the ones that had all the hospitality jobs and you'd work the long shifts and then you'd roll into uni the next day. But it's just interesting and timely about this article because tonight I was just reading that in the UK, they're having a similar sort of issue where in the past decade, four in five new jobs have gone to migrants. Yeah. and that those that are locals, Britons, are actually on welfare instead. 35:11 So you just don't want to get into a situation where that's what happens here too. 35:15 And look, the problem here is that post the pandemic, there was this surge of people and it's the uncapped schemes that go back 25 years that we've got uncapped programs now. 35:26 And you've got, I think, I think the number I saw was between people aged 25 to 29, I think over 30% of the 25 to 29-year-olds in Australia are on temporary visas. They're temporary visas. That's the number of people in this country on temporary visas, different styles of visas, bridging visas, graduate visas, all of those different visas. And I noticed this is how complex it is. Abel Rizvi published this tonight on one of his Independent Australia. 35:57 He put it up. I didn't know this. There's a thing called the Designated Area Migration Agreement that the New South Wales government is putting together for regional New South Wales where you'll actually be able to try – they'll move people with these visas into these areas depending on what is needed. And that's what regional areas have been saying. Now, I look at that. I think first thing I think of – apparently, if you read the story, there's one of these in South Australia. The state governments are organising some of this stuff. 36:28 In the last couple of years, they've started to look, gee, this is right out of control. And they're all scrambling now to work out how they can get it under some level of control through arrangements like this that do seem logical to me. But again, if you read this, your head will spin. Subclass two, different visas, it's all over the show. 36:48 Yeah, it is all over the shop and that's half the problem. But we do just have to ensure that when we are putting into place these new immigration policies of whoever wins the next election, because let's face it, it's out of control at the moment, is just to ensure that the workers that we need are going into the right places and that skilled migrants are the ones that are being brought in. And whether it's construction or whatever it is that we need, that's who we should be bringing into Australia. Yeah. 37:14 All right, 131873's number. A lot more feedback coming through and we'll finish things up. I do want to get your thoughts on a lighter matter straight after this at nine and a half to nine, 18 Queensland. 37:25 There's a lot we have to deal with here. I might save some of this for just after the news because I promised I'd do a couple of things here with Jamie Rogers. We've had the Shadow Treasurer, Tim Wilson. Of course, he was a candidate for the Liberal Party a couple of elections ago. 37:38 But the Shadow Treasurer, Tim Wilson, he's been out singing, getting a lot of attention. So what do you think of this? Have a listen to him. 37:45 That's contestant number one. 37:48 And contestant number two goes back a few years to when Craig Emerson was seeing that no-whaler wipeout. Have a listen. 38:13 So why I'll wipe out there on my TV? No, why I'll wipe out there on my TV? No, why I'll wipe out there on my TV? 38:21 So there was a show... Oh, there's Red Faces with... Oh, yes. Yeah, would you have gonged both of them? 38:27 I would have gonged both of them. 38:29 Yep. 38:30 Leave singing to the experts. It takes the focus away of the topics that you were talking about. 38:35 We have got a number of very high-profile athletes stressing the idea of trying to get fit, particularly once you get to the age of 50, really looking after your health. You would advocate that as well, would you not? 38:46 Absolutely. I think it's really important. 38:48 Swimming? swimming walking running whatever whatever you want to do to be outside getting fresh air move your body i think it's incredibly important okay and you of course were very much involved in horse racing not so much now but we have got the everest coming up on saturday car ying rising regard as the best horse in the world by many people a lot of people saying if the track gets wet uh we don't quite know what hasn't raced on a wet track before 39:14 So if it's a heavy track, I certainly wouldn't be backing it. But that's the very short price favourite at the moment. 39:20 Because breeding suggests it can rumble. We don't know until it does. 39:23 But you don't want to be testing it out. 39:26 On the Everest of all days. 39:27 And look, for people that follow horse racing, when you were right into this, you used to go out on the track with a... With a stick, a track walker. 39:34 And I would walk around the track with Mark Hunter. So anyone that does follow racing, I'd go out with Mark Hunter and we would walk around the entire track with your stick to see where it was the heaviest so that you would know where you want to be in the run. Wow. 39:47 And you would assess your form based on that. I don't do that anymore. 39:51 Still a budding politician because you weren't prepared to put your... Because why would you? Just go and watch the race. 39:56 I can't. Back in the day, I spent so many hours and hours and hours and hours doing my form. And unless I can put that much work into it, I don't really give any tips. 40:04 Next time, I'll put you to the test. All right. Thank you. Jamie Rogers here. And we have the news coming up very soon. 40:16 Across Australia, this is Nights with John Stanley. 40:21 Good evening, everyone. Welcome along. Seven minutes past nine is the time here on this Wednesday night. Welcome if you're listening in Queensland and just joined us. Of course, we've got network stations all over the country. I hope it's going well for you here on this Wednesday. We've got a bit coming up. We'll keep across all of the breaking news for you. We've got cars coming up shortly. Post Bathurst, so I don't know how our car experts are going to brush up after a very, very big weekend. There's a bit of car news as well, which we'll get to. If you were with us in the hour where we talked news, many of you were. 40:56 We were talking about some of the ramifications of the polls and what's going to happen in Victoria and there was an argument over whether One Nation voters are going to... give their preferences, and in Victoria they have to preference, whether they're going to give them to Labor. One of our correspondents is saying at the last federal poll, three in four One Nation preferences went to the coalition, which means that one in four went elsewhere, and if it's not going to the coalition, it would most likely go to Labor, and there is a lot of evidence that a lot of cheesed-off Labor voters are saying, we're going to vote for One Nation. 41:34 and then they'll preference Labor. And we can argue it back and forth, and I've got someone here saying it's crap, that media make-up. We'll find out in the last week of November, because there'll be an election where millions of people in Victoria are going to be given ballot papers and they'll have to fill them out, and then at the end of that we'll see how many of them give their preferences to who. So that's where we are with all of that. I've got one person, because we played... We heard the Tim Wilson... 42:02 one of our Jim Chalmers starting the inflation fire, and we gave a bit of a gallop to the old Wayala Wipeout as well. One of our listeners saying that Wayala Wipeout, that was Craig Emerson, wasn't too bad after a few beers. 42:16 So there you go. So there's a lot happening tonight. And of course, on the question of immigration, it's quite nuanced. And we're going to have A bit more on that tomorrow night because I'm intrigued, and I mentioned this briefly and it was brought to my attention, that the New South Wales government's setting up some migration zones in regional areas and other state governments are doing it as well to try and ensure that people on certain visas get to those areas where they are needed. So I'll try and flesh that out for you tomorrow night. 42:49 And if you've just joined us as well, we have been doing this since the day after the federal budget. highlighting this decision to scrap the highest subsidy for people over the age of 65 for private health cover. We went through it, and it's pretty simple, that if people who are over 65, they lose the subsidy, they can't stay in private health cover, then they'll go onto the public hospital system and ultimately the cost of the taxpayer will be even higher. It's just that it'll be the state governments that are paying for it. 43:20 So you've had the Coalition, the Greens and the crossbenchers and the Senate all combining to knock that on the head. Government's pressing ahead, but I think that's stubborn, but we'll see what comes of that. But there is a win on that one, which we've been talking about a fair bit on this program. But right now at 10 minutes past nine, past eight, if you are in Queensland, let's kick off. Here we go. 43:41 And now on Nights with John Stanley, Drive. 43:53 Yes, Trent's here. We'll have Sean Mackle joining us very shortly from costacar.com.au. It's a big hour this hour, but we can't kick it off without hearing my theme as well. Here it is. 44:09 And I will say in relation to Mr Magoo, and I saw a fair few of the Mr Magoo cartoons, I think there was even one or two films, I don't think on any occasion Mr Magoo ran out of petrol. Ever. Did Mr Magoo ever run out of petrol? And yet there I am watching The Bathurst on the weekend, coming to an exciting conclusion, and the bloke leading's just run out of fuel. Yeah. 44:29 What happened? Good evening, John. Good evening, everyone. The one thing I could say is a bit of a joke is that the cost of living crisis hit the Bathurst 1000 and they couldn't afford the fuel and therefore the fuel was a lot cheaper per litre in Mr Magoo's time. But I'll tell you something that hasn't probably yet been reported. 44:47 Just so people know, look, I'm sure everyone 44:50 Sorry, if you didn't know, Anton De Pasquale was leading the last few laps of the Bathurst 1000 after 150 odd laps. I think the safety car came out with five laps to go. Chas Mostat put his car under the wall up the top of the mountain. Safety car comes out. 45:07 Basically, De Pasquale's team had miscalculated the fuel load that they'd put in. 45:14 And he ran out of fuel leading on the last lap. And Brodie Kostecki went past him. 45:19 Anton actually ended up not finishing. I don't think the car made the lap. He was stuck on the road. Yeah. So I would almost be certain that a strategist will be looking for a job. at some point soon from that team because they miscalculated the amount of fuel. That's what happened. It wasn't a mistake. It wasn't they thought they put more in than they did. It wasn't that they didn't have enough time. Somebody said we need 10 litres when they needed 11, basically. Okay. 45:45 Was it someone from Federal Treasury or something, or possibly? 45:47 No, no, someone from Federal Treasury would have said, we've predicted that we need 10, we've put the forecast in, and then realised they needed 300. 45:55 Yeah. Someone's saying here, drove the Chevy to the levee, but the Chevy was dry. That happened, unfortunately. Very, very good line. Also, just on that, because I am... 46:05 Mr Magoo, but my very first... But I'm assuming that the fuel is rationed in such a way that you don't ever carry more than you need because of the weight issue. 46:20 Yeah, because of the weight. And what I think was probably the saddest part for the team was that had the safety car stayed out for one more lap... to clear the track, they would have had enough fuel to make it because a flat-out race lap obviously uses a lot more fuel than coasting around behind the safety car. But, yeah, they just fundamentally got it wrong. And, look, I guess the hard part about it is... 46:45 And you hear this a lot in motor racing and a lot of these sort of trite lines are a little bit annoying, but out of the 161 laps, the only one that it matters that you're at the front of is the 161st. Nothing before that matters. I'm aware of that. That's very good. And they say that a lot and it's a bit stupid, but it's actually true. 47:02 It's very good. The only time you want to be in front in a football game is in that last... Last minute. Well, if it's American football, the last two seconds it can be. Because I mention it because, and I've said this before, my very first car was a Volkswagen. Oh, it didn't have a petrol gauge. And it was a standard because the standard model did not come with a fuel gauge. That's right. If you wanted to get a fuel gauge, you had to have the deluxe model. Correct. So what there was was a lever. Yep. So you would drive along, and when you ran out of fuel, you pulled the lever... But then access the last half a litre or half a gallon or something. 47:33 Get you to the petrol station. 47:34 Get you to the local servo. 47:36 They needed to do that, didn't they? I've actually got a Volkswagen that's still got one of those in it. Really? Yeah, I've got one that's still got one of those in it. But, yeah, again, I mean, when you said they only carry absolutely as much as they need, that's the reality. Most of the cars after lap 161 would have gotten back to the pits on fumes. They would have been almost run out. 47:55 Yeah, so there's an art in doing it. Yeah, yeah, there is. 47:58 And someone got it wrong. 47:59 Now, at a quarter past nine, look, if you want a car valued, and as we say, if you've got an exotic car, you want to find out what it's worth, Sean will be joining us shortly. But just a couple of bits of motoring news that you've got here. Of course, Trent is our weekend host. He's a broadcaster now on the network, and he's also, of course, our motoring editor. I've named him that. 48:20 Mazda. Now, they're developing cars in China. Everything's being made in China these days, and they're insisting it's not going to affect quality? 48:27 Yeah, I found this fascinating, not least because at the moment, this week I've been driving an electric Mazda. So I've been driving the Mazda 6E, which I know you know the Mazda 6 sedan. 48:38 This is effectively the electric Mazda 6. Now, It looks, it feels, and it behaves very much like a Mazda. So, it is built in China by Geely, but it's got Mazda finishing and Mazda badging on it. Now, it does look and feel like a Mazda. If I bought it, would I be okay with the fact that it was made in China? No. I think so, even though Mazda's got a very strong reputation for the cars that it's built over decades in Japan. But there are little things like the window switches in this one I've got are a little bit dicky. 49:13 They're a little bit sticky. They sort of come up all the way and then they don't go back down. And it does a few minor things, which I'll tell Mazda about when I drop it back just for them to have a look at. But It does some little things like that that appear to me to be little final elements of quality control and fit and finish. Now, according to Mazda, it's one of a growing number, as you said, having its electric cars engineered and built in China because it's the only way it can sell them competitively. 49:44 Otherwise, they'd be too expensive and no one would buy them. So, Mazda is saying that developing the cars in China is not compromising quality. I agree with Mazda, up to a point. 49:53 Okay. And just the other bit of news, Toyota Kluger. Now, I remember when I was getting my – it's four years now since I've had my RAV4 hybrid. Is it that long already? 50:02 But I remember at the time the Kluger hybrid was coming out and people were falling over themselves for it. And I think my memory was that Toyota was in trouble because they assumed it might be 60% or 70% of people would want the hybrid, Kluger, but everyone wanted it. So there was a huge list. So now we're talking about there's a new model coming and the possibility of it being... All electric, possibly. 50:28 Yeah, that's right. So you made the point there about how popular Kluger's been. 23 years on sale in Australia, more than 240,000 of them sold over that time. 50:37 Current hybrid Kluger production wraps up in the US in December this year, so only a few months away. And the discussion is that... 50:47 it's going to be replaced in the US by an electric vehicle, but that vehicle is A, not locked in for right-hand drive and B, not confirmed for Australia. So there are alternatives for Toyota to do if they want to bring that vehicle to Australia and they don't necessarily want it to be electric. But I tend to think, John, that for a manufacturer like Toyota, it's got a BZ4X, which is fully electric, and it's effectively an electric RAV4. They have that. 51:12 I reckon a large SUV that's pretty luxurious that's electric would make a lot of sense because if you want to buy a Toyota and you don't want it to be electric, you've got your hybrid RAV4 with the new version of that, or you've got a Prado in there as well. So there are other options in the Toyota stable if you don't want a full EV. So I think it's an opportunity for them to explore. 51:35 Okay, very good. Now, look, we've got calls waiting. We'll wait until Sean comes in. We'll get rolling with you and Sean because I always love the bandit between you two. We have a lot of fun here on a Wednesday night. We do. And we love hearing from people who've got a car that they want valued, particularly when it's one that you two are looking at and going, I wish I could get my hands on that one. Or any car, whatever it might be, you can get on the phone right now, 131873. But before we go to the break, you debuted your new weekend show on our network on Saturday and Sunday. I listened to a fair bit of it. 52:06 There was one little hiccup through the afternoon, and it was that I didn't listen to the whole episode. But I listened to most of it. 52:12 Did you have something better to do with Tim? 52:14 No, no, no. I didn't listen to it. I heard enough of it to hear you were called Tom, Terrence, Tracy. I think I heard a Cyril. Trevor. It was a Trevor. 52:24 I think someone called you Trish, which was a bit weird. So many different names. And I thought, well, you know what? I'm going to make you feel a bit better because I've been doing this for decades. I like it. And this is what you can expect. Here it is. 52:46 No, it's not. It's actually John here. What's your name? John Stanley. Who? 52:49 Yes, Peter. How are you? 52:51 No, it's John, actually. 52:52 John, that's right. John. 52:55 John. 52:55 John it is. John. Oh, John Stanley. I'm sorry. That's me. Yes, I rang you yesterday. 53:03 John. Um, Danny. John, is it? 53:05 Yes, it is. 53:06 John Stanley. Yes, it is. Alan John. 53:08 Yeah, g'day, Mike. No, it's John, actually. 53:10 Yes, what's your name again? 53:12 John, it is. Hello, Michael, how are you? No, it's John, actually. You're Michael, don't worry. 53:15 I'm Michael as well. I'm John. Are you sure that's John? 53:17 Yes, it is. 53:18 Lewis, is it? 53:19 Hi, Stanley. Yeah, Stan. It's John, actually, same as yours, but go on. 53:22 G'day, how are you going again? 53:24 Yeah, good, mate. It's John. Yeah, there he is. That's what you're looking forward to. 53:28 I had a funny email to someone who'd obviously listened, and he said, Hi, Trev. I heard someone got your name wrong and called you Todd. Really enjoyed listening to the show this weekend, Thomas. Keep up the good work, Tim, and then sign up. 53:41 That's right. There you go. There you go. It becomes a game. Brilliant. So, anyway, bye next weekend. You can add a whole lot more names to the list. So good. So Sean Mackle's coming in shortly, and Cyril will be with us as well, or Terence, I think we'll call him, at 21 past nine, 18 Queensland. 53:59 We are here. It is a Wednesday night. We've got Trent Nicklitch is our motoring editor. We've got Sean Mackle from, of course, costacar.com.au. We've got to have Sean's music because I love hearing it. Here it is. Here we go. 54:11 You've got a fast car. 54:12 Now on nights. 54:13 Take it fast. 54:16 Thanks, Cars. Looking to buy or sell a car? Get trusted, independent advice for your next vehicle purchase at costacar.com.au. 54:25 Yeah, look, and with respect to Mr Magoo and the theme from Cars, I think that, I think, I prefer that music. Yeah, that's way better. 54:35 Why does he get, he's the newest entrant to the party. Why does he get the better entry thing? Well, because he got it. Luke Cames. He's cool. Is it Shane Mackle or Sean Mackle? 54:44 I said Sean Mackle, didn't I? No, I'm just asking, though. Is it Sean Mackle? It's Sean Mackle. 54:50 All right, now listen, we've got a lot of people lined up here, so we're going to get right into this. Sean, costacar.com.au, that's what you do. You bring people together. Very often, it's like a dating agency, and you've told us before, sometimes you get a call within an hour, oh, I'm looking for this car, and an hour before, someone's contacted you saying, I want to sell this car, and you get that joyful moment of saying, I can... I could facilitate that for you. I can help you out. So look, and that could be you. 55:22 So 131873 is the number, 0460 873873. You can talk directly to Sean and Trent. But before we go on, I just want to get Andy, who was ringing us just a moment ago, just about – this is a general question about headlights, which I think is a – a really problematic one for a lot of people. 55:42 See, Sean's looking across at Trent. I think this might be one of Trent's hobby horses. Andy, what did you want to say, mate? 55:49 Yes, I'm an interstate truck driver. Thank you for taking the call, by the way. This is obviously directed at Trent because I think he needs to go to the government and ask him to take a look at the regulation of standards about the headlight because... 56:06 As a truck driver at night time when I'm driving, I'll often get vehicles with high beam on. I'll flash my high beam and they didn't really turn it off. But sometimes they don't. So obviously they don't have their high beam on. And it's more to do with the modern life. Some are good, some are well designed, but others are just really bright and they look like they're on high beam. So I think that's starting to become a real issue. 56:31 I wonder how much of that is the auto lighting functions that they all have now. So basically a lot of, particularly European cars, have auto headlight functions where they basically, the car picks up the light coming to you and it turns the high beam off just in that specific area, but you get the glow. 56:48 Some of them have that tech. Where Andy's point is interesting is that I'll often be on a dark road in one of these new cars and I'll think to myself, I've got the high beams on and I don't. 56:59 They're on low beam. They're just incredibly bright. Where Andy's got a point, and he says I need to speak to government. I don't know who we would actually get to functionally do anything, to be honest, at the moment. But I've asked manufacturers about it before, and it would seem to me that you can't retrofit a lot of this crazy lighting technology into an older car, but it is available standard on a new car that's gotten through all the ADR, the Australian Design Rule approvals. So, there's absolutely something to it because there are some now that are so bright that if they reflect off your rear view mirrors, they blind you. 57:34 So, yeah, there absolutely is. And I think more than just the type of light, it's the way that the light is filtered out and how high up and how wide it goes, I think, is part of the problem. 57:45 Andy, look, thanks for your call. You're obviously on the road there. I'll ask some questions. And look, we will take that on notice because I've... See, my wife's got an older Corolla. So if I jump in her car to go up the shops, I'll go... It feels dark, doesn't it? Well, because it's the... 57:59 It's like you've got a couple of candles in front of you. 58:01 Seriously, that's the way it looks compared to the new car. And I have on occasions, because I've got the automatic... 58:08 So I'm driving on the M1, sometimes in the middle of the night after midnight I'm going up the coast, and there have been the odd occasion where a truck's flashed at me. And I've thought, well, you know, and I did have the high beam, it just goes down, but maybe it's gone through a tree or something. 58:22 If you think about what they're looking at, though, when they're looking in your direction, they can still see the high beam that's on. 58:29 So there's a portion of the high beam that will still stay on. It's quite clever lighting stuff. It's fantastic if you're driving. Not so fantastic if they're coming towards you. 58:37 And for the truckies, you know what it's like on the roads. There's the cars and there's the truckies. But the truth is they're carrying all the stuff that's in the shops for us. We need them. We'd be stuffed without them. We need them. So have a safe trip, mate. Let's take some of these calls. 58:52 Let's go to Joanne, who's on the line now. Hello, Joanne. 58:56 Yes, hello. Joanne here. I've got a 2005 Ford Fairlane, the Kia. 59:06 I'm an older person. I might be coming to the end of my driving, but it's still going quite strong. I just wondered whether I would get any money for it if I sold it. 59:18 The V8 or the six-cylinder? The six-cylinder. 59:24 I'm not sure. Six-cylinder, I think. Okay. 59:27 How many cars? 59:28 B8, B8, yeah. 59:30 B8, sorry? 59:31 It's a B-A. They call it a B-A, I think. Yeah, B-A is the... Does that refer to that? 59:38 Yeah, how many cars were on the car again, sorry? 59:40 200. It has 200Ks. 59:44 Look, you definitely will get something for it. There's a bit of a renaissance coming out with those fair lines. 59:50 If it's a six-cylinder at 200,000Ks, I'm kind of going to go around the... 59:55 Probably worth retail, 10,000 to 15,000. If it's a V8, it could be sort of 15,000 to 20,000. 60:01 I know that's quite a broad spin, but, yeah, there's definitely a market for it, depending on the condition and the history. 60:07 So would you sell it privately, Joanne, or what would you do? What were you thinking of doing? 60:12 I've never done anything like it in my life. I wouldn't have an idea how to go about it, but I'm just wondering. I'm a bit of a planner, just wondering how I would go about it. I don't know. 60:24 Joanne, why don't you get in touch with me after this, and I'll explain your different options to you in a little bit more detail. Just at your leisure, no rush, my details are available. 60:31 Okay, what we'll do, we'll get Joanne's details, pass Sean's details on to Joanne. You can have a chat with Sean. And the other thing is, who knows, there might be someone listening to us right now who's going, oh, I like that. Because it's got 200,000 k's. Barely run out. Probably been looked after quite well, so there you go. All right, so that's Joanne. Let's go to Peter. He's on the line with us now. Hello, Peter. 60:56 How you going, boys? Good, mate. 60:57 Hello, mate. 60:58 Hey, Pete. 61:00 Hey, mate. Being a retired truck driver, I understand what any news is talking about. 61:05 Hey, hang on, hang on a second. Hang on a second, Peter. When did you retire? 61:10 July, mate. 61:12 Aha, because last time we spoke to Peter, he was still driving. 61:15 He's on the verge of retiring. He's retired. Congratulations, mate. He's retired. Have you got a car you've got now that you want to ask about? Is that right? 61:23 No, no, John, I've just come back from New Zealand. I've been going to New Zealand about 30 years now. I've driven different cars across New Zealand, but the dangerous one I thought, or I think it is to me, being a driver, a Kia Sonic. I hired one of them, you know, at Auckland, drove down halfway through the North Island, and their steering assist around the bend. 61:44 Ah, yeah. It's quite invasive. 61:45 Yep. 61:46 Yep. 61:47 And, mate, I grabbed your bloody hand. Grabbed your hand, sorry for swearing. Grabbed your hand, mate, and I thought it was taken. It took control of me. And I thought, bugger that. And a truck came on the other side, you know, like B-double or whatever. Not B-double, dog and trailer. And you're in your lane. You're trying to move over. It just pulls you back. I thought, this is dangerous. 62:05 Yeah, you're right, Peter. A lot of these cars with their steering assist, they're not great. And I also too, John, because we've spoken to Peter before, I'd suggest Peter's one of the Australians who's not even remotely upset that a Chevrolet ran out of fuel on the last lap of Bathurst and a Ford won. 62:21 Okay. Yeah, because he's a Ford man. He's a Ford man. 62:23 He's a dyed-in-the-wool Ford man. 62:25 Yeah, I can't remember which of the commentaries I was watching, but they were saying that it's going to be a long, slow drive home for the Ford drivers, and then, of course, it turned out to be the opposite. 62:37 The opposite. 62:38 Thank you, mate. Good on you. 131873. Let's take a break. Come back in a moment. We've got some comments on the headlights. We've got a few cars for you to value as well, Sean. And, of course, 131873, if you want to get on the phone and get a valuation, costacar.com.au. And he's got some maybe good news for you if you're looking for one of those classic muscle cars. We'll do that shortly as well at 27 minutes to 10 or 9 in Queensland. Yeah. 63:08 23 minutes to 10 to 9. If you're listening to us in Queensland, we're talking cars here with Trent Nicklich and with Sean Mackle from costacar.com.au. Let's just go through some of the calls we've got here. There's plenty of calls on cars. Let's go to Simon. He's online too there. Simon, in relation to a particular car you're looking for, this is a E250. What's that? Is that a Merc? Merc. 63:31 Okay. Simon, go ahead, mate. 63:34 No, I've had it for about four years. I've rung up ones before, just hoping they might go up in value. They've seem to have plummeted. Well, since we last spoke. Oh, pretty much, yeah. 63:46 Probably actually got worse since we last spoke. Yeah. 63:50 Really? 2011? 63:52 Yeah. Older European cars are not going up in price, and I would suggest to you, Simon, that that's not going to change anytime soon, if at all. 64:02 Unfortunately, you know, we were just having a conversation off here. There's so many cheap Chinese cars that are brand new with eight-year warranties that that kind of class of, you know, older European car is becoming more and more shied away from, especially with... 64:16 Like, especially with repair costs. Like, I had to do parking, sorry, tyre pressure monitoring on an E63 this week, and it cost me $1,500 to do three sensors and have them recoded. Like, it's just, unfortunately, no. 64:30 Tell you what, Simon, call us every month, because one night, someone who's looking for exactly that car might be, and Sean's got to remember this as well. How long have you owned it for, Simon? 64:45 uh time's getting away about three years i bought it from lexus in brisbane and uh the guy was trying to sell me a lexus but i was keen on the mercedes and it's been a good car but i've had a i had a 150 mil boulder come off a truck and it uh hit the underneath and i don't think it's been the same since and it's a little bit stressful at the moment I'm going to deal with it but it'll work. I still like it and I'm speaking to Shannon's about it at the moment to see if they can sort of come up with something but I don't know. 65:20 It's a bit disappointing the way it's all sort of ended but I always get a service at the Mercedes dealerships, Trenton. 65:28 One of the problems you've got with these cars, and this is to what Sean is saying broadly about European cars, is 20, 30, 40 years ago, a second-hand Mercedes like this that was, say, 10 to 15 years old was still quite a status symbol that you would buy as a second-hand car and park it in your driveway. But as Sean said... People are looking at it going, it doesn't matter how much it is, whether it's 25, 30, 40 grand, whatever it is, people are looking at it going, well, hang on, if I buy a brand new Chinese car, look at what I get. Seven-year warranty, cap price servicing, et cetera, et cetera, all of this new stuff that a 10- or 15-year-old car doesn't have. 66:02 And Aussies seem to be less inclined to worry about the badge, and they're more looking at what's on the spec sheet for the price. Yep. 66:09 I tell you what, Simon, we'll keep you in mind. Give us a call in a month. You never know. And Sean, who knows, Sean might get a call with a message in the next day or so looking for that car. That's how this works. So thank you for your call. I want to go to Paulette, who is in Parramatta. Hello, Paulette. 66:26 Hello. 66:29 What have you got? 66:31 I've got a 2001 Toyota RAV4 Edge. One owner. 66:39 167,000 kilometres on it. 66:42 So that was 157,000? 167, I think she said. 167. Yeah. 66:46 Yeah, I'm just wondering, because I just find that insurance companies, the main ones, don't want to insure it for a lot of money, even though... What do they want to insure it for? Like 4,000 maximum. Hmm. 67:02 I would have thought that it's probably retail at $6,000 or $7,000, so $4,000 is a bit hard, but it's sort of not completely out of the ballpark. 67:14 Are you looking to sell it, Paulette, or are you trying to get a valuation for insurance? 67:18 Just a valuation for insurers. 67:21 I'd keep pushing to find an insurer that'll do it for agreed value. Because the problem is, John, is that if Paulette, if somebody writes that car off, runs into it and writes it off, Paulette's then got to go and buy a car with $4,000 when she should really have six. So with stuff like that, and I've seen this a lot in the last few years since COVID, Insurance companies have not kept pace, and it doesn't matter whether it's gone up or down, to be honest, they haven't kept pace with what the car's actually worth. So I would absolutely keep shopping around. 67:50 I'm assuming, hearing that, that low mileage for a 2001. That's not crazy. And if it's been looked after, so it's a good car, is it, Paulie? You're still going strong? 68:00 It's a very good car, yes. Like, we love it. 68:03 And one owner too, right? 68:04 We know that that's the risk, and it's, well... 68:10 We wouldn't be able to replace it exactly. We wouldn't be able to get a car that could run as well as this car for, like, we'd be spending at least 20 grand to get a car. Yeah, absolutely. 68:21 And that's also from that period of Japanese car manufacturing where we use the term bulletproof, but they're as close to bulletproof as you can get. They weren't too technologically complex. They were very good mechanically. They were efficient, and they just keep going. 68:34 So, Paul, it should shop around. Shop around. around but also look paulette thanks for your call keep listening because someone may may have gone through a similar situation like you and may send us a note someone who works maybe as a broker or something that uh wants to you know perhaps hear sean i'm looking at you what are your thoughts 68:53 I agree. I think, though, realistically, this is the market we now live in, where you can go out and buy a Chinese car that has everything that opens and shuts for 20 grand. All of this older stuff is resetting in the marketplace. And the reason insurance companies are putting cap values on it is because it's just not economic to fix them. 69:13 Right? Like, you can't get the parts. 69:16 I don't mean to sound, you know, the sort of dark cloud, but it's just kind of the fact of where we are with a lot of this stuff, right? All right. 69:23 Okay. Look, I've got one here. I want to get a 67 Chev Impala four-door from... 69:32 Australia. I found one in America, but no idea how to import it. Do you have any idea or any information on that? 69:39 It's funny you should say that, actually, because I had a caller on the weekend about a Capri, which I'm helping with. Get in touch with me after the show and I'll explain it. There is a way of doing it, but it is a pretty convoluted process. 69:52 And asbestos seems to be something that we need to really keep an eye out for something like that. 69:56 Okay. All right. Get Aaron's details and the two can get together on that one. That's Aaron, who was there in relation to the 67 Chev Impala four-door. Just a couple of calls on headlights. We talked about this before and Tony's with us now. Hello, Tony. 70:14 Yes, good evening, gentlemen. Great program. Just before I go and say what I was going to say, John, it's only right that I should have let everyone know that your actual real nickname is John Stanky. 70:28 Look, Tony, I actually, funny enough, I referenced this last night and it was because there was a typo in a greyhound magazine of all things. Everyone thought it was very funny. Thank you, Tony. Thank you very much for reminding everyone. And these clowns know too. Yeah, we won't forget that now. Thank you. 70:47 Thank you, Tony. It wouldn't be fair if I didn't mention it, John, so I thought I'd just mention it. But just on the headlights, look, I'm guilty of it myself because I do a lot of driving, and I drive a Toyota Land Cruiser, a new one, LC300. But what it is, it's got to do... One, the last caller was right. It's the auto dip. I find the Chinese manufacturers, maybe the sensors aren't as good as the Japanese or Europeans. That's number one. And number two, Trent would be aware of it, and Sean, it's the auto levelling. 71:18 Basically, when I drive, I can adjust the headlights. I think it's from zero to five. But if I adjust it on the highest, I can basically have them on normal beam, but it will be like high beam. 71:30 Yeah, and they point up. 71:31 You wouldn't believe it. Yeah, and unfortunately in the last couple of weeks I've had to adjust them down because the bogone moths have been getting attracted to the headlights. 71:41 That'd be painful to clean off the front of the car. That's part of the problem. You factor that in with a lot of people leaving them on auto, they don't dip as quickly, which Tony said, and the fact that modern cars, they're just multiple, multiple times brighter than they were with old cars. 71:57 Do they, though? But do we actually... Are they being set up when the cars have been delivered, right? I know there's an ADR compliance, but I don't... If I do a pink slip on a car, which you don't do on a car until, what, it's five or six years old, right? They don't check the lights. They just check that they work. They check that they work. They don't check the level. 72:14 The other thing, too, is... Let me just say, I've got a note here on this. Years ago, I worked in the Toyota pre-delivery department. One of the items to check was the headlight adjustment. Surprisingly, direct from the factory, they're aiming above the road and needed adjusting to cover the roadway. Now, he's saying that these days, it's often overlooked... 72:34 But I don't know. What I need to understand, and I'll speak to a couple of manufacturers about this, is to what extent you can adjust them. With old cars, you've just got a screwdriver and you could adjust them up and down. 72:46 You can adjust them, right? 72:48 The other thing I'm just thinking about is... What, with a brand new Mercedes-Benz? 72:50 Yeah, you can. So the Xenon headlights, you can adjust them, right? So those DRL lights, you can adjust them. And I tell you why I know that, because I've had some that have been facing too low and I've actually had them brought up. 73:02 I think the other thing is that with all these monster caravans that are getting attached to the back of four-wheel drives, I reckon that might be part of the problem as well because they're lifting those headlights up. 73:11 Oh, they lift the headlights up. 73:13 Because you think about it, it's pulling the back of the car down. 73:15 Well, one of the things we've talked about with the duck when we do our regular segment there, and a couple of his mates as well, they do, at the moment, me, Mr Magoo, I've got a tow bar on the back of my RAV4, and it's a two-wheel drive. Now, I could go and hook it up tomorrow to a very large caravan and drive off with no idea how to set it up. 73:38 There's no regulations and there's no training. So there's that point. And then the other point is, well, Trent drives a car the size of a block of flats. Where are the headlights on that massive thing that he drives? I mean, really, it's so high up off the ground. Seriously. 73:52 Do you know something seriously that I've spoken to our man, Dr Ross, about, which our listeners are not going to like, but I say this as someone who turned 50 this year? The older we get, the more sensitive to light our eyes become. So maybe the lights aren't as bright as we think they are. We're just getting older. 74:07 Yeah. 74:08 But your car is very big. I'm in a Mazda 6 electric sedan. 74:12 Okay. All right. Very good. 12 to 10 to 9 in Queensland. 74:18 Nine and a half to ten to nine in Queensland. We're talking cars with Sean Mackle from costacar.com.au and Mr. Trent Nikolic. Now, this one here from one of our listeners, I've got a 2010 STI hatch. 74:32 What's that? Is it STI? Subaru. Subaru. 74:35 What would I know? 74:36 Listen, we're in Australia. It's a Subaru. Subaru. I knew that would get a response. Yeah, exactly. 2010 STI hatch. It's got 110,000 Ks on it. I don't want to sell it. 74:46 Your thoughts on whether they'll be desirable in the future. So thoughts on that? 74:53 There's always going to be a market for it, but you've just got to keep in mind, and this is very similar to Holden and Ford stuff. 75:00 The age demographic of people who can remember Subarus going around the rally tracks is kind of aging, right? So they've probably got another 10-year shelf life. It's very sensible case for the age that you've got. 75:15 Also, probably something else that I'm just thinking about as I'm talking to you is once they get to 25 years old, there will be a flood of them come out of Japan because they're very easy to import when they get to 25 years old. 75:25 Okay, this one from a listener says, my second car I ever owned was a Ford Capri Lotus. 75:32 After three gearbox lives, I sold it for peanuts. 75:35 Duh, how stupid. A Lotus Capri now. 75:38 What year was that? 75:40 6345-ish. And what would that be worth now? A lot of money. 75:44 Because the engine was built by Lotus. All right, okay, very good. Brian's on the question of headlights again, because we're going to do more on this. I think it's worth looking into. Brian, what do you want to say? 75:55 Evening, John. I'm Trent. 75:58 Two points. I do a lot of driving at night as well. And I find that if the vehicle is approaching you on an incline, say coming up at you, if you know what I mean, the lights are very bright. And secondly, if it's wet and raining, these headlights, they're deadly. 76:17 Yeah, they reflect a lot off the road surface. Yeah, that's true too. Yeah, that's a good point as well. That's a really good point. 76:23 Yeah, look, I just don't think it's one of those ones that's not a lot of thought given into it. And can I just throw a little hobby horse in here? Depends what it is. Well, under the road rules, bicycles have to have a light that is visible. Correct. Now, how do you determine that? Because you can go to a $2 shop or the reject shop and buy a really cheap front light and back light, and they twinkle. You can barely see them. Yes, does that count as visible? 76:53 I think you've got to have a death wish if you want to go up on the road. Yeah, but I'm saying that they are. Coming here tonight, this is something John's been talking about for years. The back of Pyrmont, delivery rider on a bicycle, no lights, all in black gear, nothing reflective, riding down the middle of the road. Ridiculous. 77:08 Couldn't see him. And then, the only reason I mention that, because I'm always whinging, coming here, there was a guy, when I was coming to work early today, there's a guy, and as I'm going across, and you've got a pedestrian crossing, and you look and you see whether the traffic, so you move out, and then this kid on a line bike is sort of shot onto the crossing as I'm going across. And I looked across, and I wanted to stop and say, mate, first of all, you're not wearing a helmet. And second of all, if you ride a bike onto a crossing, you are then shooting out onto that crossing. 77:38 Well, you're not allowed to, are you? Well, I've raced it once. 77:41 I think in some states maybe you can, but you can't hear. 77:44 And you shouldn't. Logic tells you. People are looking for, is there someone standing near the crossing? 77:49 Use that word again, logic. Logic, yeah. 77:50 But logic tells you. If you are shooting out, the driver's not expecting you to come out there. 77:55 Yeah, but John, you summed it up. He didn't have a helmet on, so he can't be that stupid. 77:58 Yeah, if you're riding a line bike, you're stupid. And if you're riding a line bike without a helmet, you're even more stupid. 78:02 Yeah, five and a half to ten to nine in Queensland. 78:06 Look, let me see. I've got... Here we go. Where are we? The Simon guy that bought the merch should have listened to the salesman and bought the Lexington stuff. 78:15 Yeah, he probably should have, actually. Yeah, unfortunately. Wow. I think the Lexus would be worth less. 78:20 We've only got about 30 seconds. We get Brian just on headlights. I think Brian in relation to... You reckon it gets worse when it's raining, do you, Brian? 78:28 Yeah, right, yeah. 78:30 Worse when it gets raining. Yeah. 78:31 Okay. That's what he said. Yeah, absolutely. 78:32 In the rain. 78:33 It's just because it reflects off the rain and the windscreen and the road. 78:37 Because that fits. See, you talk about when it's raining. What about last night? You could barely see. You could barely see. It was horrendous. And I think there should also be that protocol where you put your flashes on, you know, and you put your flasher lights on, your hazard lights, don't you? Don't you think? 78:53 Yeah. 78:53 Yeah, someone's saying he's meant a Lotus Cortina, he was saying. Yeah, yeah. 78:57 The engine was built by Lotus, and it's a Ford Cortina. 78:59 Actually, with four and a half to ten or nine in Queensland, didn't you get a call from someone on the weekend wanting to buy a Ford Capri? No, last week we did. Was it last week? A Ford Capri sports car, which came out around the same time as the MX5. Remember the Ford? I think that was about the same time. And my memory of it was a friend of mine got one. 79:18 a friend of mine got one and it was actually really cool but it was seen as a bit of a lemon but i was told that they eventually stopped making them but once the last series of them they got it right but by that stage everyone was not buying them john's talking about late 80s early 90s australian front wheel drive one okay all right uh look really quickly here this is uh oh we can't do it now uh no we'll have to do it later all right sorry i've got so many things going what are you clowns carrying on with. So what are we doing? I think he's got to go to an ad break. 79:48 We're winding things up. 79:49 Yeah, that's right. 79:49 Sean Mackle is, of course, from costacar.com.au. He's with this clown on weekends as well. So you can talk to him on weekends. We're cheating on you on weekends. And Trent, whatever name he's going to be carrying into the weekend as well, you ought to be back with us next week as well. I will, mate. 80:04 I will. 80:04 And there's a couple here that we didn't get to. We'll try and get to them off air. Thank you so much. Three and a half to ten, nine in Queensland. News coming up soon. We'll get to some of your messages we didn't get to before. We'll deal with those after the news. We'll also have, of course, The Brain Game, a little bit of nostalgia and Peter Ford. But the news is next. 80:29 Now it's back to John Stanley, right across Australia. 80:53 Yes, look, Jeff's come back in relation to the Ford Capri Lotus, which we talked about a moment ago with Trent and Sean. Says it was built by Frank Madditch Racing, lightweight with a cage, had a run with it on a track and it beat an XU1, he is saying there. So there you go. That's a little bit more. And look, we had a few other people with either suggestions or questions, which we are passing on to Trent and Sean. And for those of you who can't get enough of them, They're back on the weekends with Trent's new afternoon program, Saturdays and Sundays, and do the right thing by him, ring him up, call him Sue, give him all the different names, and he'll certainly feel welcome. 81:32 131873 is the number. 81:35 in the program tonight we will have our bumper entertainment report later on from peter ford and we aren't going to have frank's treasure trove a full version of frank's treasure trove tonight what we are going to do on the program is um i'm going to bring you a little snippet which relates to what we do uh with frank's treasure trove and i think you'll enjoy that because it does relate to something that some of you have asked whether we could play. So it's a very, very famous piece of radio history I'll bring you. But there's an angle to it which I think does highlight one of the great tragedies in terms of the record keeping in the entire media industry. 82:15 So that's coming up later. Well, I won't give you any more than that. I'll keep you in suspense. And we're also going to touch on something that I know I've got a very good friend who who's dealing with a very serious kidney condition. There are other people who are suffering from kidney disease, and I think it might have been last year or the year before when we talked about this, and I was quite staggered to realise that kidney disease just sneaks up on you without any symptoms, and it can be devastating. 82:49 And so we're going to touch on that in terms of awareness in the campaign that's being run. It's pretty important. 131873 is the number. At 10 past 10, 9 in Queensland. 83:02 Now it's time for John Stanley's Brain Game. Call now, 131 873. 83:08 Yes, we have a double pass to go along and see the movie Pressure with Brendan Fraser and Andrew Scott. That's in cinemas from the end of the month. Also get the John Stanley Mr Magoo mug. We might even work on a new Mr Magoo mug with Trent and Sean hanging off the back of the jalopy. That might be one for the future, but we've got the The John Stanley Mr Magoon mug is one of the prizes tonight. And I'm going to go to the Believe It or Not Files, because it's one of my favourite stories, this one, one of those ones that people just don't believe. 83:40 And here's the question. 83:43 In 1932, the Australian Army sent soldiers into the wheat fields of Western Australia. 83:53 the Wheatbelt region of West Australia, where there'd been an invasion of Watt, because they were in there, the army, and they were sitting there with Lewis machine guns to deal with an invasion into the wheat fields of Watt. It's quite a famous and, in the end, perhaps slightly comical part of Australia's military history, but it was in 1932. Australian soldiers in WA were They're into the wheat fields with their Lewis machine guns trying to deal with something. 84:27 And it seems the something was a bit too fast for them, a bit like the Cody in the Roadrunner. But anyway, you tell me what it was, what they were after, what was it that they were targeting in 1932 with those Lewis machine guns. First person to call through with the answer we're looking for, which is the correct answer, of course. You'll win the prizes tonight at 11 after 10 or 9 in Queensland. MUSIC Take it much smoother than the voice of Dean Martin, but let's go to Alison. Alison, what's the answer we're looking for here? 84:57 Emus. It was Emus. Quite remarkable. They called it the Great Emu War of 1932. Hey, well done. You've got yourself the double pass to go and see that movie Pressure. Brendan Fraser, Andrew Scott. It's in cinemas from October 29, so the end of the month you can go and see that one. Also, we're sending you one of the famous John Stanley, Mr Magoo mugs. And the Emu stories, the reason I mention the Roadrunner, The story was apparently that they went over there. It didn't last very long. And the way the story is told, the emus were very fast, almost like John Williamson. 85:30 They were very, very fast, old man emu, resilient and masterfully evasive. 85:37 scattering into small groups whenever fired upon. So they've got these Lewis machine guns. 85:43 The emus were too fast for them. 85:45 And they abandoned the military effort after a few weeks. I'm not sure what they did after that because they were causing real problems in the wheat belt there in the 1930s. But the machine guns in the army had met their match in those emus. 131873 is the number now at 14 past 10, past nine in Queensland. 86:05 17 past 10 past 9 in Queensland. We won't have a formal version of Frank's Treasure Trove tonight, but look, a little later in the hour, I've got a little bit of nostalgia, and it's actually something that you've asked for, which is a very, very famous long-running radio segment, but there's a context to it in terms of how we've lost so much of our history. So we'll do that for you shortly. But at 18 minutes past the hour, I want to touch on something. This is a month. 86:35 There's all sorts of things. Every organisation, every charity organisation that advocates for people with... 86:43 medical conditions they have campaigns and this is one that i really did want to highlight which is october is a month where there is an effort being made by kidney health australia to highlight the issue of kidney health they're calling it the red socks challenge so what they're asking you to do is get online maybe you you donate you might get some red socks and there's a purpose to the red socks which i'll explain in just a moment and then over the month for find a way to do some 60Ks. And this is about trying to raise awareness. Now, I can't remember whether it was last year or the year before we had a conversation along these lines. 87:18 I was quite staggered to find that the kidney disease that does affect well over 2.5 million Australians and that most of the people who are affected by kidney disease aren't aware they have it. And in fact, you can start to lose your function in your kidneys and you could lose significant proportions of the function in your kidneys, 70%, 80%, and no symptoms occur. So when the symptoms start occurring, you're in real, real trouble. There's significant numbers of people in Australia on dialysis. 87:50 There's the question of treatment, and there's also the question of kidney donations and transplants. There's a lot to cover, but I think the notion that you can lose 90% of your kidney function before symptoms appear i think that's something that we all need to think about very very seriously and it's what i began when i had a conversation about all of this with the the man who heads up all of this the the man who i've spoken to a couple of times chris forbes the ceo of kidney health australia i touched on this with him earlier tonight 88:20 Hi, John. Is that right? That's right. Unfortunately, it's a symptomless disease. So you can actually lose 90% of your kidney function and have no visible symptoms. So people are seemingly well one day and unwell the next. 88:34 Yeah, the kidneys are a remarkable thing because we know that you can donate one kidney and survive on one. So plainly, you can function with most of your kidney going. The rest of it keeps working really hard to do what it has to do. But eventually... 88:51 It gives out. Is that what we're saying? 88:53 Yeah. So people actually fall off a cliff and they talk about that, that they present to the doctor and they might have swollen ankles or frothy urine or headaches and feeling a bit off, et cetera. They have a blood test or a urine test and the doctor says, you know, you're approaching kidney failure. 89:12 Incredible. So in that early stage, because I see talking about people who there are no symptoms, so they haven't got anything that tells them there's something wrong, but their kidneys are progressively failing. Is there something you can do to identify that? Is that something people should be asking about when they have their regular checkup? And again, if you do discover it's happening, can you then slow the progression of it? 89:36 Look, the best thing to do is to look at risk factors. Because there's no symptoms, you have to understand whether you're at risk of kidney disease and then maybe have a chat to your GP. So those sort of things. By far, the two of the greatest things that cause kidney disease are diabetes and high blood pressure. If you've got one of those, then you should be talking to your GP and getting a regular kidney health check. But there are other risk factors. 90:03 And Unfortunately, three quarters of our population have at least one of them, and that's if they've had a stroke or a heart attack in the past, if they've smoked or these days vaping um any family history if you're overweight or obese it's a really strong indicator that you may have some kidney damage and for those of us who are getting older if you're aged over 60 you should be keeping as part of your normal health routine of course and so people spend about 60 hours every month connected to a dialysis machine these are people presumably who'd be would be waiting for a kidney a kidney transplant Yeah, so there are about 15,000 people in Australia now on dialysis. 90:42 Unfortunately, it's one of the kidney diseases, one of those diseases that's linked to other things. It's linked to the heart system as well. So most people don't even make kidney failure. They actually die prematurely of a heart attack. So one of the ways of reducing cardiovascular deaths is to control your kidney disease. But if you do, yep, you'll need dialysis. And many people, it's five hours at a time, three times a week. So that's 15 hours a week. You're tired before and afterwards. 91:13 Some can do it at home. And then you're looking for a transplant, but not everybody qualifies for a transplant. It's a significant workup progress. There's a shortage of kidneys. 91:25 So therefore, our aim is very much... It's not all doom and gloom. There are new medications on the PBS that if you can diagnose kidney disease early, then you can slow or even stop progression of the disease. So that's what we're really pushing. And the Red Sox challenge is about bringing it out of the cupboard and making people aware of kidney disease. And luckily, we now have the opportunity to hopefully get in front of it. 91:49 Okay. So you want people through the month of October in any way, maybe ride a bike, walk, whatever it is, try and do 60 kilometres over that period of time. And that is linked to that 60 hours people spend on the machine every month in those five-hour blocks. And also, cleverly, you've got the red socks as part of this because the people, when they're on dialysis, apparently their feet get very, very cold. Is that right? 92:13 That's right. So we invented sort of the red socks because people on balances do that. They get cold feet, et cetera. So 60K your way is what we're trying to say. And it can be walking, it can be swimming, it can be spread across your family, whatever you'd like to do, because the funds are really needed by Kidney Health Australia and it's all about supporting families. patients living with their kidneys. 92:37 Look, it's as simple as redsoxchallenge.org.au. People can find all the details there. They can get involved. They can buy some socks and contribute. Just a final one, if I can. Is there that awkward conversation? Because if you're looking for a transplant, it can be obviously within your family members. We have all those stories of people who donate kidneys to members of their family, siblings and the rest. So is that something that it's delicate? but that should be perhaps being broached? 93:09 Yeah, look, there's two types of donors. It's an incredible, generous gift of life. But there is a wait list at the moment of about 1,500 people waiting for a transplant. 93:19 1,500, you're saying, is the wait list? 93:21 Yeah, that's right. And many more who are not on the wait list that could do with a kidney as well. And so... 93:28 And it's a difficult time often with a deceased donor to make that gift of life. And it's, as I said, really, really generous. But also living donation with kidneys is possible. And so if you're interested in that, then talk to your GP and their support there or give us Kidney Health Australia a call because it is something that can transform somebody's life. Obviously, obviously. 93:53 All right, Chris, nice to talk to you. Good luck. And let's hope one day down the track there's this massive breakthrough and we're not having these conversations. Thank you. Thanks so much, John. Chris Forbes, the CEO of Kidney Health Australia, one of our listeners making a note about long-term use of lithium, which is for treatment for other conditions. And yes, I was speaking with Chris earlier tonight, but I think there's obviously, I think there's a lot of evidence that that does have an effect on your kidney health. So it's something... 94:23 that I think most people, GPs, would be aware of if you speak with them, and it is a problem. 131873 is the number, and I should also mention, I've got a couple of people I'm quite close to who are going through some serious health issues. They're in hospital. 94:37 One's been in hospital, one is in hospital, and... the people who are in those hospitals looking after people with serious conditions. And we talk about how strained our hospitals are, but we'd be a long way away from any sort of sanity if we didn't have all those people doing that work, working really, really hard, working long shifts. Many of you perhaps even heading off to start a shift now or maybe finishing a long shift. 95:01 We're very grateful that you are there. 26 minutes past 10, past nine in Queensland. 95:07 Coming up to 10.30, 9.30 in Queensland. Look, every Wednesday night we have Frank's Treasure Trave. You can find them online. They're wonderful little snippets of mostly radio from the past. A lot of it, though, has come from you, listeners who've recorded radio programs, particularly during that era when there were cassette tapes. So people were able to record radio programs on cassette. 95:34 And what we discovered... 95:37 In doing this with Frank is we get a lot of material comes in, but there's a lot of material that's missing because radio stations, and we know television stations as well, because all of this stuff was on big reel-to-reel tapes, they just didn't keep records of their programs. Channel 7 used a lot of the classic television programs of the past as landfill for a tennis court at Epping. 96:01 So because Frank's not here today, I thought, well, let's try and find something else. And I discovered a cassette that I've got. And in fact, it's a series of CDs of Alistair Cook's Letter from America. Now, many people know this. It's just famous. The BBC used to have a weekly letter from America from Alistair Cook in a very distinctive style. And he'd just deliver a verbal letter from America going all the way back to the 70s. So you're talking about going through the Watergate era, the Vietnam War, all the things that happened during the 70s, the 80s, and then into the 90s. 96:36 But what I did notice was I actually went to the BBC website where I found a particular one, and I thought I'll play you a little bit of this one. We'll give you a sample of what it is. 96:48 But in the introduction on the BBC website – they've belled the cat on what happened there. Because even the BBC doesn't seem to have kept records of some of these classic programs because their archive and the archive of programs from this famous letter from America has come from listeners who recorded it. So you'll hear that in the introduction to this. And this one was in 1988. It was actually in April of 1988. 97:17 And in April of every year in the United States, there's a very, very famous event at a very famous golf course. 97:24 And it's the Masters. It was won that year by the Scott, Sandy Lyle. Greg Norman was in the field. He actually finished with a wet sail, but started off too badly in this particular year. But all of the magic of Augusta, Georgia, even non-golfers hear people talking about it. And so... This was the letter from America that Alistair Cooke did on that Augusta of 1988. I'll play you a couple of minutes of it, but what's particularly resonant is the introduction, which suggests that even the BBC hadn't kept this wonderful treasure in its own records. 98:05 Have a listen. 98:06 Hello, I'm Paddy O'Connell. This is an archive edition of Alistair Cook's Letter From America. It was recorded by one of two listeners who, between them, taped and labelled more than 650 Letter From America programmes from 1973 to 1989. 98:24 Good evening. 98:27 I've just had, for me, the most extraordinary experience of living outside the real world for a whole week. 98:37 No television, no newspaper that reported anything but the matter in hand, which we'll come to in a minute. 98:43 No contact with people who talked about the real world or anything going on in it. 98:50 Perhaps I'm being a little snobbish in using that phrase, the real world. I suppose I mean the world you cannot help rubbing elbows with once you are home from your job. 99:02 And even on your job, you have to contend with traffic, telephones or tractors, a crop not coming along as you had expected. 99:12 And in the evening, unless you're a monk or a nun, you see and hear about the Cyprus hijacking, the patrolling Israeli soldiers in the occupied territories, about the French election, about Prince Charles and modern architecture... 99:30 about Mayor Koch in New York saying that any Jew who voted for the Reverend Jesse Jackson would have to be, his word, crazy. 99:41 I learned about these things last Monday on my return from Shangri-La. 99:47 I should say that Shangri-La, which is way down yonder in Georgia, has newspapers and television with all the regular national stations and a flurry of cable stations too. 100:01 but there was never any time to read or listen. 100:05 This was my daily round in Shangri-La. 100:09 Wake, breakfast of various fruits and juices, scrambled eggs, country sausage, that is, sausage patties, no skin, no bread, crisp bacon, grits with pepper and butter, and hot southern biscuits, which are an unsweet, floury scone. 100:30 Back to the motel room, grab a badge and a shooting stick, the telephone rings. 100:36 The car is there, whisked off, the last glimpse of the real world of supermarkets, petrol stations, lunch counters, pancake parlors and the like, into a long driveway bordered by magnolias. 100:51 down to a circular lawn with flower beds, and into a small, white, southern colonial plantation house, flanked by what once were slave quarters, and are now on one side suites for the older members of this club, and on the other side, the locker room for the players. 101:14 There, the word is out. The word is golf, golf. 101:20 Yes, that was the beginning of his letter from America. And then he talked about the Augusta, Georgia Masters of 1988. 101:31 But that description, and that was the nature of what he did. He talked about Watergate. He'd give a weekly letter. But like so much of what we play with Frank's Treasure Trove, It came from BBC listeners because the BBC hadn't even kept it. Quite remarkable. And I haven't played it all because it goes a lot longer than that. You can find it on the BBC website, a lot of this material, in the way that we're now trying to honour our heritage by gathering information. And so, as I say each week when Frank's here, if you've got some old tapes, old material... 102:03 You can send it to us. We can digitise it. We can send it back to you. But we do need to make sure that this history is preserved. And as we say each week as well, if you've got some stuff that's on, it may be your own material on any tape or videotape or VHS tapes. Get it digitised soon because the longer you wait, the more it will deteriorate. And Frank is one of many people that do it. Frank Houston, I-U-S-T-O-N-2. 102:30 Frank Houston2 at gmail.com. You can contact him if you want him to do some of this digitising or preserve your own material. But that's my little nod to what we do here on a Wednesday. Frank's not here. He'll be back next week. Right now, 22 minutes to 11 or 10 in Queensland. 102:46 20 to 11, 10 if you're in Queensland. 102:57 Now on Knights, the Entertainment Report with Peter Ford. 103:02 Every Wednesday night we speak with Australia's leading entertainment reporter, Peter Ford. Pete, good evening once again. 103:07 Good evening to you, John. 103:08 Now, Powderfinger, they're back, they're selling their shows and the tickets are going like hotcakes, apparently. 103:17 Through the roof, absolutely. I mean, this time last week, we didn't quite know what was going on. I mean, we pretty much thought they were getting back together, but we didn't have any details. And those details were only released on Monday. So what happened today, the tickets went on sale. If you had already pre-registered at the Powderfinger website, that gave you a code. You could then go and buy some tickets. Remember in the old days, we used to have fan clubs. I used to run some fan clubs when I was a kid. But these days, of course, you know, everyone has their own website and that's how you get involved and keep up to date. 103:52 So just based on those people alone who had registered, so far they've added extra shows in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, everywhere basically. They have added extra shows based on that demand. Worth noting too, that unlike a lot of really hot tickets that go on sale in recent times, there's no dynamic pricing. They have set the, and this is up to the artist to say, I don't want that. And that's what Powderfinger have done. So if the ticket is meant to be $200, when you go to buy it, it will still be $200. 104:25 They're not going to suddenly say, oh, that's actually $430 now, because that really makes people angry. So the demand today has been extraordinary. There's a Telstra presale on Friday. And then it's not until next Monday that anybody... can just go online and buy tickets. So purely based on today and the limited way people could get into the sales today, it's already through the roof. So there's no doubt this is going to be a massive success. 104:54 Huge success for them. You kind of buried the lead there. Can I just circle back to use one of those horrible cliches? You used to run fan clubs, you say, as a kid. Can you give us a little bit of a direction on that? What were your fan clubs? I'd love to know. 105:11 Well, you've got to remember, this is in times when people were wanting information about their favourite stars. Yeah, I know. So at various times, I did, I'm even admitting this, I did run the Colleen Hewitt fan club. I did run the Alison Durbin fan club. And I did run the Liberace fan club. So that's a sad admission, I know. 105:35 No, but this is the whole thing. As you say, in those days, people who wanted to know, there was no social media. You had to look through the entertainment pages to get information. And if you heard something on the radio, there might be a little bit of a snippet. So people who wanted to know would join the club. And the club, that was your start as an entertainment reporter, wasn't it, really? 105:55 Yeah. I guess it was or a stalker, one or the other. But yeah. And, you know, there would be a monthly newsletter, which I would type up and then I would go to. Yes, it wasn't a cassette. Now, I did have access to a photocopier and send these out. And of course, people had to pay a yearly fee to be a part of this fan club. 106:17 why are we even talking about no no i'm interested you know why because you're not interested no no i am i am i am you know why because when i first started as a reporter in canberra i was a very young very young reporter uh there was a i shared an office with a fellow uh who was older than me and he used to send out a weekly newsletter in the post on politics it was called the laurie oakes newsletter so You know, everyone was doing it in their different fields. 106:44 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I didn't know that. Well, of course, weekly, that sounds like far too much of an effort to me. Monthly was bad enough. And, of course, eventually I did lose interest, not necessarily in the artist, but in running the fan club. So I'd move on to something else. Anyway, that's a close. 107:00 I mean, look, I've got my own Friday night show dedicated to fans of just about everything now. So I might even interview you down the track. In the meantime, this huge music star who was shot in a drive-by shooting some 30 years ago, Tupac Shakur, is that what we're saying? 107:20 Yeah. Well, yeah, a lot of people won't know him, but he was a big rap star back in the day. It's going back 30 years now. 107:27 I'm pretending that I knew him, but honestly, I saw the name. I looked it up. Massive, massive star who died in the drive-by shooting all those years ago. 107:36 He did. And up until today, it's been kind of one of those unresolved stories with no ending because... they didn't have anybody who they knew was responsible or could take responsibility. But today they did get somebody. I mean, he was actually found guilty a couple of months ago, but today was his sentencing. And in his 60s, he's been sentenced to a minimum of... 40 years to life. So, you know, most unlikely that he's ever going to be coming out of prison. 108:07 So it's taken 30 years to reach this point where this chapter can be closed. He actually didn't pull the trigger. The man who pulled the trigger died in another drive-by shooting a couple of years later, unrelated to Tupac Shakur. But this man now, this man should be in jail anyway for being an idiot, because what he decided about 10 years ago was, yeah, I'm going to start talking about it now because the statute of limitations has passed, so they can't get me. So I'm going to write a book about shooting Tupac Shakua. 108:39 I'm going to do a documentary about shooting Tupac Shakua. And of course, foolishly, he was wrong. It turned out they found a way to get to him. even though technically the statute of limitations had passed but they got to him and today he's in prison will be there for the rest of his life so the man was a complete idiot to do that um but then again at least finally he's you know tupac's family were in the courtroom today for their victim impact statements and and you know they at least feel today they've got some kind of justice 109:12 Peter Ford with his weekly entertainment report here with us now. Selma Blair, if we go back, she was a really big star alongside the likes of Cameron Diaz and others in a lot of movies. She's had a lot of troubles over a number of years, and it seems to have come to her head now. 109:28 Yes, look, she had a lot of credits for movies and TVs. It's one of those careers that didn't sustain. She kind of kept on getting work, but she never really became A-list. Then she got a lot of publicity a couple of years ago when she revealed that she has MS and it was really taking a terrible toll on her. In fact, in her very interesting list of credits, she actually played... Kim in the American version of Kath and Kim. That didn't take off, but that's a little Aussie connection there. 109:59 But she's in the news at the moment because she had this kind of meltdown or breakdown on a flight from Los Angeles to New York. And she tried to open the door of the plane midair. The flight attendants tried to calm her down and sedate her. And she punched one in the face. She bit another one. Then when they got onto the ground, they managed to restrain her. When they got onto the ground at JFK Airport, suddenly she assaulted three other people. The weird part about this is that if she does have MS, as I say, her symptoms do seem to have regressed a little. 110:36 But when you see her, she seems very frail. She walks very carefully and slowly. So where this kind of manic strength came from to be assaulting these people is quite weird. Obviously, something went wrong. Now, whether she mixed medications and alcohol, and that's a possibility, because 10 years ago, something not dissimilar happened with her as well. Wasn't as dramatic, but she did admit on that occasion that she'd mixed alcohol and alcohol. and medication that was before she had ms uh she is an alcoholic she's talked about it and written about it so look it's a sad story but what do you do with someone like that she is a woman with a teenage kid she is somebody who does have ms does she go to jail i don't know it's one of those things of course you you can't go around biting people unless you're dracula i guess you can but you can't do that They've got to be consequences. 111:33 But, you know, I don't know where that'll land. And her celebrity should not play any role in that whatsoever. You know, sometimes for better, sometimes it makes it worse. People feel like they have to make a display or an example of you. So I don't know where it's going to land. I mean, the interesting twist also is that she has to face these two legal battles because what happened in the air comes under the jurisdiction of the FBI. But what happened when the plane landed comes under the jurisdiction of the NYPD. So she's got very, very troubled times ahead of her. 112:06 Let's turn to a really big star of the United States, Kelly Clarkson, won the first American Idol there and has had a big, big career. But she tried to turn herself into a modern version of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman after a visit to a store in Brooklyn, one of these art stores, one of these stores that sells artefacts and knickknacks and the like. It looks like it's pretty upmarket. But Pete, for those who haven't followed this, this has been quite a circus. 112:36 Look, it's one of these ridiculous stories where people somehow feel they have to get emotionally invested and take a side. And it's all over a $15,000 US sort of automaton, I think it's called, like a bird puppet. You pull a string and it sings. Now, this bird is called Molly. It's nailed to a wall. It is like the mascot of this store in Brooklyn. And then along comes Kelly Clarkson and says, I want to buy that. And they supposedly say to her, no, that's not for sale. 113:08 I'm sorry. She claims they gave her what they call the elevator look, where they looked her up and down and like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, as if to say, you don't belong in this store. And so she got very angry, apparently, and other items that she was going to buy, she put back on the shelf and she stormed out of the shop. She goes on to her social media and says, I've been treated terribly to her eight million followers. And suddenly this store is in chaos. Yeah. 113:38 And she did describe it, didn't she, as a pretty woman moment like Julia Roberts. 113:42 Yeah, she did. And it's, you know, that is a great moment in that movie. But, you know, people have been debating this and arguing this and she should have done that. And, you know, why didn't... And I must admit I'm one of the people who says, well, why didn't she just ring the manager or the owner of the store and discuss it and find some kind of resolution? Why do you... You know, you must know you're going to cause havoc and chaos to that store by getting your 8 million followers, you know, ringing up and harassing all the staff there. And they've revealed they've been getting death threats, etc. 114:15 But the interesting twist here is that... Earlier today, there was CCTV vision that finally came out. It's odd it's taken so long. And an independent news outlet got hold of it, not one of the major ones. It doesn't really indicate a lot, except it does indicate she did seem to leave in some kind of huff. where she put the other stuff down that she was going to buy and she seemed to call out something to the staff and other customers are turning around and looking at her. So I think this is very bad for her image. 114:47 I think she needs to desperately find some way to backtrack. I don't know how you do that because, I mean, apart from anything else, you know, she's got this very loyal, almost feral fan base and they're the ones ringing up doing the death threats. You only need one crazy person. I mean, how crazy is that? I know. Over the $15,000. 115:07 And just on the image, because it's a quite smallish store. I saw the CCTV and it looks cluttered, but she was dressed down with a yellow shirt and a backpack and a cap on, but she wasn't dressed any more down than anyone else in the store. It wasn't like it was an upmarket boutique and she was walking through looking like she didn't belong. She was dressed like everyone else. It's a bizarre story. 115:30 Yeah. 115:31 And look, I would be surprised if any store, if your credit card, you know, goes through, they'll take your money. The complication here is that there was a little price tag kind of next to Molly. Now, they say that was not a price tag for Molly. That was an indicator that the artist would make another one similar or the same for $15,000. But Molly herself... 115:56 or I guess it could be himself, was nailed, literally nailed to the wall and is the store mascot and wasn't for sale. So is this a story of a star who has never heard the word no, who basically got angry and decided to unleash her flying monkeys on the staff of this store? Or was she treated badly? Plenty of people get treated badly in shops. We've all had terrible service at different times. 116:23 I don't think this is good for her. Her image has been very much the story of the, well, not, I guess, dissimilar to Pretty Woman. She was the cocktail waitress in Texas who was discovered. that she had a brilliant voice and she got a lot of hits and she got a daytime TV show. But she's always had this sort of down-home, very natural, you know, image. And this goes completely against that. 116:45 Yes, it does. It does. And the good thing is, of course, in the world of entertainment, TV, radio and the rest in this country, no one ever says, don't you know who I am? No one ever says, don't you know who I am? 116:55 They never would do that. Never in this country. And to be honest, most people in Australian show business or music couldn't afford a $15,000 puppet anyway. 117:04 Yeah, and I think a lot of people in our business are a bit scared to say the words in case the answer comes back. No, I don't actually. Who are you? Yeah, exactly. Which can often happen. All right, Pete, as always, great to talk to you. We'll do it again next week. 117:14 Thank you, John. See you then. 117:16 There is Peter Ford with his weekly entertainment report and some revelations there about fan clubs. I've got a bit of correspondence on that, which I'll share with you shortly, at 5 to 11, 10 in Queensland. 117:27 Two minutes to 11, 10 in Queensland. Steve just saying, just the lady, well, she wasn't actually saying, don't you know who I am. It was Kelly Clarkson who was suggesting she'd been treated like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. 117:38 And that's a big story, of course, in the United States. Anyway, and I was just observing that the don't you know who I am thing is rife everywhere. I'm sure it's been said by some politicians, but that did not involve a politician. Also, Tommy says, the woman who ran the Beatles fan club in the UK, Frida Kelly, was famous through the 2013 documentary called Good Old Frida. We're actually continuing our Only Fans series on Friday nights with fans of other things. Horse racing it is tomorrow night. Giving the Everest is on the way. 118:10 And we're going to be... moving into a whole other areas and probably fan clubs of bands will come into the fray we're doing it all through the off season that's 10 30 friday nights uh 9 30 in queensland 11 o'clock news coming up soon 10 o'clock in queensland that fantastic invention the bed easy we talk about here where of course it makes it easier to change the sheets on the bed particularly people who have trouble doing it and need someone to come and help them well this is so good Because no matter who you are, the very heavy corner mattress getting it up is so difficult. 118:42 Well, you press the bed easy, inflates in about 40 seconds, lift the mattress. You've got both hands free to tuck everything in without the backache or the aching fingers. It's an Australian invention. It works a treat. And it means that it just goes down and it makes it so easy for you to change the seats or for someone who's having trouble with it. It's an Aussie invention, a family-owned business. The whole story is on the website. Bedeasy, B-E-D-E-Z-Y.com.au, bedeasy.com.au. That's where you can order. That's where you can see the whole story. And, of course, they've got all sizes available. 119:13 Bedeasy. 119:28 Now it's back to John Stanley, right across Australia. 119:52 Yes, always get a bit of a lift when we hear that music to kick off the final hour of our show for this Wednesday night. It's just after 10 o'clock if you are in the northern states in Queensland, just after 11 o'clock in the southern states. 131873 is the number. A lot of notes coming in. One of our listeners talking about the... This is the fellow that was going back some decades that was being discussed there, Tupac Shakur, was also a poet... 120:22 A collection of poetry from the late 80s and 90s. Thank you, Mark, in relation to that. I might have a look at that. And Mark's also sent me a note. I did get an email from Mark not that long ago. His daughter's a musician, and I am going to have a look at that because I have... 120:38 referenced her before, but she's very talented. So anyone who's got someone that's doing remarkable things, you want to tip us into it, and we are always willing to hear from parents, grandparents, and people who've got amazing things that they are doing, and we're happy to highlight that on our program. We'll try and do that, maybe even tomorrow night. Mark, I'll be in touch with you. 131873 is the number. Bit coming up. Just on the question of immigration, I want to play an interview later in the hour because there's this campaign that's been launched by the Australian Hotels Association. 121:15 This is the hospitality industry talking about immigration and they're running a campaign and this is something that's happening almost under the radar where it's one of many business groups that are saying, well, if you're going to take a big cut to immigration, there are areas that you really need to be very careful of and so they've run a really complex Quite blunt campaign. So I'll let you have a listen to that later in this hour. And Phil O'Neill is going to continue his education on horse racing leading up to the Everest meeting in Sydney this weekend. 121:54 And, of course, over the next four or five weeks, we've got all of the big races being held in Sydney and Melbourne, culminating, of course, in the Melbourne Cup. 131873 is our number. 0460 873873. 10 past 11, 9 in Queensland now. 122:26 Now, front pages tomorrow, the Courier Mail in Brisbane, their headline says Sippy Cats. Now, it's headline Sippy Cats and the reference is to the City Cat Ferries. So City Cat and the play on words, Sippy Cats, because the Brisbane City Council is going to investigate putting licensed bars on City Cat Ferries. with the Lord Mayor saying it'd be a fantastic addition to the popular river service. He said half the fleet already had a service desk, could easily be converted into a food and drink sales area. 123:01 So he's backing the idea of bars on the ferries. Oh, wow. There'll be people who think it's fantastic. Others might have some questions. I'm sure there's going to be a fair debate about that one across tomorrow on 4BC and through our program. So that's one to look out for. 123:19 Bars on the CityCat services. 123:22 That's the proposal from the Brisbane City Council. And the Sam Wood issue, of course, they've got his... 123:31 His wife, who's, of course, involved in the charges that he's facing, they've got a picture of her, Snezana is her name, steps out ringless with a picture of her and some exclusive pictures they've put there on the front page of the paper. 123:46 The Telegraph in Sydney, they've got a picture of Rhys Walsh. Rhys is the word. This is a preview, of course, of the opener of the World Cup Rugby League with Australia playing New Zealand. That's tomorrow night. 123:57 They've also got a reference to the story we touched on earlier, which emerged earlier today, where the federal court... has stepped in and overturned the decision made by Tanya Plibersek to stop that $1.3 billion gold mine from going ahead in the central west of New South Wales or placing conditions on it that they said prevented it from going ahead. So it was to do with a... 124:19 A blue banded bee, if you'll recall, the conversation about different groups and Aboriginal groups in that area that were saying that there was a bee that was being threatened. So all of that's in the Telegraph. Their main story, though, on the Telegraph, and I don't have much more detail, but it says this is in relation to Anne Arley. Now, remember, Anne Arley is the small business minister. And Anne Alley in the Parliament a couple of days ago, when the business of the surcharge that the tax office was, of course, planning to impose on people, that's the... Well, the fact that the... 124:54 The tax office was going to prevent people paying their taxes by credit card if they couldn't impose a surcharge. That was the decision that was made. We did learn earlier in the week that Anne Arley, the small business minister, only learned about the tax officer's decision when they made that decision, the tax office. And the Treasurer had said, well, he had had notice of it earlier. 125:14 And we know there's now this standoff as to whether Anthony Albanese overruled the Treasurer, and I'll get to that shortly because there's coverage of that in the Australian newspaper. But Anne Arley is the small business minister who I think we can now officially say she's embattled. So when you have a minister who's on the back foot, Anne Arley is now the embattled small business minister. So the story says, meet the small business minister who's been travelling the world while Aussie companies crumble. 125:41 And they've got details of the last 12 months and a fair bit of money being spent on travel around the world. Now, I had a quick look at this. 125:51 Obviously, the story's inside the Telegraph. She's Minister for Small Business, Minister for International Development. Minister for Multicultural Affairs. So when I did a quick search, I found statements. She went to Vietnam and Cambodia in July. This is about international development. She also went, as I have a look here, and this is not comprehensive, but this is where you can find out what's going on. She went to Bahrain, Jordan and Qatar at the end of last year. This is talking about, I guess, some of these partnerships, not to do with small business, but to do with the other portfolios of international development, but she's been flying around the world, and so they've got that one on the front page. 126:33 Plain Wrong is the headline, and she's been travelling the world while Aussie companies crumble. So that's The Telegraph's front page tomorrow. Sydney Morning Herald, they have... This is the situation where, and I haven't got the whole story, but they're talking about the Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern asking the Catholic Church to hand over control of its rented premises. So there's a standoff there in relation to this service and the Catholic Church. The details there in the Sydney Morning Herald. They've also got this story. 127:04 This is the trust tax. This is the change to the taxing of trusts. It's on the front page. It says business groups are warning years of expensive turmoil will be unleashed by the federal government plans for a minimum tax on discretionary trusts. 127:18 As Jim Chalmers warns that without reform, the nation's tax revenue will be eaten away, leaving working Australians exposed to even higher taxes. 127:26 So this is the third key budget change, imposing a minimum 30% tax on the net income that flows out of the estimated 1 million discretionary trusts every year. Minimum tax rate on trusts expected to raise more than $40 billion over the next decade, about the same as the budget's overhaul on both negative gearing and capital gains tax combined. New South Wales government did move today and announced it on our Money News program earlier. It won't hit the trusts with stamp duty. if they are rearranged so that the arrangements are rearranged. 128:00 And so when an arrangement's made like that, it can trigger the imposition of stamp duty on a transfer of the title. New South Wales government say it won't do that. Some of the other states are still talking about that one. So that's gone into the parliament today. And the business group's saying there'll be years of expensive turmoil as a result of this one. That's their warning on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. Now, the Australian newspaper, their headline says, Sting in the PM's Tale. 128:31 And this is the story that's emerged where it appeared, first of all, that Anthony Albanese was saying, well, I was the one who intervened and made a captain's call to get the tax office to back off from not accepting payment of tax payments. by credit card. And then this seems to have been a story over the day, it's turned into a story of Anthony Albanese versus Jim Chalmers. The story here is, and this is the headline in the Australian, Anthony Albanese has drastically watered down his boast of being personally responsible for reserving the tax officer's credit card ban as he denied undercutting Jim Chalmers, with Labor MPs privately complaining that internal morale is at its lowest level since being swept into government more than four years ago. 129:17 The government's mid-term blues escalated today when a key budget savings measure was defended in Parliament with the Coalition and the Greens striking down Labor's proposed $3 billion rebate hike on private health insurance for over 65s. 129:33 Just on that one, it was expected. It was expected for the last few days. We've been on this since the day after the budget. It was a move to remove the increased public subsidy of private health insurance for people over the age of 65 to make sure they don't drop their private health cover as their budgets get tighter. 129:52 and move across into the public system. The government said that that was going to save $3 billion, that they'd move into aged care. Anyone with, I think, mathematics skills would know that what would happen is that people would drop their private health cover, they'd then move across into the public system, and so it would probably cost more. 130:11 But that, of course, was a public system being run by the states. And once that became very clear, huge numbers of those people who get the private health subsidy, the extra subsidy, were on very low incomes. And so the Greens came in, combined with the coalition and all the crossbenches to knock it off. The health ministers saying, well... 130:33 we're still going to proceed with this. 130:35 We need this money to increase spending on aged care. Well, if he starts to say, well, if you don't pass this, we won't put the money into aged care, that would be disgraceful because there are people who are in dire straits in aged care. That funding needs to be put in there now. Then they can work out what they're going to do and where they're going to find the $3 billion, but don't find it from here because they're not going to get the support across the country. Also, This is interesting because you've got the election coming up, of course, in the last week of November in Victoria. 131:09 It says, this is the Australian, Victorian Liberals will hold off on preference negotiations with One Nation until nominations close next month as Jess Wilson seeks to sideline Pauline Hanson's party and make the election a straight contest between the Coalition and Labor. 131:26 Preference talks that all parties will start after nominations closed on November 9, describing the timetable as standard practice. Well, don't need to do anything before November 9. They don't even know who the candidates are. So I would think that would be a reasonable thing to do. At the moment, the coalition is in the box seat. They are leading on preferences. They are expected to win the election. 131:46 And of course, in Victoria, unlike New South Wales with optional preferential, People who vote for, for instance, if they vote for One Nation and One Nation does not finish on top, those preferences would presumably, most of them would be going to the coalition. So we'll see what comes with all of that. That's the front page of the Australian newspaper. And then I've got the Financial Review at 20 past 11 or 10 in Queensland. They've got on their front page, the cost of the trust crackdown intensifies. 132:17 The Greens' threat to block the government's crackdown on trusts, unless it removes the exemption for charities, would deprive the not-for-profit sector of billions of dollars in donations. As accounting groups warn, the cost of complying with the new regime will be more than $1.5 billion that Labor's estimated over the next decade. So the situation here is, That the Greens, now what's happening is the business sector and the Greens introduced the legislation to impose a minimum 30% tax on discretionary trust. 132:47 That was introduced into the Parliament today. 132:51 But he's got the business sector saying, well, it goes too far. The Greens saying it's not going far enough. 132:57 And so this is the problem they have, because to get it through, they're going to need support from one or other of the groups. If the Coalition and Greens both oppose it, well, it won't get through the Parliament at all. So that's going to be a fascinating one to see where they go on that one. That's the front page of the Financial Review. And again, look, the Melbourne Age newspaper, and I think this is a very important story to they've said Coalition and the Greens sink $3 billion aged care plan. 133:27 Well, no, they haven't. What they've done is they've sunk a plan to take away a subsidy that many people on low incomes were relying on to keep them in private health cover. 133:39 So that's what's been sunk. And now the government's got to find that $3 billion because they do need to put that money into aged care. That's the way I would see that one. 133:47 131-873 is the number now. 133:52 I've been telling you all for a couple of weeks I heard rumours in the corridors where he spill Chalmers and Alba. Everyone's saying that. I don't know where the rumours are coming from because who's going to challenge him? Jim Chalmers won't be challenging him. So I think logically, if there was someone in the parliament that was going to suddenly turn the vote, but anyway, people are going to keep talking about it and confidently predicting it. It's like a, well, it's like one of those analog watches. It's right twice a day as well. 134:23 So if you make your predictions and make enough of them, they may come true. 22 past 11, past 10 in Queensland. 134:30 131873 is the number, of course, wherever you're listening to us. Of course, in the southern states, it's just 25 past 11, past 10, of course, if you're in Queensland, and then a different time in South Australia, WA, and then around the world. There are all sorts of time zones. And I actually think, particularly after midnight, I'd like to see Phil kick off his show with saying, all right, give the time in each of the states and territories. 134:55 Yeah. 134:56 Then go through New Zealand. We've got listeners in New Zealand. No, I don't want to do it. We've got people listening to us in China. There's only one time zone there. You'd be fine with that. And then a couple of token ones in the other parts of the world. 135:05 No, you know this is my Achilles heel. You know that I can't do time calls. Incidentally, two things. One, you've still got that cough, John. How's this? Like three months down the track now? 135:14 No, it showed up once tonight. 135:17 And that's all. So, yeah, and you highlight it. The thing about radio is if there's a little error or something, you just move over, you don't highlight it, and you come in here and highlight it. 135:24 Well, because I've seen what happened in Wuhan, and I'm just a little afraid that, you know, you could still be walking around. Patient zero. 135:31 Well, I forgot, actually. I forgot that it's tomorrow's conspiracy theory Thursday. Exactly. 135:36 Before we get into that, what happened to my intro? Because I had that for a while there. 135:41 Can I have it? Yeah, here it is. 135:42 All right, thank you. Can we have it? Yep. 135:49 John, John, John, John. 135:54 J-O-N, John. 135:56 He's worked on that for days and days. This is not going to catch on. However... 136:03 I think your listeners are all getting into the Phil thing. F-I-L-L. Yeah, I've noticed that, yeah. 136:08 But when I found that somebody sent me a text last night and said, you know, there's a John version of that. I've been conspiring with Dylan here in the studio for the last few hours to make sure that we could play that. 136:19 It took you hours to put that together. It took me hours. 136:22 I think Dylan's saying, not me. Well, no, the problem was that we... And then Dylan said, oh, you know, he's got an H in it. 136:28 Oh, no. So you're just going to have to be J-O-N from now on. And why not? Jon Bon Jovi's a J-O-N. Why aren't you J-O-N Stanley? I don't want to be J-O-N Stanley. Are you having a Christmas party this year? 136:42 What? 136:42 What? 136:44 It's the middle of October. I was just lying in bed last night remembering the days of yore when you and I used to hang out back in the good old days. I used to have Christmas parties at home. I know. They were quite good, actually. I've got to tell you, folks, back in 2002 when John was still inviting me to things. 137:00 I haven't had one for about 20 years. You know what we do at Christmas parties? Everyone will wear the Santa hat. 137:05 Yeah, I noticed that. It'll be good fun. I tell you what, so John's invited me to this Christmas party and I was sucking up to him because I was trying to get him to give me a job at 2UE. And I turned up there. Honestly, it was like going to the backstage party at the Logies. Everybody in there was a famous face. It was ridiculous. Don't say that. It was a household face. It's just not true. I couldn't believe it. The people that you rub shoulders with, John. 137:27 No, they were wearing masks. I mean, I won't say any names. 137:30 Because I don't want these people to be implicated in your cabal. But I'm telling you, there was everywhere you looked, there was a recognisable... And that is just a... 137:39 It's true. It's a verifiable lie. No, it's not. 137:41 You know it's true. It's just not true. You mix in some pretty high circles. 137:45 We may restore the Christmas party this year. We'll see what we can do. I'd love to meet some more famous people. Just on the Christmas party, when did... Because remember there was a point where everyone started wearing the Santa hat. 137:54 Yeah. 137:54 And maybe it was when they started making them in the $2 shops because you can buy them. Everyone's got them. You walk through the CBDs in the week before Christmas, everyone's wearing those silly Santa hats. 138:04 Can I tell you something that Sam and I do is that I always start counting them when I start seeing the first one. And then about 18 or 19 as I see them, I start to lose count. But last year, funny you should say that. There were less Christmas hats than previous years because I count them when I see them. And I think I got to about seven and it was nearly Christmas Day. That's driving around everywhere and things like that. So maybe it's no longer going to be a thing. Or maybe all of your celebrity guests have bought them in time for your Christmas party. 138:36 Okay. Now, I understand you've got someone on your show tonight who's just come back from Egypt and they saw, scrawled in the, just one of the little bricks of, is it called a brick of the pyramids? E.T. was here. Yeah, I didn't know this. Comprehensive proof. 138:51 Yeah, I didn't know this. 138:53 That aliens actually built the pyramids. 138:55 That would work well if it was Paranormal Friday. What is it? Well, isn't tomorrow a conspiracy theory day? Yeah, that's a different one. That is a conspiracy theory. We speak to John Ronson, who wrote one of the great conspiracy theory books of all time called Them. He's touring Australia. I'll get you some tickets if you want to go, John. He's going to be in Brisbane and Sydney and Melbourne in the next couple of weeks. So I'm going to talk about that. That's coming up a little bit later on this morning. Speaking of books, I'm going to speak to a professor of the economy about a woman who's written a book with five principles that we should have. 139:30 that she believes the whole system is broken and how right she would be about the economy there. 139:34 There's no doubt about that. And I was out because I was recording for OnlyFans at Randwick yesterday and they were telling me they had to send all of the race books and form guides online off to get pulped because they liked, because you don't call it race book. 139:52 No, it's the racing guide. You don't call it the form guide. 139:55 The running sheet. You call it the running sheet. And they're all going, that's fantastic. That's much better. 140:00 So anyway, I found out the reason why you won't put the bet on for me at the TAB, because I don't know how to do it, and you're well known in this town for being the betting man's betting man. It's because you don't want to spoil your algorithm at the TAB. No. Look, I'll give you a map tomorrow. 140:21 You walk in there, and this way you're actually continuing to give someone a job. You walk in there, you say, I want to have a bed in the Everest, and they'll be able to tell you how to fill out the ticket, and you'll be able to have your bed. No. 140:33 Because I found out from the TAB, I spoke to a bloke and they said, yeah, John Stanley, we found out, you know, we know what his algorithm is and we don't want him to suddenly turn into having a win. That's why you don't want me to put it down in your name. 140:45 Yep. All right. You've got a lot more coming up. I've got a note here that's interesting because when I was just talking, people talk about, oh, there's going to be a challenge, Anthony Albanese is going to be a challenge. By who? And then Russ has sent this, and it's an interesting one, saying that Albozo, as he calls him, brought in a rule, Labor can't deny for sitting Labor PM. Well, you can. You've got to get a certain number. You've then got to put it to the party. It's 50% the caucus and 50% for the party leadership. This was a change that Kevin Rudd put in. 141:17 But guess what you could do? You could just go to the party room and say, I move that we change the rules. If you get 51% of the party room says, well, I'll change the rules to the old rules, then change the leader. You could do it. Funny... 141:32 You mentioned that. I'm talking to Terry Barnes later about the possibility of Albo throwing Jim Chalmers under a bus. And I said, do they have the equivalent in politics that they do in radio around this time of the year where they have what they call the killing season? Whereas if you've still got your job by December, you've probably got it for another year. We're still hanging in there, John. And I wanted to know whether or not that's the same thing as well. And he said, possibly. So there is still time for the PM to be tapped on the shoulder. But I think he's too busy pushing people under buses so that he can keep... 141:59 Because what happens around here is that, you know, in radio, if you want to last a long time in radio, when you get to this time of the year, make sure you use the stairs and that way you avoid that situation where you try to use your pass in the lift and it doesn't work and that's how you find out. 142:15 Use the stairs. Well, fortunately, you and I do shows where nobody actually wants to do them. So I think we're safe for the time being anyway. 142:20 Yeah, and the other thing, of course, if anything does happen, we'll just take the old George Costanza that you just turn up on the Monday. Yeah, that's it. 142:26 Sleep under the desk. 142:26 We'll still be here. Yeah. 142:28 All right, mate, I'm looking forward to it. Give him a call. Talk to him about running sheets, racing, and in particular the pyramids. He wants to hear about that. All of those things. And plenty more coming up with Phil. He's here in about half an hour. Thanks, J-O-N, John. That's how to spell his name. 26 minutes to 12 or 11 in Queensland. 142:49 22 minutes to 12.11. If you're listening in Queensland, we were talking before about Tupac Shakur, who is a singer and was going back 30 years. 143:01 And one of our listeners here is saying Aussies would have bought more of his records if his name was Six Pack of Beer instead of Tupac Shakur. 143:08 So anyway, thank you very much for that. 143:10 I appreciate that one. Also a note that there was rain earlier in Armidale. There's more coming tomorrow. So that's in northern New South Wales. Look, there are areas in Australia that desperately need rain and they desperately need the rain to try and deal with what are very, very dry conditions. So we can't really complain about the rain. 143:34 and we can do with a bit more in certainly parts of Australia. The problem, of course, always is that rain's too much where we don't need it and not enough where we do need it. There was a plan, was it 100 years ago or maybe close to that, to try and do something about all of that. It was the old Bradfield scheme, but that's gathering a lot of dust on a shelf and has been for a very long time. 131873 is the number. And just on leaders... 144:00 See, people keep talking about the rules that prevent leadership change. Tommy makes the obvious point. They can be forced to resign. We saw it with Anastasia Palaszczuk. We saw it with Jacinta Allen in Victoria. And as I said, if there are rules, you can always change the rules. You have a vote to change the rules if things get very dire, but the only problem is you need to have a viable alternative and I don't see one at the moment. So anyway, that's academic and it'll cause a lot of speculation. 144:31 In the weeks and the months ahead. But in the meantime, I just wanted to get to this one because immigration is a really, really important subject. It's the core of so much of the debate that we have. And the system is quite complex. It has been for the last 20 years, a lot of situations where you've got a whole lot of visas that are uncapped. And so to try and pull the numbers back, you've got to work out where you're going to pull the numbers back. And inevitably, there's all sorts of organisations that say, well, actually, don't pull these numbers back because you're going to affect our business. 145:02 The AHA, this is the hospitality industry, this is the Australian Hotels Association, they've actually put out an ad. 145:10 which is pretty blunt in terms of the impact of cutting back on certain visa categories that the hospitality industry and the health industry and plenty of others do rely on. 145:22 Our sister station 3AW, Tom Elliott, was talking about this earlier today. And so I want to play you, because he played the ad, he made his own observation and then spoke to the CEO of the Hotels Association. Here it is. 145:38 Okay, so I had a look at this last night. I'll play it for you again. This is the Australian Hotels Association just warning about the consequences of dramatically or drastically lower immigration. 145:52 What's a bloke have to do to get a coffee around here? Where's Sven? 145:55 Gone back to Sweden. Half the kitchen too. 145:57 Where the hell's all the fruit? Still on the trees. 146:00 Pop, can I get an apple? 146:01 Maybe for Christmas. Kitchen open? Yep. 146:05 Through there. You want me to cook it? 146:07 Yep. What do you mean my room isn't clean? We're short-staffed. You'll need to clean it yourself. Room 508. Good luck. Hi, Mum. 146:14 Oh, good. Can you give me a hand? 146:16 Yeah, what with? 146:17 The nurse has gone home. Be a love and wipe my bottom. 146:22 Well, that'd strain the familial relationship, wouldn't it? An ex-guest national CEO of the Australian Hotels Association, Stephen Ferguson, good morning. G'day, Tom. Did you commission that out? 146:34 Yes, we did. Absolutely, we did. 146:36 Can I just ask, is it all AI? 146:39 Yes, it is. 146:40 We had a question this morning about whether actors missed out on getting a quit out of it, but the whole world's changed now. 146:47 Now there's people that can help businesses and whoever, creative people, create content like that to try and get simple messages across. 146:56 So I guess the gist of the ad is that in areas like stacking supermarket shelves, picking fruit off trees, working in old people's homes, working in cafes, working in hospitality, et cetera, without the high level of immigration, we might not have enough workers. Is that what you're saying? 147:14 Yeah, but look, the first thing I'd say is nearly every employer I talk to wants to hire Australians first. It's so much easier. For us to bring in a chef or any skilled worker for any business in Australia costs about $35,000 to land them here and takes 12 months. So if you can find someone locally to do the job and start tomorrow, that's our preference every day of the week. 147:36 Well, I know that in the last unemployment figures came out for August, you know, there are almost three quarters of a million unemployed Australians. So, I mean, these are people who don't currently have jobs. Why wouldn't they jump at the chance to do some of those jobs? 147:50 I can tell you that any unemployed person that wants a job, if they went to their local pub, club, cafe, restaurant... 147:56 meat works, farm, nursing home, they'd be able to get a job. We don't control people's motivation and businesses, you know, we don't control the unemployment benefit rules if they're the ones that are sort of, you know, people are thinking that people are getting paid too much to stay at home. We can only play the game that's in front of us. There's plenty of jobs out there, especially in the hospitality industry and a stack of other industries as well, Tom. 148:22 I mean, but do you think in what you just said, are you sort of saying that maybe unemployment benefits were a bit high and that if they were lower or harder to get, people would go to work? 148:32 Look, some people are saying that. That's not a view I have an opinion on. But what I can tell you is that if people want to find work, they can. Where we struggle, and working holidaymakers are a great example where the government wants to chop 40,000 of those back, We need those people in seasonal areas, especially in places like far north Queensland. And they'll go up there to work in hospitality when the sort of tourist season's on, or they'll go up there to help pick avocados and mangoes. And that's real. I was with people from far north Queensland in Canberra yesterday talking to parliamentarians. 149:05 They're really, really worried about what they're going to do for workers. 149:09 Tell me, do you think some Australians see certain jobs as being a bit beneath them, like, you know, working in Uber Eats or picking fruit or going up to Queensland and picking avocados, which I think technically are fruit, but I mean... Tom, yeah, look, I think Australia's changed, hasn't it? 149:23 I mean, you know, nowadays everyone seems to want to go to university, but even great trades such as, you know, me coming in an electrician or a carpenter or a plumber... 149:33 The commencements in those trades are down. I mean, they're great honourable professions. We can't find chefs. I mean, Australia's changed. People are wanting to do sort of more white-collar jobs, and that's just the fact that businesses are facing trying to provide services to people. 149:51 Yeah, look, I've looked at this as well, and I agree with you. I mean, we've now got almost 60% of school leavers going on to some form of tertiary education, which is a good thing. But I think the assumption behind that has been is that everybody who gets a degree will get a white-collar job. And, of course, there simply aren't enough white-collar jobs to go around, or not really well-paid ones. 150:10 No, no, that's 100% right. We sort of wish that we could get people back. I was talking to the construction industry yesterday and the miners. I mean, they're after engineers, you know, carpenters, plumbers. We're after chefs and hotel managers. All great careers, but it's seeming that, you know, Australia's changed and people have being encouraged to go in a different direction. 150:31 Yeah, it's really interesting because that's the campaign they're running and I mentioned this earlier and I have more on it tomorrow. There's a regional approach being taken by the New South Wales Government. They're calming up certain regions where they're going to try, this is the New South Wales Government, encourage people who have got certain skills to go into those regions online I wasn't even aware that the state government makes decisions about where people go on these visas. It's a very complicated system, the immigration system, and I think that's one of the reasons why even I think at government level and in particular at public service level... 151:08 Even though they've got no idea what's going on, it's all out of control. So we might try and get a handle on some aspects of that tomorrow. But the notion that you can't find people to do those jobs, I reckon there's a couple of sources we've talked about before. For instance, people who are on the pension might want to do extra work. 151:27 Still the whole business of the income test for pensioners. That's not everyone. It might only be a small number. And then there's also the one we've talked about here with our friend Chris Vag, who says there are people who are living on the streets, living homeless, but are at a point where they can and they want to turn their lives around. And these are jobs that... maybe, with a bit of training and a little bit of help and a hand up, they could move into. So we shouldn't be giving up on them either. 14 to 12, 11 in Queensland. 151:57 11 minutes to 12 is the time. 152:00 131873 is the number. Just a story that's popped up here, and I was just having a look here because, of course, as you go through various generations, there are different experiences of how the whole dating scene works. So Bumble, now Bumble, And again, this is one of the online sites. Bumble's actually the subject of one of those, how would you describe it? It's a movie, I think it's on Netflix or somewhere, and it's about this woman who was 24 years old coming up with an idea of an online dating site. 152:33 She'd actually apparently been working at Tinder. Came up with Bumble where, as I understand it, Bumble was where women would be the ones who'd make the first move. I think that's the way it worked. So that's as I understand it. So Bumble, five and a half years ago, because you started Bumble, it was very successful. 152:54 This is Whitney Wolf Heard, and it went public, and when it went public and the share offering came up, it was valued at $20 billion. $20 billion. 153:07 That was five and a half years ago. So I'm reading here that Bumble's just been taken over by a newly formed firm, and they've taken it over for $1.9 billion. 153:20 So this is all in Australian dollars. So five and a half years ago, it was valued at $20 billion. And they're saying now it's lost most of its value. It's being valued now at $1.9 billion. And according to the story I'm reading here, younger users began to sour on dating apps. And that's been why its value has gone down. Having looked at it, though, because she founded it, At the age of 24, took it public. And if the thing has been sold for 1.9 billion Australian, I'm guessing she's probably still done pretty well out of it. 153:58 Not a multi, multi, multi-billionaire, but I'm guessing she's probably doing better than the person who, hopefully me, wins that Powerball tomorrow night. Because you pick up, is it 100 million, I think, tomorrow night, the Powerball draw? 100 million. I think she might have more than that. So she's done very well about it, but it just goes to show these things change very, very quickly. 154:19 in terms of maybe the idea of meeting people face-to-face may actually come back in vogue. Who knows? 131873 is the number. We're going to finish the show shortly at 8 minutes to 12 right now, 11 in Queensland. Thank you so much for all the feedback. Had a really good news hour tonight, actually, with Jamie Rogers. So you can get the news hour, of course, as a podcast, as applies, of course, to the rest of our program. And I've got a bit of feedback also tonight about our series of interviews and some suggestions for people I can speak to in our Only Fans segment. 154:52 Have an amazing one. On Friday night, a phenomenally invested fan. No, it's not that. It's fans of, well, it was rugby league. Now it's fans. This is a fan of horse racing with the lead into the weekend. I've got a fan of baseball lined up. I've got a whole lot of them. But I reckon one of those music fans might be a cracker. In the meantime, it's the birthday of Justin Haywood, who was the lead singer of the Moody Blues. This is a big hit he had. It actually started out, apparently this song, as a jingle for Lego and turned into a big hit. 155:24 Here it is.