Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Trump, Gaza & Liberalism" with Senator Dave Sharma

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"Trump, Gaza & Liberalism" with Senator Dave Sharma · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas and dangerous ideas are exactly
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what we need to talk about during election campaigns to figure out where politicians stand
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what we think about them, how they're going to address the biggest issues of the day and yet
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of course uncomfortable conversations and dangerous ideas are precisely what political candidates
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tend to avoid. That's why it's so refreshing and so constructive to speak with someone who is
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not actually technically up for re-election at the upcoming Australian federal elections.
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It's been a huge space of elections in democracies all over the world in the past 12 months,
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South Korea, India, Mexico, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany,
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now we've got the end of Justin Trudeau in Canada. Next up it is Australia's turn,
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Aussies will be going on the polls in the first half of May, the exact date is not yet confirmed,
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because the Prime Minister only has to give 33 days notice to the opposition and
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all of a sudden you have a poll, he's got a certain window in which he can call it and they
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usually leave it up until the very last minute to leave the opposition scrambling. Today's guest is
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a senator from the opposition centre-right coalition party, the liberal party, he's not up for
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re-election this time around as I mentioned because in Australia much like the United States,
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Senate terms are twice as long as the terms for non-senators, but Dave Sharma is an interesting
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and controversial figure with a lot of fans and a lot of enemies in Australia, he was originally
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part of the Scott Morrison government, he was a member of the House of Representatives of the
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Lower House in the last government that lost power in 2022 and he was swept aside and swept
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out of his seat by a sort of anti- incumbent surge of what we called teal independence, meaning a
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collection of independent centre-right mostly female, mostly business people who came in to
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address what they regarded as being a stale and tired and sort of sexist and vaguely
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climate naive government targeting potentially vulnerable moderate conservatives in moderately
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conservative seats and Dave Sharma was done in by Allegra Spender who was the independent candidate
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running in his seat which was in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, it's a division called Wentworth,
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it covers the eastern portion of the central business district and the eastern suburbs including
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the heavily Jewish suburbs and neighborhoods of Ularra and Waideli council. I only say that because
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Senator Sharma was previously Australia's ambassador to Israel, even though he himself
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Jewish, he's of Indian, Canadian heritage originally, nonetheless he was an Australian diplomat
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posted abroad, it became a member of the House of Representatives, lost his seat and came back
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in 2023 as a senator from Australia's most populous state, the one I live in of New South Wales.
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As part of our coverage of the Australian election, I do not want to get too parochial,
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I'm keenly aware of the fact that a majority of our listeners are not in Australia, so I
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wanted to talk to people who are intellectually interesting, who are stimulating, who are ideologically
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complex and not relentlessly partisan, so I've invited the Prime Minister and the opposition leader,
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but we've been fairly judicious in our selection of other politicians who made the cut.
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Senator Sharma was one of them, he and I talk about populism, about Trumpism, about Gaza,
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about nuclear power, about Jew hatred and about whether liberalism will survive the 21st century.
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I hope you enjoy as much as I did, the one and only, Senator Dave Sharma.
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When you think about the motivation for Kanye to get into politics and have this kind of crowning
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achievement on his career, why did you get into politics? What was your initial motivation?
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I think for me, so I've been, you know, as a career public servant diplomat,
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last rolling government was an ambassador, and I think I've sort of got to the point
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where I thought, look, I've had an influence on Australia's foreign policy by being a public servant,
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but ultimately like I'm an advisor and I'm an implementer out of what the government
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decides to do, and I thought, if I really want to have my hands on the wheels, I need to be on the
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elected side of government, not the public service side of government. Is that true though,
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unless you're a cabinet minister, you sort of still have to do what the government wants you to do.
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Well, look as an MP or as a senator, you have a lot more influence. Do you feel more influence
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now than you do? I mean, when I was a public servant and an ambassador, I had a lot of
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influence in my particular channel, right? When I was ambassador to Israel managing the
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Israel relationship, managing the Middle East, you know, I could exert some influence there,
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but I'm interested in all sorts of issues, you know, I can start this relationship with China,
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with the US, you know, economic policy, competition policy, social policy, and now it's a real
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privilege. I mean, if you're a senator or a member of parliament, you can, you got a voice,
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you got a platform, you get to meet with stakeholders. If you've shown interest in the topic,
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you'll have 20 people knocking on your door wanting to brief you on it, which is a great privilege,
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you know, you get access to the best experts. And then if you're in government, but even if you're
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in opposition, you can help shift the contours of that debate or help land a decision or help
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highlight a problem needs addressing. Is that easier in the Senate than at one in the House?
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I think it is a little, yeah, because being a house member, you've got to be one very mindful
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of your electorate and where they are on things. Where's the Senate? Look, you represent a whole
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state and tends to have a bigger diversity of views. But also, I mean, my view is that electorates
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expect a lot of their federal members that don't really fall into the remit of the federal
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movement. You know, you put it bluntly. So you get all set holes and
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yeah, literally hot holes, development, parking, traffic, local infrastructure, the school,
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the hospital, the trading hours and the noisy neighbor, you know, the development application
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that's knocked back. And people still have, I mean, Australia, I think people have this,
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you know, I've got separate levels of government in Australia, federal state, local government.
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But I think a lot of people still have this intuitive sense that it's hierarchical that
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federal Trump state and state and translocal. So if I'm the federal liberal in the area,
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I'm the big cheese. I can tell the council that they've got to do this. I can, I can,
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I can bulls out the mayor and say, no, you've got to change the decision. Of course,
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it doesn't work like that. Like we've got our own separate lanes. But I think that's why people
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often still tend to gravitate these issues towards the federal government. But you're the,
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you're the branch of government that has an army. So surely you could send the war ship
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into the council. Tell them what to do. Exactly. We're good. Yeah. No,
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there's a direct fire on the council. How Australian democracy works. How do you feel about
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the state of Australian democracy when you look at? So we've got elections in Canada this year.
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We've obviously just had US elections. Everything's sort of rolling all over the place.
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It seems that we immune from there. Well, I'd say, I mean, I think what you're seeing a lot
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worldwide is a kind of strong anti incumbent sentiment. Like there's a lot of incumbent
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governments who've lost office. You know, Germany's just, Germany's just changed governments,
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trying out, trying to relatively have only been in office for years or something, right?
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Conservatives in the UK last year, they'd been in office a lot longer. Democrats in the US
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have changed. May or have a change of government in Canada. So I think there's quite a strong
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anti incumbent sentiment. And I think what you notice, and I think this is true globally, at least
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in sort of Western democracies, is there's much less loyalty to party brands. So
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in Australia, the traditionally are people who always voted one way and their parents did,
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and they would vote that way almost without thinking, you know, increasingly like the
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no one's rusted on and people move between elections and cycles. So that's why you can have a
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scenario where a first-term government loses. And I think, you know, it would still be unusual
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in Australia. It's only happened once before. But I think it's entirely possible that
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weed liberals can win this next election. Wait, is that right? It's only happened once before
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that a first-term government has been booted out of power. Yeah. And I think it was in 1931
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from memory. Yeah. That's impressive. Yeah. So it tends to sort of happen in Australia,
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because the inclination in Australia is, are you giving them a second chance? They're not that
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bad. But I think there's much less loyalty to sort of parties and party brands. Just as
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there is in lots of spaces, you know, like consumer culture, much less loyalty to brands. I mean,
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you know, I'm a bit older than you, but when I was growing up, you know, you're either like
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Ford or Commodore, right? Ford or Holden? Yeah, they had a Ford or a Holden car. You know,
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they're two types of computers. You shopped at Coles or we'll lose. You did your banking with,
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like, you know, Nav or Westpac, you had, you know, there's like, it's strong to kind of use to
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have a limited number of choices. But what? You know, internet age has done has given us
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huge number of choices, right? And you see that I think in our political system now where there's
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a fragmentation, right? And people are prepared to choose a brand that they think is more
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authentic or true to their own identity, rather than the traditional, well, this brand is,
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you know, most closely resembles my values. Well, I mean, also, hasn't there been a sea change
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in the relationship between the brands and the particular demographics that they represent
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in the sense that when you were a kid, when I was a kid, like, presumably, if you were a blue collar
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working class person, then you were a labor motor. Yeah. You know, that was the heartland of the left
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and, you know, the conservatives would have been more associated with an elite university educated
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top end of town. Yeah. And now you are seeing those, those shifting sands where you've got a
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populist insurgency of sort of blue collar, almost counter culture, kind of anti social justice,
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you know, seriousness, you're brigade, yeah, coming on the conservative side and the left has
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become somewhat more attentive to and attuned to the concerns of university educated, you know,
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people who are very careful about the things that they say and so on and, yeah, they're virtue to
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each other, yeah, using certain codes that don't resonate with the heartland voters who are
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drifting off to conservatives. Yeah, I think that's very true. I think we've seen all my,
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like, there's been a political realignment and it's not, it hasn't just happened in Australia,
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it's happened in the United States, the United Kingdom, yeah, we're increasing the parties that
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are left are the parties of tertiary educated, usually employed rather than self employed, not
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not often business owners, but often they're working, working corporations and whatnot, tend to
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be more urban, you know, city dwellers tend to be more affluent, whereas traditionally,
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of course, the parties in the left were the opposite of that, you know, it was like the unions,
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yeah, blue collar workers, high school education and whatnot, and increasingly, you know, we would
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argue now, the real party is the party now of like small business and workers more than the
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labor party is. Do you worry though about the derangement of the right about the risk of flirting
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with this kind of counterculture populism that it becomes a, I don't know, toxic or illiberal?
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You know, I mean, I'm sort of, so I'm a kind of, I view myself as a classical liberal,
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like a John Stuart Mill kind of libertarianism liberal, which basically takes the view that, you know,
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sanctity of the individual, the sanctity of every individual as a being tweeted as a separate
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unit, and the view that government should basically not interfere in the lives of its citizens
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other than to provide protection against harm and threat, and where there is some sort of compelling
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case to do it. I think there are elements of sort of the populist right globally that don't take
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that kind of traditional view, it's a more tribalistic sort of majoritarianism type movement.
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Yeah, blood and soil. Yeah, blood and soil nationalism. I mean, I'm not attracted to it.
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I don't think it works in Australia though. I don't think it will take root here. I mean,
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I've heard them flirting with it. I mean, I hear noises out of the liberal party that sound like
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it. And I'm a Kali Akash talking about how Peter Dunham is going to do Trump-y sort of things.
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Yeah, but if you look, I mean, I think like, you know, Peter Dunham has been asked a few times
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now to sort of embrace Trump in white polices, and he's basically said, no, so, you know, Trump came in,
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he immediately said they're getting out of the Paris climate change. Peter Dunham was asked,
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he said, no, we're not, we're staying in. Trump withdrew from the World Health Organization.
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There's a chorus that pops up here saying, oh, Australia should do that too. Peter Dunham said, no,
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you know, Trump said Zelensky should make peace with Putin, games up, and Peter Dunham said,
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no, we're going to keep supporting Ukraine. And I think there's, you know, good reasons for that.
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I mean, I think Australia is a more, I think the political centre of gravity in Australia is
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not as far right as it is in the United States, but also I think compulsory voting actually
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has quite a sort of centrifugal impact if you're like on politics in Australia because
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winning elections isn't about mobilizing your base or energizing your base and getting your turn
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out. It's about appealing to the median voting, you know, the party that best appeals to the
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median voter wins elections in Australia is in the US. You don't have to appeal to the median
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voter if you can turn out your base in a stronger way than your opponent can turn out there, you know.
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Have you been surprised by how well Peter Dunham seems to be appealing to the median voter?
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I think like a lot of good political leaders, I mean, the sort of circumstances and times suit him,
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you know, often politics is like right person, right place, right time. And I think he's,
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yeah, Australia's been hit with a challenging set of circumstances in
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deteriorating security environment, stagnant incomes and, you know, kind of a growing lawlessness
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or pressure on law and order and civil order. And I think Peter Dunham's, you know,
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straight shooting what you see is what you get decisive strong leader. And I think people
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are sort of saying this is what we need right now. And I think he's been successful as a result
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in appealing to people in a way that, you know, he might not have been five or six years ago
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because the times were different. Would you have been surprised if we were having this conversation
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the day after the last federal election that, you know, and Friedenburg had lost his seat and
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like it was a landslide and on my goodness, you know, all of the moderates are out of the party,
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all of a sudden, you know, your crew essentially were decimated. And the conservative party was
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now this rump of sort of what everyone was saying, you know, it's just this far right rump that's
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going to wander around in the wilderness for several electoral cycles. What would you say if I
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parachuted you into today from there? Yeah, I'd be shocked. I mean, I am shocked that because I
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had, you know, wasn't that long ago and I was one of the casualties of that election, I lost my seat
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and I really felt, you know, Jay, we're going to have a couple of terms in the wilderness here.
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I would have been surprised if you told me back then that we would be a competitive
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political force at the next election. But I think we are, I think we've, you know, I think the
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Labor government has underwhelmed and disappointed in a way that we didn't predict or foreshadow. How?
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I just don't think they've governed very well. I don't think they have an idea about what they
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want to do for Australia. They've got groups they want to reward and supporters they need to look
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after and qualify. But I don't actually think they have a, you know, the word vision is overused
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in politics. But I don't think they have a program. They're three things that they've done wrong.
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I think, you know, I'm happy to name the three things. I think they've, they've
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mismanaged the economy. The government has basically added to inflationary pressures made
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the cost a living worse made the reserve being jobs, heart, reserve being job harder added to
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inflationary pressures kept interest rates high for long. I mean, this is a government that has
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spent increased spending by more than any first term government since the Whitlam government. They
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have added, you know, about three hundred and fifty billion dollars to government outlays.
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So they've done that wrong. I think they've allowed
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social cohesion if you like or social harmony to deteriorate because of their failure to
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protect the Australian Jewish community and stand up against the attempts to
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harass, intimidate, threaten and use violence against them. And I think what would that have
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looked like? Because you hear, you know, they will always say, well, we have denounced it time and
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time again. You know, they denounced anti-Semitism and so on. If you're a small liberal then maybe
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hate speech laws aren't the best tool for that either. John Locke wouldn't like a hate speech law.
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I think what was missing though and because of like a political leadership was law enforcement
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basically. I mean, you've seen, you know, we've seen now in the last month or two, right?
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We've seen arrests made charges like there's now Australian Federal police task forces now in
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New South Wales police task force. And I think that is having a deterrent effect because people see,
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oh, these two nurses at Bankstone Hospital have now been charged. There are people in court
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in connection with, you know, have graffiti on restaurants or firebombing vehicles and
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more than a recipe made. That was absent the first 12 months. And there was no Australian Federal
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police task force. The government had not sat down with their own law enforcement authorities
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and intelligence agencies and said, this is the priority. You need to put resources on it. You
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need to get on top of this and you need to send a signal to the broader community. But instead,
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I think they took the attitude. I think this is a generous interpretation to them. I think they
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took the attitude that if we, people have legitimate, a legitimately upset about the conflict
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in the Middle East and people are legitimately upset by Israel's behaviour. I accepted those
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people who have that views and so I think they took the view that if we sort of
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a scene to be too heavy and clamping down on this, then we'll make the problem worse. I think
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that was the wrong call. Then I think my view was always that unless they police this, they
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would create an environment of permissiveness where the actors would be more involved and to take
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more extreme steps. And we've sort of seen that happen. I mean, it started off with protests,
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right? But then it spread to boycotting businesses and then it was to graffiti and then to doxing
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and then to torching vehicles and then to firebombing signals. Like it suddenly got progressively
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worse. I really hope we put a, we sort of drawn a line in the sand now. We can walk that back.
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But I think a failure to take a tough one early on led us to this situation. I mean, it may be partly
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because of that. It may be partly because of the escalation of the Warren Gaza as well. I mean,
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the escalation of violence against Jews globally may be tied to that. And it's entirely possible.
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I said right after October 7th, you know, and I was a member of one of those WhatsApp groups
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that got doxed as well. I mean, and I was saying it to the group, the worst things get in
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Gaza, the worst things are getting out for Jews everywhere. So do you hold the Israeli government
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accountable for that? No. Because I think, I think, I mean, it's obviously, look, I lived in Israel
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for four years as a ambassador. I was there as the ambassador and, you know, the last kind of
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major Israel Hamas war, which is in 2014. And I remember that time it was an uncomfortable
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difficult time for the Jewish diaspora worldwide because Israel was taking the fight to Hamas.
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But my view has always been, you know, Israel did not start this conflict. The people who call for
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a ceasefire neglect, the fact that there was a ceasefire the day before the 7th of October.
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Gaza had basically been, you know, given everything that the international community calls on Israel
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to do, you know, withdraw the settlements. Right now, it doesn't have to have been prosecuted. You
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can imagine a thousand different ways of prosecuting it that are not as brutal and that don't
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raise people's eyebrows quite as much about whether or not Ness and you know, who is purely
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motivated by military considerations or also by his own political considerations about prolonging
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the war or making it. You know, it's, it's messy. There's only so many months that you can keep
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bombing women and children before the atrocity of October 7th becomes like, well, hang on, is this
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the most parsimonious and peace-loving way to resolve the problem of Hamas? I mean, I think
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the option has always been that the Hamas, you know, to bring the conflict to an end at any time
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by releasing the hostages and laying down their weapons. Now, you might say, well, it's unrealistic
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if Hamas to ever do that. But I think too often in his conflict, people attribute moral agency to
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Israel, but they pretend Hamas doesn't have any, you know? Like, Hamas is not a, you know, a force of
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nature like a hurricane or something. They could, they choose to do things and not to do things. And
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Israel has, you know, it's a very difficult war environment, which means that, yes, civilian
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casualties have been high. I accept that. But it's because of the way that Hamas operates,
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embeds themselves in civilian infrastructure, propagand, benefits in a propagandistic sense from
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civilian casualties. They'll make the most out of them. I mean, their war range throughout all of
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this has not been to defeat Israel militarily, but it's been to discredit Israel internationally
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and de-legitimize Israel internationally, because that's where they see the sort of the terrain
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of its conflict, if you like. It's in the, you add it's in global capitals, it's in world
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opinion, it's in the liberal press, you know? That's always been in the attacks on Jews around
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the world, which is a force multiplier, because they know that they know Jews all over the place
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will cop shit for what Israel's doing. And I mean, their intention has been basically to make
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the situation of Israelis living in Israel kind of unbearable, such that they leave, go to another
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country. So at this point is a two-state solution tenable? Is it feasible? Is it realistic?
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I don't think it's realistic any time soon. That said, I'm not someone who says, well, we should
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abandon it. I think, you know, the basic proposition I see is there's two peoples living west to
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the Jordan River towards the Mediterranean, about 16 million or there, about 8 million of them are
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Jews, 8 million of the Arabs. They both have legitimate claims to the land, ancestral historical
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religious, and the state of relations between those two peoples is such that you can't possibly
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speak them to live together in a single state harmoniously. So the only answer is two territorial
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sovereign entities. Now, I think that's still my view, but I'm pragmatic enough to know that
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a two-state solution any time soon is woefully unrealistic given the lack of trust between the two
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peoples, but I think there are steps that can and should be taken towards giving the Palestinians
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more control over their own affairs and their own governance. Would a Dutton government's approach
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be any different from an Albanese government's approach on that? Well, I think we would, yeah,
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I think it would be because I think the Albanese government is basically now in the business of
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dictating or imposing a two-state solution. I mean, they have voted for you in resolutions,
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and Penny won't give speeches saying we're going to recognize the Palestinian state
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absent security guarantees from Israel, absent the settlement of the question of Jerusalem,
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absent the demarcation of territorial boundaries. Whereas our view as a liberal government would
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be that a two-state solution can only come about through negotiation between the parties, and we
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would like to see that happen, but we're also going to need to control, you know, who enter the
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negotiating position. I think the more important factor to control is the Palestinian side, and I
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don't actually think that's a sort of a partisan point, but I mean, firstly, part of the problem,
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part of the obstacle to a two-state solution has been that the Palestinian Authority only speaks
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for half the Palestinian population, the West Bank population. You've had an entity in control
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of the Gaza population, which is committed to Israel's destruction, not interested in negotiations,
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doesn't want to coexist with a Jewish state. So that needs to change. And then you need a Palestinian
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Authority that has sufficient credibility in the eyes of its own people. I mean, Mark Watterbusis
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like 21 years into a four-year term now, has sufficient credibility in the eyes of its own people
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that it can make the compromises that would be necessary to make and maintain credibility
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with its own people. And I mean, the Palestinian Authority is not that entity. No. So I think, you know,
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there's a lot of work to be done on the Palestinian political part of the equation. And I think a
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large part of that falls to the Arab world. I mean, I don't buy into everything Trump has been saying
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on the Middle East, but I think at the heart of his message and all his crazy plans for Gaza,
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and so on, the heart of his message is basically being, this is my solution, Arab world, if you've
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got a better idea, you better bring it up. And I think what he's saying there is this problem is not
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the U.S. and Israel's alone to solve. It's the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Arab world has an
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obligation to help solve this. And the Arab world is basically washed their hands at a Palestinian
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problem for the last several decades, you know, at least since the 67 war, since the 6th day war.
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Yeah, they'll give them some money. Yes, they'll use them sort of for propaganda purposes, but
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they don't resettle the Palestinian population or give them rights in their own countries.
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They don't help reform the Palestinian Authority or anything else. I think they're the only
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people that can. They're the only people. We as the West can't. We don't have the credibility or
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the influence to help change the nature of the body politic, the Palestinian body politic,
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but the Egyptians do, the Saudis do, the Emirates do, the Jordanians do, but they haven't ever wanted
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to sort of roll up their sleeves and get involved in that because they're always too worried about
26:08
the impact on their own societies and countries. Yeah. Well, they also have contempt for Palestinians,
26:13
you know, really do. They're so racist against Palestinians. Yeah, no, that's very true.
26:19
You talk to people who in privileged positions in Saudi Arabia and in the UAE and they're not
26:25
generous towards their Arab countrymen in the way that, you know, they speak out of two sides of
26:29
their mouth. No, I mean, the Egyptians want to keep them all in Gaza. I was the first thing they
26:33
did after I came to say, and send the texts to the border. Yeah, see a lot of the borders.
26:37
What did you make of this AI video of Trump and Ion? Do you see that where where he's ranking
26:41
and rationing? And Trump actually posted it. Yeah, I mean, I thought it was, I thought it was a
26:51
bit insensitive, I guess. You know, I'd, he's obviously playing off his press conference
27:00
again with Netanyahu where I think Netanyahu was even a little gov smacked by what Trump was saying
27:04
if you saw his own response, Netanyahu was kind of smiling Riley and saying, well, this is a
27:09
someone who has amazing ideas and creativity, basically, which is sort of a... This is back when
27:13
they're first proposing that the guys are takeover. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's something about the
27:19
this kind of shitposting, like Elon provocative, like playful gamification almost of governance.
27:29
Yeah. That I don't quite know what to make of. No, it's definitely quite revolutionary.
27:34
I mean, even all this stuff about we're talking about Canada before, like, you know,
27:37
Governor Trudeau, the 51st state, like it's the sort of the trolling that's going on, which is very
27:43
young, happens in others who are very unconventional for politics, right? People expect politicians
27:48
to be, you know, serious and stand by their words and not be sort of sarcastic or ironic or
27:53
mischievous or playful, but he's changing all of that. And I'm curious to see does it work.
28:00
I mean, what did you make of the Zelensky moment with Trump and Vance berating him publicly?
28:07
I mean, I think I thought it was very unfortunate, but I was also surprised, you know. I mean,
28:16
and look, I think Trump's remark at the end was quite telling, oh, this is going to be great
28:20
TV. I mean, I think to understand that administration, he has a theatrical mindset and he's,
28:26
he sees, which is not a revolutionary viewer, he sees politics as a performance. I mean,
28:31
historically, you know, if you look at like the, reportedly, the words of the emperor Augustus
28:38
on his deathbed were, you know, did I play my part well in life? You know, will I get the
28:45
applause from the actors? He realized that politics was the large part of his performance and
28:50
many are home in emperors, dude, but Trump has sort of, you know, reinvigorated that tradition.
28:54
He says a lot of politics is about performance. So if you hear my thing, sometimes the drama is
28:59
sort of the intent of the act and the fact that everyone wants to see the next episode,
29:03
everyone wants to know what's going to have a next attack that is almost endless. Yeah, exactly.
29:08
You sort of don't want people fucking around at that level, at least. But like, what do you
29:12
make of Doge and like, Eli and the concerns that some people have about the Department of Government
29:17
expenditure and Elon Musk bringing in, you know, random people to presumably have access
29:25
to citizens such security accounts and like payments and like, you know, supposedly finding
29:32
waste fraud and abuse and yet when journalists from the New York Times actually dig into the
29:36
receipts, they're like, well, hang on, this thing got counted four times. This thing is a thousand
29:40
times more than they said it was. They don't seem to be particularly scrupulous about caring
29:44
about getting it right. It's more about the, it's the vibe. Yeah, it's a symbol because I mean,
29:49
I think the reality of US government spending, I mean, I think I spend about, you know,
29:54
$7 trillion annually, you know, I think somewhere between about three quarters of that is Medicare
30:01
Social Security and Industry Payments, basically non-discretion and unless they want to touch
30:05
me, who wasn't using the United States Government as an insurance company with an army?
30:09
Yeah, yeah. And then basically what? And then the rest, the discretionary spending is basically
30:13
defense and a few other stuff. And if you're not going to touch defense, you're basically left
30:16
with about 10 to 15 percent of the budget you can play around with, you know, which so, you know,
30:22
like foreign aid is like it's such a cheap shot to go after foreign. It's like, you know,
30:26
and I have heard of, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, like Trump mentioned in his speech,
30:30
they're not, you know, some programs that they've cut, but I have heard of a lot of programs that
30:37
I think many people would be aghast that are collapsing because of the basically the cessation of
30:42
the USAID, like whether it's the outbreak of infectious diseases like Ebola and West Africa,
30:48
or whether it's, you know, demining parts of Afghanistan or Cambodia, you know, I worry that
30:55
these things are going to have the willing of the chainsaw life. Oh, definitely. Yeah,
31:00
well, yeah, it'll come back and they'll be blown back. And also, you know, we keep hearing that
31:04
America is the largest donor of foreign aid in the world. Well, yeah, because it's big and rich.
31:09
Per capita, it's not, per capita, it's quite mean comparison to most other rich countries.
31:14
If you just a few left-fail questions, if you rerun history a thousand times over,
31:19
in how many universes are you a politician? So it's not something I always, like, I'm not from
31:28
a political family. I don't have any sort of pedigree or any kind of reference points. If you
31:32
like, that's not like an uncle or a cousin or an altering was in politics. And it's not something I
31:38
always thought I would do. So I wasn't involved in politics as a young person. It's a student,
31:43
it's a student or a university or, you know, in a young liberal movement. And I'd say I'm in
31:48
in my 20s, I wouldn't have necessarily known which political party I belong to either.
31:56
So it's, you know, probably like, you know, two out of three times I'm not a politician.
32:01
If we read the cycle again. That's a lot, a lot. More than 300 times you're a politician.
32:06
What's going on with the, with sanctions in Australia and this bipartisan
32:11
commission that you were, you were looking at the, at Iranian money. And so I like, they were
32:15
Iranian revolutionary guard terrorist assets in Australia. There seems to be sort of propaganda
32:22
arms of the Iranian regime. I don't know where their sort of locust of control sits within Iran,
32:28
is it within the IRGC or the elsewhere. But there's an operation called Press TV, which is like,
32:34
be like Russia today or something like a propaganda or the global times for China say.
32:41
But a little more insidious, propaganda arm for the Iranian regime, it seeks to, you know,
32:49
portray a particular image of Iran globally, but also shut down alternative views, muddy the
32:54
waters on the stories of the critical. But also it's sort of presences sometimes as
32:58
a kind of harassment intimidate diaspora populations. They are meant to be a sanctioned entity in
33:04
Australia. So we put sanctions on the government in September of 2023, which means it's
33:09
prohibited to transfer the masses, it's prohibited if you're a third party to deal with their assets
33:14
knowingly. They shouldn't be able to operate in Australia. But lo and behold, two weeks ago,
33:19
they pop up at Western Sydney University holding a microphone, press TV,
33:24
press TV across the microphone, interviewing Senator Fatima Payment of Western Australian
33:31
former Labor Senator, in an interview that then is broadcast on press TV channels because they
33:37
incredibly naively, they seem somehow convinced Senator Payment to say that Iran was basically
33:44
a paradise for women and a, you know, a feminist dream, which is great for them. Right,
33:50
wow, we'll put this out. So press TV puts it out on their channels and looking into it,
33:54
I mean, firstly, I shocked that hang on, how is this sanctioned entity turning up at a press
33:58
conference in Western Sydney? But you look at a press TV says they have a correspondent based in
34:02
Sydney. That correspondent on their LinkedIn profile says, I'm the press TV correspondent in Sydney.
34:08
I presume that for them to operate and have a microphone and broadcasting equipment,
34:12
assets are being moved around. Someone's getting paid to file these stories, someone's getting
34:16
remunerated, it makes a mockery of our sanctions regime. So this committee I was on looked into
34:23
this, looked into more broadly the application or effectiveness of our sanctions regime. And
34:30
we heard enough evidence to suggest that we were missing a lot of these sanctioned entities that
34:34
we tend to just put something on the list and then do nothing about it. But this has been a really
34:40
this case that's come to law in the last week, really egregious. Have you spoken to Senator
34:45
Payment about those comments? I've spoken to her directly and I've spoken to Senator Wong,
34:49
Pettity Wong, about because the sanctions enforcement sits within her department and said,
34:55
you've got to look into this. I asked her. But what do you think Senator Payment was talking about when
35:00
she was saying that it's better to be an Iranian woman in Iran than it is in Australia? Well,
35:04
I think she's since resolved from those comments. I mean, I was, I think she's since resolved and
35:10
she said, I was saying what I heard in the room or something. I mean, it's pretty pathetic and
35:15
weak, uh, resentment. But I mean, I was, I can only put it down to naivety. I mean, I was,
35:22
but I was just shocked. I mean, this is a, um, this is a Senator who's, who spoke on the anniversary
35:28
of Musa Amini's death. I mean, you remember Musa Amini Kurdish Iranian women arrested by the
35:34
Iranian morality police for not sufficiently covering her head, for not complying with his
35:39
Islamic dress code, um, beaten in prison, died, uh, kicked off the sort of, um, Iranian protest
35:47
movement, um, which demanded greater rights, which was subsequently slapped down. So for that
35:50
of the payment spoke on the anniversary of her death, saying, I'd say terrible, what's happening
35:55
to women in Iran and somehow, so she's not like she's ignorant or she's completely, you know,
36:01
um, uh, uninformed. I mean, you know, it's like Lenin's phrase useful idiots. I mentioned
36:09
she was a useful idiot of the Iranian regime. And for someone in her position, uh, Muslim
36:15
Australian woman who, um, his family fled from the Taliban and Afghanistan and sort of
36:20
sanctuary in Australia, you know, you'd expect some a lot that would speak with some,
36:24
speaks with some authority and has some knowledge of the issues. And so what's the next step? Do
36:30
you think like what should, what should be being done in the sense that is it a matter of the
36:35
Australian federal police, uh, like obtaining subpoenas into these organizations bank accounts
36:41
and things? Yeah. I mean, I think at first point, Australian sanctions office, I mean,
36:45
Defe doesn't have police officers, but they can refer things to law enforcement. They should
36:49
be, um, it's federal law. So as the AFP's involved, they should be saying to the AFP,
36:54
here's this person. I mean, I've sent all these details to Penny Wong. He's this person. He's
36:57
reluctant profile. Right. He's a social media profile. Not hard to find. I don't want to look
37:02
at the door. Ask them some questions, bring them in. Right. And then you'll get more words and
37:06
look for their bank accounts and then see what's happening and basically roll this up. I think we
37:10
should, the other, I mean, this is sort of slightly unrelated, but it turns out we're one of the
37:16
biggest buys in the world Australia of basically, um, refined Russian petroleum products. Um,
37:25
I mean, you wouldn't like say, honestly, so Australia is the biggest single buyer of about
37:31
eight refineries in India and Turkey, whose primary input is Russian crude. So we're not buying Russian
37:36
products directly, but Russia sends their crude oil there. These guys refine it, turn it into
37:41
petroleum products. Australia is a bigger buyer at 3.9 billion euros last year, about 5.9 billion
37:46
Australian dollars than any country in Europe of this stuff. And that money is going directly to
37:51
Russia's worth it. I mean, we're effectively bypassing not a sanctions breach because we're
37:57
technically paying me into media areas. Yeah. And the product has been somewhat transformed
38:02
because it's not long that crude is refined. But I mean, it, it goes entirely into the
38:06
spirit and the intent of that. Why are we still importing so much energy anyway, Dave?
38:10
Why would we do what refining more here? Yeah, refining more here using more, I mean, look,
38:15
the counterpoint to the counterpoint to why we should elect Dutton this time or why we should let
38:22
you guys take government again would be we had almost 10 years. It was yet almost 10 years prior to
38:28
this government. It was a complete failure to introduce a comprehensive energy policy. It was a
38:33
complete failure to introduce a real climate policy. You can't even need to get started on
38:39
Robo debt and like, you know, the sports roots and all that sort of stuff. It was a lackluster
38:45
under achieving decade of governance. Why should you get another crack at it? An energy would be
38:52
right up there. Yeah, I look, I'd accept the, you know, legitimate criticisms to be made of our
38:57
last term in government. I was there for the last three years of it as a member of parliament.
39:02
And I agree on energy policy. I mean, look, part of part of why I got involved in politics on
39:10
the liberal side and was I thought like our energy policy was was sort of mess. We weren't
39:16
recognising that a transition was underway that we needed to make a transition for climate and
39:22
environmental reasons, but also that if we didn't, you know, we would miss out on economic
39:27
opportunities. I think we've got a much more sensible energy policy now, which recognises the
39:34
importance of renewables, which remains committed to the direction of travel of reducing emissions
39:39
and moving towards net zero by 2050, but that it also recognises that gas in particular will
39:45
remain an important source firstly for sort of the, you know, peaking energy needs and energy
39:51
transition, but also as a manufacturing feedstock for, you know, ammonia fertilizers and nitrate and
39:57
that recognises the importance of nuclear energy as well. And I would say, you know, I think we
40:03
now have a balanced and economically, economically responsible attitude towards the energy transition,
40:10
whereas I think if we were guilty in the past of being kind of blinked by ideology,
40:14
I think the Labor government is now because they've so demonised gas and fossil fuels that even
40:22
now they're in office, they can't embrace them even though they know they have to as part of
40:27
a sort of the transition mechanism because they've spent the whole last exes and opposition demonising
40:32
them, but they've also oversold the promise of renewables and it's showing consumers are sort of
40:38
realising that. I mean, Anthony Albanese promised before the last election with our policy,
40:44
your electricity bills are going to be $275 cheaper, right? The government is now giving every
40:49
household $300 a year and people's electricity bills are still in the order of 50 to 60% higher,
40:54
right? So that's, I mean, that's done terrible damage to the promise, if you like, of an energy
41:01
transition because people, people said in the bills and I said, well, hang on, this renewables,
41:05
you said like the renewable energy is free and it works perfectly, but hang on, I'm paying a
41:10
whole lot more. You could do a lot more to invest in it, couldn't you? I mean, look, I greatly
41:14
respect that the, that Dutton has the sort of strength of will to pursue the nuclear thing
41:21
and the defiance and the, you know, that this is something that he obviously cares about and he
41:24
doesn't care about the political fallout of it, it is nice to see someone care about something
41:28
and actually take it to an election that's a big, you know, expensive, audacious thing that
41:33
doesn't have a huge amount of innate, popular support. But you speak to most engineers and energy
41:39
people and they say, yeah, nuclear is a very useful part of the mix for countries that are not
41:44
quite as hot and sunny as Australia is. We really don't need it here. Renewables are getting
41:49
so much better, so quickly that if you just had a sane and forward-looking energy policy,
41:53
you probably, you wouldn't need the nuclear component. Were you pro-nuclear, provider?
41:58
It's becoming a coalition platform? Yeah, I always, well, I always had been because I just think it's,
42:04
it's great technology, it's kind of got a bad rap out of fairly, you know, a lot of people think
42:10
that these things, all the only amount of money that we could put into that, if you really leverage
42:15
renewables, hydro, solar. Well, but the challenge there, I think, so yeah, renewables as a
42:22
generating asset, good, storage of renewables, suboptimal, the storage solutions at the moment,
42:29
and we're a lot better quickly. Yeah, but how long is nuclear you're going to take?
42:34
Well, how good will batteries be in the 15 years it takes, 20 years it takes to get nuclear?
42:39
Yeah, I mean, I hope a lot better. I mean, with more batteries, with better batteries,
42:44
cheaper batteries, longer life batteries, you know, possibly not with your mind batteries,
42:49
but solid state batteries, we might be able to stabilize the grid a lot more. And in which case,
42:53
you know, I'd be all for that a whole lot of energy. Or subsidise everyone to electrify everything,
42:57
so that, you know, once, once everyone, once your car is a battery, and once you've got sort of
43:01
community batteries and that sort of thing, once everyone's got solar, then makes things a lot
43:06
simpler in terms of storage. Yeah, but I mean, I've got, so I've got solar on my house,
43:12
and I've been looking at getting a battery. Yeah, at the moment though, like it's, you know,
43:17
probably like, you know, paid off over 12 years or something is kind of roughly my calculation,
43:22
which is not like solar, you know, I put, I don't know, $10,000 saved solar panels on my roof.
43:29
Yeah, and I'll probably pay that off in like five or six years in terms of the
43:32
savings batteries, not quite there, which is nice, but the amount of money that the government
43:36
would spend on nuclear, you could put into subsidies to make that a more attractive proposition
43:40
for people. Possibly, but I don't think, I mean, there's always going to be a role for like
43:44
base load power generation that people aren't generating themselves. I mean, industry needs it.
43:48
Yeah, you need it for reliability because, you know, even with solar and a battery,
43:52
you're still going to have days when you're not generating much, right? And you're still,
43:56
consumers will still be able to expect to draw from a grid. So you'll still need a, you know,
44:00
something that's, yeah, some sort of base load power. And I mean, I think, you know, in engineering
44:05
terms here, once, like the easiest part of introducing renewables into the grid is at the start,
44:10
right? And as their penetration in the grid becomes more and more, it becomes more difficult to
44:16
manage, you need to build new connecting infrastructure, transmission lines, which is, you know,
44:20
part of the cost we're seeing with labor storage solutions, all that sort of stuff,
44:25
when they become a bigger part of the grid. And that's why I think that they,
44:28
you're always going to have a role of at least, I mean, I'm not an engineer, I'm going to
44:33
pluck a figure out here, but, you know, 30 to 40% of something that's providing continuous
44:38
base load power that's not renewable generated. If you were a betting man, what are the odds that
44:43
you give me that Australia has nuclear power in 20 years? Oh, I'd say that. I mean, look,
44:49
we'd have to win the election. We'd have to, they just sort of change us through the Senate. But I
44:53
think if, if there was no sort of legislative bar, if this was like, if the private sector could
44:58
make its own decisions about this at the moment, it can't, because there's a legislative bar,
45:02
I would say it's like 60%. I mean, the interesting thing about nuclear at the moment, I think,
45:06
is that you suddenly have a lot of tech companies, big tech platforms and giants, like MetaGoogle,
45:12
Microsoft, one or two others who are investing in nuclear assets or investing in early stage
45:20
nuclear startups or kind of building new small modular reactors. They're doing this because out of
45:25
their own commercial interest, because one, they want to retain their low emission credentials. But
45:29
two, the power needs of data centers, especially with artificial intelligence running are going to
45:35
be massive. That's great for the industry because what all that investment means is it accelerates
45:42
the product development cycle and it will de-risk these things because you've got all this capital
45:47
going into basically refine, build, improve, whatnot. So I think like we will find, and these guys
45:53
are great, you know, tech companies are greater building, iterating, getting stuff to market,
45:58
testing, refining and proving like we might not always like their products, but they are amazing
46:03
and how quickly they can move. We will find that they advance the nuclear industry in 10 years
46:07
like faster than it's advanced in the last 40 or 50. You mentioned artificial intelligence.
46:13
Are you an optimist or a person that's about what algorithms, social media, and subsequently
46:17
artificial intelligence are doing to us all? I'm an optimist. You know, I have concerns at the
46:24
margins about how to be used and I don't think we should just let it rip and no guardrails and
46:29
but I just see artificial intelligence as a tool that humans will use and ultimately we're still
46:36
going to be in control of it. I don't have this. Do you use it? Yeah. I mean, I tend to do it on
46:42
weird stuff like I'm doing this big, big ride in a couple of weeks down and like I'm
46:49
bright, like coming up mountain off from a false creek and I was trying. Someone said, I said,
46:53
I don't want like what heart rate I should be going up the hills because they're long climbs or
46:57
power up when they put it into check if it's they'll give you an answer. Give me a pretty good
47:00
answer, you know. I use it for sort of quirky stuff like that. But I think it's, I mean, I see
47:08
there's an, you know, it can improve people's speech or expression. It can give you quick answers
47:13
to complicated questions in a way that a search function does now but is a bit less user friendly,
47:20
you know, maths. I mean, when my kids come to me with maths problems, right? And I did, you know,
47:25
four unit maths at school, but you know, 30 years ago, I've forgotten a bit, but they'll come
47:30
to me with a maths problem and I'll plug it into chat GVT and then it's surprisingly not that good.
47:34
It will give it will sometimes hallucinate maths problems. Yeah. That is true. You're probably
47:40
actually better off with a straight up Google search for a maths problem. But it helps sort of
47:44
refresh it in my mind. That's how it works. So I just think, I mean, you know, will it
47:51
just place jobs? Yes, but not directly. I mean, I think if you look at something like the
47:57
automotive industry, it used to take lots of people to build a vehicle that automotive industries
48:03
become basically robotized and mechanized. So now a single work on a factory line produces a
48:08
lot more vehicles, right? Now it didn't mean that they had job layoffs over night, but it just
48:12
means a single work is more productive and basically the manufacturing process becomes more
48:16
capital intensive, less labor intensive. I think this is what AI holds. I mean, what you'll see
48:22
is that basically people who use it, business that use it, whether use cases, well demonstrated,
48:27
they become more productive, they sell more, they can sell them more clients, a single account
48:32
and can serve more clients than previously. Cost will come down for consumers and there's not
48:37
going to be job losses as much as, you know, direct job losses as much as just more efficiency,
48:43
more productivity. And I mean, you know, one of the biggest challenges we face in Australia is
48:48
productivity is flatline, right? Going nowhere. And unless we move productivity, you can't have
48:55
better living standards, you can't have more money for social services without adding to government
48:59
that you can't get people tax cuts. You know, say if AI is a productivity tool and it should be,
49:06
I'm all for it. Let it rain money. I'm going to give you some words and I want you to give me
49:11
a one more answer, which is the quickest thing I can. That was a kind of a raw contest.
49:15
W.A. Premier said, you asked him about JD Vats, the other day, I'm not going to repeat what he said.
49:19
You say that? No, I didn't say it. Well, I was like, can I have to repeat it?
49:23
I think Roger Cooks, the West Australian Premier, was a vicious lunch and I think someone did
49:29
this thing with him and I said, you know, go say the first thing that comes into your mind and
49:33
someone said JD Vats and I'm not going to, because I know, he said something which he subsequently
49:38
had to give a press conference to walk back from it. All right, I'm not going to ask JD Vats and
49:47
Robert Menzies, leader, Churchill, visionary, Vancouver, home, birthplace, Brexit, disaster, Elon Musk,
49:59
House. Talented, but complicated. Allegra Spender. My opponent. TikTok. Not a user. Israeli
50:13
settlers. Unhelpful. Capitalism. Good. Popularism. Has its uses, but generally bad, the Australian
50:24
Labour Party. Trapped by its history. You want to expand on that?
50:33
I think the Labour Party, I was a great admirer of the Hawking Keating Government and they had a
50:39
modernising, I'm a great admirer of Tony Blair's Labour Party in the UK as well. This Labour
50:43
Party is basically, turns back the dial to, you know, they've taken industrial relations
50:50
back to where it was before Keating and Hawking. They've regulated the economy that Hawking Keating
50:56
did so much to deregulate. They haven't recognised that basically a worker's standard of living
51:04
is intricately linked to inflation, the availability of social services, not just their pay packet.
51:08
So I think we've got a really retrograde Labour Party that's, it's vision of Australia is kind of
51:14
1970s vision of industrial conflict. Organised Labour versus business and they're picking a side
51:21
where I think the Keating and Hawking governments sought to govern for all Australians.
51:26
It's interesting. Okay. Carrying on. Workness. Past its time. Orcas. Good.
51:35
Companies that require staff to write he, him or they, them, gender pronouns in their
51:40
e-mouse signatures are necessary. Yes or are a fact? Not a peacemaker. Scott Morrison.
51:49
Did Orcas. Good guy. The ethos have been credited for that. The ethos have moved fast and
51:55
break things. I'm an admirer, not in government though, but in the private sector. Libraries.
52:02
Founts of knowledge should be preserved. What's the most unusual place you've ever been?
52:08
Geographically. Yeah. Probably Cuba. I travelled to Cuba as a studying university student in about
52:23
22 or 23. Great country, strong culture, but I talked about the Labour Party being trapped
52:33
in the past. It had become in prison by its history. It was still living in the,
52:38
when was the revolution? 1959, I think. It was still living in the early 60s. I mean, the
52:42
vehicles are still from the early 60s as part of the charm, right? But the aisle and lovely old
52:47
colonial homes falling down from the early 60s, the whole place is stagnated and you couldn't
52:50
feel, you felt the absence of freedom there basically. I think that Cuban revolution
52:59
when it took place overthrew basically a military dictatorship rather, but it's not a great
53:05
government. And their initial sort of first flush was really positive, but they really lost their
53:13
way and it was sad to see how a country that was so promising. It had so much promise
53:21
had basically been dragged down over the decades and become this miserable place. I mean,
53:25
I mean, the guy we stayed with in Cuba, like they had these sort of semi-legal kind of
53:31
private houses. He was a doctor, but he earned more, renting his rooms out to us than he
53:36
would as a doctor. The taxi driver who took us from the airport or the car driver, you know,
53:41
he was like a medical specialist, sudden, what he was like an obstetrician or something,
53:45
but he drove a taxi because it was more lucrative and likely he had these perverse things where
53:50
they got a very skilled workforce and educated workforce, but the destruction of the market,
53:54
economy has kind of destroyed any price signals and you have all these perverse things that
53:58
result from it. Yeah, centrally planned economies don't work. We can take that onto the bank.
54:03
Should we colonize space? No, I don't think so. If you can snap your fingers in Australia,
54:10
never gets colonized by the British. Do you know it? Never gets colonized by the British.
54:17
No, I think it was inevitable that Australia would be colonized by someone and I think we're
54:21
better off to be colonized by the British than anyone else. Will liberal democracies survive
54:26
the 21st century? Yes, but I think it's under more challenge than it has been since the
54:34
early days of the Cold War. I think that the most can I expand on this? Please.
54:42
I think one of the reasons why market economies and hence liberal democracies because
54:47
the two are usually coincident, right, succeeded. And basically one, the Cold War was
54:55
they were more in an era of sort of decentralized information and asymmetries.
55:02
Essentially planned model couldn't never compete with a devolved model, which is basically
55:08
one of market economy is market economy devolves basically decisions to their optimal level where
55:16
information is held and people can make their own decisions about allocating capital stuff.
55:20
The Soviet model failed because they could never tell what was going on on the shop floor, right?
55:26
Technology is kind of changing that. I mean, you can now almost have an omniscient
55:31
central entity that knows everything can aggregate all this data and can process all this data
55:39
and can give you insights into what's happening and make decisions. So I think many of the technology
55:46
tools, ability to process large amounts of data, artificial intelligence, they tend to actually
55:54
favor centralized regimes, not only Amazon algorithm as the new Pollock Bureau.
56:00
Yeah. And I think you can probably, China is a textbook case in that. They have got a successful
56:07
economy. It's got its challenges, but they still have a highly interventionist economy,
56:12
right? Let's the government still make broad decisions about the allocation of capital,
56:16
but they can still run a better economy than the Soviet Union ever could because they've
56:20
got the tools to do so. They're probably more economically literate, but they can also run a
56:24
mass surveillance data alongside it in a way that older regimes would have to divert a huge
56:31
amount of money to internal surveillance for stability. China does, but they've got tools that
56:37
allow that to do and allow them to do that much more. So I think there's sort of the competitive
56:42
advantage of a market economy, liberal democracy model has eroded somewhat versus a totalitarian
56:48
or centrally planned model. Do you worry that as things become more chaotic and as we split apart
56:54
culturally more and more presumably due to social media and the growth of echo chambers and
57:00
self-sorting of communities, there'll be a temptation among some liberal democracy which might
57:05
succumb to the introduction of an authoritarian. Yeah, I think it's a worry. I mean, I don't
57:16
just sort of prelude to your question that I don't necessarily agree that you know,
57:22
I think we have sort of drifted apart. There's less commonality in society and people can
57:27
echo chambers, but I don't think that process is an extra will like I think it will find its natural
57:32
end point or end state and I think you're already there's still a lot of attachment people have to
57:38
like traditional what we call traditional community non-digital community, neighborhood clubs,
57:43
family friends, you know, and you're seeing a bit of a I think we've seen a slow reaction
57:48
that you know, it's always people getting off social media or detoxing or engaging in kind of
57:52
analogue rather than digital activities because I think we're still at heart, you know, we're still
57:56
a species, right? We're still a form of April chimpanzee and that has deeply social needs and I
58:03
think that's that will help us stop or slow prevent further fragmentation. Do people think
58:10
you're Jewish? Yeah, a lot of people. I'm not for the record. People think you're Jewish, it
58:16
actually is surprising number of Jewish people in college Jewish. It's understandable. Yeah,
58:22
ambassador to Israel. David or people think I'm a David. David, David. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
58:28
trying to do we look. Yeah, no, I've got to say I've got I've kind of got a Middle East and
58:31
Jewish world about me. You're Indian, right? Yeah, Indian father. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, so it's
58:36
fine. I don't like I speak some Hebrews well with that and I'm often photographed now if I've
58:40
been a synagogue, I've got a Kipper also then. Yeah, yeah, that photo goes that everyone goes
58:44
I must be Jewish. Okay, but I'm very I guess proud or happy to be a friend of the supporter
58:51
of the Jewish community. We set the record straight right here. Yes, I'm a non-Jew goi for the
58:56
ages. I would say good luck in the election, but I don't need to because you're not up this
59:00
time round. No, I'm not. I'm helping many of our canners, but I'm not on the ballot paper this
59:07
time. Thanks for coming into our great stuff. Thanks so much for having me on.