Angertainment & Slopulism with Ed Coper

Summary

Betoota Talks: "Angertainment & Slopulism" with Ed Coper

Date: May 17, 2026
Host(s): Clancy Overell, Errol Parker (The Betoota Advocate)
Guest: Ed Coper (Author, political strategist, digital culture observer)

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Episode Overview

In this incisive and irreverent episode of Betoota Talks, Betoota Advocate editors Clancy Overell and Errol Parker host Ed Coper, a leading voice on the weaponisation of outrage in media and politics. The conversation explores the rise of "angertainment"—content that monetizes grievances and feeds the algorithmic beast for clicks, clout, and political leverage. They dissect how outrage, algorithm-driven media, and performative culture have warped journalism, policy, and public debate in Australia and worldwide.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Satirical Warm-Up and Setting the Stage

• [00:00–03:14] The hosts exchange playful banter about lifestyle upgrades (Lebanese lunches, cologne) before pivoting to the podcast's theme: how digital media (especially short-form, emotion-driven clips) now dominates news and public perception.

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2. Ed Coper Opens with a "Masterclass in Grievance"

• [04:20–05:45] Coper launches into a mock-rant skewering "cosplay journalists" like the hosts, critiquing the dilution of journalistic standards and the erosion of trust—a performative prelude to a serious discussion on angertainment.

"Journalists go to fucking school for journalism... and you guys are the most trusted. No. So what? You’re funny, you like sport, ha ha, clever. Anyone can do that fucking shtick.”
— Ed Coper [04:33]

• The hosts and guest debrief the meta-performance, illustrating how genuine-sounding rage hooks attention.

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3. The Mechanics of Angertainment

• [06:43–09:47] The discussion drills into how media personalities (like Carl Stefanovic) and politicians harness outrage not necessarily out of conviction, but because it guarantees eyeballs and engagement.

"Do we hate the player or hate the game? This is the system that rewards people for making that content."
— Ed Coper [07:11]

• Coper’s new book on "angertainment" is referenced, with examples of politicians performing viral stunts to capture cycles of attention—“a policy-free zone.”

• Classic talkback radio is compared to today's social media landscape, with the crucial difference being social media’s “ceilingless” reach.

"The level of...qualification to have that opinion hasn’t changed. Just as reactionary gut instinct. But he now could be more influential than your broadcast journalist behind a desk."
— Ed Coper [10:41]

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4. The Algorithm as a Slot Machine/Cultural Force

• [13:00–15:20] The group unpacks how social platforms incentivise outrage and sensationalism, likening algorithms to poker machines—constant dopamine pursuit.

"Our brains haven’t changed, but now we get infinite information all the time. And our attention filters are set to pick up on things that seem like threats. That’s the problem."
— Ed Coper [14:43]

• Evolutionary psychology: We notice threat and drama over nuance, and algorithms ruthlessly exploit this for advertising gold.

• The difference between Chinese and Western algorithmic priorities is highlighted: China uses social media for collective betterment, with strict controls; the West leans towards profit-driven chaos.

“They [China] just passed a law saying that you need a relevant qualification to express an opinion about a topic on social media… I’m not advocating for that level of censorship, but it is fascinating.”
— Ed Coper [17:09]

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5. Counterculture and the Impact on Music/Culture

• [18:43–20:55] Counterculture’s decline: Social media has flattened difference; “mainstream” and “underground” blur, so kids now rebel by going offline.

• The Spotify analogy: Music is optimized for the algorithm, shaping not just what is made but how.

“This is where the tail wags the dog. The algorithm is determining human behavior. It is not responding to human behavior.”
— Ed Coper [19:40]

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6. Monetized Grievance and Political Power

• [20:55–23:09] Politicians who master angertainment—presenting policy as quick, emotive benefit—can gain outsized influence. The example of New York’s Zoran Mamdani illustrates viral, “radically mainstream” policies packaged with snackable style.

“Mamdani’s position over here, but his policies are in the middle...he is radically mainstream.”
— Ed Coper [23:09]

• In Australia, “winners and losers” budget analysis is lambasted; real issues (housing, cost of living) get obscured by adversarial media narratives.

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7. Housing, Asset-ification & the Social Contract

• [24:04–28:18] Housing as the quintessential grievance. The transformation of homes into assets has upended social mobility and services.

“So now look how perverse this is. There is not a single local government area in Sydney where the median salary for a nurse, a firefighter or a teacher is equal to the median rent, let alone the house prices...What are we describing? We’re describing a feudal system.”
— Ed Coper [26:42–27:31]

• Stories of European and American renting norms are contrasted with precarious Australian tenants and predatory landlords.

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8. Slopulism: Grievances Old and New, Served Algorithm-Style

• [30:42–31:55] Grievances—housing, culture wars, migration—are nothing new, but today’s media ecosystem turbocharges and monetizes them.

• Virtue signaling, performative empathy, “cancel culture” are analysed as extensions of the same outrage incentives.

“We have performative conflict. We have performative viciousness. We have performative empathy…It’s now a weapon.”
— Ed Coper [32:02–33:40]

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9. Local vs. Global Outrage & Australia's Immunities

• [34:43–36:49] Despite the globalisation of “rage bait” (with Australian, US, and UK grifters sharing each other's content), Australia’s compulsory and preferential voting, and independent electoral institutions, provide firewalls against the worst outcomes.

“The unique thing about Australians… is our political system has way more protections against extremist rage bait than countries like the UK and the US.”
— Ed Coper [34:43]

• The persistent return to “the warm gooey centre” at elections is attributed to cultural egalitarianism, economic safety nets, and structural safeguards.

“We are egalitarian… much more about having a society rather than having an individual. And that's the cultural part that’s really important.”
— Ed Coper [37:39]

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10. Effects: Political Paralysis, Shallow Debate, and the Threat of Extremism

• [39:57–41:35] Outrage-driven politics leads to risk aversion, shallow policymaking, and emboldens the fringe, even if not yet in electoral outcomes.

“Brave is the politician now who wants to go and put their neck on the line knowing they’re going to get this angry Internet mob shouting them down. It's brutally effective.”
— Ed Coper [41:35]

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11. Inside Party Politics & the Future of Populism

• [41:56–43:53] Party branch meetings and pre-selections are captured by ‘algorithm slop’ (outrage, echo chambers). The Liberal and Labor parties are both at risk of chasing resentment at the expense of substance.

“Politics is about competing stories...You can’t just expect to go and tell the same story as the other people...That’s what they don’t get.”
— Ed Coper [42:49]

• The winning formula? Acknowledge grievances but also provide meaningful solutions.

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12. Migration, Grievance, and Scapegoating

• [43:53–47:16] The politics of migration is explored: all major parties awkwardly try to balance reality (Australia needs migrants) and outrage politics (scapegoating, dog-whistling).

• Media and politicians often distract from structural economic issues (like housing or stagnant wages) to focus on identity and culture war flashpoints, with corporate funders sometimes fueling the fire.

“A lot of the anti trans campaigns in the US are funded by fossil fuel companies...they know it creates so much noise and instability that no one’s ever going to pass any climate legislation.”
— Ed Coper [48:32]

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13. Behind the “Slop” – Grifters & Strategic Distraction

• [47:16–48:43] Two types of anger-tainment drivers: outright grifters chasing monetization of rage; and players with a political or industrial agenda, using distraction to jam the policy process.

“If you want to... get a million followers and monetize the shit out of that, you’re going to be successful beyond your wildest dreams. They don’t believe the opinions they’re spouting.”
— Ed Coper [47:30]

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14. Conclusions & Meta-Reflections

• [48:53–50:05] There’s a plug for Ed Coper’s new book—which includes a shout out to The Betoota Advocate for “delivering information in a way that is fit for the cultural times... and fit for the algorithms.”

“There is a lot of important information contained in your jesting, and that’s how you get it through, right? You wrap it in humor, you wrap it in the Zeitgeist… You put the peanut butter, the dog medicine, in the peanut butter that way.”
— Ed Coper [49:15]

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Notable/Quotable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the Motivation for Outrage Content:
  “If people are pissed off about the housing market...Angertainment takes those grievances and monetizes it for engagement bait.”
  — Ed Coper [07:37]

• On Social Media’s Effect:
  “All of the reward systems on social media favour the Talkback Radio/Fox News style of broadcast.”
  — Ed Coper [09:47]

• On Algorithms and Human Nature:
  “Our brains haven’t changed, but now we get infinite information all the time. And our attention filters are set to pick up on things that seem like threats.”
  — Ed Coper [14:43]

• On Australia’s “Firewall”:
  “Our political system has way more protections against extremist rage bait than countries like the UK and the US.”
  — Ed Coper [34:43]

• On Political Risk Aversion:
  “Brave is the politician now who wants to go and put their neck on the line knowing they’re going to get this angry Internet mob shouting them down.”
  — Ed Coper [41:35]

• On Performative Outrage:
  “We have performative conflict. We have performative viciousness. We have performative empathy...it’s now a weapon.”
  — Ed Coper [32:02]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:20] – Ed Coper’s “masterclass in grievance”
• [06:43] – “Do we hate the player or the game?”
• [09:03] – Algorithm vs. Talkback radio
• [14:43] – Evolutionary psychology and the outrage algorithm
• [19:40] – Spotify, the algorithm, and ‘cheapening’ of culture
• [23:09] – “Radically mainstream” policy; bashing the “winners and losers” budget
• [27:31] – Australian housing as a modern feudal system
• [34:43] – Australia’s structural defenses against “rage bait”
• [41:35] – Political paralysis in the age of outrage
• [47:16] – Grievance-mongers: grifters vs. strategists
• [49:15] – How satire works algorithmically; Batoota’s plug in the book

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Summary & Tone

This episode is a sharp, funny, and often witheringly honest look at the fractured state of media, public debate, and politics in the digital age. Coper and the Betoota editors dissect how real grievances (like housing, jobs, cost of living) are cynically weaponized in the economy of attention, while highlighting why Australia, thanks to certain electoral safeguards and a lingering “mateship” culture, remains less vulnerable than the US or UK to populist extremes. The conversation is colorful, full of darkly comic analogies, and grounded in realpolitik and critical media theory—delivered with Betoota’s signature irreverence.

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For Further Exploration

• Ed Coper’s Book on Angertainment (with a plug for The Betoota Advocate)
• Noted segments: The evolution of talkback to TikTok, the power and peril of algorithmic attention, and how Australia might defend its democracy from the global “rage bait” machine.

Transcript

[A]

Clancy, what's that you're wearing?

[B]

What do you mean? I don't think an unironed half buttoned shirt is out of the usual.

[A]

No, the cologne. You usually smell like instant coffee and tobacco. What's going on here?

[B]

Oh, that. Yes, it's called Pour Homme Oud Noir.

[A]

Versace.

[B]

It is Versace. Thought I'd treat myself.

[A]

You've been doing a lot of that lately.

[B]

Yes, well, my new Lebanese friends down in the flight path district have shown me the finer things.

[A]

Yeah, like what?

[B]

Well, basic male hygiene for one. I've quit the darts. I'm a probiotic yogurt kind of bloke.

[A]

What else are you treating yourself to?

[B]

Well, after we finish this podcast, I'm gonna rescue myself from another depressing desk lunch and go and get myself some Elgina.

[A]

You've become fully obsessed with that place, mate.

[B]

The legendary Lebanese lunch has changed my life. From fresh salads, garlic sauce, crunchy pickles. I genuinely cannot stop thinking about it.

[A]

What are you even ordering?

[B]

The crispy special, mostly golden chicken tenders, garlic sauce chips stuffed in the roll. It's outrageous. But the tawook and tabbouleh rolls are also in the weekly rotation.

[A]

This is becoming your whole personality, and rightly so.

[B]

It's $14 for a roll, chips and a drink. Honestly, it's the perfect escape from the sad sandwiches.

[A]

Well, what are we doing here? Before we get into it, this episode is brought to you by Dan Murphy's and if Daniel has one thing, it's an eye for value. You've seen it. That's stare. When you get out of the car and he's just there staring at you. It's the look that says, I know why you're here and I know what things should cost. Dan Murphy's has everyday low prices across Australia's largest liquor range. For think the classics, the cool new stuff young people drink and the things that you don't realize you were looking for. And if you do find something cheaper somewhere else, Dan's won't match it. They'll beat it. That's the lowest liquor price guarantee. Found it cheaper. They'll beat it. Simple. But as always, T's and C's apply like anything in life really.

[B]

Nobody beats Dan Murphy's. They rule the roost when it comes to that. For range and price, you can't do better.

[A]

Shop in store or [e-mail] choose to drink wise, don't drink dumb.

[B]

You're listening to a DM podcast. Welcome back to Batuta Talks. The Weekly Batuta Tutor Advocate interview, which is in video format, as you'd probably be able to tell if you're watching on YouTube. It's also available where all podcasts are available. We've been at it for a couple years in this format. As editors of the Matuta Advocate, you're joined by myself, Clancy Overall, and I'm here with Errol Parker, editor at large.

[A]

Good to see you. Good to be here with our true audience, which is audio only. Yes, I think so. It's, it's a real scourge on the format, this stuff that you got to film.

[B]

Well there you've got the long form YouTube stuff, but you've also got the, the, the snackable short form clips, which is now what a lot of the great podcasts in the world have become. The 90 seconds. I guess real just hits the right exact kind of emotive checkpoints and hot buttons to warrant its existence in a social media algorithm. We work very hard to get those clips right for you, ladies and gentlemen. And today's guest is going to shed some light on really how to game the algorithm with, you know, grievances, perhaps other kind of dopamine triggers such as mild pornography and of course, just full blown violence. Thank you for joining us today, Ed Kopa.

[C]

Thank you. And I just. What, Can I get something off my chest?

[B]

Yes.

[C]

First of all, I'm a serious guy. I do a lot of work in this space and one of the most damaging things we have to society is cosplay journalists.

[A]

Yep.

[C]

Okay, yeah, you guys are in this category, okay? You have done nothing. You have no training, you have no background, you have no intelligence. There's no, there are ethics, there are standards. Journalists go to fucking school for journalism. They do their cadetship, they do their time and you guys are the most trusted. No. So what? You're funny, you like sport, ha ha, clever. Anyone can do that fucking shtick. Anyone can do that shtick journalism and hard. You are cheapening a whole fucking procession profession. Your cosplay at this kind of stuff. I'm going to get a serious person on. I'm going to talk about a big issue as if I know. You don't know. Put the disclaimer, you don't fucking know. Tell your audience you don't fucking know, okay? They deserve that. They deserve to know. Trust is dead. You guys are the problem. I'm sorry.

[A]

That's the most genic shit I've heard

[C]

in my fucking life.

[B]

Now how old are you, Ed Kopa? That was a master class in grievance.

[C]

Grifting, and somewhat genuinely held, but maybe an element of trying to demonstrate the thesis.

[B]

That was a pretty earnest grievance right there.

[C]

I have many deeply held grievances. If you package them up in a bit of rage, a bit of anger. Yeah, that's the hack. Yeah, that's the hack.

[B]

Now, could you reckon you could apply that, what you just did, you know, sensational spray, by the way.

[C]

Thank you.

[B]

Do you reckon you would be able to apply that to perhaps an ethnic minority?

[C]

Well, if we wanted to go further. What are we going for? 20,000 likes?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah, okay. Yeah. Cosplay journalists from an ethnic minority are the worst. They come to this country, they don't go to journalism school. School. They don't do their cadetships.

[B]

They don't share our values.

[C]

They don't share our values. You want to come here, fine. I'm not racist. But if you want to come here, you'd better do a fucking Australian journalism degree. I'm not recognizing the Karachi School of Journalism in the information I'm getting. Thank you very much.

[B]

Well, we have Carl Stefanovic's producer here today, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us, Ed Kopa.

[A]

Carl's doing a good job. He's like, he. The fact that you two burnouts are

[B]

talking about the whole act is over now. We can just continue. We can talk about anger tainment now.

[A]

That's what I'm saying.

[C]

Well, look, you know, there's a big question that you got to, you know, a conundrum at the heart of all this. Is Carl Stefanovic someone who genuinely holds those ideas and wants to shout angrily about them and have guests who shout angrily about them? Or is Carl Stefanovic trying to produce a show that gets the most eyeballs and knows that because the way you get the most eyeballs is to be extreme, outrageous, angry and shouty. You got to do it right. Do we hate the player or hate the game? This is the system that rewards for people making that content. And so it shouldn't be a surprise that that's what people want to do.

[B]

So I want to talk to you about. You've released a book on this anger tainment. The one thing that comes to mind with a lot of these manosphere is even. That's an outdated term now. But like some of these grievance grifters is they're half right.

[C]

Of course.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And that's. And that's where it starts.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

You know, it's easy to take half truth, Right. You guys do have a lot of trust in your audience, you know, and it's easy to then take that and spin it to, you know, wherever you want to take it. The grievances are real. Yeah, Right. I am pissed off about the housing market, I'm pissed off about cost of living. I'm pissed off about, you know, you know, the general direction in society. The grievances are real. What angertainment does is it takes those grievances and then monetizes it.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

For engagement bait. But, yeah, it wouldn't work if people didn't share the actual grievances.

[B]

Are you seeing this translate in Australia, electorally, would you say, the Farah by election, angertainment played a role in that?

[C]

Definitely. Yeah, definitely. There's a breed of politician that gets angertainment.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And it's the ones that you might do, might see doing stunts like, you know, Pauline Hanson wears a burqa into the Senate floor. It's all we talk about for a week. It's a policy free zone. There's no solutions, you know, nothing. If Pauline Hanson was Prime Minister tomorrow, it would not make the country materially better. It is all around tapping that populist grievance through good, engageable, clickable content.

[B]

What's the difference between this shit and talkback radio, which dominated Australian politics for 30 years, 40 years, you know, Alan Jones, John Laws. That was anger, tainment. They had it down to a fine art.

[C]

The difference was the ceiling on its influence. Right. Talkback radio was important. It definitely set the political agenda of the day, but it did not determine the whole of society, the whole of culture and the whole of politics. Right. Social media increasingly does. Does that. It's where we get our opinions. We are switching off from other forms of information, young people especially, but also old people, and we are just getting our information from social media. If everyone in the 90s and noughties had only got their information from talkback radio, what a fucked up place this would be. But we're kind of. That's what we're doing now. All of the reward systems on social media favour the Talkback Radio Fox News style of broadcast.

[A]

We've all landed in Sydney, walked up to the cab rank and made eye contact with a cabbie who's been waiting in his taxi with a Daily Telegraph on the dashboard and Alan Jones on the. On the radio. And in that 20 minutes it took to get into the city, the conversation was usually around what they were saying. Now, when you shut the boot, when you shut the door at the hotel, that's it. The Conversation ends. But with the proliferation now of mobile phones, it's endless. I mean, like, would the silver bullet here be just getting rid of all

[C]

these hand computers, just taking Ubers? So the equivalent for the cabbie analogy, right, is you know, who they bless their cotton socks, you know, since time immemorial, have had uninformed opinions that they want to spread to their passengers.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

In the cab rank era, he was spreading that to one guy in the passenger seat. The equivalent now is if we give every cabbie with that opinion a microphone, a beautiful podcast suite like the one we're sitting in now, and an audience of millions. Right. The content hasn't changed. The level of, you know, information and qualification to have that opinion hasn't changed. Just as reactionary gut instinct. But he now could be more influential than, you know, your broadcast journalist behind a desk or, you know, political editor at, you know, at a masthead paper. That's the difference.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I had a cab driver once enlightened me and it was a fairly long trip and it was late at night about the Jesuits conspiracy that I haven't seen come up for a while. And I think that's due for a

[C]

rebirth on social media that's always existed, but the ecosystem that used to exist around information was built to filter fringe opinions out. Okay. If you were the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and you put that conspiracy theory on the front page, no one would buy your paper and the advertisers would desert. Right? Your business model would collapse because advertisers don't want risky, fringy content. They couldn't do it. All of the gravitational forces, like, we've got to stick with the mainstream consensus, right or wrong. Now, the equivalent of the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald is your Instagram feed or, you know, your YouTube recommendation algorithm. And that favors the fringy shit that would never get an advertiser in a traditional publisher. So the more counter narrative your story is and the more, you know, outside of the mainstream consensus, the more interesting it is to the algorithm. You think about all the health influences on social media. You know, if you put a video up saying, actually, you know, I went to my GP and they suggested I just eat healthily and exercise and get my flu shot. You know, your mom and your two friends might see it. If you get up there and say, guys, there's some biohack that you're not, you know, if actually, you know, if you mainline, you know, some kind of pesticide straight into your anus, you know, it's Going to make you live for 100 years. That will get way more attention.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So that's what's changed. The stuff that used to be disincentivized is now incentivized.

[B]

Where are you seeing the. I guess the algorithm is. Is a highly, highly complex software. Where did you see that come from? You know, part of me feels there's a little bit of the poker machine in it.

[C]

Yeah, it's just Queen of the Nile.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

You know, and that's.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Right. So let's go back to first principles. These, the big tech platforms are machines that are designed to generate revenue through getting as many eyeballs for as long as possible, sell them to advertisers. And the way that they have to do that is to keep everyone engaged for as long as possible. And when the, you know, the olden days of social media was literally a timeline. Right. I call it a timelines chronological feed. It wasn't a very good experience. Yeah, I didn't want to see what you had for breakfast. You know, I wanted to kind of mine through all of that content to find something that's relevant for me. The volume got so great that was impractical to do. So the platform's like, okay, we're just going to lose eyeballs. We need to keep people here. Why don't we put that really funny cat video above what that person's great aunt had for breakfast? Because I think they're going to like that more.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Very simple concept that has completely revolutionized and upended the entire world. Because that is something that, that is fundamental to our core human biology is we are built to filter out most attention, most information and pay attention to the things that evolution has decided we should pay attention to. Now, we evolved over millennia, you know, and, and what our brains are designed to do is to filter out anything except like a woolly mammoth.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[C]

I'm like, oh, pretty flower, sure. But there is a charging woolly mammoth over here or like a Viking horde coming over the hill. I got to put down my, you know, my hay bale and go and pick up my sword. Our brains haven't changed, but now we get infinite information all the time. And our attention filters are set to pick up on things that seem like threats. Yeah, that's the problem. It's really screwed things up because it served us stuff like one nation content. It wasn't built to do that. Yeah, but, but maga, One nation reform, that's just built for the dopamine hit. And what social media wants to give Us.

[A]

And I've heard this conspiracy or rumor that the Chinese version of TikTok is very different in that, as we all know, TikTok is owned by a company affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, our dear friends. But the content that's fed on their algorithms is more, you know, towards serving your community, how to do your personal best, how best to give back to society. And then you go on to the American version of TikTok and it's all about, like, drink Ivermectin if you want to stave off the common cold and stuff like that.

[C]

Yeah, look.

[B]

And is there a finger on the scale?

[C]

Part. Look, yeah, part of it's cultural. Right. So. So the first thing I'd say, many years ago, I went to a human rights conference in China. Strange, I know, but I went in there full of my, you know, Western bravado, thinking we are great at human rights. You're really bad at human rights. And you speak to all the people in China and I say, well, you do all the easy stuff. You, you do all these civil and political rights where all you have to do is not throw someone in jail if they don't say something. We do the really hard human rights, like giving people housing and water and education. That takes a shit ton of money and effort. You do the easy stuff, we do the hard stuff. So you're bad at human rights. And, you know, my point is obviously thanking your sponsor, the ccp, for bringing this program. The way that they view society is very different from the way that we view society, much less individual. It's in the name communist. And that has flowed through to just the design of their technology as well, which is really interesting. You look at the design of their AI. It's not about helping some Silicon Valley unicorn reach, you know, maximum revenue. It's about how do we embed this really seamlessly into our manufacturing and industrial processes at scale to give us an edge in the economy. It's completely different the way they see technology and so on, things like TikTok and social media. They just passed a law saying that you need a relevant qualification to express an opinion about a topic on social media. Right. So you're going to show you. Oh, here's my medical degree. So let me tell you, Ivermectin is a bad idea.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Now, obviously there's all sorts of problems around that. I'm not advocating for that level of censorship, but it is fascinating.

[A]

I've also heard too, that hypothetically, if, say, you're driving a Tesla, it's on Auto, Auto mode. If there's a group of people or a tree that you're about to crash into, the Tesla will always choose the people. Where a Chinese made one will always choose the tree.

[C]

What a perfectly, you know, beautifully timed analogy for our new AI age that now the electric cars are making the ethical decision to, to which train track to go.

[B]

You hear those stories of the kids walking around with flip phones and just completely tapped out because some people would argue and it's hard to identify when the counterculture no longer existed. You know, for years you had what was deemed the media by, you know, two TV stations and three newspapers in each city.

[A]

It was like a pipeline.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

Between these companies and us.

[B]

Yeah. And then there was something that existed just under that and occasionally that would bump up and become household. You know, I think the Beatles actually had to find counterculture because they were so big so early that they had to go and do their thing in India and, you know, avoid tax. But forevermore there was just this thing that the counterculture, the kids were onto something different. Grunge was that, hip hop was that. And you know, the mainstream culture was doing something else. And then for them we've kind of stumbled in and social media comes along and then, you know, we don't really have a mainstream culture to have a counterculture to. It does feel now that the time has come for the counterculture to actually be offline. I mean, the kids would be having more fun.

[C]

Look, music is, is great. And first of all, let me just defend the Beatles for their tax implications. You know, they went off to Rishikesh because the tech around live performance was fucking shit.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And they didn't want to sound shit. And they just completely were over the fact that they were rolled out to screaming fans and played bad music. Right. They cut their teeth in the dirty clubs in Hamburg as 17 year olds. So I think it's a good, it's a good place to start because music is a perfect analogy. Spotify is where artists need to go to be commercially successful now. So music is being made now for the Spotify algorithm. There's an early hook, they're shorter songs, it's a catchy beat. There's some novelty, some gimmick in there that they know is going to get it replayed. And as a result, the shape of music is different and I would suggest worse. Right. This is where the tail wags the dog. The algorithm is determining human behavior. It is not responding to human behavior. And it's, it's interesting in culture it's interesting in music, I think it's a great shame, you know, for, for that part of society. But the point of anger, tainment is there's another effect that we don't pay enough attention to. And that is the same processes that service, you know, shit. Spotify, you know, playlists is a form of political power. And if you know how to make Spotify friendly music, you can then become the number one selling artist in the world.

[A]

Right.

[C]

If you know how to use the algorithm for political ends, you can become the number one most powerful person politically in the world. And we don't pay enough attention to that because the people who get that, the populace, the right wing populist, and they don't do it because their ideas are suited to the algorithm. They do it because they speak the language of the algorithm. Anyone can speak language of the algorithm. And so we have a whole class of people who now have control over our lives just because they've hacked. They've realized a hack sooner than everyone else. Yeah, right, like they were the first to cotton onto that hack.

[A]

Well, yeah, we also saw that in New York with mum Dani.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Where you know, he just had a very simple message that was packaged in a way that made it snackable.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And now look at him.

[C]

Now look at him, right? He was a social media native, but his policies, like the bit that people miss is they see the style and they think it was all style and they don't see the substance. Right. So if you look at the substance of what he was saying, he was positioned by the media as a far left extreme candidate with extreme policies. All of his policy platform enjoys somewhere between 70 to 80% support across America. Not just New York. Right. Obviously New York is a liberal bubble. Right. But the things that. And it's the same in Australia. Putting caps on rents and rents, freezings, universally popular. Taxing wealth, not income. Universally popular. Making public transport for a universally popular. You know, all of the kind of things, look at the budget that we've been talking about incessantly this week. I fucking hate the way the media covers the budget.

[B]

It felt like a natural, it felt like a natural disaster. It was the pre budget kind of hype.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And we cut now to so and

[C]

so to talk about the winners and the losers. The winners and losers, all losers, you know, asset holders or who the are they? Right. They're people who, yeah, like yeah, you're a baby boomer woman on the northern beaches who holds an asset in a property.

[A]

Right.

[C]

But now your, your kids and Your, you can't see your grandkids. You have to travel an hour to see your grandkids because the winners of the budget, you know, are gonna, can't afford a house there. You're a loser. You're a loser of this system. It's not winners and losers. There's a society. Yeah. It drives me mad.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And so, you know, the policies, the idea that you have left and right over here, and everyone loves this, this warm, gooey middle is not borne out by public opinion. Mamdani's position over here, but his policies are in the middle, where, if you can, if you define the middle as the most mainstream, widely held opinions, he is radically mainstream. Right. It is a center left party saying we should do incrementalism or a center right party saying, you know, the system's working fine. Those are the radical people when it comes to popular opinion. They are way out of step in popular opinion.

[B]

That's, that's really interesting. I mean, by any Australian standards, Mandami is a wet liberal.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

He's a Turnbullist.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. But look, the style is important too, you know, so he, he didn't go out there and offer his, you know, policy plans. He went out there and said, here's how I'm going to make your life better.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So you think about why are people drawn to one nation in Australia at the moment? They say they feel their life sucks and they feel it's getting worse. And the parties go out to them and say, either if you're in government, you say, no, you're wrong. Here's the ways we've helped be grateful.

[B]

Student loans.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. And I'm not dissing those policy solutions, but they've skipped the bit where they acknowledge the grievance.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Say, yeah, yeah, you're hurting. That's. This is a big problem.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Here's we agree that aligns with our values. Here's how we're going to help. Yeah, Mandani did that. He said, yeah, it's too expensive to live in New York City. We're going to make your bus fares free. We are going to put a tax on all these Russian oligarchs who have empty luxury apartments in Manhattan and then give that to you so you can afford your rent a bit better. Anyone can understand that. You don't need a PhD in economics to understand how that's going to improve your life. It's not rocket science. Right. You know, screw the fucking policymakers in the 90s who made homes asset classes. Okay? That's warped. We don't really talk about that. Right. We talk about negative gearing and let's go back to first principles. Right. A house is not an asset. A house is a home where people live.

[B]

Well, it wasn't back then. It wasn't back in the day exactly. But now it's very. Yeah, that's. I think what's rocked everyone about this budget is this alternative universe that Jim Chalmers is trying to lead us to where home ownership and just home homeliness.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

It should be prioritized above all else. It doesn't click for some people. There's like this existential feeling.

[C]

It's talked about in the wrong way. Yeah. It's talked about in terms of assets and investment domain.com.

[B]

all of our media has been kept afloat by property listings for however long.

[C]

Well, let's.

[A]

Yeah, and there's that like in the budget. How, how if, if you bought a five sort of bedroom house in West End on half an acre, you're a loser now. Like, like, like if you bought that in 1985, you're a loser even though now you've tripled your money.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

This budget makes you a fucking loser.

[B]

That, that also goes back to that era before properties were viewed as assets. This is the type of people that lived in apartments. Nurses who lived near a hospital and retirees. Maybe not back then. They were still moving to Port Macquarie and Harvey Bay.

[C]

And when they. And when they downsized into that apartment, their house was freed up for the next generation to come and buy and raise their family.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[C]

So now look how perverse this is. There is not a single local government area in Sydney where the median salary for a nurse, a firefighter or a teacher is equal to the median rent, let alone the house prices. Right. So you want to buy your trophy home in a fancy suburb and then fall over and turn up to hospital and expect someone to treat you. Where are these people coming from?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Where do they live?

[A]

Yeah, right.

[C]

The whole thing is perverse. Your asset is valuable, but you don't have a fucking nurse.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Who is able to treat you when you're sick or a teacher for you who's gonna teach your kids.

[B]

You've got Irish girls who come over here to stay for 18 months who live in a share house with like six of them. That's who's gonna be your nurse and

[C]

increasingly less able to do so.

[A]

Right.

[C]

Like, so that's the median rent. Right. Like maybe a boarding house full of Irish nurses might be able to afford that. You know, with A shared bunny. And what are we describing? We're describing a feudal system, right, where some people are living within the castle walls, and then we have a bunch of serfs that we expect to live in squalor to serve us. That's not what I signed up for. Right. That's not. This is a great fucking country. To borrow from the Anger Tainers, Australia was great. Right. We need to make Australia great again. Right. And it is increasingly becoming less great because the things that we think are great about Australia is the fact that we have social mobility and equality for everyone. Well, we don't. Increasingly.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So any politician who comes along and is able to communicate that effectively, nobody will give a fuck what stripes they have.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I don't care if it's Pauline Hanson or if it's a Zoran Mandani. On the other hand, nobody's offering that solution to Max Chan.

[B]

Lamar?

[A]

Well, it's interesting you say that. Like, how we go back to talking about hospitals is that one of my good mates from uni, he's now a paramedic in London. He operates in, like, the Paddington area, takes people to the hospital in Paddington. But he just bought a unit in Paddington for £400,000. It last traded in 2011 for £381,000.

[B]

London is a good example. The right people are commuting in. You know, the bankers are living in

[C]

the bedroom suburbs with a bigger taking, public transport. Part of the problem why I don't own a house in Sydney is because. Is because I didn't think of owning a house in Sydney back when everyone should have been buying them. Because it's very normalized to rent in cities like Paris and New York. And so the landlords are different, right? They're okay. They know the value of a good tenant. They're okay with you staying there for life. I have a ongoing battle with my dickhead landlord. I hope he's watching, because I. I'm saying this directly to you. Every time I ask for a tap to be fixed, the rent goes up 30%. He's constantly trying to evict us. It is an absolute nightmare family.

[B]

By the way, this is an apartment.

[C]

Thanks, Mom. I don't know, you know, where my kids are going to sleep in a month's time, right? It's very unsettling feeling in New York. We knew we could have stayed in that apartment for life because it's very normalized. And rent control exactly as long as you want. And the difference is in Australia, because we made property, residential property and asset class Traditionally, your landlord is an investment property investor. In cities like Paris or New York, your landlord is much more likely to be someone like a super fund.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[C]

Where they're like, this is a large asset class in a residential tower or a commercial building. You know, we're not buying mum and dad houses in the burbs, you know, and it will give us this return. And we don't care who the tenant is. They can stay there for as long as they want. And it's very normalized. That is a big missing piece in Australia. These rent to builds. The idea that, you know, you can have stability and be a renter at the same time is really, really important. We don't have that.

[B]

Would you say a big part of this current rise of sloppyism, you know, algorithm rage bait? Would you say housing has a big part of that?

[C]

Look, it's grievance agnostic. Yeah, right. So we have a big grievance in this country of housing. A lot of other countries have the same grievance. Yeah, but you can take any other grievance, right? This is why it always has the same kind of themes. Like you look at the, the Voice to Parliament referendum. The grievance themes are ancient, right. The technology was modern social media outrage. But the grievances was, you know, they're going to come and make me have a permit to put my fence up. They're going to take Australia Day and take my land. And, you know, it's the same stuff back in, you know, the 90s around Mabo native Title Wick is exactly the same stuff. So grievances are old. The, the way they are manipulated is new. It's just where we're living in an age that is built for grievances. If you are a grievance, welcome, your time has come. Right.

[B]

There's a grievance that exists and probably predates this, this new kind of anger tainment. You know, dystopia is the, the empathy, you know, the performative empathy that perform it. The virtue signaling that the woke.

[C]

Right.

[B]

You know, everyone.

[C]

How long are we into the podcast?

[B]

But that's a grievance thing too, where, you know, everyone's problematic.

[C]

So I was listening to a podcast interview with Ashley Sinclair. So she was a maga rage baiter, one of the most successful ones. And she is also one of the many, many women who has a baby by Elon Musk. Oh, yeah, right. So she's the, she's the, she's the one who flipped. She came out and she called Elon out. On in public saying, hey, dude, what the fuck? Could you, you know, give me some child support? She's now a remorseful MAGA rage baiter. And she gives a lot of really good commentary about what it was like being one of these agitators. And she's got a great phrase. She, she calls it performative viciousness. Yeah. And it is, right? So we have performative conflict. We have performative viciousness. We have performative empathy. You know, what we used to call, you know, woke up, but that's all devolved now like into. Into just conflict. Right. So, so wokeness started at a place where young African American kids were saying, were being told, don't forget the, the racist injustice of your past. Right? Like, remember, stay woke, you know, stay woke to, to, you know, the, the, the injustices that's led you to this modern, you know, situation you're living in. It's not that now, Right. What it is is performative conflict. You know, it is targeted at our opponents. It's supposed to be, you know, like canceling used to be about our own tribe saying, hey, dude, you can't say that anymore.

[A]

Right.

[C]

That's a bit, you know, that's an awkward thing. I can't laugh at that joke. You know, we don't really say that.

[A]

And now you're not allowed to sit with us.

[C]

Yeah, now it's a, now it's a weapon for the other team. Yeah, it's the sword of cancellation.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Charlie Kirk gets shot and killed and MAGA goes trawling the Internet for anyone who said anything, no matter how nuanced, balanced and true, and goes and cancels them. Pete Hegseth purges the armed forces of anyone who doesn't like Charlie Kirk. Great national security initiative there, you know, people. There's a guy who spent about 30 days in jail in one of these states for saying that, you know, Charlie, people are taking opportunity at Charlie Kirk's killing. Wasn't even dissing Charlie Kirk. Right. So, so we're not actually trying to correct behavior, right? Like, wokeness was supposed to be like, no, we're correcting behavior. This is like, come on, dude, it's. It's now a weapon.

[A]

Have you noticed anything uniquely Australian about what we see as opposed to, you know, American rage bait, English rage bait and stuff like that?

[C]

It's actually the interesting thing is the opposite. The interesting thing is how much the global rage bait networks just share each other's content. Right. So you go to an Australian rage baiters feed and it will be, you know, anti Jacinta Allen anti Albo pro Nigel Farage pro Trump copied and paste from some racist outrage in France. You know, and you go to the UK and the US ones, it's exactly the same. So it's actually the defining feature is how global and irrelevant all of the content is to, to Australians. Yeah. The, the unique thing about Australians, which is this is the good news story, right, is our political system has way more protections against extremist rage bait than countries like the UK and the US So you know, things like, and plug for anything because you know, after there's an election people talk about getting rid of these things. Compulsory voting and preferential voting and an independent Australian electoral commission. These protect us from the worst of these sorts of things. Right. So you can't have an extreme opinion, get a lot of attention in social and social media and then expect to have mainstream political success in Australia in the same way that you can in the the U.S. yeah, first past the post in England. Now you still can. Right. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we're, we're immune. It's just we have more, more protections, we've got better armor and so we need to protect those things because in a, if MAGA had happened say in Europe, it probably would have been a minor party.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Right. And then be a part of a coalition right wing government and the figures of MAGA would be important and they would work wag the dog like you know all the, the right wing ones do, you know like Smochrich in Israel or you know, the MAGA people in the US or Farage. Yeah. And Robert Jenrick, people like that in the uk they're still very important and powerful but they probably wouldn't have become president like, like they do in other systems. So the political system is very, very important. It's like nerdy and uninteresting but probably saves our lives every day.

[B]

Why is it, do you think that, you know. Sure. Barribai election One nation shits it in indigenous voice Halfway through a political term. Indigenous voice no, shits it in like the grievances thrive in these guilt free protest votes. But when we get to the next federal election and they're looking at Pauline Hansen, Angus Taylor and Albanese, we know who they're gonna vote for. We do, yeah. As in. And I say they, I mean the vast majority of Australians. Why do Australians go back to this warm gooey center when it comes time to actually do something democratic?

[C]

Well, we have the wonderful position of being less polarized and less radicalized. In Australia for a number of reasons and they're important to unpack because we need to cherish the shit out of it. Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

The first is cultural.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

We are egalitarian. We have, you know, this amazing 60 plus thousand year old history of cultures that survived side by side, hundreds of them, in a competition for resources that was never replicated on any other continent on earth. Right. We don't reflect enough on that. And then with European settlement we got all of what Europe thought was the detritus. Right. But really were just like the rat baggy political prisoners. And you know, the people who, who came from different social classes in a very stratified society. We still inherit like all of the culture of knocking people down tall poppy syndrome to be more egalitarian and the idea that, you know, I've lived in America for a long time, so individualized. There's so many ways that you don't even think about. Right. We don't have that in Australia. We're much more about having a society rather than having an individual. And that's the cultural part that's really important.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

The political part is, is, is all about those protections that I talked about. Right. The people who agree with those soft, gooey middle things that are actually extreme never vote in America.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And they don't, they never vote in the UK or other countries that don't have compulsory voting. So it's different. People will come out and decide, you know, what's important. And most people are decent, most people are, you know, want others to do well. You know, most people are happy to take a hit if they're wealthy, if it means others get ahead in a way that other countries, you can't say that. And that's wonderful. And then we have, you know, economic reasons as well. And this is where we're in danger of losing. You know, we have the ability of people to go to university, become professionals, get well paying jobs. We have a really advanced economy with, with high wages where people can in theory in the past afford to have social mobility and look after the basic things in life. And when you have the basic needs catered to in life, you can be much more generous and progressive in your politics. You can support a safety net and a helping hand and all the other wonderful things that we enjoy in Australia.

[B]

So, so where our greatest risk from this anger tainment kind of ecosystem is extremism and violence on the streets. Not so much politically in Australia.

[C]

Well, it's going to pollute politics which will lead to the first thing yeah, so they're all, it's all a tangled web. Right. So in a normal setting politics is done by really boring people with suits and spectacles in think tanks and the policy debate with, with Laura tingle on the 7:30 report and you know, then some, some commentary on it and some negotiations with lobbyists involved in camera.

[B]

Midnight Oil has a few albums like.

[C]

Exactly, exactly.

[A]

Don't cut down.

[C]

And then, and then we have, and then we have a turtle or something picking the winner, you know, or an octopus, you know, to predict the winner. So, so those things are the way politics is conducted traditionally. What is different now is you have someone will come out with a policy suggestion and the ability to shout it down without any nuance, just with sheer noise, no debate. It kills the possibility for Australia to have any ambitious legislation or ambitious projects and it makes the political class much less ambitious as well.

[A]

Right.

[C]

So you think about the government sitting there before the budget. What's going to happen if we come out and announce Policy X? Oh, we're going to get shouted down on social media. And of course the traditional media is compliantly reports what happens on social media. Everyone is outraged and the kind of turtle pokes its head back in the shell and like, all right, the headlines great.

[B]

Social media backlash over.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. And they cherry pick a couple of, a couple of people. It's not representative.

[A]

So yeah, so one person on Reddit,

[C]

one person on Reddit said and now that dictates politics. So yes, we have great political systems set up to, to, you know, to give us good solutions but it's in the public debate that we're going to find that and you know, brave is the politician now who wants to go and put their neck on the line knowing they're going to get this angry Internet mob shouting them down. It's brutally effective.

[B]

What you're saying there is that what we're seeing in these Liberal Party branch meetings where they're just so hopped up on algorithm slop that they, they can't bring themselves to pre select a woman because that's woke or.

[C]

Yeah, they're not representative. Yeah, they're not representative. They're the three, you know, gray haired nomads who have nothing better to do than to get out of bed and worry about what bathroom people can use. Yeah, but that's not representative. But they are determining the whole Liberal Party and look at the consequences for them. They're dead.

[A]

Well, it goes back to what you were saying earlier is that, you know, grievance only works if we the viewer care about it, you know, and have that. When people are consuming Angus Taylor's rage bait, do they genuinely believe that this person who spent more time in Walara than Wentworthville actually cares about this stuff,

[C]

you know, the Liberal Party, to think that you could put Pauline Hanson saying Pauline Hansen shit up against Angus Taylor saying Pauline Hansen shit, think that people would choose the Angus Taylor version, Right? I'm not going to. If I. If I want to be a successful musician, you know, and I go out there and try to play a shitty cover of a. Of a successful recording artist, nobody's going to buy my shitty cover. They're going to buy the recording artist. Right? So politics is about competing stories, right? Who's telling the best story? And you can't just expect to go and tell the same story as the other people who are telling that story. Right. That's what they don't get. So that's the challenge for the Liberal Party and the challenge for the Labor Party is to not fall down the same trap.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Right. And. And they sometimes go straight to the solutions and it feels like they're denying the grievance. Yeah. Pauline Hanson, one nation. They just do the grievance and they never offer the solutions. Yeah, why don't we marry these two things together, right? Like, yeah, you can be a grievance politician and also have solutions to them. That is the winning formula for success. You have to do that.

[A]

People in Canberra, they know that our economy is crumbling, there's cracks in it, and the best way to fill up those cracks is with the human spac filler. That is migration. It's just about how they package that up. One nation that's choosing to be like, no more unskilled migrants. You know, every migrant that comes here has to be a neurosurgeon, even though we're kicking our ones out. And then you've got the Labor Party who's like, you know, come here if you want to work and pay tax and become an Australian, and that the Liberal Party is somewhere in the middle where they have to be like, you can come, but you have to be good at something, but it's okay if you're not. You can learn how to do something.

[C]

The cold, hard economic reality is, you know, people are like, oh, bloody Albo and Jim Chalmers. Look at, you know, our economy's not growing. You know, there's no productivity. Look at this deficit, right? And they know the solution is, yeah, we need a ton more migration. We're a tiny country and we need more people here paying tax and Contributing to the economy. And the people who want to come here are from all flavors, right? All shapes and sizes in different countries. And it ranges from people who are going to like wipe the one nation voters ass when they're in an adult diaper, right through to the neurosurgeons and, you know, skilled AI, you know, developers. And they can't say that because the Labradors are in charge, right? And there's cheap tricks for anyone who wants to get out there and say, boo immigration, boo migrants. You know, look at this isolated case of violence. There's, look at the uk, right? So what's happening in the UK at the moment? For those who don't know, anytime anyone who's brown commits a crime, it is front page news and tens of thousands of people go out there on the streets and protest. Now, the reality is twofold. First of all, you left the fucking European Union and had to import a lot of people from South Asia and the Caribbean look a lot scarier to

[B]

look at than Polish.

[C]

Exactly, exactly. So now it's a, it's, it's, you know, and a Pakistani person doing that instead of a Polish person doing that. The second thing is, the only crime that is actually up in Britain is shoplifting, which we know is correlated. When the economy is not doing well and people don't have enough money to afford food and clothes. Right. That's where you should point your grievance. But the problem with the anger tainment system is it rewards people who say a Brown person is going to, you know, attack you walking home in a dark street at night and ignores the real problems and the real solutions. And the more that politics and politicians cater to the sugar hit that they can get over here, the worse the problems get. Now people like Trump don't care because it's good for them. Yeah, right. They want problems to get worse. They want people's lives to get worse because they're the beneficiaries. So the people who want to make lives, people's lives better. Right, which is the vast majority of politicians. Let's, let's just, you know, they get a lot of grief. But a lot of people are in this for, for altruistic motivations. They need to do a better job of not just taking the sugar hit and pandering to that or figure how to put the important policies in the peanut butter. Yeah, right. Give people what the Labrador wants, what the, what the sugar hit is. Yeah, with the solutions. Not just like the easy shit which is beat on a migrant.

[B]

Is this by design this anger tainment, is it by design so that we're not talking about the facts, we're not talking about, you know, the, the economic grievances, the economic realities that a lot of people are in.

[C]

There are two motivations to do anchor tainment. The first is just your grifters. Yeah, right. If you want to, if kids growing up don't go to school, go and pick up a camera and have some extreme opinion, get a million followers and monetize the shit out of that, you're going to be successful beyond your wildest dreams. They don't believe the opinions they're spouting. And the second is, you know, that's just a product of the system. The second is those who do have a barrow to push either politically or industrially. Right. So you know, if you are a legacy fossil fuel company and you don't want any climate legislation, you used to pay lobbyists, you just make entertainment. Now you create noise, you flood the zone with. That's the famous, you know, Steve Bannon saying. And you can't get anything done. You drown out any reform, drown out any debate. It's hysterical. A lot of the anti trans campaigns in the US are funded by fossil fuel companies, right? Shell, Chevron, Exxon, the Koch brothers. They don't have to talk about climate, they just get people angry about bathrooms.

[B]

I didn't know that.

[C]

And they know that it creates so much noise and instability that no one's ever going to pass any climate legislation. And you're going to get elected these culture warrior politicians who are not going to pass any.

[A]

So, so that's why the richest person in our country is flooding cash into,

[C]

into Pauline Hansen into the. That is an investment noise in the country. Absolutely.

[B]

Well, there you go. I look forward to reading the book. It's just come out today.

[C]

Now, spoiler alert, there is a plug for the BATUTA advocate in there. All right, I don't want to blow too, too much smoke up your ass. And as, as I've already accused you cosplay journalists, the verbatim grievance that we get from the top.

[A]

So how about we start with that and then we go into the.

[C]

However, however the BATUTA advocate you find gentlemen in your team, you do get a plug because you are delivering information in a way that is fit for the cultural times that we live in and fit for the algorithms, right? There is a lot of important information contained in your jesting and that's how you get it through, right? You wrap it in humor, you wrap it in the Zeitgeist, you talk about how Simi Sasagi should Obviously play numbers 1 through 13 in the origin team this year. Beyond doubt. And you can put the peanut butter, the dog medicine in the peanut butter that way. So if there's any listeners who are fans of the Batuta Advocate, I'm assume some of your listeners are fans of the Tutor Advocate. Yeah. Flip forward to about page102,272 and you'll get a plug.

[A]

Yep, there you go.

[C]

Buy it, obviously.

[A]

And we got rich doing it.

[B]

Well, yeah, it's been hard, but we've held back on the xenophobia. But, you know, until now in Jim's sick experiment, who knows what we're going to have to do. Thanks for joining us, Ed Kopa.

[C]

Thank you very much for having me. Been a pleasure.

[A]

Hey, what if I told you that everyday Australians are helping fund billions in diesel costs for some of the biggest mining companies in the world?

[B]

You're having me on.

[A]

Nope. That's just how the diesel fuel tax credit works.

[B]

Ah, yes, the diesel fuel tax credit. Remind me how that one works again.

[A]

The diesel fuel tax credit lets businesses claim money back on the fuel that they use. And it was set up to support farmers, fishers, truckies, you know, the backbone of the nation.

[B]

Yeah, fair enough, sure.

[A]

But over the years, it's drifted from its original purpose. You know, today the 18 largest companies in mining in this country claim around $3 billion back through it every single year. 3 billion, are you deaf? 3 billion. It's uncapped as well. The bigger the company, the bigger the cheque. And as we all know, these mining companies are highly profitable and most of these profits are shipped overseas to fatten the wallets of others.

[B]

And we're picking up the tab.

[A]

Yep, you are.

[B]

All right, so what's the fix?

[A]

Pretty simple. We don't scrap it, just cap it. Farmers, fishers, small businesses, they all keep the rebate. The cap only applies to the 18 largest companies in mining.

[B]

The ones who should be paying their way.

[A]

Exactly. It saves about two and a half billion a year. Enough for 22,000 teachers, or 25,000 aged care places, or 10 million household energy rebates, fairs.

[B]

Fair cap.

[A]

The diesel tax handout for the 18 largest companies in mining.

[B]

Head to DieselTaxHandout.com au to learn more about it.