Special guest Joe Aston joins, Winter Olympics Sexism, the Rise and Fall of Luke Sayers, Corporate Travel Management and Temple & Webster Crash

You think it's sexist or not sexist, Mike? - No. - It's scared, now. - I don't know if I'd call it sexist. - Mike's too weak for this question. - Are you all scared to answer? - 50 people. - But you're the reason our society's going down the toilet. - Why? - I'm Adam Schwab. - I'm a dear shiftman. - And this is the Contrarians with Adam and Adi. (upbeat music) - We are back episode 177. So if you're episode under the tank, in the tank. - Yeah, I know. - How was your week? - Time flies. It was good. I've got fun things to talk about today. - What have you got? - I want to start with something that. - We've got a very special guest coming up with a shortly. One of our Contrarians favourites. If not, I think our most regular guest now. - Probably. - Johnny Stinchon will be fuming. - Somewhere in a jet, blame himself. - Across the Atlantic it'll be rope. - So one of your favourite things that you say to me that people don't hear because it's off air. Is when you're having a tirade about something and it stresses me out a bit, you're like, "Don't worry, no company can sue." It's injurious falsehood, right? - Yeah, exactly. - Do you want to try and explain? - Companies can't sue for defamation when you've got more than 10 employees. And so they have to sue for this perverse. - Yeah. - Which you can't win at. Can I call it a tort? - It's a tort. - And injurious falsehood. One of the great names. - Here's a great name. - And so someone tried to sue for injurious falsehood. - Absolutely. - No, they didn't try and sue us. I think they were too smart to try and sue us because they know that you're all over this stuff. But did you see that a company tried to engage, like they basically litigated an individual for injurious falsehood. And that company was judo bank. - Really? - Hard to get up on those claims. - And this is what happened. So this in the media, and I just instantly thought of you and I felt very disappointed 'cause it turns out you're right about most of what you have to say. And so a customer felt very aggrieved by judo bank. - Yeah. - And so decided to spend and not inculcated. - Like calling a lawyer or something like that. I don't know what the actual issue that person had was, but they were very worked up. And I can note, I know that because they spent a very substantial amount of money doing the following types of things. They basically created a billboard. And put a billboard, I saw just 25, 30K, right? - 10.30. - It was in a good location. - Yeah. - And it set something like, I don't know the exact what I'm paraphrasing, but it's just something like judo, the dishonest bank. - But I shocked it, they were able to actually do that 'cause usually at home or anyone knew the papers, they only print this stuff. - Yeah. - Well, they got this, I think it was a worse word than dishonest. And then they went and got, you know, those bikes that ride around with the billboards on the back, they went and did it with that. Now judo bank, they got very worked up by this. - Yeah, you would. - And they took them to court for injurious falsehood and they lost. And so I looked into why they lost. - Why they lost? - 'Cause it seems like a pretty good argument. Like if that was defamation, you know, it would be true to a public interest. - And so you'd have to either prove that judo really was this terrible thing. Or that by- - Yeah, it was telling people. - Yeah. - And you got to prove damage and some, it's actually, there's a few things to be hard to prove. - But it is winnable. Just, it's actually hard to win defamation in Australia. - It would be easier than anywhere else in the world, but it's winnable. - Like in the US, like the US would look at that defamation on the left 'cause they got a first amendment to give you and do us a whatever you want, really. - And so this is, you have to prove this thing called melis. Now, you look at that and say, well, that seems pretty malicious. That is not what melis is in this context. What it means is that you have to prove that the individual didn't really believe what they were saying. - Yeah. - And they were doing it solely for malicious reasons. I know it's not true, I'm just trying to hurt you. But this individual was clearly able to prove. And it was not like the judge said, yeah, you're right, Judo is someway dishonest. Actually, the judge said it's untrue, like this allegation against them. But because this individual really believed what they were saying, it was not malicious. And Judo lost the case, which comes down to this point. The measure of truth in Jury's falsehood rests between the two years of the individual who's making the claim. It's not a bizarre law. How could you ever win that? - You could win that. - And that's why nobody, and Judo's completely strised in themselves. Strised in themselves. - Yes, they have strised in themselves. - Famous bars, we're talking about this. Nobody would have cared about this. - This is why, every time somebody writes a review on much risk, most of the time, they've probably committed some sort of injurious falsehood. 'Cause we're not gonna sue people for that. - And get you a review of that. - Like half the time people just try and extort a refund and they're very occasionally they justify it most of the time. But if they justified it, we'd apologize, refund whatever. The people who get views, they get left up but almost always small time, crooks, trunnel, extort, a refund out of you essentially. That's always injury, but we're not gonna sue people for that. 'Cause it's a complete waste of time and money. - So what is their stopping people from running around when they're aggrieved, saying anything about the company that they believe to be true, nothing, right? - There's a cost involved, which would be money. Most people just ignore them, 'cause they go, "Oh, this is some. " - Well, 'cause I'm not moving people and I'm not paying for granted. - To put up a billboard. - If you're sure a billboard, I go, this is some aggrieved customer, I don't really believe it. - But you're a particular kind of individual, you're involved in business, you run a business, but a regular person driving past. So I guess if they would have put the logo of judo bank on there, that would have been trademark breach. That would have been easier to fight against, right? That's usually what they people get them on. - Right. - To breach trademark. So this individual that did this will obviously had some sophistication. Apparently, this is what I read. - Who was it, do you remember that? - No, but they wouldn't have got an advertising agency to put the air together. Like, they put a lot of effort into this, right? And so, I don't know, you know what? - Sure, I should have used AI. - You're absolutely right that judo should have just ignored it. - That's just, yeah. And the guy would have just given up. Like, it's crazy. - Is that kind of speaking of frustrating incidents? - I'm just gonna say speaking of crazy things. - Well, you could go crazy, but. - So I've had an incident with my council, I think actually I'm too bad at council. - Oh, you're a local council. - LGI, yeah. - Yeah. - So, - Local government. - This council is - Local government. - Authority, I think. - Authority. - I'm in the office in the same council as where I live. - Yeah. - And these guys are lethal with parking. If you're one minute over your parking, bang, you'll get a five minute girl. - Yeah. - And she's next meet me. - I'm all right with that, by the way. I think there should be a bit of - - Yeah, why are you laughing? - I hate that. - I don't know, there's a 15 minute grace period in some council's. - I'm just kidding. - Which way, which council has a 15 minute grace period? - I'm pretty sure. - Not well. - I think in Carlton, there's a 15 minute grace period. I looked it up once. - Because I thought. - That was a minute means, one hour really means one hour and 15, just two hours. - What about it? - It's the same as a meter. If you don't feel you're meter enough, it's the same, or is that just on the moon? - I'm not 100% sure. I can look it up now. - What's a meter, what you put coins in? - You know, like it was now, it's all app-based, but like it was in a pay for parking or a non-pay, because non-pay obviously, you got one hour non-pay, after you usually have a few minutes, but because you're not gonna get done, someone's not gonna check you at the minute, you parking the minute you leave. - I'm not in favor of short parking restrictions in shopping strips. That's terrible for shops. - Sure, so be it. - Yeah. - And sometimes for a particular reason, like you need turnover of cars. - Yeah. - I don't mind a two hour parking restriction in a shopping area by the way. - Yeah, I agree. - But I don't think if there's a restriction and you go over it, I'm all right, you get it's a fair enough. - Also, I do, the punishment doesn't, like I charge your 100 bucks if you're one minute, all right, we're getting to the nuances now. - One minute or 10 minutes, it's like, I get it, but it's the same kind of idea of like, there's a restriction. - Well, actually should be exploding limit, in my view. Like if you're one minute over, you should be like a 10 bucks. If you're two hours, it should be a hundred bucks. - It should be actually going out, based on how long you mean that. - Well, that's too complicated for a council. And also, - But it's actually more, much more moral. - You're right, but how about this, I know I've sidetracked on this, but like if you get a ticket, do you think you can just park there forever and just leave the ticket on your way? - Oh, I think you get one per day. So you see people like, I've seen people park there for months only get one. - Yeah. - This will be my point in a second, but. - A hard place to park. Like someone that's almost impossible to park, I love the Jerry Seinfeld car park in New York. - Well, just in general, car park anywhere in New York. - Yeah, it's a park park. You know, the Quiddie parked in his spot and then he wouldn't move the car for like, 'cause they couldn't get a spot again. I think if there's a very hard place to park, you're better off just parking in and, you're never moving. - And you're not moving because you're not gonna get a spot. - Well, I guess to my story in a moment. - All right, keep going. - But I was at lethal here and, I told you the story about how I once got one across over my, I had a permit. I was across over my house. It was a half hour spot. I couldn't park anywhere else, 'cause it was a market day. Lizam was a, anyway, they gave me a 60 or 70 dollar fine or whatever. I was 80 dollar fine, two minutes after, even though it was spots everywhere. And I remember when the magistrate court and got over term, they made me pay the magistrate court fee, which is the same. - Yeah. - So this council is lethal on parking. - I think you get a bigger parking ticket if it's a no standing zone. - This was a half hour zone. - No standing, I actually agree with that. They mean you should 100% get a big deal. I'm not really sure about that. Or a clear way. - Who are you getting up? - Yeah, I want a shoot. I once got to. - I agree with that. - That was a fun experience. Anyway, I live in a residential street. Well, we renovate, we're renting this. I don't know why, 'cause people are generous. - We're not that far from the beach. People just dump their cars. - Yeah. - We can. Anyway, that is what it is. So I'm parked at Caravan on the street about two weeks ago. - Are you familiar with the Caravan parking laws? - It's just no idea. I mean, like, yeah, I have no idea. I would not be happy if anyone that lived within a hundred meters of me had a caravan. - Well, it's generally how I'd live. - Well, even worse, I don't think this person even lives on that, even using this suburb. I think someone's usually dumped the caravan here. It's an old terrible caravan. - So is it not connected to the back of a car? - No, it's just the caravan. It was there for ages. I did use Danny Garog, SnapSense, Solvab, which is a great app. Well, I'm down here in the tank. And I get a message saying, "We've inspected this caravan and it's legal." I said, "What the hell? How can this be legal?" This is a massive caravan. It's taking two spots. It's got gas bottles on the road. So like, massive health risk. It's overhanging. They just strip by about two meters. It's ridiculous. And then living this there for a week. This is a council that gives you a fine if you're one minute over. So they come back. I called the council, "How can this be legal?" So breach age overhanging. Be this gas bottle. See, it's like 7.6 meters, which it can't be more than 7.5. The guy with council was quite nice. Sent somebody else there. Go, "Yes, you're right. It's more than 7.5. This is a legally parked." So they're getting fine. - So you can't park something this longer than 7.5 meters? - Oh, straight. But the most bizarre. - Well, I don't know any of these rules. - Well, yeah, I tried to do some research on it. One bizarre thing is, if this was 20 centimeters shorter, it could have legally parked there, which is a completely. - Yeah, well, I think they're finally changing this law. But what a ridiculous oversight by these morons. But anyway, we'll move on. Then the guy came back and said, "It's 7.6. It's illegal. We're going to get a towed. It's like a week later." After I'd made multiple complaints. And then somehow the head of parking enforcement for the council, who actually seemed like a very nice guy, and really knows his staff, started messaging me. And we had a few disagreements on some legal shock to hear that. - And I said, "Why is this guy getting a million dollar fine?" - He should be getting, at least a hundred dollar fine every day. Well, it was parking there. We've given a notice, he has to move it. I said, "How does that abrogate, give him immunity?" From the ongoing, if I'm one minute late, you find me a hundred bucks. This guy's got a 7.6 meter caravan. - It's so true. - With gas bottles on the road, over here, he's making like three or four different rules. - He's not just the leaf in the law. That's your problem. - Well, this guy enforces the law, and he doesn't understand that. - And he doesn't understand that. - You've got the, I've also got the, I'm pedestrian crossing the other day with my daughter. We pressed the button. There were no cars. I'm like, "We should just cross the road." She said to me, "It's Jay Walking." - I'm the biggest Jay Walking, a Shroud, I love Jay Walking. - So I think the thing about Jay, it was my argument, too, which by the way, we didn't, I didn't cross the road. But like, I said to her, that sounds me. The problem with Jay Walking is that it takes away all decision making and judgment from the individual and makes you totally trusting of these lights going red and cars stopping. And I'm not in favor of anything that removes judgment and replaces it with law. And I think you are too trusting of the law. Basically, the law is just people making stuff up and being relatively hidden rich. - I was a lawyer, I understand the law. - This is a really clear law. - But why do you trust it so much if you understand this? - What do you mean, trust it? - Well, I don't think the law is ever gonna be applied very well. - Well, these guys apply for law a thousand times a day when you're one minute over. - You shouldn't be applying it. - You would argue they apply that law badly. - Yeah, immorally against drivers. And now they're forcing it immorally for a driver. So they get it wrong on every, these guys manage to get it wrong every time. That takes a real skill. - Yeah, but I think that is just my expectation of the law. - This is the law, the law is fine. People, it's the Councils who, what do you think? Have you ever seen how courts function? Have you been following courts? - I took my last guy to court in a moment. - You weren't in law, Strye. - You weren't in civil time. - What is this? - What do you think the point of a Council? What is the point of a, are they? - They're in a sue, a president. - Who are they there to sue? - I think they're there to collect garbage. - That's what I think they're doing. - We're talking two parks. - No, that's what I think they're doing. - I can't just get higher garbage or authority. - Why do we need to do all this stuff? - Someone has to hire the guy to do it. And they also do things like, you know, all the childcare stuff that goes on in the area in libraries. I think they've got a real role, but I think their role should be very narrow. - Should they do parking? - Yeah, I think, I don't, well, Roach is a whole broader question, right? Like there's actually, you know, I can flippantly dismiss most of your complaints about councils, but it is a broader question, which is, you know, we talk about the fact that North Road in certain sections where it goes through Glenire Council is a six lane highway with no people on the side of it. And it's for just as 40 or 60 kilometers. - Yeah, ridiculous. - It's not 70 anywhere anymore. - Yeah, that's a bit sad. - Now do I think Council should have control over that? No, I don't. - That's ridiculous, right? - Is it definitely Council in the council? - Yeah, there's some roads that are like, Vicro's control and some of the carlison controls. - Yeah, but North Road is six lanes. - No, North Road is six. - Yeah, and so I feel very hard of trying to support people. - So these work falls who get in Council, getting Council, that job is, how do I make life worse for people? - For drivers. - For everyone. - Well, especially for drivers. - Yeah, for everyone. - Generally cars are not loved by Council, Councillors, and so I've thought long and hard about financially supporting people to get into Council, to take away all of these laws that pertain to roads. - Or put it back to 70 or what it should be. - And just focus on how do we reduce rates for taxpayers, ratepayers, and make life better for the people that live there? - If you look at parking specifically, I would have thought the purpose of Council, and I'd pay like 13,000 dollars in rates or whatever, but it goes amount of rates. And what is I get is rubbish collection and an incompetent parking space. - Well, you might find that you're now paying an extra fee for rubbish collection. - So yeah, I don't even get rubbish in there. - I get nothing for that. - No, I mean that. - Most councils, or many councils, won't include garbage collection in your base rates anymore. - But then what is the schedule? - They'll charge you on levy. - What is this money going to? - So in some councils that goes to putting Palestinian flags up, I'm not exaggerating about that. I think Coburg's still got a penalty standing as a flag up. And so, you know, this is like this, I would call, like you're not meant to have parties, the people aren't like having parties and councils, but I'd call my thing back to basics. And it's like anything that doesn't pertain directly to the ratepayers in the area. - Yeah, don't do it. Don't sping about his parking. - I never pertain to it. - And that completely stuffed out. I've got a friend who used to be the mayor of Portfield. - Well, the mayor is not. - The mayor's nothing. - He was, he was right about his, now, not the mayor. - And that's the wrong. - Carefully. - Yeah. - Apart from the Lord Mary in Melbourne, which is an elected position. I think that councils have got this handshake agreement where every year they rotate who the mayor is. - Among the councils. - Someone else gets that, yes, amongst the councils. - Well, then I get by doing my councilors, right. - Well, but they change every year. - Yeah. - So one thing is true, whatever it is, it's pointless, right? Like, so the mayor's like a chairperson of the council, essentially. - Right. Now, I don't even believe in elected local government. I think it should be a part of the bureaucracy. I mean, maybe God, God help us. - But it's better than what's going on. I think there's a big debate to be had about local council. I mean, it's, it's shambled. - But if you think, I'm, the great thing about my parking, and by the way, it was historically super corrupt. - Yeah, local council. - But if you go to the parking issue, like in both cases, they find you when you live there, for being overstaying when you've got a permit, like you pay $400 per minute as well as you add, they find you when you've got a permit because you're slightly breached some kind of half an hour or so. Yet when someone who doesn't even live in the council, dumps their massive caravan legally, they don't find them because they said, "Oh, we're gonna move them." How can these people be so incompetent? - Well, you know, you get fined for parking of your own drive. - Yeah. - I mean, who's finding you for that, the council? - Yeah, exactly. - But the whole point of these people are elected by the residents to serve the residents. They turn around, they find the residents. - Well, I think you'll find they have a very different view about that. - Well, I'd love to know what they view. If you're a council, come and defend yourself if you're a council. - I think they, I think they, I think they reluctantly accept that they need to be elected because unfortunately it's a democracy and they can't just serve the input. - It's a democracy, right? - And then I'm not sure they believe they are there to serve. - What do you think they, what just to enrich themselves and go on European dreams? - No, I don't think that it's self-serving in that way. I think they believe they have a higher calling. And their job is to play any of their bigger ideological views in this little power play that they've got in council. That's what I think, I don't think that, I think corruption, I mean, I'm sure there still is corruption in local councils, but I think if you go back 30 years, that would have been the primary motivation of people getting onto council, is planning related stuff, but I don't think that's easy. Now I think it's part of the bigger ideological, wars that are going on, culture wars. That's what I think. I never talk about sport. Do you prefer winter or summer Olympics? Well, isn't the winter Olympic, Olympics, the aristocrats Olympics? 'Cause nobody can afford to do any of those sports. - Yeah, I guess you can tell that it is skiing certainly. - Yeah, I mean, like if you think about summer sports, like you don't need to have much money to run. - Running, maybe most other shoes. - You don't even wear shoes, cycling, swimming. You need to have, like I think a lot of sports you do, but running is probably actually, running is the exception, I think. - Yeah, I think a lot of those sports, like you can be a lot poorer and be an athlete in the summer games. - Leave me mistaking the winter games. - I think I take out athletics, I think, no one can even afford to ski. And like if you're gonna go and do Bob's sled, how do we even get into that? - Do you think we're running? - Who the hell can do that? Well, I'll tell you a story about Bob's sled in a second. - You guys, summer winter, what do you prefer? - The winter's always like, it's only like becoming really popular recently. So I feel like it's really, - It's a good knuffling popular. - In Australia. - Oh, I. - Because we've got some really good winter Olympics, like, so great, great spectacles. - And like their show, K-Sync, - We're with the two 2002 with famous David Brabary and, and at least Campland, who won two golds then. But yeah, we've got better. - We'll talk about the composition of the Olympics. - Summer winter, this gives us one of one. - Winter, your summer sounds like. - No, I find, like, I don't really fully know. - You want to get a one word answer, you got this really hot. - Equal, equal. - Equal. - Well, I find that I find-- - I'm winter as well. - You look like Bob's skiing. - There's a skiing. You know, Jimmy Rees, you know who he is? - Yeah. - You look like the guy who is-- - He says, he says, I find it a bit samey, but yeah. - Well, he says most of the Winter Olympics is scored on vibes. I find it a bit gree. I think that's a pretty good summary of the Winter Olympics. I will tell you a couple of crazy things. Maybe one in particular about Bob Sled, and then I'll wind about some-- - Bob, that's a time. Bob Sledan, he'll be there, they're not judged. So, you know, there's a few different kinds of Bob Sleds. - And the one that-- - The Skeleton. - Well, no, I'm not even including this thing. - There's the objects. - That's even more crazy event. Like Skeleton is genuinely crazy. Skeleton is-- - That's the first. - The first thing, more unsafeless, just slide down with no Bob Sled. But hang on, but what if we put our head first and see if our feet first? That would be the most easiest way to die, right? So, but a Bob Sled. So, there's a thing called the Mono Sled. That's one person's sled. So, that's actually a fair fight. Now, you might think it's all a fair fight, but it's not. Because the Mono Sled, everyone is in the same Bob Sled as in not together, but the same type of one. - The same type, they supply it, right? - They supply it. - Yeah. - In the event where there are two and four, you bring your own sled. - Yeah, that's the cool running, same as they were in. - And so, do you know the consequences of that? So, Richie country's win. - Yeah, you have countries like Germany who spend 10 siblings of the whole year. They're literally working on the metal age. - Yeah, what's your cycling in Limpix as well? - I don't know, but like, - Yeah, you're winging about cycling. - I know, but like how, basically it's down to the tech. - Totally. - Because when you come to cycling in Limpix, it's purely the tech. When you came to S&12, one all like England, all those, 'cause they invested billion dollars in cycle. - So, how do you, 'cause you know, motor racing is hit like F1. - So, yeah. - Yeah, heavily, heavily about the tech. I think I've said this to you before, but the car that wins race one, if they didn't change that car at all, by the last race, it would be last by a mile. - Really? - A mile. Yeah, they're constantly changing cars during the season. And so, how do you feel about the Limpix largely being based on tech? - Certain sports, right. - Yeah. - Because in my skiing, generally, there were everybody on the pretty much the same skis, 'cause you can bet that it's a cheap relative, I don't like those, I don't like cycling at Limpix for that reason. - Well, then you don't want to watch bobs. - Yotting the same, I find bobs that are boring sport, to be honest. - Yeah, it's hard to get the feeling. - You can't tell who's winning, who's losing. It's not, I think, like things are funny. - I love watching Dan Hitzke. That is just, I got 150 Ks an hour. It is, I've got 100 Ks an hour, and you start going, whoa. Like, that's speed. Like, 150 is like, - So, I'm not, - The thing about it is this, I'm not minimizing the effort of the athletes, because whatever effort you are in the Olympic Games, like it's remarkable, and unbelievable. My point more is when it comes down to 500s of a second, like, what are they just stick over and in the same bobs lid? Let's see who's the best. - Great, I think cycling should be the same bike. - So, you're a BMX. - Yeah, so the more great is the one to watch. If you can watch bobs, let's go. Now I want to move to this point, which is, so, Annika Wells, your favorite means to us, because you're always defending, huh? - She's row out of the news, isn't she? - Well, so she can't travel anymore. Basically, you were great. - You were stuck in Queensland. - Yeah, she's not going anywhere, so maybe she gets on a plane. Presumably her husband's like, you can't go without me. And then there's two tickets, right? So she's not going anywhere. - She's taking it out. - And all kids is right. That was the problem. - So it's all over, I think. And so she didn't even go to the Winter Olympics. Do you know that? - Well, so she's no shooji, really. - Why sports minutes are going to the Olympics? - I don't think so. - I'll probably, maybe I'll be able to leave this. - Have you been to all with that? I haven't been to an Olympic. - Just a couple to, just see how much you've been to. - Yeah, it's lots of Olympic stuff. And so Sydney Olympics obviously I went to, because I'm the Benjam Olympics. - I really went to come up games on Sydney Olympics was amazing. And so, - That's a bit young. - And so Annie Kowalson wants to still make comments about sport, because she has sport minutes. And her comment was, how proud she was that 62% of the Australian Olympic, Winter Olympic team is female. Okay, so how do you feel about that comment? - I find it a highly sexist comment. - Sexist, right? - You think it sexist or not sexist, Mike? - No. - I find comments. - And it's sexist, Mike. - That's too waked for this question. - Yeah. - Sexist or not sexist Joel? He's got a microphone there. - He's also. - He's scared to answer. - He can answer. - You're all scared to answer. - 50 people. - But you're the reason this, our society's going to be on the toilet. Why? So, so the sexist for two reasons. One is, one of the main reasons, the percentage, well if I talk, let me tell you these numbers. I'm going to tell you participation numbers. And you tell me what you think this pertains to. - 20, 22, 27, 29. I think those are the numbers. - No idea. - What do you think that pertains to? - No idea. - It's got to do with the number of participants of Australian athletes in the Wins and Games. - It's just four games. - I don't know then. - And so that is the number of participants. The number of male participants starting four years ago and going forward to this year. So it started at 29 and now we're down to 20 male participants. One of the reasons is, because in order to equalize the number of female participants in the Winter Olympics, which I totally support, they had to reduce the number of male participants because they didn't want to larger, overall number of participants. So it's now harder to get into the winter games as a male. And so the number of men has been steadily diminishing over time. Now it shouldn't have to diminish just because it's harder. Like we might get better, but we don't get better. And so one reason the number of female participants has risen is simply because the number of male participants has diminished. So the percentage goes up, right? But the second reason I think at sexist is even more consequential, which is the split between men and women in the Winter Games is now 53.47. It used to be much worse. It's almost the same. - More males. - More males. - 53.47. I'm totally, so there should be 50.50. That's where it's getting. The split in Australia is 62.38. So we should not be saying how great is it that 62% of participants are women, because they are massively overrepresented on the general split. We should be saying how come there are only 38% males participating when 53% of overall participation is males? I'm all in favor of women having equality in sports, as you know, selfishly for catapult, and also just because I think it's right. But I'm not in favor of twisting the truth. So that you say how great is it? - You don't solve sexism with more sexism. - It's essentially what's happened. - It's actually problematic that men are so underrepresented as a specific affirmative action at the university is where they disadvantage a certain group to favor another group, and then you have people who aren't deserving going, and it becomes out of control, like we saw in the US and the Ivy League, where it just comes in absolute shambles there. - Well, I'm not even sure that this is the consequences today of affirmative action. I think female winter Olympian to Australia might just be better right now than males. Like we've got one great, - Oh, we want a slider, we've got some good, we're good at aerial skiing. - We're one goals in both freestyle, we're one in female one. We want a fairly lucky golden board across. That was female. So I think I have three goals. - We're a genuine chance of gold in Bob Slid in the league. - Oh, no, Slid, I think the Australian is the best in the world. And so I get why we're skewing towards women, 'cause we're more of a chance of winning medals. - Of course. - 'Cause I don't know where we should be that. But we shouldn't paint that as how great is it. It's 62% because the logical endpoint of that is, it's 100% women. Well, that's the logical endpoint. And so that's ridiculous. I just think it's not that hard to figure out. A quality means if the split is 53, 47 going to 50, 50, then a quality would be the same split of 53, 47 going to 50. So do you know who, I'm gonna possibly say her name wrong? Do you know who Destiny Ayava is? - Great name, no I don't. - AyAVA. So she is an Australian women's professional tennis player ranked inside the top 200, but right outside the top 100, which is the death zone of earning a living blood test. But unbelievable, right? - Yeah. - Now, she has just retired from tennis at the age of 26, I think, in a very unhappy state. She's actually called tennis, something like an abusive boyfriend. - I actually saw that headline. - And one of the big problems that she has had is that people on social media have been barraging her with abuse about her body. Body shaming, have you seen this mic? - No, I haven't. - Body shaming stuff. Now, the thing is this professional tennis players, female tennis players, it's gonna be pretty tough for them to be 40 kilo eating disorder models and nor do you want them to be right. And essentially, she's an islander by background. I think she might be some moan by background. Her mum is like this kickboxer slash very successful rugby player. And her dad's like a power lifter, okay? So she's not gonna be a 40 kilo, 45 kilo whatever, nor is Serena Williams, the greatest of female tennis players. What's her name? - Nor is Seville, Link. - Like you just gotta be whatever shape you need to be in order to sell. - That's why I'm saying it's got so much better with these powerful, absolutely agree. And it is terrible that she has faced this barrage of body shaming so bad that like, it seems sort of deeply affected now. I know a lot of pro athletes listen to this podcast. I've obviously had quite a bit to do with pro athletes over the years as well. And so I would say this, like I think it's terrible. I think she's a complete winner. She should feel like a winner. Nobody should feel like a loser being in the top 200 tennis players in the world. - Probably what the fifth best in Australia or something like that. - I mean, she might have been a five higher than that. - And so I would hope she's young, right? She's 26. Hopefully she takes a break and she finds some love for the sport and she goes back to being able to play for herself if that's what's right for her. Well, I recommend it's for all people, but especially athletes, stay away from social media. It's not good. Don't do not read what people have to say about you. These people are all jealous about their own lives. And that is why they're saying nasty things about you. And hopefully just turn all this forward on the stands. - I hope you enjoy being amazing. - Which why I stopped really writing about on Twitter is the abuse she get. I was an assentment on athlete. - Yeah. - The abuse she get from people who think it's okay to insult people. It's just bizarre. - It's terrible. And I really think people that are in the media and have a profile, like unless you're one of these few people that really enjoys harassing back on socials and like that's how you get your kicks. And there are some of those maniacs, but you should just turn it all off and focus on what you're doing because I think this is a really sad situation for someone to have excelled so dramatically that they're one of the 200 best, I think she was 176. Or I should have bad Australian open, like she got knocked out in the qualifiers, but she made it to round two last year. - That's pretty good. - Like I mean, turn this stuff off and just find happiness in like your own endeavors. - Yeah. - So he's my quiz. You ready Mike? - I'm so ready. - Okay, so China versus US, the cost of everyday things. I'm using the US dollars. So I'm gonna name a thing. Actually, start with monthly salary. - Start with rice. I mean rice is gonna be a pretty big difference. Before we start with things that people buy, I'm gonna start with monthly salary after tax. And that'll anchor you for the stuff. - I see. - 'Cause what you're trying to work out is like buying power and then you're gonna sell it. - Purchase by power, yeah. - I thought it was pretty interesting. - Different your cost, different some style versus other stuff. - What do you reckon the average American earns? Versus average Chinese person earns after tax. - The US dollars. - I presume it's US dollars, yeah. - After tax? - Yeah. - I'm just gonna go for a round number in the US and say 50k USD? - Yeah, that's exactly right. - Okay. - So. - I thought it was monthly. - I'd monthly, so. - Four thousand doing monthly. So it's exactly 50k. - I used to, much thought it's 50k USD a monthly salary. - Yeah, I'm the day. (laughing) - You didn't let me answer. I was gonna say 5,000 a month. - Yeah, it's like, - I think it's sort of, yeah. - So China, I won't tell you till you end that, I can't say that. - China. - And it's US dollars per month. - US dollars per month. - This is a good question. - Average. - Yeah. - median average, it says. - I'll say 3,000 a month. - Okay. - I think that's a pretty good guess. I might say, $500. - So they're both wrong. Mark more wrong. It's 1,000. - Wow. - Okay. - Wow. - It wasn't downright. - Not far off, yeah. - Okay, so. - 'Cause lots of people live in the countryside. Actually, the most amazing thing about the China miracle economically is not what people in the city's earn, but it's had dramatically, the wealth has increased in the countryside. The people that were like, they had starving to death. And now like that, that they've really risen in the countryside. And they can actually afford to eat. - It's a really interesting ones here, because I won't give you much of why. - Okay, we'll start with having close to your heart idea, Capuchino. How much do you reckon US versus China? - Because there's a lot of Starbucks, which is pretty expensive. I'm gonna go for maybe $4 US. - I'll say five. - Michael, ding, $5.32. - $5.32. - Chinese, pretty expensive, isn't it? - China, yeah. - And US dollars as well. - I find US, especially like places like New York, 'cause Australian prices, but in US dollars. - Well, I'm not sure. Like the thing about China is, like, Capuchino is all being served in the cities. And so I think there might not be much of a difference in price between those. - I'm gonna stick with $4. - I'll say six. - Six. - More expensive than US. - I'm just throwing out what. - Michael, you can absolutely miss it so far. $2.95. - All right, so you need to get the mic to job. - Oh, it's not. - It's not. - Yeah, sure you would have. - So it's not very different. And that's because it's like sure you do it. - It's an urban luxury good. - Okay. One way to get on local transport. Well, I think that will be massively different. So $2 in the US would be my guess. - So $3.50 US. - $2.50, I'll give you both equal. - That's fine. - In China. - $0.10. - $1.28. - $0.50, did you come firing this quiz? - Well, 'cause I just, you're just a junk to be honest. (laughing) - This is again. - Change, you're trying to get over over there. So this quiz is actually something that you can like wrap your head around. Not just me guessing. What's got company that has 32 letters in a chain in the middle is the smallest company that makes feet or something. - Okay, move it you get. So I think in the US it might be $7. I know that's way too cheap. I think in the US it might be $14. - I'm gonna say 13 in the US. - Well, just don't get anchored by me. - No, well that's what you're gonna do. - I'm gonna get right out of here. - And then, - Well, we'll go first next time. - China. - China. - Well, saying, "Are we right on the US or not?" You're very close. My idea's that I can fire here at 15. - No, that way, answer. - You're pretty close. - Didn't I say 14? - You said that name. - I said that name. - The reason you said, the reason you said 14 is 'cause I said 14. And then it's copying me. Is that a thing one lower? You should have gone one higher. - Exactly. - So the question that you should think about my, 'cause I don't know the, I'm trying to think about this, is do we think movies are a luxury, a city luxury in China? Or do we think they've made it into the countryside? My gut feel, so there are a lot of - They're like a fest in China movies. - Yeah, I think they've made their way out. 'Cause there are a lot of Chinese movies that become like high spot shops. - Yeah, you've been trying, man. - So I'm gonna say $8. - $8, I think that's way too high. So you have to think about the price of, think about it relative to the price of transport. So transport was $2.50, $15. It's like, you know, what's that? Seven times the price. And so if transport was, - $2.25 or whatever it was in China, I said 10. Then I think it might be $1.50 kind of. - Empire strikes back. - Is that right? - $6.39, man. - Really? Well that means it can't be too much rural. - Yeah. - It must also be a city thing. - It's probably a minimum, 'cause you gotta pay the Hollywood night stuff. So I think there's a minimum movie ticket you have to do, actually justify it, right? - So how the hell can people of, so it must be mostly a city endeavor. 'Cause $6 in China, $6 USD, is very expensive for something. - How can another one for you? - Yeah. - Galon of gasoline, Mike first, US. - Oh, I wouldn't even know how much a gallon is. - What's a gallon? - Four liters. - Four liters, okay. So what do I pay for fuel here? - That'll be $6 or $7. - $6 or $7 in Australia, probably. - Australian dollars. - I'll say US four and China, I'll say one. - I think it's cheaper than $4 in the US, but I think it might be three. I think. - I'm five here, three 32. - Yeah, I think so. - 'Cause it's a bit cheaper than-- - You and Mike, why don't you pair off that? - Yeah. So I'm gonna tell my reason, then I might be wrong, 'cause I was wrong on the movies. - The thing is, some things need to be subsidized in order to stop, to keep the Communist Party in power. And so you have to make sure people can eat, and I suspect you have to make sure they can get around. I suspect this might be subsidized. I suspect this could be 50 cents a liter in China. - I think you failed your earlier test. - Yeah, what, how much is that? - Is that a luxury item? Is driving a luxury item? - Is it? - I don't know how you driving. Is it a luxury item in China? - I don't know what it is, is it? - Also, the other thing you haven't thought about is China's not a producer of fuel, where it's-- - I think that might subsidize. - I thought it might have subsidized. - I wouldn't have got this right either, but I wouldn't have got as wrong as you guys got it. China more expensive than you. - Really? - So US is $3.32 and China $4.35. I would have come roughly eight years. - You know what US has the cheapest gasoline in the world? - So you know what would be interesting to know, where the diesel is the same as well, because all of these factories are running on a lot of diesel. And so it would be interesting to know, I'm shocked to see all of them. - I'm shocked to see all of them. - There's quite a few here. McDonald's combo meal. - Well, this is the, so shouldn't-- - You get that, shouldn't. - Well, that's a city good, presumably. Like no one in the farm is eating macas. So I think it would be pretty similar to American costs. So what's an American meal? I don't know, $5. China. - Is it still that cheap in America? - I think so. - I'll take this. - America $5. China $3.50 might be my guess. - I'll say America $8.30. - Well, it's good that you don't know this answer, but otherwise, in miles off, it was $12 in America. - $12. - This is a meal. - Have you been to Maca's in Maca's? - I've been to Maca's, but I reckon it's-- - I think it's in Australia. - I know, but the Australian, Australian McDonald's is a different-- - You know what? - I think Maca's, I think they've stuffed it with the push button things. I can just make the local disgusting now. China 497. - Maca's in Australia is a different quality to Maca's in the US. - Better. - Much better. - Yeah. - Much better. - I can't give one more. Mobile monthly phone plan with 10 gig data and calls. - Oh. 25 USD. - Michael? - I'll say $19. - I'll be anchored. - 60. - You miles off. - 60. - Yeah, we need to see the mobile phone. - What are you paying for a mobile phone plan in Australia? - 90 or something. - What do you pay? - Yeah, I pay about 70, I think. - Well, that's lower than 60 USD. And like I think you can get it. I think you can get-- - And I have unlimited data online. - I think one of these Vodafone plans, you can get for $25 a month. - Yeah. - Vodafone resellable. - I don't know, that's what it says. And what about China? - I don't know. Well, I'm obviously falling off a cliff on this. China so well. So promising. - I don't know. 25. I'm given up now. - Michael. - $1. - Oh, he's got it. He's got back. He's got back. - He's got it. - He's got it. - He's back. - I was three games to love up. And then all of a sudden it was over there. - I was five. - I've three, Dan. I didn't bother planning on that. - I said. - I Steven Bradbreed it. - He's the answer. - Yeah, although you Steven Bradbreed it low. If you tell me the score, it won't be great for you. - Yeah. - That wasn't the one. - I just shocked. I think we've got on that high note. We'll go to Super Good Back with some really great stories soon. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - And we are back. We've got a very special guest with us, Adir. Our number one guest, three times on the show now. - Is that, does that mean no one? - Knocked off Stan Schult. - Ooh. - So he's over the Atlantic on Jeff. - You thought we could even name it number one. - He's like, as in the top ranked, which will also give you, but that just means by frequency. - Yes. - Well, that's what I thought he meant. - That we can say. - And by appeal to our listeners, I agree with that. Those interviews that you do, the video interviews, they must have been tremendously successful, 'cause they are great. - Thank you. - Have you had a lot of feedback on those? - Yeah, heaps. It's a surprise that they've been successful, including acquiring paid subscribers, because there was sort of this view that podcasts have to be free. And because that's how they've always been, but guess what? - Could you give like a 15 minute free and then a one hour paid right? So people, I wanna hear the rest of it. So they, I don't know why I thought this, but people will subscribe to RamPart for my articles, but no one's gonna subscribe to the video content. I'm not sure why I thought that, I think just 'cause that's how it sort of is elsewhere. But yeah, like the numbers of new paid subscribers are off the back of that content has been phenomenal. - I think it might be, just I think it might be partially that. I think people wanna subscribe, 'cause I love your writing. They go, "Oh, do I wanna space 600 bucks or whatever it is for the writing?" And I said the video, "I wanna see the chase packer interview as well." It's the kind of portfolio effect. - The front door in, and I agree. It introduces, well, it's introduced so many more people to RamPart who didn't really know that it was there. And I think that's the thing about this video content. You guys know better than I do, 'cause you've been doing it for longer, but you clip up this stuff for socials, and that is effectively your advertising in the way that you used to take a bill without. It serves both purposes. So. - What's been your favorite interview, so far? - Jesus, that's a tough question. I think interviewing Jane Hurt, Likker, was, you know, I thought you were gonna say that was your favorite. You're from a Bet Noir. - Yeah, I thought she's got a really mixed reputation. - Did it change your view on her? - I think so. I really respect that she fronted up, and she answered hard questions. And I think people were able to see a human side of someone who's just sort of like a bit standoff-ish and cold. And I think some of that's a double standard, but not all of it, but. What did you think about her explanation on Ellen Joyce, which was effectively, he was amazing, but then kind of lost the plot. Yeah, lost the plot. - Well, that's sort of been my thesis. - Yeah, long-wears. - So that's like, look, but that's an insider's view that shares your kind of money. - And she was quite a close with Ellen, right? At the time. - Yeah, I think, yeah, absolutely. - When she left Quantas, so she was running loyalty, then she left to go, "A-2, right." Was that, do you think Ellen pushing her out, or she left Puele for her own fruition? - I don't think she was pushed. I think she went, I don't think she wanted to go from being the CEO of Jet Star to being the CEO of Frequent Flyer. That was sort of seen as a perceived as a demolition. - Well, a lot is a much better business. - Well, I would think that was a demotion as well, though. Like, "One is you're running an airline, and then one is you're running a division of a business." - Which makes all the money at the business, though. - I get it. - Well, I think if you took a long view, it would have been smart to say, "Well, if I do this for two, three years, I've then got off-run on an airline, and I've run the loyalty." I mean, she's really well placed to replace it. But as we know, like, Ellen Joyce was not leaving for any of it. - Yeah. - She could have gotten, I mean, I guess she wanted to stay in Australia, but if she had run loyalty for a few years, she could have gotten an international job on the basis of what you just said, which is that's where the money is. - Why have these guys left? - Yeah. - Your James Packer interviews, in my view, probably the best interview I've ever heard. I've ever listened to it on the golf course, and I thought, "It's never won this to end." That way, you're obviously friends with James. I've put you in a really interesting position. You've known him for almost a decade now, I think. Talk us through getting the interview, 'cause he doesn't do many. He really doesn't know interviews. How did that James sort of interview come about? - Obviously, my relationship with James is complicated for my job, always has been. And I've faced some criticism for being friends with him, and I'll cop that, that's fair. But it's always been one of those things where I thought, "Well, I've got this friendship. I'm not gonna write about him." Some journalists would write about their friends, and then you criticize for that too. So, yeah, I was sort of like, okay, I'm gonna ask James to do my podcast. It was an unusual, it was a step change in my thinking, and look just to be totally frank about it. I was being a bit mercantile. Like, I needed someone who would be, really get attention for my small business. And he was very generous. I mean, he said, "Yes, straight away." I think he said something like, "I owe you at least that." And I thought, "You don't owe me anything." But, you know-- - 'Cause what was the fight you had with him? Who was that over? - Hamish Douglas. - That's right. - Yeah. - And the other time you were proven completely right with that. So-- - Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I don't know that anyone's ever completely right. - Well, to be honest, you actually could've got a lot harder on Hamish and didn't, for reasons we all know about, but you'd like you'd point and pulled your punches there. So, it's almost surprising that he-- - Yeah, but I mean, James is, you know, James is, this is, I'm not revealing anything that he hasn't said himself. You know, he's been, had really struggled with mental illness, and he has, has a very severe case of bipolar disorder. And when he blew up at me, he was in a manic episode. And he was blowing up at everybody. So I never took that personally when he sort of, when that happened, I just knew that it would all, you know, go under the bridge. - Do you think the interview would be as well-received as it was? - Well, going into it, you know, it was the first one I recorded. I took this whole thing really seriously, and I, and you know, I hired Eliza Harvey, an amazing producer and journalist from the ABC. She's now joined Rampart Full-Time, but, you know, we'd spend eight hours on the questions, just writing the questions of every episode. And really, I wanted to do the highest quality, you know, like 60 minutes or former, you know, current affair level quality of premium video interviews that sort of is a gap, at least in business in Australia. There's no one was doing it. - Absolutely. - And I'm not, you know, yarn event. I don't have those skills, you know, so I was quite nervous, and I put in a lot of work to try and get it right. But it was my first interview. So I was nervous. I was friends with the guy. I sort of didn't want to put him in a position where he was going to say something. There was damage him. It was all, it was sort of complicated. - It was a complicated character. - We flew to Fiji, he was, he's both. - I wonder where, I wonder where he was. - But it was in the middle of nowhere. (laughing) So anyway, we're all sitting there, and he actually kind of sort of started off waffling for a fair bit, and I'm sort of sitting there going, "Okay, this is a bit plundorous," and then he just warmed up. (laughing) He was amazing. I mean, he was so honest, he was super self-reflective, and he was the version of James that no one else sees. You know, that I see the guy sitting there who's very humble, you know, gives himself a five out of it. - Same very humble, I think the interview. - But I think that's how he comes across, it's interesting to say people don't say that, because I don't think I've ever met him. I think my natural disposition towards him is extremely positive. Whenever I've read him speak, whenever, you know, there was a book that was written about him that he seemed to cooperate within some way. - Oh, he definitely cooperated a lot in that book. - This is a, yeah. - That makes it his book. - Yeah, and I feel like he's overly harsh on himself. - Yeah, I agree. - He's very introspective. I kind of walk away mostly feeling like he seems like a very decent human being who may not have been blessed in the way that he was born into the world, to be honest. I always say that on this podcast, to Adam, I think if he was born middle class, he would have made it. Like the guy smart with a lot of drive, and I think being born as the son of the most well-known rich person in the country by a mile, did him no favors at all in life. That's my view. - Which is very much a media person now. - Yeah, I mean, this is to that. - Yeah, I've always felt like he seemed like a very decent human being. - Well, I agree. - We didn't love him before. After he's Dan Andrews comments, I loved him. More of my love. - Oh, that was the moment. - That was the moment. I was just like, wow. When he said what he said about Daniel Andrews, I just thought, oh boy, this is going to be big. (laughing) And so it was. - People do tell me that maybe three podcasts can pass between you mentioning Andrews. I reckon they might be overestimating that number to be honest. I don't know if we talk about the news last week where Dan Andrews in hospital in quite, I presume you heard that. What have you heard that has been published on Dan Andrews' current health? - Nothing to be honest. I mean, yeah, I've heard bits and pieces, but I've also heard a lot of things about Dan. - Exactly. - There's a lot of gossip about that guy that turns out to be pretty damn good. - This is not falling downstairs, gossip. This sounds much more. - People are even more fixated with him than you are. Like, this is a guy that has a lot of people fixated. - We could reason though. - Maybe, I don't know. Well, I wanna ask you something else about it in the interview. To pass anyone said no, don't you know if it's a name? - Not sure. - Really? - Yeah. - I'm shocked by that. - Said no to being interviewed by me. - Yeah. - Oh, no, plenty of people. - What basis? - I think that's a terrible decision. - Well, some people just don't want to be on a podcast at all. There's lots of people like that, and I respect that. There are other people who sort of think, well, what's the purpose of this at this stage? You know, they might be, what will people think I'm doing this for? I get that too. - But these are people who. - So there's plenty of also no, yes, but not yet? - You're very nice on the point. Like if you look at your writing, it's not that you're attacking people. Were you pointing out rogues and stuff that we want to be pointed out, but in your interviews, you come across, but you don't ask hard questions, but you're not attacking people. You're not being overly critical. You're getting this to all of you. - Well, I have a platform to write what I think. I'm there to draw out what they, for them, to explain themselves in a more deep way. - That's a good way of saying it. There's no point having a podcast where I hack to people. And that would be a very short series, 'cause no one else would come on. - That's hard talk. It was just that whatever that was on CNN or whatever it was, where they just pummeled global leaders for 15 minutes. I mean, and like the thing is, you don't really get a lot out of that because the victim is very defensive in their responses. But I feel like people that are in the public eye in business, so that could be a CEO of a big company, a chair, board directors, like effectively, you've put yourself out there as a public figure by doing that. Okay, it's not the same as a celebrity, but I feel like you should be inclined to come and talk about your views on things or defend yourself is the wrong word, but like it's not like you're staying at home not wanting to participate in public life. Being an even a director of a public company's participating in public life, I think those people should be coming on the podcast and speaking. - Yeah, but I also have to choose people that are interesting. And I mean, the thing you would realize-- - A narrow pool. - Quite nearly in Australia is that there is a finite number of people who are interesting. To a broad range of people. Like there's lots of people who would be interesting to a narrow pool, but we're sort of going a bit wider and then if it was say a written profile for rampart subscribers. - So how's the business going? So we spoke to you about eight or nine months ago, it was better than you expected. Is it-- - It looks like it's flying from the outside. Don't you agree? - Yeah, it looks like it's flying. - Well, obviously we're flying. - No, but we're not buying something that looks like it's flying. We might lie about it. I mean, I probably would lie to be honest and say it looks like it's going great. So it's hard to-- - No, if I'm telling the truth-- - But it looks like it's going great. Like, honestly, does-- - Let's say, name me this startup founder who turns up and goes, "Oh, it's terrible." Like, "Oh, the number's a catastrophe." - Well, we had someone on here who failed. And they were very honest about that. It was actually a really interesting discussion. After the fact, no, it looks like it's going great because people talk to me about it. And when I look at the video interviews, that is so obvious to me that that is content that is going to drive subscribers. - And you've been seeing 20 articles on the packer interview and you're employing more people to write for you. It's pretty obvious that's going well, right? - It's going really well. I sort of had an arbitrary number of paid subscribers that I needed to hit where I estimated I could pay myself what I used to. And I flew past that number by 50%. - Wow. - And now, how do you-- Hey, tracking relative to you. - What you've seen now is many year exactly, right? - Many years, sorry. I hope you bet that. - Oh, yeah, happy anniversary. - If you said day one, you said, I'd love to be at X-thousand subscribers in a year. How are you relative to what your initial hopes were? - Yeah, I'm 50% higher on that. But I mean, having said that, that was an arbitrary number. But we've got multiple thousands of paid subscribers. We've got multiple millions. - That's amazing. - Just signed a incredibly prestigious naming sponsor for what will allow us to be now do the second series of the video series. So that will now just switch to a monthly cadence. - Great. - We'll just permanently have a monthly one of those. I don't know where the ceiling is, but when I left the AFR, the AFR had 150,000 digital subscribers or they're about. Now, obviously-- - There's your tab. - Well, I mean, potentially. Obviously, it's not the tab. It's not the tab for a subscription news product that's just me and-- - 140,000 publishers right up to you. So-- - Well, that's definitely, obviously, very flattering and all that. But being more conservative, well, if they had that many, should I be able to get myself 10,000? - I think we should have-- - We've had a couple of years ago, I thought 10,000 was about what you'd get to at that level. - And so if you then incrementally add other really compelling voices, then that number 10,000 might become, over time, 15, 20, 25, 30. And with the price prices that we have, I think the economics can be quite attractive. - I think the way I would build something today is around a character or personality to begin with that people can follow and then expand it out from there. I think that's the way to build media today. Daddy's maybe, I don't want to say that's what inadvertently done, because I don't think, you knew what you were doing and your aim is not to replace the fin review. - No. - But Daddy is the way to build a media business today. And so I don't know if that 150,000 is your tab, because some of that will be a lot of it, it will be businesses buying subscriptions for their-- - Like that's what we have to do. - That is well? - Oh yeah, we have. - Okay, well, I think, so what I don't, I'm not sure I agree that 150,000 is not your tab. I think it might be your tab. - Well, as I say, it's not the tab for rampart with just-- - Just you, yeah. - Yeah, it may be the tab over a much longer period of time for more of an all-star cast. But it's a bit like, a bit like interesting podcast subjects. I can tell you, there's also a finite pool of really excellent business journalists in Australia. That's for sure. - Yeah. - So who's working for you at the moment? - Iva Races. - Yeah. - He's Races, the former Chondicleer columnist. - And he was an analyst, right? - And he was a former-- - He was a former-- - He was Morgan, he was Bailews, he was-- - He was an ex-legender when he was writing Chondicleer. - He was covering RIA when it was 30 cents. - He should have been buying RIA, not covering it. - Well, he was. - Oh, there you go. - Let me tell you. So he's certainly not writing for rampart for the money. He does one column a week for me and he's got a really significant following already. He's just on fire. - Why not to articles he wrote, "I thought you'd written them, which is the biggest compliment "I could give him." I didn't realize. And I saw, "Oh, I've wrote this." It was one of the companies earlier ones. It was very much your, I don't know if you've-- - Yeah, he's not trying to mimic me. He's got his own voice and he's quite, he's a bit can-tankerous. And he's just got a lot of core memory. That's the other thing in journalism. People come and go and there's no one sitting there going, "Hang on, I've seen this all before 20 years ago." Or, "I've seen the full purview, "I've seen the full range of what this company has done." - Especially in today's internet. - In terms of strategic areas. - 99 and I, and if you live through that, it's pretty helpful. - And we're also cross promoting with other sub-stackers, you know, like Yidean Hague, who's a great cricket rider wrote for us over summer. You know, John McDonald, who's a fantastic arts rider, speaking of can-tankerous, who we ran a piece of and we'll write for us more. - Yeah, just really. - I thought Emma wrote a great article. - Emma Fisher, yeah. - Fantastic, I thought. - She's a great writer. - Great to get her back on, actually. I think she-- - I'm trying. - Yeah. - Because, you know, the way to compete with a fin is not capital brief, in my view, because that is something that is trying to replicate, like for like what they do. I know they would say they're trying to break stories differently, but that is a head to head. And again, I just really think the media landscape has shifted in the last 15 years. And I don't, I think people can follow journalists to other places now. It's not just about the media having the distribution. And I think that's really changed media. - Yeah, well, I mean, I was saved from making that mistake. And I was all set, I'd software, I mean, I hadn't signed any documents, but I'd soft raised a lot of money. I was in a higher, a lot of journalists all at once and you know, try and build an instant newsroom. And I took advice from some pretty significant figures in digital publishing in New York and Washington. And they were like, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Mostly because that's what they'd done. And they wished that they had it. They said, start as small as possible. Don't raise capital, bootstrapper and grow incrementally. Because otherwise, all you're doing is burning your own equity to pay these people who won't necessarily, you sort of don't know for sure that they're actually gonna bring in any paid subscribers at all. And so instead, you know, I started, cost me $100,000 or something to build my tech stuff. And we were profitable from the second month. - Yeah, which is, and by the way, I subscribed to Capitol Brief. But I think, when I pay, I think I subscribed to 50% off. It was at what, $150 or something. And I thought that is a hard way to make money. Like that is a lot of work for $150. That feels like a tough road. And I know like back way back in the day when Alan Colors started his various things, like business inside, no, it was like, inside business, I mean, that made no money. - No, no, no. - So that you record a report today. - It turns out no marks. - Yeah, yeah. But what I'm saying is the media business with all the journalists, that could not make any money that's great. And the tip sheet made money. - The thing about that to remember is that that was in the late 2000s, right? And he also gave all of his equity to Mark Carnegie and John Wiley, not all of it, but majority of it, to raise a first fairly small amount of data. - And every nature as well was being messaged. - So Color was unlucky really in terms of his timing. If business spectator had been today, when I sold to News for 30, he would have sold to News for 300. He would have had recurrent subscription revenue. - Yeah. - And, and, and, and, and, and, and, - That was a great product as well. - Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of lemming stuff like, they had a lot of kids ripping, like picking up the, ripping off the stories, putting them up online. So that it was sort of low down the value chain. But then to have those tremendous commentators over the top, you know, Color Batho. - Karen Maley. - Got Leibson. Yeah, some, some, some, some series. - Yeah, so they, you're right. They're in the wrong time. Cause today they would have built the brand around those characters. - And charged like wounded. - That's right. You're absolutely right. - It was Color, it's fake right. Like it was, it was, it was, at the paper. - Yeah. - Can we talk about businesses? - Yeah, we're gonna talk about businesses. We obviously got Joe. What we got Joe here will, - Well, I was just gonna raise firmas cause they're in the fin again. So my long-term fuel and firmas and Neo-Claz are more broadly, so I think the business models are unviable and irrespective of the fact that I think the trajectory of AI is probably unviable. Even if it's not, I've got, - It was the odds right, basically. I was not, I was not gonna correct that. - Was it? - Yeah. - So the odds, the odds are bad is character. - Yeah, the odds are in a piece of bad is character. And so, which is essentially, you have to pass some character test with the ASX and the guy's been to jail for insider trading, so is he gonna pass the character test? My view on this twofold and pretty simple, one is, I think if you go to jail and you do your time, that's it, right? You've done, you've paid your price, like that's how the justice system needs to work. - Who's 21 as well? - And so I think they should leave him alone for that. But I also think these Neo-Claz are basically the Titanic. And we're at the moment of iceberg dead ahead. And we're arguing about whether the captain is wearing the wrong cap. Like, that doesn't seem to be the biggest issue with firmas. I think firmas will get away. I think they'll get away. - I think they'll get away. They'll make tons of money. - Do you think they'll get away, Joe? - Big IPO. - Yeah. - IPO straight into the ASX 20 is pretty unprecedented. Look, is the market deep enough? Is there enough liquidity in the local market? Who knows? - I would be surprised, but they're certainly gonna try. That's a sure thing. - But I totally agree with you on the point of character. Like, if you were going to hold a moral excellence test or barometer for the chief executives of every-- - Which would qualify. - I mean, are you kidding? - Yeah, 'cause Chris Ellerson qualified? - Well, indeed. - 'Cause Chris is actually, you've been effectively admitted to crimes, right? Like, he hasn't been prosecuted for them, but he's confessed to them. - He hasn't been charged yet, but he certainly will be. - Well, he can't be, he's been confessed. He didn't know. - Yes, he has. Yeah, look, I didn't really get that. I mean, the idea that the ASX will say that all of the courtists is not allowed to be a CEO, is just absurd. - Especially the ASX is so desperate for listings at the moment. - Well, exactly. - If you're gonna list the ASX 20, they'll take it. - Correct. - They'll take it. - So they've taken Israeli crypto exchange, right? - They would, that's like anything at the moment. So, but I do think there's a bit weird that they're listing in Australia. Like, why would this not be a logical listing where Call Weave is listed and where Iron is listed? - Maybe, I don't think I can get away in the US. - Maybe, but like-- - But why would it be able to get away? - Because Regal and others are involved in it here. This is one of the reasons I think the market way-- - This is why it has been regal, has ever tried to. - I know, but they're basically every, all of the investors are significant operators. I think if anyone was gonna be able to push this onto the boards in Australia, these existing investors would be able to. Plus didn't Blackstone just give them $10 billion of debt, but yeah. - That's debt. I know, but then they got Blackstone lobbying in their corner, 'cause Blackstone's gonna feel a lot better about their debt if they're a public company. - Blackstone might wanna pick the business up for cheap. - I'm not sure what Blackstone are going to do. - Well, that's interesting, yeah. - Okay, but Blackstone spent a lot on the equity of air trunk. - Yeah, yeah. - What, 24 billion? - 24 billion, I don't know. - Yeah, well, I'm not sure of that. I think it was equity value, if I could be wrong. - I mean, I think this is a side show. I think the bigger issue is, we never really, I mean, we talk about them a little bit, but they've got cooling tech. What does that mean? - That's making the cooling tech makes it difficult. - How are these two random guys coming up with something that no one in the state has come up with? - I'll tell you what, John's come up with. This is what the cooling tech is, like it's quite specific. So they get the racks and they've re-engineered them to be able to immerse them in liquid. 'Cause you have to call these things, the problem is calling. I mean, there's a hundred of problems, right? Getting extra, you can't even get the chips, but they can't even make the chips, right? - Right. - You gotta get the power and the cooling, but they're immersing them. And so CoreWave doesn't immerse them because this isn't really been done at scale before and CoreWave just wants to roll out fast. And so the chips are liquid called inside the chips, like they're not just air cooling these data centers anymore. And so the idea that a firmness has is let's immerse these things in liquid, which definitely is much better at cooling, but it's not like CoreWave hasn't thought of immersing them in liquid. Eventually, everyone is gonna immerse them in liquid. This is the most 99, 99 business I've ever seen. - There's just an engineering challenge to say, let's go and build brand new data centers with a whole new engineering model of immersing these things in liquid. And CoreWave does not want to do that. And whenever a firmness uses a third party data center to roll out, which is their initial plan, they can't immerse them in liquid as far as I can figure out. - Why? - Google and AWS, immersing me in liquid. - I think eventually, to be honest, I think everyone will eventually, but just not in the next five years would be my guess. - Why not? - It's my point. - 'Cause it's slower to grow. - These guys are better tech than Google? - No, but they're starting from scratch. - They're starting from scratch. - That's the whole thing. - The whole thing sounds like, I guess fraud or the more. That makes no sense. - I thought that could be one point. - No, I tell you, this is my point. - This is my point. - It's fraud, 'cause it's all too transparent to be fraud. Like, Irony's not fraud, 'cause they tell you everything they're doing, right? So it's not fraudulent. - It's gonna be the biggest thing to happen to Tasmania since David Boone, I think. (laughing) - Can I ask about another one of your, one of you, I think, possibly the first to talk about, I call Jamie Ferret, a set of Bruce Bent, who, star, what do you tell us about how you found out about the story, I think you would have written about, what, 2016, '70, you know, I think he started running about him when. - Yeah, well, I mean, a fund, which is now merged with Regal, called VGI, VGI partners. - It was that time and who? - Yeah, launched a short attack on corporate travel. - If I look back at that, you know, I think the key learning was that they sort of overegged some of it, you know, that this is the short. - Thesis. - Short seller. I'm sure they may not agree with this, but, you know, they sort of threw 80 different things at corporate travel, and 10 of them maybe weren't that compelling, and so what it allowed Jamie Ferret to do was to focus on the 10 that weren't very compelling. And only talk about those. But if you go to some of them and you still look at them today, like, for instance, the impossible, the irreconcilability of their cash flow statement, they were really compelling and very difficult to explain. And of course, Jamie Ferret's never even bothered. It was never forced to. - Yeah. - And a lot of it all starts to make a lot of sense now. Like, they just kept, like, many roll ups, they just kept bolting on acquisitions, and so you could never get a clean year-on-year view of their numbers. For instance, they had an income statement. The expenditure in multiple periods was much, much higher, sorry, much, much lower than the cash flow, for the same thing. Like, they had wage, they'd say their wages were, like, $30 million, but they'd spent to double that. I'm sorry, I might have it. I might be mis-explaining it. It might be backwards. I might have that backwards. But either way, their account said that they were spending much less than it was possible for them to be spending. And they, obviously, you don't have to use a direct cash flow statement, but it's a very, very uncommon for a business like that, not to. - And eventually it should have reconciled. Like, at least over two or three years, it should have reconciled. - Exactly. So then you have COVID, which allowed them to do all of this, sort of move into stuff that was really not BAU for them. - It's the UK, BB, I actually think. - Yeah, well, they started doing, sort of, not only did they do a lot of us COVID accommodations, sort of. - Salt and Seekers stuff, you know what I mean? - Well, no, that's two, that's the other one. So they did a Salt and Seekers stuff, but they also absolutely rinsed the UK government and consumers. Well, we had it here, the hotel. - Oh, the hotel quarantine. - Or the quarantine stuff. And COVID testing services, they were doing all this stuff that was crazy margin, which was once off, which really pumped them up. But then they moved into this as a side. - They never were, they were only travel other than us who didn't raise during COVID. Like, so, flight into raise, where jet, that's where beds for famously raised. Like, both hugely done there, and looking to raise. - Looking dot com raised, the $200 billion dollar go off, the Airbnb raised, 100 billion, and these guys didn't raise. - From henceforth, they just had these super profits, like 60% earnings margin on their European business. - And corporate travel is a much more competitive business than leisure travel, for example. You can margins get smashed, because they're, it's fairly common to start this product. - Well, it isn't, it isn't. I mean, you can charge pretty fat margins to governments there. But look at all of government contract here. People, everyone wants that contract. It's not as if it's a non-competitive contract. - No, look, that's true. But then they somehow, after securing it managed to, it's a bit like the builder who tells you that they're a bit cheaper than anyone else, and has anyone, any builder ever stuck to the price they told you they're gonna charge. - Well, in the classic case, it was talking to Annika Wells, before the start of the year. - That's true, all of government contract. - And that's true, yeah. And that's true, and that's true. - $30,000 dollar flight. That was because, presumably, you see him making a massive margin on that. - I keep hunting for that $30,000 business class flight to the US. - That's because CTMA $20,000 margin. - Yeah, it's actually impossible to find that for us. - In that case, it's right. - There's very few businesses where you scale that large, and the customer does not demand a volume discount. Like, I can't think of any other business where you can go, okay, well, I'm gonna be a multi-billion dollar vendor to you, and I'm gonna charge you the same prices as if you just went out and bought each unit of the price. - Well, they should be getting low from the rack. They should be demanding lower service fees, and all sorts of stuff. - Absolutely, but also they should be. They should also be demanding guaranteed fair discounts, right up to the day of travel. - Totally. - The airlines, when a customer is that big, that's something that you can deliver. - Totally. Well, the government's got a huge advantage in that their funder demands no equity, provides money every year, and the minute they provide the money, they assume that money is gone, and they're gonna get no return for it. That's the advantage the government has with the taxpayer. I think, you know, this is the core of all of these overspend problems. No one really cares, because there's gonna be more money flowing through, and if you don't spend it, you don't get it next year. I've got, look, we can go on for ages about that. - We're back to DMs. - We're back to DMs, so what basically transpired, obviously we found out eight months ago, was that they had retained refunds that should be repaid to UK government, the Australian government, and other customers. - Yeah, and the amount of money was exceeded, the amount of cash that they have left. - Significantly, probably doubling that, and we're talking cash and free cash, 'cause a lot of that cash is tied cash. - Well, exactly. Exactly. They're now allowed to continue operating on the IATA rail. - Which is bizarre. - And they say that they're able to draw on their debt. - Also, on their lines of credit, which I just think, well, hang on. What kind of bank? What do you, I would love to know what they have told their banks, and what they've told IATA, because if they've told IATA the truth, and they've told their banks the truth, how is it possible that they're allowed to draw that? - Well, I think I add, or operate on those rails. - This is not exactly too big to fail, but I think the message to IATA is, if you take this away, it's gonna be a complete catastrophe to all of these where a team is playing. - But that's not IATA's concern. - IATA is there to, as a clearing and settlement system for airlines, that is. - But what's gonna happen to all the money that these, all of these huge number of customers have already paid them, that's to go to the end of the way? - That's not coming back. They're losing more and more money every day. - Is every customers leaving them? - But if they stay operating, then presumably they're not- - You're assuming they're comfortable? - No, but I'm assuming that they're continuing to forward money to the airlines for the seats. - That they've collected and I think IATA would be worried about that. - They're now on a much tidal leash, so they can't, they have a limited number of tickets that they can have in credit. - Yeah, which makes that profitability even worse. - Correct. - 'Cause they're constrained really in selling. - But IATA just wants the airlines to get paid for the tickets, and I think if they, if they, if they take them off the IATA rails, the airlines are never gonna see any of that money. I think it's obvious why IATA is doing it. The banks are tired to know, maybe they think, if they send these business into receivership, they're less likely to get their money than if they continue funding it. - You know, it's sort of like, at some point, you've got to wonder how hard the board is looking, you know? (laughing) At this stage, it's almost like, I don't want to know. All of the issues with their accounts eight years ago, were pointed out to the Chairman who declined the opportunity to look more closely. - He's been chairman for, you're in crashman chairman for six, seven years, how long has he been chairman? - Oh, since 2018, I think. - Okay, yes. - Yeah, and of course, when this all came out, this is the other thing about corporate travel. Like, you can almost never trust anything that the company says. They came out and they said, "Oh, well, this is just a non-cash." - That's right, with our account. - They moved, they changed auditors. The new audit, it came in straight away. They go into a trading halt and they say, "Oh, we're just having a little disagreement. Don't worry, we might have to restate our profits, but it'll all be non-cash." Well, that turned out to be completely horrible. - Yeah, of course. - It's the opposite to the truth. It's the opposite. - And this is months and months and months ago. Like, this was in August, and they're still suspended from trading. I mean, what could be so complicated unless it was like really really bad? - How are we going to fight this cash to keep operating? - A lot of the shareholders reduced their holding to zero. I guess. - Yeah, well, I mean, there's a whole market in off-market trades in companies. - It's amazing. - With everyone's massive discounts, just trying to get rid of the things that they were selling for. - Doug's trying to sell it, said one cent is what he'll take, as it goes out of his short. People will solve for zero. - Yeah. - Are those 75% discount? - Yeah, like they're trading $4 or $5. So, I mean, I don't know who the buyer of that, the buyer of those, - Yeah. - for a five-day big ball. - That's good on you, I say. - That's like a, that's like a feel-king type of stuff. - So what was the deal we'd be buying at 4 bucks? - What was it? - What was it, what was it? Halted price? It was $16 or something. - So it's not, 'cause I said to you, hit 32, I'm going to say. - I said to you, you would, I would definitely buy it for 1% of the, 'cause when we work through, - I said I would, - And you wouldn't. But this is like 30% of the Halted price, that feels pretty high to me in this situation. - And of course, sorry, and the whole point that we now return to is, of course, Jamie Ferris, they threw Jamie Ferris' underling under the butt and said, oh, he's terrible at this. - He wasn't even near the time, it's happened. - Yeah. - It's like, - The American. - He was the head of the Europe. - The UK, yeah. - I think he really, I think his name was. - That corporate travels had like five CFOs. - Yeah. - And he's got to go for well- - Well that's your criticism. Your criticism is like, I quite a joke there, the turn table of CFOs. - I think your line with Jamie Ferris has always been the CFO of this business. - CFOs. - And CFOs. - And so, like this whole, the notion that you could just, the underling would be found responsible for this whole disaster was just so far. - Or could strain this fraud from the UK. - And then finally, what was it two weeks ago? - Yeah. - Now it's Jamie Ferris' going. But he's staying on as a paid consultant and everything's fine. Can you just imagine that people believe just the most incredible nonsense in this matter? - How is, we talked about this last week, I'm not sure how, but how is what Jamie Ferris, what CTM did, not Jamie specifically? How is it on a crime to retain refunds that would you, it's no, it's me, my view is no different to getting paid money in your bank account by mistake and retaining it and spending all the stuff. - Well the thing about a crime is it has to been individually involved and I don't know which particular officer of the company will be found to have, you know, been the decision maker. And I'm also not a lawyer and I'm certainly not a lawyer specialising in UK law either. So I wouldn't even venture to that. - But I think in vector Australia businesses, well, I wasn't just UK businesses. - Well, that has, well, this is the thing we don't have an information yet. I mean, every client. - I'm pretty sure that mention is doing, is doing their own order. - I'm pretty sure the initial announcement talked about Australia as well as UK clients. - I don't remember that. So maybe I've listed if that's the case. - Would you keep using them if you were a customer or for them I would? Is Ramparta customer sitting here? - No. But now might be a good time to negotiate a good deal. - Well, if you're money, if I'm paying up for it. - If you're money next to the airline. - So I was using a credit card and get a charge back. I think that you're fine. I mean, I wouldn't do. I wouldn't stay a customer, if I was a customer person. - No, why would I be a customer, those chunks? Like, it's the, the person you're paying in advance, if you're using credit card, big deal, 'cause you charge back. But if you're paying cash, that cash goes if they go, "You're an unscrupulous credit." - Yeah. I really feel for the staff. - Yeah. - It's an awful thing to happen to anyone to find all of this sort of, the world evaporate under your feet. It's a hard sell to be, if you're a corporate. - So I think about it as, like, see if I was on the board, or let alone God forbid the chair of that board. - You would never get appointed to that board because you have your own opinions about that. - Well, that, so I think about that. And I think, when you say people believe anything, I think mostly, most people are not involved on the inside of these things. And so one of the things I try to be very open about is what it's like on the inside of these things. Now, catapult is a different kind of board because everyone on there has a background in business. I don't say that, like as a joke, like that's actually, it makes it quite unusual as a board in Australia. But also, I say how high pages runs, it's a well run board. But I think if the CEO and CEO are bringing stuff to you, even if it's fraudulent, at the beginning, it's hard to tell. That's the honest truth about being on a board. Like, you can be lied to by a CEO and CEO for a significant period of time. - I accept that. But when someone external, there's a short thing on you and takes you to pieces. And I agree with you. Like doing 80 issues is much less effective than five issues, five good issues. At that point in time, I would think, I better look into this in detail. And I think my DNO insurance would come and say to me, you should look at this in detail because you've been given a heads up on this. And I think that's the moment at which the defensive story falls to pieces because they did get that heads up and we think there's something seek inside this business. But had that not have happened, I just want to say honestly, had that not have happened, there will be great narratives inside that company by people a lot closer to the business than the board about why margins are so good. And it would not be easy to go and probe why these margins are so good as a non-executive, independent non-executive director in that business. How would you go about that? - Well, I would say I would like to see the source material. - I mean, the contracts. - So that so the Auditor and Risk Committee should have sat down with the auditor and gone through that. But then we say this point, which is the Auditor signed off on all of these accounts. It was not until they swapped auditors. - Sorry, every corporate fraud in history had an auditor. - I know, but like. - Like Auditor signed off on fraudulent accounts all the time. - And so it's problematic as the Auditor and Risk Committee goes to the auditorances, let's talk about this. But the auditor is signing off on this. And so the question is, there is something fundamentally wrong with the system where an Auditor and Risk Committee and an auditor can sign off on years and years and years of what's effectively misstated accounts. And I'm not sure how to fix that, but like. - But you're also, I think the opposite of what you're saying is true. That can only happen when no one is asking questions. If anyone's asking you questions, how is it possible that our EBIT margin is double our competitors or two and a half times that? - And if I could have had more scale, I should have had a higher mark. - Yeah. - I totally agree with you on that. I think-- - Well, well, Amix, global business travel, has a lower margin by, like, how's that possible? - So when I think about the intricacies of the Auditor and Risk Committee that I'm part of, and the detail that we would go into, things, yes, I think I agree with you about that. Like, that was an obvious question that should have been asked. But ultimately, there still is a lot of reliance on an auditor and the company to provide answers to you on those things. And the question is, at what point does a director, and maybe this is the broader challenge with the way things work? So I'm not a career director, like this is not what I want to do for a living, but if one is a professional director, you're getting appointed by an existing board. And if you are the person that is asking questions to the point where an executive starts feeling harassed or other board members start feeling uncomfortable, the likelihood of your name continually being put forward to go on boards is gonna be zero. - Well, you have perfectly captured what I've been saying for years. - But it is true, like, I know that you know it's true, but I'm saying as an insider, like, yeah, so catapult sport, like it might sound very self-serving and it's totally self-serving for me to say catapult sports is not like that, but one of the reasons it's not like that is because I think it's very important to have people around the board table that have set in these seats as CFOs or other roles, historically, so they are better placed to be able to dig into things, 'cause they understand where you would hide things if you wanted to hide things in an organization. - Speaking of rogues, can I switch to another one? - Sure. - Luke Sayers, Mr. Melbourne. You've written a lot about Luke. - I've never met Luke. - I'm the man of either. - He's a wipe-out guy, I'm gonna come across him. - No, you're not missing anything. I remember the first time I met Luke and he reminded me a lot of Kevin Rudd in that. He spends the entire time he's talking to you, looking over your shoulder for someone else. - Oh, that's horrible. - Powerful. - I think to talk to you. And I thought, okay, I get who this person is. - This is PWC era, USB-NM or post. - Maybe, I think it was post, yeah. - So Sayers encode at this point? - That's just one of his peckadillos, frankly. (laughing) Yeah, look, I-- - I'd be nice with this. - The whole dick pick thing is pretty gross. And I've sort of been thinking about this a bit lately because there is no doubt that part of this is just old-fashioned prerence. And we are just, can't help but being obsessed with what's happening in people's bedrooms and in their private lives. And I'm guilty of that, to a certain extent, I think we all are. But the thing that I find most interesting about Luke Sayers is that he's his tax-leg scandal stuff at PWC. And his evidence to the Senate was repeatedly implausible. Like he said, things that has been contradicted by all of the other evidence has been found by multiple Senate committees to be unbelievable. And yet he just still charges on. And so, to me, the only thing that's interesting about the dick pick scandal is how similar it is to his previous scandal in that people seem to believe what comes out of his mouth. (laughing) And then get really surprised when it turns out not to be true. Like he's just hilariously false individual. If I said to you, there's going to be a PWC scandal and people are going to take falls, but the person that was CEO at that time - Never knew anything about it. - It will be accepted that he never knew anything that was going on. It would be implausible, right? If I tried to pitch that to you. I think, like I can no percent about this dick pick scandal. I think the reason it's news is because of what it is, right? Like if it was, like it's. - Well, it goes to the AFL, the governance. - It goes to Melbourne as well, right? - It's very, it's not a great reflection of my side. - But the issue with it is that pick was sent to a female sponsor. Is that the core. - I'm trying to get to. - It's a mixtureist. That was obviously the allegation. - What's the core issue that the AFL should have been investigating? - What they should have been investigating was why the president of one of their clubs was sending a pick, a. a photo tagging the employee of a club sponsor. - Yeah. - Which then Luke takes in a stage and all of the implausibilities begin. It's alleged that sayers sort of blooms. It's alleged that sayers bloomed at all on his wife. And a lot of that, you know, I think he's difficult to. He's going to be difficult to bear out. And mostly that the AFL took him on his word. I mean, this is supposed to be a tribunal of fact. And they didn't even check with the person who was being alive. It was just completely crazy. And then he even gets his kids involved. I mean, oh God, the guy is just unbelievable. - Well, I've heard it. So I've had tons of stories about him. I don't, I don't want to repeat them here. Like, I don't know what to believe. Want not to believe. And I don't really care about these types of things. Obviously, my, like, I'm conflicted because I've got this close relationship with the AFL. And I've got, like, there, I've always found them to be good. I haven't been involved in this part of the world. You've never seen a dick pic so it has been an issue. - No one's ever sent me. - Yeah. - When it's out by saying that. And so I do feel like, to me, most of what is going on here seems to be you can't make too many enemies and expect to get away with that forever. - The other thing that, of course, is highly relevant is that the AFL hired a quite a senior executive to run all of their media and government relations, et cetera. And they hired Luke Sayers' PRPers. - Yeah. - So Sharon McCrogan, who I don't know really particularly. - You should work with that Andrew. - Yeah. She did a great job. - But I thought, you know, there should be, there's a Bingo card. There's a Bingo card here. - It was relevant. - You're on six for the same as that. - She worked, she did a great job for Afterpay, I think. And she got some magic beans. - Five million dollars worth of that. - Like many people. - We'll wish we got those. - But she also worked for the CFMU. - Yeah. - And she, with Leon's wire, she was sort of subcontracted to Leon at ABL. And everyone is allowed to have legal representation no matter who they are. But PRs sign up voluntarily. And I don't know who would want to do the PR for Luke Sayers. But she was doing his PR on the PWC stuff, which I don't think he comes out all very well. And then jumps in to help him with his dick pick scandal, which is then the subject of an AFL investigation. Five minutes later, she comes in and becomes as hired as a senior executive. - Well, maybe they thought she did it for a long time. - The most senior PR, I think they're pouring to Andrew Dillon and the most senior person there. - Yes. - Right. So, I mean, look, all of this is subject to legal proceedings. We'll have to see what actually comes out. But look, it's just an incredible soap opera. - Well, I'm delighted by the event that I think your ex-girl ex-colleague mark. I think Mark broke it last week with the Luke Sayers. Thank you, Bash, and Francois. - That was Hannah. I was a Hannah who broke it, sorry, Hannah. That was a great story. - Yes, the rear window team have been awesome on this stuff. And that lunch, or dinner, or whatever it was at Francois, I mean, I just thought, trying to think how I could torture my worst enemies, I would send them to the field. - That's how you do that. - So you had Eddie McGuire there, one of your Bet noirs. You had Sharon was the only female in the room. You had Andrew Bassett there, who obviously been critical of in the past. Adi is good friends. - You or me? - Me more. - Adi is good friends. - So you had the idea, I was the different view. This is like the, let's make a dear sit uncomfortably at this warm conversation. - Well, look, I respect Andrew Bassett. - Dan Andrews in the room. - But I don't quite understand his blind spot for Luke Sayers, but you could say that about quite a lot of people in there. - Well, who invested it? Apart from Andrew, obviously invested in, I think that Bet is his god of zero at the Fox zero. - There he is, if you did. If you, because I think-- - I don't think it's god of zero. I don't think that's true. - I understand it's being written down to close to zero. But I don't think it looked like a bad investment. Like this is the thing, we can have this particular, like it's, I'm just gonna say devil's out of position. So we can have this particular view of all that's going on. I don't really care about it, 'cause I don't care about this kind of stuff, but I understand why people are interested in it. I'm not arguing that's not in the public interest. I think it is in the public interest, 'cause of how many power people are involved in this. But at the time that Luke Sayers left PWC and started his own thing, I think that would have looked like a good investment. - It would depend on your view on Luke. Was he effective? It's a PWC, was he not? - He grew PWC. - He made a lot of money when he was running us. - Well, Pita C was number one before he started. Let's be clear, that would clean him up. - Yeah, they've certainly grew. - He made a lot of money. - Oh, they're now number four. So you know, I get it. - Sure. - But I mean, I'm, I'm just thinking about it. - He's leaving it a point in time. - Yeah, at that point in time, they're leaving it a minute. - I think you can be overly critical of, if there's anything about someone. - I know that PWC, because something is not good. - We have work with PWC. They're out of order, they're about, we work with Rob Silver, who was amazing and now obviously has his own shop. - He grew that business. Then there was no, - He lost the lead significantly. They've, they've, they've got Pricewaterhouse Merchant Coopers in the library. And they'll, they'll double number two. - He would. - They had Deloitte's because then he went there and they're business. - He went there and they're, - He went there and they're business. - This is number four. - There was no tax scandal. He was the president of the Carlton Football Club. In this town, like that gets you a lot of contacts. This guy's deeply connected. - I'm not listening, I can see, I'm looking at him. - Hang on, I can see Andrew's governance. - I've never met him. - That's the thing. When you meet the guy, you just go, how does anyone believe any, - But there is a bug, but they do, right? - Five minutes with the guy and you that. - But I spend a lot of time with politicians and you think, he's made a lot of politicians and you think, my God, that's who's running this country. - Yeah, well true. - That's who you're right. And so whatever's going on here. - But that doesn't mean you'll give them your money. - If you think they're gonna make you money. 'Cause somehow this personality, whatever you think of it, that's a solid investor. This person, whatever you think of them, has built this huge network and I think it's primed to make all of this money and the house of cards that it turned out to be, like it wasn't obvious that was a house of cards at the time. - It was a bit on Dan Andrews' in Jurund Victoria. - Yeah, that's right, exactly. - His closest to Andrews was sort of the selling point. - But that was a good bit, wasn't it? - Or it was still running the state of Victoria. - Yeah, sort of like, - It's sort of like, there was a point in time where selling tobacco to people was a good bit. - All right, but that was a very good bit at a point in time. But like Daniel Andrews, government, the extension of his government is still running the state of Victoria. That is not Luke Sayers' problem. Luke Sayers' problem is not any changes of government. - Or a different problem now. - His problem all has stemmed from, if not for this dick pick, he would be fine. Like, he does, - That is not true. - It is 'cause he does the BWC tax scandal. - No, he did not dodge it. It still he wears it like a rotting carcass. And that is why his business was really, well they had to, you know, it was really struggling. - You think that is what made the name change happen in the sale and-- - The dick pick made the name change happen. - The dick pick made it happen faster. But I think the damage was done. And that's the substantive issue here is the BWC tax list. - I think a lot of people didn't like Luke to the point, almost you can't even-- - Well, that's my point. - And the dick pick morphs that into, they brought the haters into the open and allowed them to have unbridled public hatred. - Let's be honest, if you've got, I mean, I talk about you in the third person, if you've got Joe Eston feeling this way about you, it's not gonna disappear from the media, right? - Like, that's gonna be the truth, right? - And you wouldn't be the only person that feels this way about him. And I just kept coming back to the same point, which is this whole thing feels to me like a moment where he made too many enemies that are too keen to give him a kick now. And that is why this is not gonna disappear. And his wife might be on that list by the way. - That's what I think she's saying. - I think she's headless. - I just think he sort of encapsulates this, I love Melbourne by the way, but it doesn't encapsulate this thing that's not great about Melbourne, which is it's like this game of mates. Mate, mate, mate. - It's not everywhere. - It's all that? Sorry. - You don't think that's everywhere? - I don't think it's everywhere. - It's everywhere. - No, it's a case. - It's a certain size of town. - But was this the case 20 years ago? Has it always been the same? - Oh yeah, absolutely. - Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And they're just different names, different faces. But this whole, it's who you know, it's who you're in the club with, rather than whether you have any skills whatsoever. - Just to, like I'm not defensive about Melbourne at all, I actually I think if you've got a Sydney today, I know you'll agree with this. If you got a Sydney today, and I was starting a business today, I mean, you'd have to start it in Sydney, like it feels like such a more dynamic city. This city's really been set back, obviously, in the last 10 years by what's happened here. But on that point, if you have to be a certain, so Adelaide is smaller. I don't know what goes in Adelaide and Brisbane very well, but they're smaller. Sydney is a bit bigger. What do you think this is? This Melbourne characteristic? Do you ever view on that? Or is Adelaide the same? - Adelaide and Perth are the same. - They're the same, okay. - Absolutely. - So you think Sydney's different because it feels bigger than much bigger than Adelaide and Sydney? - Well, I mean, it's not big anymore. I mean, they're sort of fairly similar size populations, but Melbourne's extremely parochial. Like it's got its own sport, you know? - Yeah, that's true. - That's true. And as a say all of this, like I love Melbourne, I come here all the time to be honest. Like if you treat cities like equities, then you know, you want to buy low. Now it's probably a good deal. - Well, you can buy property. - Well, if you look at it, I could see the tax. - Yeah, that's true. - Dan Andrews wasn't coming from Melbourne. I think he was from country, so is his wife. Luke says in the country, Eddie from effectively, well, from Adelaide, I always wish the best of Melbourne. - Lord Meadows, I love my favourite thing that Kerry Stokes ever said was, you know, Eddie McGuire carrying on about broadmeadows, you know? Like it was, I grew up in the unwanted children's home in broadmeadows, and the rest of broadmeadows was perfectly middle-class. - I actually wanted to go into broadmeadows. On the way to the novel, I once went to broadmeadows. Mac is, that was pretty bad. It went one of the trash compacts with the size. - Was it as bad as the Mac is that what was it? Which Mac is did Scott Morris and Shini Stokes? - In the gummier. - In the UK. - Yeah. (laughing) - Probably that the same after Scott went there. I just want to talk about who else do in a complaint about that? I want to talk about Temple Webs and one of our favourites at the Contrarium. It's been a tough few months for Temple and Webster. Shareholder was presumably none of whom are Contrarians, listeners, with company suffering at a shock 32% single-day price calamity last week as it missed profit expectations for December half. - Which doesn't make them unique, right? It's a tough time to be reporting results that they've said it's right. - 32% is pretty unique. - Yeah, it's high. It's high. - There's a lot of whoppers in August though. I mean, the reactions are really out-suffering. - Yeah, and you almost can't report anything right now. Like, if you report 90% of your result is good, and like Nick Scali reported these great results, but like Jan was a bit weak. - I thought that Scali was having that vibe. - And said, and said, because November is so big, it's slotted. - Yeah. - Still like cheap, by the way. - Emma was trading at $28 a share last year, giving her a $3 billion valuation. Is now trading at 914 million. The company reported revenue growth of 20%, but a massive drop in gross margin has damaged investor confidence. Cashman XCO and co-founder Mark CoolTart remained upbeat. Telling investors that in our eyes, it is not a miss. I think what analysts are doing is looking line by line, whereas we have told everyone what we want to do is manage the business for growth. - So I just want to break down that comment. So in our mind, it's not a miss. That's okay, but there is consensus. So you either miss consensus or you don't. And then criticizing analysts for looking line by line. Like, isn't that what he's doing? He's looking line by line. - We should see the other ones. - Yeah, I guess that's what those lines, do you think we could have written this half yearly results release three months ago? I think we picked the revenue number. - We'd have to have a revenue. - Yeah, like it was pretty straightforward. - I think it's going to have to have a 3.6 maybe done margin. Everybody was going to be 3.9. Both are terrible numbers. - What the hell is the difference between those two numbers? - Well, apparently, and number. - Well, I think as we talked about, - A-b-d-d-d. - This is the excuse that the market was looking for to really, like the business already been sort of 50% down, and now it's dropped another 30. It's still probably 80% over the value. - We're getting closer to what we thought what we think it should be. - The question is when you close the short, because like, at $5, - No. - You know what $7 now? - $2.5. - I think it's worth too. You think it's worth too, but I don't think the market's - It's going to be a bit overshute. - More or not less. - Maybe, all right. - All right. - Have you got a short open? - No, we only talk about having shorts. We're not sure how to do it. - It's possible. Let's be accused of insider training or some sort. - I think the biggest issue that I had was if you look at contribution margin, talk about the load about this 20% revenue jump. What do you think contribution margin did? - Oh, I mean, it would have barely moved. - Zero. - It's up to the results, but my assumption is they spent all of their profit on marketing. - It's been all their margin on marketing. - That's a usual, I mean, - This is bad even for them. - They've never done this. - They did that a couple of years ago. - Not quite. - We thought that we'd be-- - $1 for $1 for $1. - We talked about last mile that we think, "Oh, I can give you a quick summary of why this came back." It's pretty straightforward. They weren't on track for 20% growth. - They had to get $420 per cent. - And you know, $480 per cent. - I said to you, they'll get to 20. They had to spend all of their gross profit to get to 20. - On profit. - They got to 20. That's what they mean by where optimizing for growth. (laughing) If that is to mark, he'd been able to fool the market. 'Cause some people are investing in this business so it can't play more on it. - I mean, if that's not the law, then this by the way, what's that term? - I still know funds that are long on this stock. - This is staggering that could be long on this stock. - I agree with you. - You could tell them all the way that this business doesn't have pricing power. It's got co-al of the company against it. It's got Nick Scali. You got Gee Squad, you got Gee Squad from everywhere. The only way they can grow revenue is by effectively operating it zero margin. And then they're trying to do the reverse that profit drops. So they can't grow and grow profit at the same time. Yeah, people are paying this business at $3 billion when it made $3 million in profit. - To their credit once again, we can put them in the category if they've been totally honest about their shortcomings all the way through. Like it's been all, it's been all-- - They've never all heard the reports. They never lied about anything. They basically just convinced people that having this low EBITDA margin is fine, as long as they keep growing. And then if you remember I said to you one analyst showed me their model, and they had to model 30 years out in order to put a positive rating on this stock. So yeah, I mean-- - Thanks before you go. Joe, you've been really great on anti-semitism in the last, well, last two years, especially the last couple of months. I know both of us are super grateful for your contributions to the subject matter. How have you ever seen this sort of thing? You live not that far from Bondi. How has the last sort of few months been for you? Obviously, you're not Jewish yourself, but you know plenty of Jewish people. And what's the-- - Yeah, well, I mean, I'm not sure that I have been that good, to be honest. I one of the things I thought after Bondi happened was I should have said more, and I wish I had. And it's hard, you know, because you can get inured to things, you know, you get used to them. And it's tragic when it takes something awful happening for you to sort of get jolted out of it. But look, I was-- yeah, I was going to Adelaide Riders Festival this later this month to interview Michael Lewis. - Which were amazing. - Yeah, I know. And Louis, I was really grateful to Louis Adela for asking me to do it. You know, I've always had a great, pretty good relationship with Louis Adela, without really following very closely her stuff on Israel, to be honest. - Yeah, I mean, I was just really shocked about that whole situation. And I have to say, good on Tony Berg, you know, ex-Mcquarie for coming out and revealing what was really going on there, because Thomas Friedman of all people-- - Yeah. - To be banned, to have his invitation rescinded to the Adelaide Riders Festival, because of what was a pretty innocuous column in the New York Times. And they're carrying on, like he's sort of like right of baby, or something. - Yeah. - He's like a Democrat. - He hates being a Democrat. - Yeah, exactly. So there's something really crazy going on in Australia, I think globally as well. People that I really know very well, very smart people, and they just the way they carry on about the pro-Israel lobby. And I just sort of think, where's this coming from? I don't know. It could just be, you know, we're all in Dano and Silas. They may be they're just consuming different content to me or whatever. But I don't lie awake at night feeling like the pro-Israel lobby is doing anything that's particularly damaging to my liberties as an Australian. But like there's people out there, real people with real jobs in senior parts of Australia who think this. The Randa Abdel for tar stuff was, I sort of sort of didn't really know who she was, a bit like Antoinette Latouf. These things are the making of these people. - The other like the Jewish lobby is completely strised to as well. - Yes. - I should have just shut up out them and let them die as low death like they were not. - Oh, initially but like-- - Inevitably once she was invited to the Adelaide Riders Festival, like the damage is done. Like uninviting was always going to make her a better. How all of these artists can rise up in her defenses, pretty disappointing. But like that's the crowd that goes to Riders Festival yesterday. I went there last year because my book had come out. And I felt pretty uncomfortable by some of the sort of vibes that I was picking. Because I also interviewed Josh Braunstein for his book, which was about more about Quantess and Corporate Life. And Josh was the lawyer for the TWU in the baggage analyst case at Quantess. And I get on well with Josh. And I respect him in terms of his capacities as an industrial relations lawyer. As I said on stage, I think I said something like you and I couldn't possibly disagree more on the issue of the Middle East or Israel or whatever I said. Anyway, I thought I was going to be shouted off the stage by the crowd. And I was just thinking like-- But you didn't feel physically endangered. You just thought they were-- Yeah, because I'm very keen to go to this whatever the fake Adelaide Riders Festival is. That they've jammed together to try to give-- I'm a little fat as a master at this festival. Whatever it is. And like, if she wants to go on spout that rubbish, then I just want to ask questions from the stage. I think I'm maybe-- I'm very interested in your view on this. I need to know very long. But like, do you think we should silence these people or do you think that we should argue against them? Well, I don't think-- like the suggestion that she was sort of silenced, I mean, she was uninvited from a festival. There's a lot of silences, right? Some people want a silence. This kind of speech. Well, I think there's always got to be a line between freedom of speech and hate speech. And I think I've tried to-- a couple of articles for Rampart. And I've put that one I wrote about this issue outside of the pay well, so anyone can read it. But there has to be a distinction between saying, raging against the Netanyahu government, or the IDF, whether or not what you're saying is actually true, or factual, or you have a right to say these things. Once you start saying that a certain part of the Australian population should not be safe, should not be allowed to be safe forever for your safe. And they say culturally safe, as if that somehow makes it. A bit like she says Zionist when watching me to shoot. Yeah, that's right. You just cannot go around threatening people's safety, cultural, or otherwise. And at that point, I think that speech doesn't need to be restricted. But there's also lots of hypocrisy on this stuff, which is why I usually don't write about these sort of freedom of speech, religious anti-discrimination stuff. Because inevitably, whichever side you're on, you see all of the discrimination that you're against. And then there's all this discrimination that you're happy to let go. But through to the keep up. So there's a lot of hypocrisy around this. Because you can't care about it. Everything. That's one reason, or it's malicious. I think people should find that article you wrote. I know I pitched it hard at the time. You wrote it. It's outside the paywall. I think people should then subscribe to rampart after they read it. But I do think-- We're going to get you out of 150. Like that was the-- That was the-- Oh, 50,000. Yeah. It was the best-- Yeah, it was the best article that I had read full stop on that issue. Because everyone wrote stuff about it. I wrote stuff about it. That was the best article I wrote. And also John's your best writer. We got to-- John, John, John, Joe Goe. He's been very generous with his time today. And are you going to get to-- I also don't want to-- Eventually, your subscribers are just going to die a boredom if we keep talking. At least there's not some stuff. But I don't know if this is actually-- I've never wanted to go along. They probably-- Did it actually create a job? Yeah. You guys are almost-- Go as long as acquired. Well, that's Adam's true. Adam's dream is to change the name of the podcast to acquired and then to get those two guys instead of me. And then he'll be happy. My dream is to one day be on the quiet. And I can also have their advertising deals. Yeah, that's pretty-- Wow. We actually had that on the pod, which had been-- We went through-- You had to one the pod? We had been one of the acquired guys on the pod. Oh, really? Yeah. We didn't mix it for quiet. I'll have to go back and listen to that. Adam was one of them. I had to take no credit for that. You got him on. He was amazing. And he talked about economics in the business, which was none. Did you hear that 10-year anniversary episode? It was with Michael Lewis. Yeah. And they did it went through a lot of it. I think Michael got it from us. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. We're going to get it somewhere. Thank you for having me. It's time. Thank you, Mark and Joel. Thank you, Adir. Of course, we will not be in person next week, but we will be doing this my far. Look forward to it. [MUSIC PLAYING]