0:04

From The Australian, here's what's on the front.

0:06

I'm Claire Harvey, it's Monday, May 27. An

0:12

embarrassing defence secret is out in the

0:15

open. Australia had almost no

0:17

submarines available to defend the country between 2009

0:19

and 2012, even

0:22

as China was aggressively expanding

0:25

its navy. That's an

0:27

exclusive live right now at theaustralian.com.au

0:34

Missing mother Bronwyn Winfield was given legal

0:36

advice just before she disappeared in 1993,

0:40

but she was entitled to a

0:42

significant share of assets from her

0:44

failed marriage. Husband John

0:46

Winfield was the last person to

0:48

see Bronwyn alive, but he

0:51

says she chose to leave him

0:53

and their young daughters. He's never

0:55

been charged and denies any wrongdoing.

0:58

It's all part of the gripping

1:00

cold case being investigated in The

1:02

Australian's new podcast Bronwyn, available now

1:04

at Bronwyn podcast.com. Compulsory

1:10

national service for all 18-year-olds.

1:13

That's the bold policy UK Prime

1:15

Minister Rishi Sunak is staking his

1:18

future on. It's the

1:20

billionaire versus the silk, as

1:22

Barista Kiyostama tries to bring

1:24

labour back. Stay with us. Over

1:30

the next few weeks, I will

1:32

fight for every vote. I

1:34

will earn your trust. Standing

1:36

outside 10 Downing Street, getting soaked

1:38

in the rain, stoically refusing to

1:41

hold an umbrella, or even wear

1:43

a raincoat. That's the

1:45

image Rishi Sunak created for voters as he

1:47

announced Britain is going to the polls on

1:50

July 4. It's

1:52

his bid to extend the

1:55

Conservatives' 14-year reign for one

1:57

more term. got

2:00

drenched, a nearby loudspeaker started

2:02

playing the opposition's anthem. Things

2:05

can only get better. China

2:09

is looking to dominate the 21st century

2:11

by stealing a lead in technology, and

2:14

migration is being weaponised by hostile

2:17

states to threaten the integrity of

2:19

our borders. You

2:23

might have thought sopping Sunak looked

2:25

resilient, or just a bit

2:27

of a drip. I have

2:29

to say I took the slightly more conventional

2:32

view that whoever in Rishi

2:34

Sunak's communications team didn't bother to

2:36

look at the sky or their

2:38

weather app should be sacked. Richard

2:41

Ferguson is the Australian's national chief of

2:43

staff. As you can hear, he's also

2:45

a Scotsman, and he's spent a

2:48

lifetime immersing himself in British

2:50

politics. That

2:52

would have worked that scene of him in the

2:54

rain if it had been a stronger speech, but

2:57

it was not a strong speech. He was pretty

2:59

flat, he looked like a dejected man who knew

3:01

he was going to lose an election on a

3:03

landslide. People in his cabinet

3:05

had no idea he was going to call

3:07

an election, and it was a surprise he

3:09

called it considering he's about 14 to 20

3:11

points behind in the polls. Richard

3:14

is a politics junkie, and he likes

3:16

things to be done properly. So he was

3:18

horrified when it emerged over the weekend Sunak

3:21

had broken the first rule

3:23

in political campaigning, racing. He

3:26

had taken a day off to which the jork

3:28

had become, well this might be a bad day

3:30

for Labor because Rishi Sunak is an oak campaigning

3:32

making mistakes. He's had

3:34

a tough first week. He was photographed

3:37

in front of an exit sign. He

3:39

visited the shipyard where the Titanic was

3:41

built, prompting lots of gags about sinking

3:43

ships. And he watched

3:46

scores of his own MPs quit.

3:49

Tonight, one of the Prime Minister's

3:51

most senior cabinet ministers is calling us today.

3:54

Michael Gove, an influential... When Rishi

3:56

Sunak came out with a blinder of

3:58

a policy which is compulsory national... service

4:01

for everyone aged 18 in Britain. Basically they

4:03

will get to choose between 12

4:05

months in the military or they're

4:08

weekend doing volunteering, firefighter, ambulance,

4:11

that kind of thing. So

4:13

that would be the first time since the early 50s

4:16

that they'd have national service. I

4:18

mean he needs something so he might as

4:20

well try a couple Hail Marys. The

4:22

other idea Sunak really needs to

4:25

work is migration policy. He

4:27

wants to send illegal immigrants who attempt

4:29

to enter the UK via the English

4:32

Channel to Rwanda. Rishi

4:34

Sunak himself on day one, which doesn't

4:36

help his bad campaigning streak, said that

4:38

there would be no flights to Rwanda

4:40

before July the 4th when the election

4:43

will be held. He says it will

4:45

only happen if a Conservative

4:47

government wins. So he won't have

4:49

the image of sending anybody off.

4:51

But the problem he was going

4:53

to have is what if flights

4:55

left in September to Rwanda but

4:57

the small boats just kept on

4:59

coming across the English Channel. He

5:02

couldn't risk the policy being

5:04

seen as a failure. There

5:09

have been five Conservative PMs

5:12

since 2010 and they've instituted

5:14

immense reforms through education to

5:17

health and social policy but

5:19

they've stumbled by seeming entitled and

5:22

out of touch. First

5:24

David Cameron who gambled and

5:26

lost on Brexit, Britain's departure

5:28

from the European Union. Cameron

5:31

called the referendum pleading with

5:33

Britons to stay in the

5:35

EU. The British people have

5:37

spoken and the answer is we're out. And

5:41

I think the almost seven years of

5:43

his premiership were kind of

5:45

thrown away in that one instance. Cameron

5:49

quit and Theresa May stepped up.

5:51

But May was slow to respond to the dreadful

5:54

2017 Grenfell Tower

5:56

public housing fire where

5:58

72 people The

6:02

warnings this building with a fire

6:04

trap apparently went unheard, but it

6:06

was impossible to miss the screams

6:08

of those begging to be saved from it.

6:17

And she couldn't get her own MPs to

6:19

agree on how the EU break up

6:22

should be handled. She

6:24

just didn't have the charisma and she didn't have

6:26

the control of her party to succeed and

6:28

it was left to Boris. Boris,

6:32

the brilliant, deeply flawed

6:34

scruffbag who had successfully convinced

6:37

the British the EU was to blame

6:39

for all their problems. He

6:41

was definitely the most consequential of those

6:43

five Prime Ministers, Claire, and

6:46

probably the most consequential Prime Minister.

6:49

Definitely since Blair, although you could make a

6:51

very strong argument since Thatcher, he

6:53

got them out of the European Union, he

6:55

led them through the coronavirus pandemic. I

6:58

think there's no doubt that Boris Johnson had

7:00

extraordinary leadership when it came to backing Ukraine

7:02

in the months leading up to the war.

7:05

This hideous and barbaric venture

7:07

of Vladimir Putin must end

7:10

in failure. Boris Johnson

7:13

is a hero in Ukraine, and rightly so. But

7:15

then there was the other side of Boris, Claire. There

7:19

was the struggle with the truth. There

7:21

was the chaos. During

7:29

lockdowns it turns out that his entire

7:31

staff in Downing Street were constantly having

7:34

parties when other people couldn't go to

7:36

the funeral of their parents. Mr

7:39

Speaker, I want to apologise. His

7:42

operation was chaos and

7:44

so he was steamrolled by his

7:46

party. Basically, he was only left with a couple

7:48

of ministers and he had to go. But

7:52

a lot of those ministers now say they wish

7:54

they'd never done it because then they got Liz

7:56

Truss. be

8:00

forgiven for saying who? Because

8:02

Liz Truss's prime ministership only

8:04

lasted 50 days and featured

8:06

a wildly ambitious economic plan that

8:09

crashed markets and sent interest

8:11

rates soaring. Perhaps

8:13

her most memorable moment was visiting Queen Elizabeth

8:15

II at home in Balmoral

8:18

and posing for what turned out

8:20

to be the last formal photo

8:23

of the Queen. I think

8:25

there's a great irony clear that the

8:28

late Queen's first prime minister was Winston

8:31

Churchill, maybe the greatest Briton

8:33

who ever lived, definitely the greatest

8:35

British prime minister. You know, the

8:37

man who won the Second World War in Stott Petlar. We

8:40

shall fight in the fields and

8:42

in the streets. We shall fight in

8:44

the hills. We shall

8:46

never surrender. And

8:49

then her last prime minister was

8:51

the shortest serving and probably

8:53

the worst prime minister Briton ever had.

8:56

We import two thirds of

8:58

our cheese. That

9:00

is a disgrace. She's

9:04

written in her recent book that she said,

9:06

why is this happening to me? To which

9:08

point most prime ministers go, well, it's actually

9:10

an incredible opportunity to lead your nation and,

9:13

you know, kind of darkness, but she

9:15

did it very woodenly. She had

9:17

no charisma. She had radical

9:19

policies that most of our party fought

9:21

went way too far. It's okay to

9:24

do Reaganomics if you're the world's currency,

9:26

but it doesn't really work when you're Briton and

9:28

you're about number seven. And

9:31

that led us to Rishi Sunak

9:33

who shares with his wife a

9:35

fortune of just over one billion

9:37

Australian dollars. I

9:39

think that Rishi Sunak deserves a lot of credit

9:42

for fixing a lot of the economic

9:44

mess he was left with by Liz Truss in such

9:46

a short period of time. Inflation has

9:48

come down to target banned just in the

9:50

past week, which is why some people think

9:53

he called this election. It's

9:55

a huge gamble. Will Briton's thanks

9:57

Sunak for fixing the mess or

10:00

punish him for the years of chaos.

10:03

He has a reputation for being

10:05

quite catchy and for not

10:07

really getting why everybody doesn't

10:09

love him. It's just not that

10:11

good at politics. Coming

10:16

up, the man who's carrying Labor's hope

10:18

of kicking out the Tories. If

10:21

you haven't already caught Headley Thomas' new podcast,

10:23

Bromwynn, it's a new cold case from

10:25

the journalist who created The Teacher's Pet. Episodes

10:28

1 and 2 of

10:30

Bromwynn are free to listen

10:32

for registered users right now

10:34

at bromwynnpodcast.com. From

10:58

the team that brought you The Teacher's

11:00

Pet, Shadow of Doubt and Dying Rose.

11:02

Unlock early ad-free and bonus content from

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brand new series and friendship shows such

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as I Catch Killers for Gary Jubelin.

11:09

One was shot in the mouth and I thought

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he was dead. Another one been

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shot in the shotgun and I got the

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overspray. Search for CrimexPlus on Apple Podcasts to

11:17

start digging deep into the world of true

11:20

crime. Things

11:29

can only get

11:32

better by D-ring.

11:39

That was UK Labor's theme song

11:41

for the 1997 election when Tony

11:43

Blair swept to power. Now

11:46

there's a new Labor hope, Sakeah

11:49

Starma Casey, a former Crown Prosecutor

11:51

and human rights barrister, the

11:53

son of a nurse and a factory worker. Over

11:56

the course of the last four years, we've changed

11:59

the world. changed the Labor Party, returned

12:02

it once more to the

12:04

service of working people. Starmar

12:07

wants to slash public health waiting

12:09

times, create a new border security

12:11

command, set up a publicly

12:14

owned green energy firm paid for by

12:16

a tax on oil and gas, and

12:18

recruit thousands of new teachers. But

12:21

so far, there's no big vision for

12:23

sweeping change. I

12:26

think our cousin at the

12:28

Times, the great Times columnist Daniel

12:30

Finkelstein put it really well recently

12:32

in which he said, Keira Starmar's

12:35

message at this election is Britain

12:37

is broken, let's do nothing about

12:39

it. Starmar stumbled

12:41

over the issue of the trans community,

12:44

struggling to answer questions like what

12:46

is a woman? All the

12:48

while he was battling to get rid of the

12:50

forces of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn,

12:53

a hardcore left winger who'd promised

12:55

to rip up the Brexit deal

12:58

and nationalise the railways. He

13:00

has really brought them back to the

13:02

centre, you know, saying that they would

13:05

stick by, for example, Tory spending rules,

13:07

which would lead to some big cuts

13:09

in the future. He's, you know, repaired

13:11

the relationship with business. He has really

13:13

done a fantastic job of making the

13:15

Labour Party an electable alternative

13:17

of the classic centrist kind

13:19

of hot kidding Clinton Blair

13:22

kind of way. Gaza

13:24

has been the big problem for Keira Starmar.

13:27

You know, he has done so much

13:29

clear to try and separate his party

13:31

from the party of Jeremy

13:33

Corbyn, which had some of the worst

13:35

conspiracy theorists anti-semit you could imagine, kind

13:38

of near his centre of power. But

13:41

there's a lot of British Labour MPs

13:43

with huge Muslim constituencies who feel very

13:46

strongly on the issue of Palestine because

13:48

he's so far ahead. It hasn't really been a

13:51

problem in opposition, but I think it will become

13:53

a huge problem for him in government, especially if

13:55

he gets a large majority where he has a

13:57

lot of left wing MPs that essentially are the

13:59

best. act as the real opposition, a bit

14:02

like Tony Blair faced during the Iraq

14:04

War when left-wing MPs were constantly voting

14:06

against him on the Iraq War. But

14:08

he does have this general problem that he's

14:11

basically trying to see nothing in

14:13

order to not scare the horses and get in and

14:15

that doesn't always work, especially in an election campaign. Richard

14:21

Ferguson is the Australian's national chief of

14:23

staff. Thanks

14:26

for joining us on the front.

14:28

If you like the show, give

14:30

us five stars wherever you listen.

14:32

And don't forget to join our

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subscribers at theaustralian.com.au and be the

14:36

first to know. My

14:43

name is Manny Carutas and I'm a

14:45

former New South Wales policeman turned investigative

14:47

reporter with a passion for missing persons

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cases. I'm here to

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quickly tell you about our true Crime Australia

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