0:01

G'day humans, welcome to the safe space

0:03

for dangerous ideas, and here's a dangerous

0:05

idea for you. Do we need

0:08

political parties? Do they serve

0:10

our interests? Is it better to

0:12

work inside the political system, or

0:15

to blow it all up and try

0:17

to find a way to empower and

0:19

to fund independence who can

0:21

indeed topple governments? Today's

0:23

guest was fundamental in the

0:25

last change of government in

0:28

Australia. His name,

0:30

the Holmes-of-Court name, is well known

0:32

in Australia because his father was the

0:34

first ever billionaire. They

0:36

come from generation after generation of

0:38

extremely influential and powerful wealthy figures

0:40

not just here, but back in

0:43

the UK before Australia was even

0:45

settled or invaded, as the

0:47

case may be, by Europeans. And

0:50

Simon Holmes-of-Court, he's a brilliant guy

0:52

in his own right, has

0:54

an extraordinary tale to tell about

0:56

his relationship with his billionaire father

0:58

and the consequences of his father's

1:00

untimely death. And

1:03

what Simon did at the last

1:06

election was not single-handedly,

1:08

he's very bashful about it

1:10

and he's very bashful about

1:14

his financial role as well as

1:16

his motivational and cultural role in

1:18

creating the landslide that happened in

1:20

Australia at the last federal election.

1:24

With all of that being said and all of

1:26

that throat clearing aside, he's basically the most important

1:28

figure in Australia in creating

1:30

a wave of centre-right,

1:33

independent, mostly female candidates

1:35

who swept aside the

1:38

conservative governing coalition after

1:41

almost a decade in power

1:43

by targeting them on a few

1:46

vulnerable issues. Climate change, where voters

1:48

felt there was inaction, women's

1:50

rights, where voters felt there was

1:52

a kind of tin-eared deafness towards

1:54

the need to get real about

1:56

sexism and indeed even sexual assault

1:59

and harassment. Parliament House and

2:01

corruption. Not so much

2:03

the old-fashioned corruption of bribing politicians to

2:06

do your bidding, but just

2:08

the slightly sleazy everyday corruption that

2:10

we've gotten used to. Australia did

2:12

not have a federal

2:15

anti-corruption body to oversee that

2:18

everything was clean. These

2:21

candidates who were loosely called the

2:23

teal candidates because they all shared

2:25

the color teal on their palates

2:27

became a monumental, phenomenal force in

2:29

Australian politics. They now sit in

2:31

the Australian Parliament and they

2:33

were largely responsible for the sweeping

2:36

aside of a decades-old conservative rule

2:38

and the introduction of Australia's Labor

2:41

government. But Simon's beef is bigger. It's

2:43

really not just about the short-term tactics

2:45

of getting rid of any one government

2:47

or other. It's about the

2:50

long-term strategy of resting power away

2:52

from institutions, political parties that

2:54

seem deaf to the needs of

2:57

voters and seem obsessed with their

2:59

own factional infighting and their own

3:01

special interests and putting power back in the hands

3:03

of the people, back in the hands of independents,

3:05

back in the hands of members of the community,

3:07

business people who might want to run for office.

3:10

Simon's a totally fascinating person. I

3:12

hope you enjoy this insightful conversation

3:14

as much as I did with

3:16

the one, the only, Simon Holmes

3:18

of Court. I'm

3:22

interested, so you started out

3:24

more than for Netscape. You

3:33

went to the States after... Yeah. Well,

3:36

not your first job, but it was maybe

3:38

your first big one. I

3:40

started studying in Perth

3:42

at UWA and I got

3:45

really involved in student organization. They're

3:47

sort of student politics without the

3:50

politics. A

3:52

large student organization called ISEC. I

3:54

got involved in that. Student politics without the politics.

3:56

What do you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because my

3:59

recollection is... Drinking. My recollection of

4:01

student politics was that it was

4:03

incredibly ideological and hostile and fiery

4:05

and Marxist. Yeah, there was a

4:08

sort of parallel. There was an

4:10

international, it still exists, organization called

4:12

ISEC. It's in 80 countries

4:15

around the world, or it was then, it's probably more now, that

4:19

specialized in student exchanges,

4:22

internship exchanges, conferences with a lot

4:24

of professional development

4:30

along the way. And a

4:33

lot of drinking. So

4:36

I got really involved in that, became

4:38

the state manager. The drinking or the

4:40

conference? Sorry, I'll leave the drinking time.

4:42

Okay, tell me all about it. Yeah,

4:45

the University of Western Australia, we won the

4:48

National Boat Race Competition more than a few

4:50

times. What's the Boat Race Competition? When

4:53

you get the group of

4:55

people sculling beers one after the

4:57

other in a chain. So

5:00

it did reasonably well at that. Yeah,

5:04

so I got really involved in

5:07

that and I didn't finish my

5:10

undergraduate degree at University of Western Australia.

5:14

I did that for about three years, worked

5:18

in Malaysia for a year and towards the

5:20

end of that. Was that for your dad? My

5:23

dad passed away by then, but

5:25

it was for my family company, an

5:27

engineering company. When did he die? I

5:29

was 18, he died in 1990. So first year uni. Was

5:33

that unexpected? Yeah, absolutely. That

5:36

was probably a significant, that

5:39

was a significant role in me moving away from

5:41

my studies and getting

5:43

distracted. I had a business on the side. I

5:47

mean, just for people who don't know, he was Australia's

5:49

first billionaire. He was a titan of Australian business. Was

5:51

he still at the top of his game when he

5:53

died? Yeah, very much. He

6:03

got smashed by the

6:06

stock market crash of 87, but

6:09

put businesses back together,

6:11

had recovered

6:19

from that, but

6:22

his health wasn't as good as he laid on, wasn't as

6:24

good as we thought

6:27

it was, and he had a massive heart attack in

6:29

September 1990. So

6:31

that was a big thing. So

6:37

yeah, I worked for ISEC for about

6:39

three years. But

6:42

just pause on that for a moment. So you're

6:44

at uni in first year, your dad's

6:47

a very famous guy,

6:50

suddenly dies. It's pretty surreal. Yeah.

6:53

What were the weeks and months after

6:55

that like? Yeah,

6:58

a bit of a blur. No,

7:00

very much a blur because there's a sort

7:02

of a private or

7:04

family grieving aspect, but there

7:06

were many, many people in

7:09

his life and a very

7:11

complex business left behind. Yeah,

7:15

it was a complex

7:17

time. And had there

7:19

ever been an assumption that it was a family business

7:21

where there'd be an heir? I

7:26

don't think so. No, it was... There

7:30

was no succession playing out. No, it's funny

7:32

to watch. I've

7:37

only actually very recently started watching

7:40

the succession. It's funny to watch

7:42

that to think of... I

7:45

can sort of see how

7:48

that could come about. I'm really,

7:50

really grateful that my family avoided

7:52

that. Yeah, right. So what

7:54

happened to his business after he died? My mother took

7:56

over. Very different,

7:58

very different style. My

8:01

father was about identifying

8:04

businesses that were undervalued,

8:08

buying them up. It

8:10

was an amazing group

8:14

of assets. At

8:16

one point, it owned the rights to the

8:18

Beatles and the Muppets and a

8:21

bunch of newspapers. There

8:24

were some resource companies in there. It

8:27

was steel

8:30

holdings. There

8:32

were a lot of disparate

8:34

businesses in there, including a

8:37

winery and a beef

8:40

cattle business and a

8:42

construction company. That's the one I went to work for

8:44

in Malaysia in 1993. My

8:49

mother ran the company

8:51

very differently rather than acquiring and –

8:55

my father would sort of restructure and

9:02

then move on to buying –

9:04

restructuring, selling off parts and really

9:08

sort of

9:10

finding the undervalued assets and

9:12

extracting that value and moving on to the next.

9:15

My mum was much more into running the

9:17

businesses as going

9:19

concerns. She took the basket

9:22

of assets that – sort

9:25

of a bit like musical chairs. My dad died

9:27

and suddenly what

9:30

was left when the music stopped, she

9:35

had to sell a bunch of stuff to stabilise

9:37

the business and pay off a bunch of

9:39

debt because the banks were a lot more

9:42

risk averse without – his

9:45

genius around. She

9:48

stabilised the business and then ran a

9:51

number of them, including construction,

9:53

beef and wine from

9:56

there and a few other smaller entities. What

10:00

was this, the 90s? Yeah,

10:02

so I understand it's

10:04

quite different now. I haven't been back. A

10:08

lot of people I know who've spent time in Malaysia think

10:12

of the building of the Petronas Towers, which

10:14

were the largest building in the world for

10:16

a little while, as being sort of a

10:18

marker between old Malaysia and new

10:20

Malaysia. I spent

10:23

a year there. I'm going

10:26

to offend people, but this is

10:29

Malaysia in the early 90s. The

10:34

racial tensions were really, really strongly

10:38

felt then. The joint

10:40

Indian Malaysians and Chinese Malaysians?

10:44

The Malay Malaysians hated the Chinese,

10:46

and the Chinese Malaysians didn't

10:49

respect the Malay Malaysians, and

10:52

both had

10:55

no respect for the Indian Malaysians. Then

10:58

the white expats had this strange

11:02

life of being

11:04

very, very temporary citizens, a

11:07

necessary evil for the

11:10

development of the country. It

11:14

was very clear that we

11:17

didn't belong there. Was

11:19

my heart in power at this time? Yeah,

11:22

he was. I remember. For

11:24

people who don't know, he was a

11:26

long serving, sort of slightly cantankerous pro-continent.

11:28

Yeah, and I do. I remember one

11:30

thing quite explicitly. Paul

11:35

Keating was our Prime Minister at the time. I

11:37

was at uni, I think, when this happened.

11:40

And Keating called him recalcitrant. That's right.

11:43

I was going to say intransigent, but

11:45

yeah, recalcitrant, because he didn't come to

11:47

the Asia Pacific economic... He

11:50

didn't come to one of these

11:52

events, and there was a huge diplomatic

11:54

blowout. Yeah, we all got a call

11:56

to come to the Australian Embassy for

11:59

an emergency meeting. that the

12:02

Malaysian government were

12:05

very concerned about this word recalcitrant

12:08

and they had their best translators working on this

12:10

word. It's a difficult word to translate. It's

12:13

full of nuance. And then

12:15

we came back a couple of days

12:17

later because Keating had said that he

12:19

regretted the comment. He used the word regret.

12:22

And they got the best translators again to work

12:24

out what the word regret really means. Not quite

12:26

sorry. They decided that regret

12:29

was in the way we use

12:32

it, regret was equivalent to sorry.

12:36

So the Australians were told don't worry. You're

12:39

safe now because the Malaysians have forgiven you because...

12:41

I remember wondering whether or not that whole thing

12:43

was just a mistranslation problem because half of Australia

12:45

wouldn't know what recalcitrant means. And when you translate

12:47

it, I'm like, it's possible that they translated it

12:49

as idiotic or

12:56

something. But anyway, so yes, Malaysia

12:59

in the 90s. I

13:01

mean, it's a funny part of Southeast

13:04

Asia. Yeah. Malaysia. I've

13:06

been there a few times and it's changed a lot. Yeah. The

13:09

first week I was there, there

13:14

was an incident

13:17

where everyone in the office was

13:20

standing by a window looking at the river below

13:22

and a body

13:25

was floating down the river. And

13:28

I remember the person in the

13:30

office with the lowest station

13:32

of all, the tea lady, coming

13:34

across to the window, looking out

13:36

the window and went, oh,

13:38

it's only an Indian and walked off. Wow.

13:43

And that was... Yeah, the

13:45

racial tensions there

13:48

were quite mind blowing.

13:51

There were lots of institutionalized too

13:53

where Malays

13:55

would have access

13:57

to cheaper housing or there would be... Quotas

14:00

for university. Yeah, every company had to have a

14:02

Malay director So we had one guy just came

14:04

to an office a day a month and we

14:06

paid him a lot of money And he didn't

14:08

do anything. Yeah company, but it was just part

14:10

of Dr. M was

14:12

very fixed on elevating the station

14:15

of Malay. Dr. M meaning Mahatma

14:17

the president Yeah, Prime Minister It's

14:20

interesting you say that because you're reminding me that

14:22

during the lead up to the voice referendum in

14:24

Australia last year Which would have

14:27

seen the creation of an indigenous body

14:29

an advisory body to the Australian Parliament Comprising

14:33

First Nations Australians. I actually got an

14:35

email When I

14:37

still had my ABC show from

14:39

a Malaysian Australian listener saying trust

14:42

me. You don't want to import Like

14:46

race that you know, you don't want to

14:48

encode racial dominance into any facet

14:50

of your political system because I've seen

14:52

what happens in Malaysia where you have

14:54

allocations for certain types of people and

14:57

all the malaise we hear first so

14:59

the malaise get this quota and this

15:01

person was found the You know the

15:03

the the designation of First Nations people

15:05

as being given this Prime

15:08

this place of primacy in the

15:10

Australian Constitution as like reminiscent of

15:12

that and problematic Well,

15:15

certainly problematic problematic there and the

15:17

malaise weren't the first either the There's

15:20

a there's an indigenous group The

15:22

Orong Putra there who are

15:24

completely sidelined. Right? Yeah, right. So

15:27

how far back do you want to go? I

15:29

mean, yeah, well, that's Israel Garvey one. You want

15:31

to take that on? We

15:33

do we start the clock in 1948? 5,000

15:35

years ago Yeah, so

15:37

anyway, so you so you end up and you go

15:40

along to study colonist science and computer science Yeah, that's

15:42

in the States and so the work I was doing

15:44

in in Malaysia. I was helping me

15:46

I was helping the construction company with

15:50

It was John Holland constructions with

15:53

we're basically modernizing setting

15:55

up Email for

15:57

the first time between between officers. I

16:00

doing a lot of a lot of i take

16:02

work and. I realized

16:04

at the end of that stint that bill

16:07

for me I t was about getting people's

16:09

print is working and I'm teaching them how

16:11

to use fancy word. Yet the end and

16:13

I. Swore to myself I

16:15

was no many do anything with

16:17

computers ever again. I've been a

16:19

big computer games from long my

16:21

back I'd spend playing with computers

16:24

since as about I'd also ah

16:26

an online from me and that

16:28

eleven years old I'm sorry I

16:30

was always very much a computer

16:32

game but I realized that's when

16:34

it came to business computers were

16:36

it was just an off Career

16:38

is where is where I left

16:40

side. Yeah, Met

16:42

when I left Industry notes I.

16:44

Am. Ah, What

16:46

follows in was him allies are applied

16:48

for yet I see some could Dartmouth

16:50

College in the U S Am. I.

16:53

Didn't know much about adversity. Cool. Douglas

16:55

is an ivy league. see it is.

16:57

Yeah, I didn't know what I really

16:59

meant that point. I didn't know much

17:01

about it, but my am I have

17:03

got two brothers. He went say. A

17:06

Went went to college in college and Us

17:08

exist college University main a sign saying in

17:10

the Us are they went they went to

17:13

college in the Us and said i used

17:15

by Saddam as it's pretty good since ah

17:17

and without having ever seen it with having

17:20

so much about it I was also didn't

17:22

spot and I took an well as at

17:24

work. I'm into the fact that you're the

17:26

sort of a billionaire help. With

17:29

a think I remember saying the application

17:32

process said i'm ah we have students

17:34

from sixty nine countries Ah ah and

17:36

then I'm and then the next year

17:38

when I'd been an ah yeah when

17:41

when when side accepted it said we

17:43

have students from seventy countries such. As

17:46

his residence I think. look I

17:49

think that was part of it.

17:51

I'm like I'd I'd had good

17:53

results. I'm from ah in front

17:55

from from school your academically good

17:57

I went to write a very

17:59

an illustrious. Pro. school in Australia in July. I

18:01

wouldn't say a great school, but I wouldn't

18:03

do an illustrious school. It's a school for the upper

18:05

crust. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,

18:09

we could do a whole episode on that. Well,

18:11

why don't we just touch that since there seems

18:13

to be something there in your eyes

18:15

that I can detect. And perhaps, Jalal, when you say it,

18:18

what in the great school were? So

18:22

the school had a pretty dark

18:25

period, and that's been covered. I

18:27

mean, it was touched on in

18:29

recent Four Corners report.

18:31

Did you complain that for people who can

18:33

say it? Well, the school had a very

18:36

significant problem with abuse

18:38

through the... Well, I was

18:40

there in the 80s, but

18:43

it predates that and post-dates

18:45

that. But it was subject

18:50

of a lot of complaints through the Royal

18:52

Commission into sexual abuse

18:57

of children in care. It

18:59

was a boarding school, and

19:01

it had a very significant

19:05

problem with pedophilia in the

19:08

60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. Did

19:11

you say any of that? I was

19:14

lucky not to be the subject of any

19:16

of it, but certainly we

19:19

all saw inappropriate relationships.

19:23

And through the Royal Commission,

19:25

I read lots of the evidence for that, and

19:27

I went along to one of the days of

19:31

the hearings. And people

19:34

I knew were the subject of... were

19:40

complainants, and teachers who

19:43

had played a

19:45

significant role in my education were implicated

19:47

and charged and served time. Yeah. Were

19:49

you aware at the time that it

19:51

was wrong? Yes.

19:53

Yeah, no, we were... Well,

19:56

it was a secondary school, so

19:58

yeah. age

20:01

12 to 17. But

20:03

yeah, we were very aware it was wrong.

20:09

But it was a funny environment. The

20:13

teacher who I

20:15

think has been most punished out of,

20:18

who served time and was

20:21

subject to many complaints was

20:23

my maths tutor. And

20:26

for the last two years of school, I went around to his

20:28

house every

20:31

Tuesday night and he poured me a glass

20:33

of wine. Luckily

20:36

for me, I never felt

20:38

threatened. Never

20:41

move on me. But

20:45

this guy was convicted. And

20:49

I know someone who

20:53

went through that Royal Commission and said that there

20:55

were 35 teachers or

20:58

staff who were named from

21:02

Geelong Grammar in that process. So I had

21:04

a real problem there. That

21:06

was part of it. It didn't affect

21:08

me, but I know it affected a

21:10

number of people very much. But

21:14

that was in a context where it was

21:16

a very

21:19

violent school at that

21:21

time. My understanding is

21:23

that it's very different now. I wouldn't

21:25

want people to think

21:27

that I'm saying, don't send your kids there

21:29

because it's awful. I'm sure 40 years later

21:32

and we're in a

21:34

different legal context. I think

21:36

now that if

21:39

a kid at Geelong Grammar had called their

21:41

old son today and said, hey, I

21:46

wrote a little chapter

21:48

on it in a little

21:51

book that I published a couple of years ago. A friend

21:54

of mine was

21:57

forced down a drain, a storm

21:59

water drain and six boys

22:02

stood on top and urinated on him

22:04

and then stood on the grade on

22:06

top so that he couldn't get out. So he's standing

22:08

in the dark, in the

22:10

cold, soaked in the urine

22:12

of six boys on top as

22:14

they laughed. He

22:20

reported that incident and nothing happened. In

22:25

today's environment, if you called up the Herald

22:27

Sun from John Graham and said, this just

22:29

happened to me, it'd be front page the

22:32

next day. We're in a different context where

22:34

then people acted with complete

22:36

impunity. In fact, the headmaster

22:39

who oversaw that, who was

22:41

aware of that incident and many like it,

22:43

who had documented evidence of all of this,

22:47

went on to be the head of

22:49

Eaton and was a tutor

22:51

of Harry and William at

22:54

Eaton and never suffered anything from

22:56

that. Like the church. It's

22:59

like the church. It's like, you just

23:01

take the problematic person and you

23:03

move them to another jurisdiction where

23:05

their reputation isn't going to follow them. It

23:09

was a brutal place. It was more about

23:11

the violence, not really

23:13

the physical violence, but the psychological

23:16

violence of that school. Between

23:18

the kids or from the teachers?

23:23

No, mainly between the kids, but

23:25

it was understood

23:28

and accepted. I

23:32

think it was deemed part of the

23:34

experience by ... You

23:37

often think, yeah, there are 70 young

23:39

men who are in a boarding house together

23:44

with maybe one staff member

23:47

who sticks around to 10 o'clock at night. The

23:50

rest of the time, it's Lord of the Flies the

23:52

whole time. Without

23:57

the stratification of ... The

24:00

structure the social structure that builds based

24:03

on fear and

24:06

threat of violence it would be

24:08

a much more disorganized place I think

24:10

that the the Lord of the Flies

24:15

structure that emerges out

24:18

of that is it was

24:20

a useful way of maintaining some

24:22

level of order. I mean

24:24

it's timeless that's how we've been arranging

24:27

is how mammals have been around in

24:29

their societies for millions of years right.

24:32

And if you're not going to have to any macro

24:34

level and the same. Yeah the

24:36

tough are going to be tough and the weak are

24:38

going to get preyed on. I mean it's just insane

24:40

that anyone ever thought it was a good idea to

24:43

take the most irrational and

24:45

power hungry and hormonal demographic of humanity

24:47

which is teenage males and put them

24:49

in an anarchic situation like that and

24:51

let them sort it out for themselves

24:53

and then everything would be hunky dory.

24:55

So just before we leave that I

24:57

don't want to dwell on this for

24:59

too long. But so you had friends

25:01

who you knew at the time were

25:03

having relationships with teachers? Certainly

25:07

but you know close acquaintances in my year

25:10

group knew that they were

25:12

having I wouldn't

25:14

call them relationships that that that they

25:17

were being pursued. And

25:19

that some of that came out in the

25:21

Royal Commission. I mean the reason I ask

25:24

I say use word relationships is because it's

25:26

sometimes interesting in these scenarios where the

25:29

child will not realise that there's anything wrong

25:31

with that because it lands for the child

25:33

as love, care, affection, attention or something and

25:35

that's what can be so predatory about it

25:37

in a way you've got someone who is

25:39

incapable of consent who doesn't have the maturity

25:42

to process what they're going through. Yes.

25:44

Someone in a position of power abuses that power and

25:47

it doesn't you know it's not we have this idea

25:49

about pedophilia as being this brutalising

25:51

sort of rapey act but often it's

25:53

more insidious than that and that's why

25:55

I say. Yeah no I think there's

25:57

definitely something to that. It's

26:00

a strange environment. Schools

26:03

at the end of a peninsula tucked

26:05

away and through no man's land, not

26:08

far from Geelong. It's not actually in Geelong.

26:10

It's in Coraio, sort of separated

26:13

from the rest of the world by

26:15

the biggest oil refinery in

26:17

this part of the world. And

26:23

it's a cold, physically,

26:26

emotionally cold place with,

26:30

at that stage, you're only allowed to see your parents.

26:35

You could have one overnight exe at a time. And

26:38

you can apply to have two day exe

26:40

hits. But most people wouldn't have any contact

26:43

with their family for months at

26:45

a time. Did you talk to your mother and dad about

26:49

your concerns about the place? Certainly

26:52

did about the physical violence

26:57

and about the bullying culture

26:59

there. The

27:04

response, I remember the response from

27:06

parents of, well,

27:09

if you don't like it, we can take it out and

27:11

put you somewhere else. But part

27:13

of the culture of the school was anyone

27:16

who left was, oh, they can't

27:18

hack it. They were the weak

27:20

kid who couldn't hack it, couldn't

27:22

find their place, or they were too weak. And

27:25

so there was very significant

27:27

pressure to grind through

27:29

it. It's been fascinating going to school

27:31

reunions since. And it feels

27:33

a bit like group therapy. Very

27:35

few of us have sent our kids there. And

27:41

by now, almost everyone has made

27:43

peace with it. So it's

27:45

not something I think about daily or especially about.

27:47

But just lastly, I'm just still interested in the

27:49

dynamic between you and the friends of yours, or

27:51

the friends of friends who you knew

27:54

this was happening to. Just

27:57

tell me how you get your head around that when you.

28:00

15 and you like. Do you

28:03

have pity for them? Is

28:05

it something you just don't talk about? Do you ever talk about

28:07

it? No,

28:10

I haven't talked about it. I mean

28:13

at the time, does one did

28:15

one talk about it? No, it's

28:17

just rumors in innuendo. It's

28:20

funny, it's not the right word, but I

28:23

went along to a day of the Royal

28:25

Commission where I saw three headmasters get up

28:28

in the stand. And none

28:30

of them said in as many words, but what the

28:33

subtext was, things were

28:35

different back then. And

28:37

it was shocking

28:40

to hear and outrageous, but

28:43

there is some, I wouldn't

28:45

say some truth to it. I mean

28:47

it is as abhorrent then as it

28:49

is now. But as

28:53

I said before, if something

28:58

like that happened to you now and you

29:00

called the Herald Sun front page next day,

29:02

Royal Commission places shut down. There,

29:05

if you called up back

29:07

then, if you called up some of the media,

29:09

they'd say, boys will be boys or important

29:12

growing character building. Societal

29:17

standards have moved

29:19

a lot in that time.

29:21

Lots of innuendo and

29:24

some of

29:26

that too was

29:29

bullying by the school community of some of

29:31

the weaker teachers. If a teacher was

29:33

a feminine, it

29:37

was automatically assumed that they were a predator. Right.

29:42

Well, it turned out some were.

29:45

Some were not. They were just unusual.

29:47

Yeah, right. Okay, so you survived Geelong.

29:49

You survived Malaysia. You survived Dartmouth. Dartmouth

29:53

was wonderful, but it was quite odd. So by the time I

29:55

went, I was 20. In

30:00

the US, the

30:03

drinking age is 21. My

30:06

peers were 17 and 18. So

30:10

I was a mature age student. Wow,

30:13

yeah, right, of course. And

30:16

I had long ago worked out how

30:19

to manage life around

30:21

alcohol, whereas here

30:24

was a haven where these kids were away from home

30:26

for the first time. When you were

30:28

talking about Geelong, it reminded me a bit

30:30

of an American college fraternity with its hazing

30:32

rituals and the people who've just

30:34

come into it with the first time

30:36

they've ever left on me and daddy's

30:39

house. Dartmouth has a very strong

30:41

what they call Greek system. It's

30:43

so weird to have it called the Greek system. I know.

30:46

I've asked Americans why it's called the Greek system and no one

30:48

can tell me except that there are Greek letters. Yeah,

30:50

I know. But they said it was inherited from the

30:52

ancient Greeks or something. Most of the people who I

30:54

ask say, isn't it from Greece? No. No,

30:57

it's not from Greece. Just the letters. Just America.

31:00

Yeah, so I saw my peers

31:02

going through the process to get

31:05

into the fraternity where you pledge

31:08

and then you go through a hazing period

31:12

and then you come out the other end

31:14

and you are then entitled to run

31:17

the whole process from the other end the next year against

31:19

the next lot of kids. And I

31:21

just had zero interest in joining

31:24

a drinking club. I've been part of them before or going

31:28

through any hazing rituals, especially with

31:31

people who were for five years

31:33

younger than me who were just tasting

31:35

freedom for the first time when I

31:38

felt a lot more mature. But the friends

31:40

I made there and the quality of

31:43

the education was phenomenal. And so how

31:45

does Netscape happen? So

31:49

I promised myself I wouldn't

31:51

do anything to do with computers because computers

31:53

were just getting people's printers

31:55

working. But

31:58

This is now the late 90s, right? They were

32:00

you wanting up the internet is. Yeah.

32:03

Say so. I know I got

32:05

really interested in it. Was it

32:07

a relatively new subject as he

32:09

was a second year to do

32:11

it or any major could cognitive

32:13

science arms and it was a

32:15

mix of psychology, linguistics or philosophy

32:17

and artificial intelligence. It was. By

32:19

ear wouldn't these guys would probably

32:21

call a Digital Humanities within a

32:23

I'm a specialization In common is

32:25

science still exists as as as

32:27

a prop probably does arms hi

32:29

it's. Yeah. People don't

32:32

advertise that on his side. A similar

32:34

ensure our As and I saw I

32:36

really was intrigued by the I the

32:38

side and I'm you had to do

32:40

a bunch of computer science to get

32:42

day and I was some ah I

32:45

was surprised with how much I really

32:47

enjoyed that that pathway what inside you

32:49

about the Iowa side. Arm.

32:55

Seen. As a single sons at

32:57

sound licensing by I at that

32:59

point was that everything. Ah

33:02

I'm as a any complex behavior

33:04

by a computer was that the

33:06

debt a computer couldn't do was

33:08

an intelligence until we worked out

33:10

how to solve it acts as

33:13

it was asset or I was.

33:16

I. Was at. University. There when.

33:19

Computers. Started dating the day the best

33:21

chess players and the wells and ah

33:23

we had to to grapple with. is

33:25

the computer intelligent or is it just

33:28

a better algorithm them with had before

33:30

and we always went down the path

33:32

as not not intelligence which is getting

33:34

better at working out how the game

33:36

works and you're in a one of

33:38

the very says things you do and

33:40

I courses yates he program i'm not

33:42

some crosses ah where were you can.

33:45

You. Can make a i'm ah

33:47

is it varies as as a when

33:49

he's played the game more than a

33:51

few times. Ny amps if you if

33:53

you don't stuff up. I'm

33:56

you'll at least it the worst do

33:58

is a tie com. A

34:00

and you can make a computer

34:02

that is that will never and

34:04

never lose and always win against

34:06

Awake Tire and and he did.

34:08

You can do that in your

34:10

system of of doing any ice

34:12

and you got a cat. Is

34:14

this intelligent know? it's just an

34:16

algorithm sister very supplements sites. I

34:18

sounded interesting the the full philosophical

34:20

side of what is. What?

34:24

Is a I what you? What?

34:26

What is intelligence com am and

34:28

what is just ah is just

34:30

an algorithm? Yeah, and now that

34:32

use. fast forward a quarter century

34:34

ahead and say what I can

34:36

do now, How do you feel

34:38

when you say touch A Pt.

34:41

Barnum question. Ah,

34:45

Let. Me: just got back a little easier our i

34:47

remember I'm. A day and in

34:49

his in them as Sabri. Ninety four

34:52

miles in the office in Malaysia and

34:54

I've been trying for three months to

34:56

get the computer on T am I

34:58

get get my computer on to this

35:01

to seeing our they call it i'm

35:03

jarring which was Malays and net ah

35:05

so getting getting computer onto the net

35:08

he had to guide down light mack

35:10

t C pay from some saying and

35:12

he had a any and get permission

35:14

from the am university chancellor's to connect

35:17

to the net and. So after

35:19

months of work, I finally got

35:21

the computer onto the internet and

35:24

I downloaded. Mosaic

35:26

which was the first I'm browser

35:28

came out of some ah University

35:30

of Illinois ah sites. I downloaded

35:32

that and I'm in Albania. Officers

35:34

the six pm at night ever

35:36

and a gone home and I

35:38

was was busting ago the toilet

35:40

but I'd got. The. Web

35:42

browser up for the first time and bloom.

35:45

Absolutely. Blew my mind. I've been playing

35:47

around and blunt boards for decades before before

35:49

then more than a decade but it adds

35:51

a the the penny dropped of how significant

35:53

this thing. This internet things going to.

35:56

Guide. to buy and this is probably sell with

35:58

a dial up modem absolutely and

36:02

the pages are loading text like

36:04

just one line at a time.

36:06

Yeah, yeah. The images would come

36:08

in progressively, right? They'd start blurry.

36:10

The pixels would just slowly load.

36:12

Yeah. So, yeah, I

36:15

remember that distinctly. And then again in

36:17

November 22, when I first saw chat

36:21

GPT, I had

36:23

the same experience without going

36:25

to toilet pit, where

36:28

I just thought, holy crap,

36:30

everything's changed. And I'd done

36:32

this AI

36:34

major. And the

36:36

professor I studied under most

36:39

for that is now the head of

36:41

AI at MIT. And in

36:44

her class, we all came to the conclusion,

36:46

I think everyone in that AI would

36:48

not happen in any interesting form in

36:50

our lifetime. And when

36:53

I stumbled across chat GPT one

36:56

night in November 22, it was just holy crap.

36:59

This is an inflection

37:02

point where, yeah,

37:05

it's the beginning of an era where

37:07

nothing will be the same again. It's

37:09

funny, isn't it, seeing the wave build

37:12

in some ways. Yes,

37:15

you've seen chat GPT, but

37:17

it hasn't yet impacted. I mean,

37:19

it's going to change everything. I feel actually

37:21

a little bit like I did in

37:24

February of 2020, when

37:27

COVID was coming. And

37:29

I knew enough people in epidemiology to

37:36

know that something absolutely world

37:38

changing was happening. And everybody was walking

37:40

around as if life was normal. And

37:42

I was a chicken little. And in

37:45

a strange way, when everything fell apart,

37:47

and the lockdowns came, and all of

37:49

a sudden, everyone was running around scared.

37:51

And I was kind of relieved because

37:53

I felt like I'm less of a

37:55

crazy person. I've been saying

37:57

the train's coming. Now we're all on the train. We're

38:00

all together. We're going to go

38:02

on this journey and we'll

38:04

survive it. Who knows where it's going?

38:06

Yeah. In some ways I feel like that about

38:08

AI. I

38:10

know that this is going to be

38:13

completely world changing. Nobody else

38:15

quite sees it yet. We talk a lot about it or

38:17

job losses or misinformation or this or that. It's

38:19

going to be so much bigger than that. Now

38:22

I'm just like, okay, let's wait and

38:24

see. Let's wait and see what the train looks like

38:26

at some point in the next few months or two

38:28

years. For three years there's going to

38:30

be a moment where we're going to go, we're not

38:33

going to recognize the world that we're living in. I'm

38:37

still amused that after several

38:40

years of study and some of the best minds

38:42

and we went and visited MIT while

38:44

we were there and we met

38:46

with Marvin Minsky who was one of

38:48

the leaders in AI thinking. We

38:51

all left that major

38:54

with the idea that it's not going to happen in

38:56

our lifetime. Then

38:59

expectations have just been sufficient. Just on that question

39:01

of intelligence though that you were alluding to earlier

39:03

about what intrigued you about

39:06

AI when you were at university with

39:08

this question of if the noughts and

39:10

crosses machine just doing algorithms

39:12

or is there some intelligence there? Has

39:15

your thinking on that? What was your thinking then and

39:17

has your thinking evolved now that you've seen what chat.jpt

39:19

can do? What is intelligence? The

39:22

evolution in my thinking on that

39:24

is not our computers becoming intelligent. My

39:35

thinking is more is many of the things

39:37

that we think that we do that

39:40

are intelligent are not. I'm

39:44

thinking actually that we overrate many

39:48

of the things that we do. We

39:50

think it's brilliant work when we write an article.

39:57

You write an op-ed. Throw

40:00

ten bullet points at chat GPT and ask

40:02

it to write an op-ed and it does

40:05

better than your average columnist. That

40:08

may say something about the quality of our columnist. But

40:11

we would have said not long ago it

40:13

requires a basic level

40:15

of intelligence to write a piece.

40:17

Actually this shows us that a very significant

40:20

amount of what we do is not. There's

40:24

no secret source. Right. The

40:27

AI is piggybacking on the human intelligence

40:29

of all of the op-eds that have

40:31

ever been written. Yes. Which

40:33

is not to say that humans aren't doing that as well. I

40:35

think we do. We all

40:37

do. We spend years piggybacking

40:40

on standing on the shoulders of

40:42

others. I think we're

40:45

coming to a fascinating stage when the

40:47

AIs that we have now have been

40:49

trained on 100% human content. And

40:55

where we sit right now, 99% of

40:58

content being created in the world is by AI. We

41:01

don't see most of it. Most of it's junk. But

41:03

Google's having a hell of a time filtering

41:06

out pages that have just been – there

41:08

are content farms just creating billions

41:10

of pages have been created recently that

41:13

we're not. We

41:15

don't see enough but Google's doing its

41:18

standards to try to

41:20

filter out. But we're getting to

41:22

a point where AI is going to be

41:24

being trained on

41:26

AI-generated content.

41:30

And I kind of quipped the

41:32

other day, it's a

41:35

bit like mad cow disease, right? We're now feeding AI

41:37

output into AI. Right.

41:41

Because mad cow disease was caused by

41:43

feeding cows to cows. They

41:46

put cow matter into the

41:48

feed of cows. Ground-up cows. Ground-up

41:51

feed of cows. So we're

41:53

at this interesting point where AI is being trained

41:55

by humans. Pretty soon AI is going to be

41:57

trained by – well, when

41:59

you – find some content, it's basically

42:02

impossible to work out whether it was generated

42:04

by human or by AI. So

42:07

pretty soon, AI will be

42:09

feeding on itself. Yeah. What happens

42:11

then? I don't know. It's

42:13

going to be fascinating. It's going to

42:15

be fascinating. Anyway, we can delve into

42:17

this for hours. A final

42:19

point about AI before we get to

42:22

the other things that interest me about

42:24

you. There are so many. The ability

42:28

of AI to write a John Grisham

42:30

novel is undisputed

42:33

or will soon be undisputed. It's going

42:35

to be able to write your op-eds.

42:37

It's going to be able to write

42:39

screenplays that are

42:42

just as good as

42:44

an Avengers film. Whether

42:46

or not an AI can ever write

42:50

any haul or Tchaikovsky

42:52

or Proust or

42:55

James Joyce or something is

42:58

another question. Do you believe that

43:00

there's a sprinkle of pixie dust in

43:02

human consciousness that elevates us beyond just

43:05

the integration of information processing or are

43:07

we just so good at information processing

43:09

that we can sometimes produce a Beethoven?

43:16

I've

43:21

gone back and met with some of

43:23

the professors I had at that stage

43:26

and had

43:28

fascinating conversations about what changed.

43:30

Why has there been such

43:32

a rapid increase recently? Significantly,

43:35

it comes down to the amount of

43:38

processing power and the resources, the

43:40

memory that these machines

43:42

have, but also the access to the corpus.

43:44

When we were working on AI in

43:47

the late 90s, you'd download

43:49

a few megabyte file which

43:51

would be a language corpus

43:53

which would be 57 works

43:56

of literature that were all put together in a file

43:58

and you'd throw it to AI and say, learn

44:00

something about language from that. The

44:03

training sets are now literally billions of

44:05

times larger than that and the processing

44:07

speed is billions of times larger than

44:09

that and these things are running for

44:11

months at a time. So

44:14

there's just a step change in resources.

44:18

I think some

44:21

of our pixie dust comes down

44:23

to an order of magnitude more

44:26

– orders of magnitude more

44:29

experience.

44:33

Every day walking down the street we are taking

44:35

in massive amount

44:37

of information and every human

44:40

interaction we have. I

44:42

think AI is still orders

44:46

of magnitude away from having the

44:48

stimulus and training sets that

44:50

we have. But in principle

44:53

it could. I'm talking about

44:55

something truly new, right? So obviously now

44:59

that Tolkien

45:01

has existed, AI is going to be able

45:03

to write Lord of the Rings books. But

45:06

prior to Tolkien ever having

45:09

existed, could AI be

45:11

Tolkien? I

45:13

don't enjoy

45:17

having this view but I

45:19

don't think there's any magic pixie dust.

45:21

I think we

45:25

are an amazing computer or amazing

45:28

computational engine with amazing sensors

45:30

and actuators and that

45:37

eventually if we replicated something

45:39

with similar resources

45:42

and we're a long way off that, then

45:46

we will start to see behavior

45:49

that –

45:52

I just saw open AI's

45:55

Sora demonstration this morning. And

46:01

where we've come in one year from what they

46:03

were doing in AI generated images

46:05

a year ago. Oh yeah, they'll be able

46:08

to generate whole movies on the fly that

46:10

are tailor made to what you want. Yeah.

46:13

So will it be in

46:16

the top 1% of creativity?

46:19

Maybe not for a while. Will it be... So already,

46:23

I think

46:25

the AI

46:27

can do better than

46:30

a lot of us at mundane things

46:32

that we used to think required intelligence. Much

46:35

the same way that we

46:37

solved... Speaking

46:41

of an academic recently, he said that they

46:44

use AI for recommendation letters.

46:47

Oh, yeah. You put in five bullet

46:49

points of what the student did. You throw it

46:51

in AI and it spits back what

46:54

used to take you half an hour to

46:56

do. It will spit out something

47:00

that is completely respectable, useful,

47:05

that both the university administrator and

47:07

the student are both happy with.

47:11

Now, just like I had that flash

47:13

of, oh my God, computer

47:15

can do tic-tac-toe. It's

47:18

just an algorithm. We've come

47:20

to that point with AI. Yeah,

47:26

I want to believe there's something special

47:28

in humanity.

47:31

Yeah, but

47:33

you don't really buy it. In which case, AI will

47:36

exceed our creativity,

47:39

our discoveries,

47:42

our understanding. If

47:44

it can get to us, then there's no reason why.

47:46

And if we give it the resources. Yes.

47:49

By the time it's that smart, it

47:51

may figure out how to get its

47:53

own resources. It's embedded

47:56

in the internet. It has control over power

47:58

plants. Someone

48:01

sent me a link to

48:03

a robotics startup that's working

48:05

on humanoid robots. Our

48:10

next challenge is to

48:12

make sure that the robots are able to

48:14

make the next generation of robots. Uh-oh, have

48:16

you seen this movie? Yeah,

48:19

exactly. I've seen this

48:21

movie before. It's like, can

48:23

we please just have humans as

48:25

the decider of whether we need

48:27

it? Too late. We're

48:29

already generating these things in beta online. I

48:31

mean, I always thought that AI was going

48:34

to be built in a lab, highly secure,

48:36

like the Manhattan Project. Yeah. And

48:39

then there'd be a conversation about how to release it.

48:41

Yeah. And the worry would be maybe

48:43

it'll bribe one of the officials who worked on it. No,

48:45

we're shoveling the results. We're pushing it out there. It's embedded

48:47

in everything. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's

48:49

got access to everything apart from... Yeah,

48:51

I was talking to someone who's working

48:54

with data centers on the periphery of

48:56

the data center

48:58

industry in the US. And 10 years

49:01

ago, a 2 or 10 megawatt

49:04

demand for a data center, that's a

49:06

big number, was a

49:10

big thing. And in the last

49:12

five years or so, 200 megawatts is what the

49:14

big Facebook Amazon... Up

49:20

from what, sorry? From 2 to 200. Yeah,

49:23

in the past year. And then now

49:25

there's a data center company in the US, apparently

49:27

is building two data centers that

49:29

are a gigawatt each and they're motivated. So

49:32

it's a thousand megawatts. So

49:34

500 times bigger than they were a decade ago.

49:38

Yeah, right. And the energy

49:40

demand is coming from

49:42

AI. It's massively more

49:44

energy hungry

49:47

and people are talking very seriously that we're

49:49

going to have to build power stations next

49:51

to these data centers. And

49:55

I just... Yeah, they were

49:57

hard to swallow. science

50:00

fiction films 20 years ago where there were

50:02

these AIs with nuclear reactors at the core

50:04

of them and the hero would go in

50:06

and turn off the nuclear reactor and the

50:09

whole AI would power down and humanity would

50:11

be free. We

50:15

are just thinking, it's not that

50:17

we're not even thinking, oh, how

50:20

do we work carefully

50:22

with this? We

50:25

are scaling up, we are throwing, if

50:27

the AI had, I'm

50:31

not at all saying it has a sentience,

50:33

but it's almost like saying humans give me

50:35

what I need and we're saying, yes sir.

50:38

Yeah, absolutely. Let's

50:40

talk about power

50:42

then and the electricity and energy. This

50:45

is obviously something that motivates you enormously. Where

50:50

did your concern and activism come from? Well

50:57

first, I moved

51:00

back from the US in 2001. Was

51:03

that before or after 9-11? I

51:08

missed 9-11. I

51:11

left the US on September 10th and arrived on

51:13

September 12th. You're lucky

51:15

you were able to land. I

51:18

guess it was happening while you were landing. An

51:21

hour out of Sydney, the pilot

51:24

came onto the cabin

51:28

and said, while

51:30

you're in flight, terrorist threats were

51:32

received against US aviation. Our

51:35

intelligence is that we were

51:38

never in threat, more information

51:40

would be available on your arrival. We thought, what

51:42

does that even mean? That

51:45

wasn't something we thought about at that point. We

51:48

landed and I remember

51:50

there was a form letter that

51:52

United Airlines had that was

51:55

all blank except for the flight numbers. It was

51:57

something that they prepare in event of

51:59

a crash. while you're flying. And

52:01

they had to squeeze two, I think three,

52:04

no two, well it was two United flights.

52:07

They put in the call

52:09

signs and had to squeeze them into the box and

52:11

the media swamped our plane and we had no idea

52:13

why we were of interest. Right and

52:15

just in terms of the timing so that listeners

52:18

who aren't in Australia are aware it

52:20

happened very late at night on the

52:22

11th Australian time. Which means that it

52:24

would have been while you were in

52:27

flight you would have landed at 6 in the morning or

52:29

something and probably it was all

52:31

just still underway. George W Bush

52:33

would have been flying in a

52:36

disclosed location and all that sort of stuff. And

52:39

all the monitors and the fact that the towers had come

52:41

down. Yeah most of the

52:43

monitors in the airport were switched onto the

52:45

news and we had

52:47

no idea. No one was

52:49

sure at that stage whether it was two

52:52

buildings or 20 and there were all sorts

52:54

of rumours. It

52:56

was complete information

52:59

fog. I remember distinctly

53:01

there was a woman checking our

53:06

bags from Sydney down

53:08

to Melbourne was crying and we said

53:10

yeah that's pretty awful.

53:13

And she was crying

53:16

because it was the last day Ansett was flying. Oh

53:18

my goodness. A domestic airline

53:21

in Australia that went bust.

53:24

Wow that's revealing of

53:26

her priorities I suppose. Yeah well it

53:28

was yeah I think a traumatic it

53:31

was bizarre. So we left

53:33

the US wondering

53:36

if it

53:39

was a very tough decision to move back

53:41

to Australia. We thought are we doing the

53:43

right thing hopped on this plane and

53:45

then arrived going thank goodness.

53:48

Who's the we in that stage? You

53:50

already married? Already

53:52

married? We had a Katrina and I

53:54

had a one-year-old. And

53:58

where did you meet Katrina? Actually, I

54:00

met her at Geelong Grammar. Cool. Yeah,

54:03

we were friends. It

54:06

took us about five years to get together and we had

54:08

a long-distance

54:11

relationship as I bounced around the

54:13

world and she did too. But

54:16

we got married in 1997. In

54:20

the States? No, we

54:22

actually got married in Greece. Oh, how

54:24

wonderful. We

54:26

didn't want to drag our Australian friends to the

54:28

US. We didn't want to drag our US friends

54:30

to Australia. So we thought we'll go. Neutral territory.

54:32

Neutral territory. We're pretty. Lovely.

54:35

Okay, so you get back to Australia and then, yes,

54:38

I want to get to present-day politics. Okay, so get

54:40

back to Australia and I started

54:44

working for the family business.

54:48

They gave me a task. They

54:51

wanted to do two things. Bring

54:54

some automation into the business. It was

54:56

very difficult to get staff

54:59

to do a particular job checking the water

55:01

supplies of the – of

55:04

cattle stations because everyone with a

55:06

pulse had been sloped

55:08

across to the mines in Northern Australia and

55:11

it was very, very difficult to staff this

55:14

particular job of where you just hop in

55:16

a car and drive between each of the

55:19

different bore sites and just check that there's

55:21

water for the cattle. You

55:23

do that. It takes you six days to do the

55:25

whole – to do sort

55:27

of three loops of the property. You

55:29

have Sunday off and do it again and they

55:32

just had a real problem with attracting staff who

55:34

wanted to – There was a mining boom at

55:36

the time and there was a lot of money in mining and what he was Yeah,

55:39

exactly. And agriculture just could not

55:41

afford to pay people the same. So they

55:43

wanted me to solve, how can we apply

55:45

some automation with this and some of the work I'd

55:47

done. I'd

55:50

been – we sort of skipped over Silicon Valley but I

55:52

worked in deep tech for nearly

55:55

five years. And

55:59

we also had an – had another problem is that we were

56:01

burning about a million liters of diesel a year,

56:04

a lot of

56:06

it for electricity on

56:08

the stations and was there a

56:10

way? Do you think that they were off grid or they

56:12

just had such high power demands? Both,

56:15

off grid. Water

56:17

is a big thing. One

56:19

station I worked out, I did some analysis,

56:21

worked out it was costing us 18 grand

56:23

a year just

56:26

to keep the grass green. I said to

56:28

a manager and

56:30

he said, worth every penny. What I

56:32

mean is you come in from a

56:34

day at the yards and

56:37

to take your shoes off and walk on

56:39

green grass. For

56:42

the mental health of everyone on the station, he

56:44

said worth every penny. But

56:46

we were wasting a lot of power,

56:48

a lot of diesel for – there are

56:50

a lot of inefficiencies in the system. I

56:53

worked on an energy efficiency project. The first time I'd

56:55

really worked – I've been playing with

56:57

electricity and I electrocuted myself

56:59

when I was two and a half. I

57:02

traded back my fascination until then.

57:05

But I did a

57:07

lot of work on energy efficiency. I did

57:09

a pretty detailed review of whether solar could

57:11

help us at that point and it was

57:14

marginal back in 2002. It was hard to justify.

57:19

You'd have to bring in tons of lead acid

57:21

batteries and solar panels. It cost about

57:23

15 times as much. Maybe

57:26

I should rethink those numbers but probably 30 times as

57:28

much as they do now. So

57:31

it really didn't make a lot of sense. Around

57:33

that time, my

57:35

wife and I built a house in regional

57:37

Victoria on a farm and

57:40

it was off grid. It

57:42

just was going to cost way

57:44

too much to bring power lines in and they would

57:46

have gone across our view. So we

57:49

built off grid and it was pretty early

57:51

for an off grid system. So I learned

57:53

a lot about – And what was the

57:55

electricity supply off grid there? Were you using

57:57

solar or – Solar with lead acid batteries.

58:01

It was going to cost $66,000 for a power line and it cost 50

58:03

grand for solar battery with a diesel backup. The

58:11

diesel backup was, with

58:15

that phase, probably

58:18

a few

58:23

hundred hours a year of diesel

58:26

generator. We upgraded

58:28

the system a few years ago. Were you

58:30

exercised about climate change at this point? What

58:32

was motivating the solar thing that long ago?

58:35

For that, it was just the... Initially it was...

58:37

It was just practical. And you didn't want a

58:39

diesel generator running 24 hours a day. Yeah,

58:42

definitely didn't want that. It didn't make

58:45

sense economically to run one.

58:48

And you want

58:50

the freezer going even when you're

58:52

not there. So it made a lot

58:55

of sense. And it was cheaper to have solar

58:57

than it was to bring power. So I learned

58:59

a lot from that. A lot of teething problems

59:01

in the early stage. The

59:04

supplier of our system later admitted to

59:06

me that we were their first off-grid

59:08

customer. And then he

59:10

joked that we were also their last off-grid customer. So

59:13

I decided it was just too much hassle. So

59:15

get us to the point at which this becomes

59:17

a tipping point for you and essentially a life

59:19

call in. And also

59:21

how you got into politics. Well, when that

59:24

began. If I could...

59:27

If there were probably the most important

59:29

moment for that

59:31

whole journey or the important episode

59:34

was... I

59:36

bumped into a lovely

59:40

but somewhat eccentric Danish builder

59:42

of straw bale houses in

59:45

Dalesford who wanted

59:47

to build a community wind farm. He'd

59:51

grown up in Denmark. And at that stage, I

59:54

think there were 2,300 community-owned wind farms in Denmark. Whether

1:00:00

it was owned by the local council or

1:00:02

farm cooperative or one

1:00:05

of the first offshore wind farms in the world is

1:00:08

in the Bay of Copenhagen and it's owned by a

1:00:10

cooperative of tens of

1:00:12

thousands of Copenhagen residents. So

1:00:15

he had that vision to bring that model

1:00:17

to Victoria and I was just hooked

1:00:19

on the idea as soon as I heard it. He

1:00:23

eventually held – he got a bunch of

1:00:25

people together, project gained – started gaining traction,

1:00:27

held a town hall meeting to decide whether

1:00:29

or not we're really going to go ahead

1:00:32

and do this. I went

1:00:34

in to that meeting thinking I'd be

1:00:36

up for being part of it but

1:00:39

I accidentally came out as the chairman of the

1:00:41

new organisation. Yeah,

1:00:43

I put my hand up that I was interested

1:00:45

and got on the board

1:00:47

and then the board pointed to me and said, well you

1:00:49

should be the inaugural chair. It's like, okay, I've never done

1:00:51

this before. But that

1:00:54

was a really fun project because it was the

1:00:56

intersection of community, capital

1:01:00

raising. We had to raise a bunch

1:01:02

of money to build this. It's a two-turbine wind farm, quite

1:01:05

small now, only four megawatts

1:01:07

but it's owned by

1:01:10

a cooperative of 2000 members and

1:01:12

it generates as much power as the town uses.

1:01:17

So it's –

1:01:20

yeah, so we had to raise a bunch of

1:01:22

money. We had to find people

1:01:24

who – the contractors to build it

1:01:26

and sign all the contracts. There's the

1:01:28

planning system you had to go through.

1:01:30

But there was a whole media and

1:01:32

politics side to it and because it

1:01:34

was a small organisation and being the

1:01:36

chair, I had to

1:01:39

have a part in every – I had to get a

1:01:41

taste of every part of it. different

1:01:44

contracts to sign, to put this

1:01:46

project together and I was a signatory

1:01:48

on pretty much all of them. So

1:01:53

yeah, through

1:01:56

that, I'm Very

1:01:58

excited. Made a lot of really.

1:02:01

Amazing. Mom.

1:02:04

Local. Me: And local

1:02:06

das had residents but people around the country you are

1:02:08

interested in this concept. And

1:02:11

I and it became year was. It was

1:02:13

a fairly significant project of community. Taking.

1:02:17

Ah yeah, rather than sitting back and think

1:02:19

someone should or six as yes of saying

1:02:22

you know what we're going to do ourselves

1:02:24

and I didn't. An incredibly proud so lot

1:02:26

of but a social capital was built in

1:02:28

that and it was at its time. I'm

1:02:30

missing echoes of this now a time where

1:02:32

we are when sounds were controversial than he

1:02:34

was A he was a community embracing it

1:02:36

is yes, in my backyard rather than are

1:02:38

not in my backyard. Arrows So I got

1:02:40

us. I got a lot out of that

1:02:42

hum, got corrupted T to join a lot

1:02:44

of his. Advocacy trips

1:02:47

up to camera. Ah which are

1:02:49

so what made were making it will

1:02:51

guide to make a difference and a

1:02:53

realize that that that kind of advocacy

1:02:55

of of getting a bunch of some

1:02:57

ah. A bunch of people together

1:02:59

and am putting together a report and going

1:03:02

a knocking on doors and camera and saying

1:03:04

hey we've got this Great idea is not

1:03:06

really how change happens. Change

1:03:09

happens by funding independent

1:03:11

candidates to run against

1:03:13

vulnerable Ah politicians. Well.

1:03:15

If you want offseason com.

1:03:19

Certainly I. That's probably the most

1:03:21

impactful saying that had a bad

1:03:23

idea deal about. I.

1:03:26

I I. Was. I was

1:03:28

exposed. What one? It's one of my

1:03:31

favorite sinkers. Ah, in in the public

1:03:33

sphere, Professor Lawrence Lessig he he was

1:03:35

at. Stanford. Now at now at Harvard.

1:03:39

Guys gave her his passing. I've

1:03:41

ever come across him, he he

1:03:43

invented or he came up with

1:03:45

the Creative Commons. Ah concept

1:03:47

where we at which which is

1:03:49

how we manage. A

1:03:52

young them. public

1:03:55

domain ah licensing for content almost

1:03:57

every government report and so much

1:03:59

clinton internet now is not

1:04:02

under a copyright system but under the

1:04:04

creative common system. You can

1:04:07

have this, you can do what

1:04:09

you like with these very clear

1:04:11

constraints or not as it might

1:04:13

be. He revolutionized

1:04:17

copyright in public domain in the

1:04:19

first decade of the century and

1:04:22

he spent most of the last

1:04:24

decade looking at democracy. He's still

1:04:26

very active at working out

1:04:30

where our democratic system

1:04:32

is going wrong. He inspired me very

1:04:34

much with a – there's

1:04:37

a quote that he used to start his presentations

1:04:39

with. It's a Henry David Thoreau

1:04:41

quote that for a

1:04:43

thousand hacking at the branches of evil, there

1:04:46

is but one striking at the root. It's

1:04:50

really encouraging us to

1:04:53

– we

1:04:55

need people to be hacking at the branches

1:04:57

every day but you

1:05:00

need to go to the root problem.

1:05:03

I had been mucking around with advocacy

1:05:05

trying to convince particularly

1:05:08

my local member that they're on the wrong – Who

1:05:11

was your local member? Local member was Josh

1:05:13

Frydenberg. It was a backbencher when I first met

1:05:15

him but worked his way up to being the

1:05:18

treasurer. But I spent a fair bit

1:05:20

of time with him trying to get him to understand

1:05:22

that his party was getting

1:05:24

on the wrong side of history on this –

1:05:26

on energy transformation. Was

1:05:28

he receptive to that message personally? Overall,

1:05:34

I'd say not. No,

1:05:37

for him, the politics were more

1:05:39

important than – the politics

1:05:44

were the purpose.

1:05:47

I spent

1:05:49

a lot of time trying to

1:05:51

change minds and

1:05:55

I got – For

1:06:00

a while there, I was a member of the

1:06:03

fundraising organization that supports

1:06:05

the member for Ku Yong. But

1:06:09

I was ultimately kicked out of that

1:06:11

group after making some critical comments

1:06:14

on where the

1:06:17

coalition in particular, Freidenberg, was going

1:06:20

on energy, making some really big

1:06:23

missteps I thought. And

1:06:27

I... So Freidenberg kicked you

1:06:29

out as a fundraiser because you had

1:06:31

something to do with the approval of

1:06:33

a... Oh, there was a... AGL

1:06:39

had announced that

1:06:41

it was closing the LaSalle Power Station

1:06:43

and the government... Freidenberg

1:06:46

was on the phone to the directors of

1:06:48

the company trying to get the CEO sacked,

1:06:52

trying to force the company to keep the power station

1:06:54

open. When actually the power

1:06:57

station had been slated for closure by the New South

1:06:59

Wales company. And you wrote a piece saying, if it's

1:07:01

going to close, let it close. Well, I wrote a

1:07:03

piece saying why it's going to close, why the economics

1:07:06

and why... I

1:07:09

wrote a piece talking about how... Just

1:07:12

a throwaway line in the middle that for

1:07:14

an accomplished tennis player, such

1:07:17

a simple unforced error was

1:07:19

really silly. Because

1:07:24

Freidenberg was a good tennis player when he was... And

1:07:28

the AGL were never going to say

1:07:30

yes. He also picked

1:07:32

the wrong guy to try to bully.

1:07:35

The CEO of AGL was

1:07:38

American. Young

1:07:40

kid was back in the US. He didn't

1:07:43

have any reverence

1:07:45

or fear of

1:07:48

political leaders in Australia. He

1:07:51

wasn't about to go and jeopardize his career

1:07:53

because he was worried about what the Liberal

1:07:57

Party thought of him. So

1:07:59

he was very happy. Peter to

1:08:01

dig in on the issue. He was always going to win.

1:08:03

So and trying

1:08:05

to get him fired was, was,

1:08:08

yeah, was a

1:08:10

really silly, really silly path forward. I

1:08:13

mean, was it also silly of Freidenberg in

1:08:15

hindsight to antagonise you and boot you out

1:08:17

as a fundraiser since you ended up helping

1:08:19

to coordinate his demise, his

1:08:21

political demise? I'll leave

1:08:23

that to others to connect the dots. But,

1:08:26

you know, it's tough as to say that I

1:08:29

worked for a long time

1:08:31

to try to change minds and then realised

1:08:36

that that was probably hacking at the

1:08:38

branches and inspired

1:08:40

by Lesic who had similarly

1:08:46

started an organisation to support

1:08:49

candidates running on a platform of integrity. So it's

1:08:52

very much inspired by him. I

1:08:55

realised it's much

1:08:58

easier to, you know,

1:09:01

much easier to change the politicians than to

1:09:03

change the politicians minds. Right. How

1:09:06

did you go about doing it? Well,

1:09:09

the, so the community independence movement

1:09:11

started long, long, long before me, and

1:09:13

I'm only a small part of

1:09:16

that movement. You're a lot of its money. I'm

1:09:18

not. Climate

1:09:21

200 was probably, you know,

1:09:26

it was less than half the money in the movement. And

1:09:29

I'm about 2% of the money. Sorry,

1:09:31

by you I meant Climate 200. Yeah. Yeah.

1:09:34

Well, we, yeah. By

1:09:37

now about 13,000 donors behind Climate 200. What

1:09:39

I did is pull, Climate

1:09:44

200 is a bit of a play on the organisation

1:09:46

that I was kicked out of was Ku Yong 200.

1:09:50

So it was, you know, a play on

1:09:52

that. Ku Yong is

1:09:55

the electorate that Josh Wright, that you were

1:09:57

living in the Josh Wright group, was the

1:09:59

member for. exist to perpetuate

1:10:02

the Liberal member for Ku Yong's

1:10:05

climate 200 exists to help pro-climate independence

1:10:12

get into, have enough

1:10:14

of a- Right,

1:10:17

but it was not a subtle jibe. It

1:10:19

was not a- I'll leave it for you to

1:10:21

connect the dots. Look,

1:10:27

I wouldn't have thought to do

1:10:29

it if I- What's that thing

1:10:32

they say in politics? You want

1:10:34

to keep people inside the tent,

1:10:36

pissing out. Not

1:10:39

outside pissing it, yeah. Yeah,

1:10:41

and yeah, so-

1:10:45

In 2018, I accidentally,

1:10:48

and it's a longer story, but got involved

1:10:50

in the Kids off Nauru campaign. The government

1:10:53

had told us that there were no

1:10:55

kids in detention, but at that stage, there were nearly 200 kids

1:10:57

on Nauru. A

1:10:59

significant number of them had

1:11:02

been subject to

1:11:04

abuse. There

1:11:07

were kids as young as 10 attempting suicide, and

1:11:09

all the while the government was telling us there

1:11:11

were no kids under detention. A

1:11:14

very well-run civil

1:11:16

society campaign worked

1:11:19

on elevating the issue. It

1:11:24

was clever because Australians have a complex

1:11:28

relationship with asylum

1:11:30

seekers that arrived by boat. We're

1:11:35

disappointingly all over the map on that,

1:11:38

and disappointingly, a large proportion of people have

1:11:40

really worked up about

1:11:42

that. Almost

1:11:45

no one thinks that kids deserve

1:11:48

to be in

1:11:50

detention just because their parents- However

1:11:55

their parents arrived in the country. That

1:11:57

was a very effective campaign. independence

1:12:00

in parliament at the time who had

1:12:02

the balance of power. It's funny, that

1:12:05

whole nemesis series came and went and

1:12:07

it was never mentioned in that that

1:12:09

for the first six months of Morrison's

1:12:11

tenure as Prime Minister, it was a

1:12:14

minority government. The independence

1:12:17

had a massive win with first getting

1:12:19

the kids off Nauru and

1:12:21

then with the Medivac legislation

1:12:24

that helped medically

1:12:28

vulnerable detainees offshore get access

1:12:30

to medical care. Yeah, bring them to

1:12:32

the main line. So,

1:12:35

in that I had a lot of exposure

1:12:37

to independence, particularly Karen Phelps and

1:12:40

I saw how they

1:12:42

were... Karen was a former head

1:12:44

of the Australian Medical Association and a GP who

1:12:46

went into politics and independent. She

1:12:49

when Malcolm Turnbull resigned

1:12:54

from the Liberal Party after he was ousted, she

1:12:56

contested his seat and

1:12:59

won in November 2018.

1:13:01

She and the rest of

1:13:03

the crossbench, both in the House and

1:13:08

the Senate, did an amazing job working

1:13:11

legislation through the system against

1:13:14

the government's wishes that was

1:13:17

probably the only piece of legislation

1:13:21

that had any positive human rights

1:13:23

impact on refugees in

1:13:25

that decade. So,

1:13:29

all the pieces came together.

1:13:33

I didn't so

1:13:35

much realise that my work

1:13:37

to change from within, it wasn't

1:13:40

a realisation that my change from within wasn't

1:13:42

working. I was very

1:13:44

forcefully told your change from within is not

1:13:46

welcome. So,

1:13:48

I had to have a

1:13:50

door at one point literally closed in my face

1:13:54

to get that message. So, I was stubborn

1:13:56

to give up on that change within strategy.

1:14:00

But it came across independents

1:14:02

who were just a cut above when

1:14:04

it came to integrity. Eventually

1:14:06

you were like, well, all right, if you want

1:14:08

to fight, then let's have a fight. My

1:14:11

theory of change was you've

1:14:14

got a party that is

1:14:16

being pushed further and further to the

1:14:18

right every day through bad advice in

1:14:22

the Murdoch media. There's

1:14:25

no countervailing force pushing them back.

1:14:28

I remember. But aren't they more to

1:14:31

the right now as a result of the independent

1:14:33

insurgents? They're

1:14:38

certainly further to the right. I

1:14:41

would say my theory

1:14:44

of change that they would respond

1:14:47

rationally. I

1:14:53

was wrong. But of course they

1:14:55

won't because you've stripped all of the moderates out of the

1:14:57

party. That's what I want to question. Who

1:15:00

were the moderates that left the party? I'd

1:15:02

say... Well, Jason Falinski, Josh Frydenberg,

1:15:05

Trent Zimmerman. Zimmerman, I'll give you

1:15:07

as a moderate. And

1:15:10

Sharma, maybe. Their

1:15:12

voting records certainly are not flash.

1:15:15

Zimmerman was on the committee. But

1:15:18

let's just define what we mean by moderates. When

1:15:20

you're voting as a government, you're going to vote

1:15:23

along with the government. So your voting

1:15:25

record is always going to be whatever the government is. But

1:15:28

what the government does in the secrecy

1:15:30

of cabinet room is... I

1:15:33

mean in a parliamentary... In a party system, that is the

1:15:35

way that the party works, right? The

1:15:38

Liberal Party prides itself on free

1:15:40

thinking, right? That's slogan.

1:15:43

Yes. That's a slogan. Yes.

1:15:46

But the overall direction of the party or the

1:15:48

government is going to be determined by the... Yeah.

1:15:51

The sort of... The reasonableness of the

1:15:53

members who are... And all the

1:15:55

reasonable ones are no longer there. Well, let me

1:15:58

challenge. I mean, Fryden... didn't

1:16:00

call himself a moderate. He wasn't part of the

1:16:02

moderate faction. He was part of Morrison's

1:16:04

faction. Yeah, but that was not

1:16:06

the hard right faction. Yeah, exactly. I'm not saying it

1:16:08

was part of the hard right faction. But

1:16:13

what's the other faction, if not the

1:16:15

moderate faction? Oh, there were three factions

1:16:17

in the Liberal Party at that point.

1:16:21

No, it's semantic, but no. I mean,

1:16:24

in the battle between Scott Morrison and

1:16:27

Josh Frydenberg, on the one hand, versus

1:16:30

the right, they were perceived as the less

1:16:32

right-wing faction. I

1:16:36

don't know what they call it internally in the Liberal Party.

1:16:38

Yeah, so I

1:16:40

challenge you to give

1:16:43

me an identifiable position that Frydenberg took

1:16:45

on anything. That

1:16:49

would classify him as a moderate. The

1:16:52

moderates didn't count him as a

1:16:54

moderate. He didn't call himself a

1:16:57

moderate. In fact, I find

1:17:00

no discernible ideology at all. Yeah,

1:17:02

I mean, that's fair. Let's say

1:17:04

that being an

1:17:06

ideological right-winger is

1:17:09

better than being a highly ideological. Sure, sure,

1:17:11

sure. I mean, I think he was... I

1:17:19

mean, leave Fry to the side and just talk about the

1:17:21

fact that the dynamic that

1:17:23

happens when you... almost

1:17:26

by definition, one's ability

1:17:28

to get

1:17:30

independence to win in conservative

1:17:32

seats depends on the running

1:17:35

in conservative seats where the

1:17:37

voters are going to be most amenable to

1:17:40

not voting for a conservative. Therefore, you're going

1:17:42

to take out the candidates,

1:17:44

the members of parliament who are...

1:17:47

if you don't want to call them moderate,

1:17:49

then you can at least call their voters

1:17:51

moderate because they're the electorates where by definition

1:17:53

an independent could win. In a

1:17:56

hard right seat where voters are super,

1:17:58

super right-wing, you couldn't do... what you

1:18:00

did because it would be hard to convince anyone

1:18:02

not to vote for it. What did I do?

1:18:07

Well, I replaced moderate members of

1:18:09

parliament with independence, replaced moderate members

1:18:18

of the ruling government

1:18:20

with independence and therefore allowed Labor to win.

1:18:26

Labor would have won anyway, wouldn't they? No,

1:18:29

Labor won enough seats in their own

1:18:31

right to govern. In

1:18:34

the context of the teal wave. If

1:18:39

the teal wave hadn't happened, Labor still

1:18:41

would. Let's say every one of those

1:18:43

seats, every one of them. Maybe, I'll

1:18:45

go and show that, but either way,

1:18:48

the Conservative Party would be more full

1:18:50

of moderate. I think there's definitely, it's

1:18:53

a form of survivor bias here. Climate

1:18:56

200 supported 23 communities at the 2022 election. We

1:19:03

didn't start any of the campaigns. We had

1:19:05

nothing to do with the selection of any

1:19:07

of the candidates. We

1:19:11

stood back and these groups rose

1:19:14

up. What

1:19:16

does that mean? How

1:19:18

did they rise up? This

1:19:21

movement started back in really

1:19:24

about 2012 with the Up

1:19:26

and Indi in Northern Victoria. To

1:19:28

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