Nights with John Stanley

00:07 Across Australia, this is Nights with John Stanley. 00:12 Good evening, everyone. Welcome along. Seven minutes past eight is the time here on this Wednesday night. We've got, of course, seven minutes past seven, the time for those of you listening to us through Queensland. Some of our network stations are with us right now. You may be listening on the app. You might be listening on a smart speaker or wherever you are. I hope it's all going well for you. 131873 is the number one of our favourite NewsHour guests joining us shortly to cast an eye over the news tonight. And there's a few fascinating stories. I will also mention this. But if you're listening around Rockhampton, we've had this Singapore Airlines flight. 00:46 There was drama this afternoon, ambulance services, a whole range of emergency responses with an aircraft making an emergency landing at Rockhampton Airport. It has landed safely. We'll bring you more information on that as we go through the night in relation to that one, which has happened at Rockhampton. There's also a fascinating story. which I've kind of been wrestling with just in the last couple of hours. This is to do with power prices. You've heard this through the day. This is an outfit, one of these outfits which does predictions, and it's called Reistad. 01:23 And I actually went to their website. They've got a whole heap of stuff there, big reports, and they are suggesting that Australian power prices are projected to nearly double. By 2029, you've heard this through the day, they're saying wholesale electricity prices will surge up to $110 per megawatt hour from where they are now at $60 per megawatt hour. And when I heard that story, I thought, well, I think it was only a matter of three weeks ago. 01:52 that it was reported from the same place, Reistad Energy, that the price of power in Australia's main electricity grid has fallen to one of the lowest levels in any advanced economy. This is the wholesale price, not the price we're paying. 02:07 wholesale price of course that's got to flow through to the prices that we pay they're saying for instance that uh the the victorian wholesale price is way down but australia's wholesale power price uh in australia is right down significantly down and then so i kept reading that one and i was looking at the story today and you read down the story and it it there's a there's a fair bit of sense to it because this is one of these global energy analysts and what they're saying is that if we're going to close the coal-fired power stations and then we're going to replace them with renewable energy. 02:49 Because there's so many batteries now around the country, people have got batteries at homes, suburbs are covered with solar panels, so the wholesale price has come down. 03:00 And so a lot of the people that have got these plans to build renewable energy, wind in particular, but also solar, and they're going to invest a lot of money, ultimately you invest because you think, well, this is my return. 03:14 And now they're looking at the wholesale price coming down because there's so much stuff in the system, solar and batteries, and they see how many people in their own homes are effectively off the grid. 03:26 Well, what is the market for us? Who are we going to be selling to? And if prices are too low, we're not going to be able to invest. So all these investments are being slowed. 03:34 by these companies and so they're not going to come online. The coal-fired power stations at the moment are slated to go. You can only imagine they'll have to be kicked along. They'll have to be. 03:46 That's why, even though wholesale power prices are slow down now, that's why they're forecast to go up. And there is a fair bit of logic to all of that. The question is, are you going to get a rational and honest exposition of that from anyone in the political world? I'm not sure. You might want to talk about that. 131873 is the number. And just on politics... 04:12 There's a little story popped up in the Sydney Morning Herald just in the last hour or so that there's an internal blue happening within the Labor Party in New South Wales over pre-selections. There's a couple of aspects here because I'm thinking, well, the election's next March. 04:28 They're a minority government. They want to hang on to government. They're leading in the polls. But the position is just a little bit shaky. 04:38 And there are quite a few pre-selections that have occurred just in the last couple of weeks where captain's calls have been made. 04:46 Premiers intervened in a couple of cases, said, yes, I want this person here and that person there. 04:51 And you then look at all that and think, well, what is going on here? 04:56 In terms of the Labor Party and Chris Minns, I mentioned this last night, decisions such as putting off any action on e-bikes, there's a big, big issue there. But if you try and fix it, it could make it even worse. There's an election coming up in March. We're seeing a lot of signs that they're very worried and they're trying to make sure they're putting out any brush fires. 05:16 The New South Wales Labor government, And so all the attention is going to go on them for that election next March. And I think that this might be another little sign that things are perhaps not hunky-dory behind the scenes in the New South Wales government as it tries to work out what challenge it'll face at the election next year. And there'll be people who'll be throwing stuff at the radio if I even mention the word sandpaper. Imagine if I was doing an ad for sandpaper down at the local... 05:46 No, I'm not. I'm not. 05:49 But people got entrenched positions on all of this with Usman Khawaja now cancelling his book tour. He's put a lot of stuff in the book. 06:00 He doesn't want to talk about it publicly. 06:02 And a lot of people I know, I look at it, there are people who are saying, oh, why did he take so long to answer it? They obviously haven't even read the posts that he's made about all of that. He's talked about that. 06:13 And so people do take these entrenched positions when it comes to him, but maybe some of you... who don't like Uzma Khawaja you might like him better because he's teed off on Malcolm Turnbull in his book apparently and Malcolm Turnbull's now hitting back because Malcolm Turnbull he said bought into the whole issue the day after it broke and he said he's a bloke that doesn't know anything about cricket and we knew that because we went to the lodge there and he showed he knew nothing about cricket which wouldn't surprise anyone And so he says he should have kept his nose out of it. So that's where that one is. 06:46 We might play a couple of bits of that for you as well as we continue to move through this next hour. 131873 is the number. There's a lot to talk about tonight. But if you've got something you want to say, you can give us a call. 0460 873873. We have also had, I think, a week-long conversation about David Jones. Confirmation today that about half of their stores are going to go. A lot of people are going to lose their jobs. I'm not sure who's in charge of all this, whether it's a bean counter, someone that understands retailing. 07:17 But I think when you hear the people woven into the conversation, the people that say, if you really want to try and turn David Jones around, why don't you just go and turbocharge the customer service? 07:28 Say, we're going to stand out. We're going to go back to what we've always been absolute professionals. Blue chip customer service, really good customer service, hire more staff, put more staff on the floor, and then you could marry that with an absolute turbocharged delivery. Their online isn't bad, David James. Make it turbocharged. Promise we're going to get it to you in an hour. Do it like that. 07:51 Invest some money in that and you may get enough goodwill to keep the place going. That's just my thought. Some of you listening to it might be shaking your heads and thinking, thank God he's not in charge. 08:01 131873 is the number. I think that might work. At a quarter past eight, seven in Queensland. 08:07 Eighteen past eight, past seven, if you're listening to us in Queensland. Of course, it is the 11th of November. It is Remembrance Day. I paused at home today at 11am and there was a certain, I know because of everything we're going through. 08:26 It felt a little more profound. And every year that goes by, I remember when I first began this, one of our colleagues had a line about, and he often used it on Anzac Day, that if those people that went to the Great War, the war that was meant to end all wars, could come back and have a look. and survey the place and be going, what the hell's going on here? 08:47 Not many lessons learnt. We need to, I mean, lest we forget the people that served, the people that went in the name of our country to fight wars and the people who we owe it to, lest we forget the mistakes of the past before we keep mistaking them. that maybe one day we won't have to send people into what amount to meat grinders. Remembering that they described the Ukraine front with Russia like a meat grinder, a World War I meat grinder, and they're losing tens of thousands of people in this grisly war. 09:19 They're saying potentially every week or every month the numbers are just... 09:24 131873, I did make a quick observation there, and it was kind of tongue-in-cheek, just on David Jones. 09:32 Greg already saying, you want DJs to spend more money on staff and service. Don't you think they've already entertained that thought? Maybe if they did it, the overheads would have been unsustainable. They might have gone bankrupt 10 years ago. That's fine, Greg. The only thing I'd say, we all assume there's really smart people. 09:47 running all these things. 09:49 We assume there are smart people, for instance, running Qantas, where they've just sent a whole lot of jobs over to India, essentially to organise AI to replace those positions. And to me, that's a really dumb thing, a really dumb thing to do. And I think the idea of Turbo-charging customer service, really fast deliveries. 10:11 I still think it could work. Our news hour guest is Jamie Rogers. Now, Jamie, you've done a lot in your time. I don't think you've worked in retail. 10:18 I actually haven't. I've never worked in retail. 10:21 But the idea is everyone's got an idea because you go and you see what you think would work and what people would embrace. 10:27 Well, I think they were very much lacking, David Jones, the customer service aspect. And this has been widely covered. But you would walk into one of their shops and be looking around at all the empty desks to try and find someone to help you. And I can't tell you how many times I went in there and ended up just putting the product down because I couldn't be bothered to keep waiting. I like your idea about the turbocharging, the delivery, but that would cost a fortune. Of course. You always hear about how much Amazon loses with their delivery services, but it is a good idea. But you know what they should do? 10:57 I'll tell you what I thought was so smart, and David Jones probably should have jumped onto this. Target joined Uber Eats so that if you forget a birthday present or something, you can quickly jump onto Uber Eats and the Uber Eats driver will deliver your product. So perhaps David Jones should have jumped onto that service rather than having their own. 11:14 Well, Harris Farm operates through Amazon, right? So you can buy stuff from Harris Farm if you're an Amazon Prime member. So I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, and it turns up on your doorstep the next morning. 11:23 Yes, it's very fast. 11:24 It's incredible. So that's what they're competing with, David James. 11:28 But there's nothing like going into a physical shop. I still love going into a shop and actually looking at products, seeing it in your hand so that you know. Because if you buy stuff from Teemu, you see those hilarious videos online where when it arrives, it's a carpet with the wrong stitching. Yep. the wrong faces on different products or it's a teeny weeny little shirt, but it should be a lady size. And so it's nice going into the shop. So I really enjoy that. But I think also with David Jones, it came up a lot during the week that one of the starts of their decline was their Christmas windows last year. 12:00 Remember they did the Dalmatians instead of doing the traditional Christmas windows. It's that sort of stuff that people think, what are you doing? And end up going elsewhere because there's lots of options. 12:10 See, if I was in town, I wouldn't even know if the food hall was still there because that was iconic, the food hall. And you'd almost walk through it and go, oh, it's a bit rich for me. But you almost look at some of the food because it was amazing the way they do it. 12:22 It does seem a bit, though, as well, David Jones. It is also probably a sign of the times because David Jones is of the more high-end brands and people don't have the same discretionary spend that you can go walk in and drop a couple of hundred bucks on a dress or a top or whatever it might be. So I think that he's also an indication of... Yeah, right now. And I think David Jones also have their own issues, but I definitely think that it's a sign of the times. 12:47 22 minutes past eight, past seven in Queensland. Very quickly, I'll just mention a couple of things here. People don't like my idea about David Jones. Also, I made a reference to... 12:58 I often have the trigger warning when I mention his name. I won't do it now. Malcolm Turnbull, politician commenting on cheating is laughable at best. So I'm getting that... Thank you very much. That is funny. Thank you very much for all of that. 13:09 And plenty more as well. John's business advice is about as good as his sporting tips, at least his consistency. So fantastic. All right. If someone's got a lot of money and wants to give me a department store, I reckon it could work. But I want to try it with someone else's money, not mine. 13:28 131873 is the number. There's a lot to talk about. I've mentioned energy prices. There's the housing issue as well. But just on raw politics, the New South Wales government. Now, I actually thought pushing this decision on e-bikes, and I think it's one of those ones that doesn't really get as much publicity. I look at the news sites tonight. But then you raise it on the radio. I know Drive Time, James Willis in Sydney, he was getting so many calls. These powerful e-bikes are everywhere. 13:57 Yep. 13:57 But if the powerful e-bikes are everywhere and parents have bought them for their kids and the government's thinking about introducing a law where they're not allowed to use them, you think the government's thinking, you know what, let's put this off till after the election and hope it goes away because we don't want to have another controversy that we're dealing with that we might stuff up. 14:15 I think it's actually disappointing that the government hasn't done something when they've had the chance. This was back in February. 14:20 They've had a whole year. 14:21 They've had plenty of time to sort out this problem because we are hearing so many stories. It was on 2GB today or yesterday where grandma rang in to talk about her five-year-old grandson that was hit by an e-bike and this poor little boy had his legs snapped and is in a cast and is unable to walk and the mum has had to pay for all of the... hospital fees and the specialist fees and they don't think this little boy will be able to use his leg for the foreseeable future because of all of the issues that's going on and that e-bike rider he just went off he didn't even stop to make sure the little kid was okay and so you hear these stories over and over and over again John and even just walking down the street they come flying on the footpath and And you can tamper with the different speeds even though you're not supposed to. 15:07 So I think we should have been putting legislation in around this a long time ago because back when I ran for Warringah, John, that was last year, it was an enormous issue around our area that people kept saying, please, we have to do something about e-bikes. And a lot of people were suggesting things like having registration plates that are linked to the parents or something so that there's insurance because if you hit someone... They're not insured. So there's just so many issues, John. And I think it's really disappointing that the Labor government, the Minns government had an opportunity to do something about this. 15:42 And instead, they've chosen to wait until after the election. 15:45 Yeah. And look, I think this is the third Christmas that I've talked about it here. 15:50 about these things are being sold and we're going to be slamming the door shut again after the horse has gone. Another Christmas comes, a lot of them get sold and they have said when they make a change it won't be retrospective. 16:02 So they're all out there. They're everywhere. They are an enormous, enormous issue and we need to be taking it really seriously because you hear horror stories of children and because a lot of them don't wear helmets as well. So it's like driving a motorbike without a helmet on. 16:16 I know. It's incredible. Now, just on the broader position here, because we've got the Victorian election coming up. I've said this repeatedly. We can sit here and talk about where One Nation preferences go all day, but we're going to have the whole of Victoria compulsory preferential. We'll then be able to see in early December where the preferences went, the One Nation votes. We know it would be 70%, 80%, 90% to the coalition. We'll be able to actually see it in real time. And then we get to the New South Wales election where it's much more problematic. Mm-hmm. And I saw this story this evening that a whole lot of pre-selections are being done only now by the Minns government. 16:53 Some of them seats they hold. And there's questions about it being a captain's pick and there's no democracy. That's what they say about One Nation. And One Nation can say, well, you're exactly the same. 17:04 Well, it's interesting because in that article I know that you're referring to, it's in the SMH, where someone who is within a Labor branch have spoken on the condition of anomalies so that you can't know who they are, have said... 17:19 The Labor's always out there talking about the monoculture of One Nation and specifically using that word about monoculture, monoculture. And they said it's actually all just a presentation because we are just as bad internally. They said Labor are doing the exact same thing that we are a monoculture. So this is internal Labor people that are coming out and speaking and blowing open the lid of the fact that Mins is... doing a captain's call on a lot of the winnable, all currently Labor-held seats, and it's just really disappointed a lot of people within the community who would have liked to have put their hand up and had the opportunity to run. 17:55 And I think it's important. You want to be able to have a say of who your candidate is. And that's how you get people to get out there and support, how you get your volunteers, because that'll be the next issue that Labor has is if... Minns has made these captain calls, they might not have the support of the branches so no one will come out and hand out flyers or go door knocking or stand with these candidates. 18:16 You're a member of the Liberal Party. You ran at the last federal election. But I'm looking at the coalition's position in New South Wales. And when I was looking at the stories tonight, they linked to a previous story. This is on the Sydney Morning Herald website. And they linked to, and this might have been the last time their polling did it, preferred New South Wales Premier. And I looked at it. Chris Minns, 27%. Kelly Slane, 15%. Mike Newman, 8%. Now, Chris Minns has been Premier for nearly four years. 27%. 18:45 So, I mean, the three quarters people don't know who he is. 18:50 Kelly Sloan's, she's not that far behind. 18:52 She's not. 18:52 I reckon Mike Newman might have picked up just the last couple of months. There's a big opportunity, isn't there, for the coalition to harness, particularly in metropolitan areas, the constant calls we get from people saying, gee, we wish we could vote on Anthony Albanese now to turn it into a referendum on him. 19:09 Well, I actually think that's what it's going to be. That's what we're going to see, unfortunately, for Chris Minns. 19:14 And that's what Chris Minns is worried about. 19:16 And he should be because, unfortunately, they are tarred with the current Labor brush of Anthony Albanese and the disaster that is happening around our economy and housing. There's just – everywhere you look right now, John, and if any of your listeners disagree, please let me know, but I feel as though everywhere you look – It's going wrong. And so that will reflect on Chris Minns. And we're also seeing that in the polling in Victoria where Labor, Ben Carroll, is now one point ahead of the Greens and down the level of what his predecessor was. 19:48 And so it is a reflection of what we're seeing in the wider country. It's going to be interesting regarding Chris Minns because if you think about the past four years, what has he achieved now? 20:01 He's a nice guy. 20:02 Well, he's opened a lot of projects that were started by the previous government. 20:05 But that's what he's done. He's cut the ribbons. 20:07 And I think it's one thing to go out there and cut the ribbons and celebrate, but it's another to actually have the vision and the boldness to actually go and start a project like what we've seen with the Metro, which is a sensational piece of infrastructure. But you need to have some political willingness to want to go and actually be bold and do something like that. It's easy to go and cut the ribbons. but you need to go and do something else. And we're not seeing that. 20:34 We did see a lot of praise for the Powerhouse Museum attached to a comment. Well, we got that wrong. 20:41 And the extension of the Metro as well. So these are things. The reason I mentioned that there was another story talking about some of the seats that are being targeted, seats like Penrith and then going further over the gun buyback. where it's being targeted. There's a group, they're calling themselves, it used to be the Shooters and Fishers Party, but they've got a broader name now. They're targeting a whole lot of Labor seats, but they're not going to win seats, but they figure they can pull enough votes off Labor as optional preferential, and those votes could go across to One Nation. 21:11 And so a lot of those seats, just on that issue, which he's decided to embrace, he can't back down on that one now. 21:19 Which is why it's also really strange that in today's paper is that article about Labor blocking the bid to scrap the renewable cut mandate. So the coalition, this was that wild idea, John, a couple of weeks ago that Penny Sharp was introducing that all of the cafes, very small ones, were exempt from this policy. But they had to provide a reusable cup to the customer at no additional charge to the customer or had to fall back onto the cafe. Now, there was a lot of backlash, and rightly so, about the cost and the coalition were calling to scrap it. 21:55 And then Chris Minns said, yeah, look, we got it wrong. We're not going to go ahead with it. And then they had the chance today to be able just to scrap the legislation and Labor voted against it. So I just find that extraordinary. So Chris Minns is having to constantly put out these ridiculous fires. Yeah. When instead he should be focusing on his campaign. 22:15 And just on that one, I mean, things like the recyclable cups don't come in until the middle of the year. So you just change the recyclable cup that you're selling your coffee in. 22:24 But the fact that, I don't know, if you went to a cafe, I mean, I've got keep cups. I sometimes take my keep cup and I usually make it at home. But I wouldn't go to the cafe and say, can I get my coffee in a keep cup and drink it in the keep cup and give it back? 22:39 You don't give it back, I don't think. You keep it and then just keep bringing it back. 22:42 Because where do they store all these? That doesn't make any sense. 22:45 But this is the problem, John. It wasn't properly thought out. 22:47 That part of it is ridiculous. 22:49 It wasn't properly thought out. And you face fines. Businesses face fines of more than $100,000 and individuals $22,000. So they had the chance to stop this. 22:57 They've got all these little things, haven't they? They just build up. 23:00 But the problem is you don't need to have another example of government red tape at a time that businesses are already doing it really tough because, again, this is something that the coalition can go hard on leading up into the election just to remind people of some of the policy ideas that Labor are putting forward. 23:17 All right, let's take a break, come back in a moment, because I think it's very interesting. And once we see what happens in Victoria, we've said quite a bit here that if the coalition win outright in Victoria, it's going to give it quite a fillip. And that can tend to say, give it some... 23:30 The momentum. 23:30 The momentum and also the legitimacy. In the same way that when people started seeing the One Nation vote climbing in the polls, people who've always thought, oh, I don't like the two major parties, suddenly thought, actually, if I say I'm going to vote for them provisionally, that's going to make a difference for the first time. So people start to see that, okay, I can actually have some effect by parking my vote here with the coalition, if they can get that message across. 23:58 Kelly Sloan might have a better chance than we think. 24:01 And I think Kelly Sloan is doing well. I heard her with James Willis on Thursday last week, and they've got good policy ideas. It's just getting the cut through and really prosecuting their messaging to ensure that people know what the options are. Because I also have said previously, I thought Mike Newman was a very good selection by One Nation because he was all about finances. So that when he had his announcement of being the New South Wales leader, there was no discussion around immigration. It was all about how to bring back productivity in New South Wales and very, very finance focused. 24:34 I thought that was smart on the One Nation perspective. But it is just getting your messaging out there and being really strong and not backing down. 24:42 A couple of quick comments here, and we'll take a break. We get to the other stories that have been talked about all day. Get your perspective on those. But someone's saying here, because always people hear this, and we try here to go through the news of the day. Perhaps we do it slightly differently so people get a different perspective. But you're always welcome to raise other things. I do say, though, here, other than the regular news and the war, views on, it says, dogmen, skinwalkers, werewolves, UFOs, aliens. This is all on, you can find it on YouTube, I'm assuming. 25:13 So anyway, look, I'll go and have a look. There is plenty of stuff. 25:16 Sorry, that was a topic that we should be talking about, UFOs. 25:18 I don't know. I don't know. 25:21 I'm always open to that stuff too, so send it along because it's always interesting. 25:26 If you are one. Also, they say One Nation's a one-man band. Liberals are the same with Kelly Sloane. It's true. You don't know who the others are, but really, how many, apart from Chris Minns, do you really know too many others? I don't know. No. No. And that's why I found that interesting, preferred Premier, he's only got 27%. So there's a lot of people... 25:47 Sitting on the fence or maybe just waiting. Also, the Liberals aren't doing themselves favours. With all the MPs that are leaving. 25:56 Yeah, I mean, just in a couple of cases, I mentioned this last week, there's the old thing the continuous call team uses, call people trenches. You wouldn't want to be in the trenches with you. Some of those people deserve that. Your colours come through. I mean, to go at that time is terrible. 26:09 Well, it's not fair on the person that comes in after you because you haven't given them enough time for the community to get to know who they are. 26:16 That's right. 23 to 9 to 8 in Queensland. 26:20 131873 is the number. Look, one of these notes from Tommy here saying Chris Minns will probably argue the high New South Wales debt and interest expense is why they've reduced debt-funded construction projects. They did say that. They said that the previous government, and I know I spoke to Labor people who are expected to win that last election, and they said they've created a situation where it's going to be really hard to do anything else because they've packed the place with these projects. But the projects, I just think, you know, they're long-term issues 26:50 city state building projects aren't they especially if we're continuing to build multiple apartment buildings we need to be also planning the infrastructure around these because we've got to think about the future generations and the quality of their life they're all going to be jam-packed with no means to be getting around properly the traffic's going to be horrendous schools are going to be they're already beyond capacity so if we're not building enough so i just think we need to be bold and planning long-term projects yep 27:17 Now, the situation today, this outfit, and again, I mentioned this earlier, Rijstad, and I'll deal with it in a moment. You've got something to say about this. But Rijstad's the consultancy that a few weeks ago said our wholesale power prices are close to the lowest in the OECD. And I looked at the numbers, and that's true. But that's one of the reasons why they're able to project today that our wholesale prices could double by 2030, which is extraordinary. Yeah. 27:44 It is extraordinary. And this article is talking about how we're shutting down coal-fired power stations at a double rate than what we're building renewables, which just doesn't make sense. When you're shutting down reliable power generation before you've got a sufficient replacement capacity operating, it's just this basic supply and demand that's now lacking. And, John, I actually a few weeks ago came across this article in the Japan Times, and it literally has as the heading... 28:12 energy transition of australia is a warning to the rest of the world we have become the don't be like australia because of our energy transition and this article was going into detail about how we are turning off our baseload power before finding a replaceable a suitable replacement for it and ultimately that's then that could cause issues with blackouts and high prices. And let's not forget, we were supposed to have $275 off our power bill, John. 28:43 And now it's looking like it's going to climb from $60 to $110 per megawatt hour by 2029. We have to start saying, when do we get to a point where accountability, where is the accountability within this? There's promises that have been made to Australian families and to Australians. There is never any form of accountability. It's just, oh, well, we'll just keep... asking the taxpayer to pay more for our mistakes. 29:08 Yeah. What's intriguing, because I saw this, I thought, well, the wholesale price, and the question then is, because the wholesale prices have gone down to really low levels internationally, our wholesale price, and it's not surprising because so many people got solar and wind during the day and a lot of batteries coming in as well. So I look back at the story, same outfit, Reistad, And in the story, it says this, where the cheap market prices mean investment cases don't stack up. So if the wholesale price is going down, the people who are setting up to invest in either renewable energy or even upgrading the old coal-fired plants to keep them going, they're going to go, what are we going to be selling our power for if the prices have gone down to this? 29:51 So they're actually pausing their investment. I guess you could almost say... that maybe goes all the way back to when we privatised the whole deal, because if you're not relying on market forces, you just say, OK, this is what we have to do. But it's not being done. It's not being done. 30:06 No, it's a mess. And when we look at the renewable energy scheme, and to your point about the projects that have been announced and then those that aren't going ahead, there's already 27 of the close to 110 projects. 27 of them have already said, we're not going ahead. It's too expensive. It's not feasible. 30:25 They're not going to make money out of it. 30:26 No, because it's also so expensive for the construction aspect of it as well. And within this article is also the COP31 co-presidency... 30:36 costs of how much we are paying so originally we were told it was 150 million which is outrageous in itself and within that's that 32 000 spent on coffee over at the cop 31 guess how much it's now projected to which is in this article 250 million dollars There you go. $250 million. That's a lot of money. Think about what we could be building with that. 31:01 Back to our point talking about infrastructure projects. 31:03 That could build a few hospitals and schools. It's a lot. 31:05 You compare it, say you've got these renewable energy projects that are being relied on to fill the gap by 2030, but it's investment. being invested and they don't really know what they'll be able to charge for their product imagine if you had a similar situation let's say a company like trans urban uh when you were trying to flog the uh all the toll roads if they were told okay this is how much we're going to charge you but we can't really tell you how much the tolls are going to be in the future and they go we can't do it as opposed to yeah guess what the tolls keep going up and up and up every year with index and you're going to make an absolute fortune they go thank you very much yeah So, you know, dear me. 31:44 All right, so you've just got to explain these things to people and be honest with them. 31:50 Well, I think we need to reassess this whole energy transition, John, and the government needs to get out of their stubbornness and lift the moratorium on nuclear so that it can at least be part of a proper discussion because we can't have a proper debate when one of the energy sources has a ban on it. Just lift it and see what the market says. Let the market decide. 32:11 Yeah. 32:12 Because countries all around the world are going down that path, and yet we are not. And we have some of the largest uranium stores in this country. 32:19 Not to mention all of the creatives in Australia at the moment are in a panic because Anthropic and some of these other big outfits are saying, well, we're going to stop pouring money into data centres in Australia unless you lift your copyright restrictions so that we can use all these creatives' work to train our AI. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a hard one too. Well, yeah, but the government can say no. Well, no, because we're one of the few countries that are actually welcoming them in. And then once they come in, they're going to be wanting power as well. 32:50 Well, this is where we need to figure out the data centres because there's no way that they're going to be able to be powered on renewable energies. That's right. They are going to be sucking as much energy as possible, which is why they need their own little small modular reactor that could sit next to... 33:05 The racetrack that you want to use the racetracks. 33:08 I wanted to use racetracks that are the regional rural tracks that have got acres and acres and acres of land that aren't used that often. Put some data centres out there that they're not too close to homes either. 33:21 So the whole premise of Snowy 2.0 is based on receiving a high spot price in prime time. So that's just delayed and delayed and delayed. So you've only got to – well, the CEO reckons they are going to get there. But we'll be here in – You know what? 33:36 They don't have any reason why to get there because – Labor removed their KPIs of having targets and what time to finish. So they have no reason to finish this project at all because they will continue to get paid. They have no KPIs. So it doesn't matter if they continue to build for years and years and years. It doesn't impact them. So I just think, John, this is going to be a project that is just going to continue to chew up taxpayer money. 34:00 Yeah, fascinating. We will be here in 2029, and then we'll either be reporting on its opening or going, what the hell's going on here? 34:08 Oh, it's still 60% done. 34:10 Still 60% done. At 13 to 9, let's come back in a moment. We'll just go to the housing issue, but I also want to talk about, there's a bit of North Sydney news. Of course, you're on the board of the North Sydney Bears, but they're very much in partnership with the new bears that are coming into the competition next year. Very much under the radar, I think, the bears, because of all this stuff about Papua New Guinea. But they will make a big impact. 34:31 They will make a huge impact. 34:33 I knew you'd say that. I knew you'd say that. 12 to 9 to 18 Queensland. 34:38 131873 is the number. Jamie Rogers is with us. She is our NewsHour guest tonight. We've got a couple of things to look at. The housing market, it's gone. Of course, we know the bottom's fallen out of the housing market today. Quite a shift. There's been a shift in the proportion toward people who are taking out loans for new properties, but for residential investments, that's gone right, right down. We've seen prices coming down as well. 35:08 And people really don't know when the bottom is going to be reached with all of this. 35:14 It's really concerning, John. It's incredibly concerning. And the figures, new investor loans have fallen more than 30% in just a single quarter. And it's the largest quarterly decline on record. 35:26 That's the number of loans, yeah. 35:27 Yeah. But what's really concerning as well is... The Commonwealth Bank has said that it's the highest rate of mortgage arrears in six years. So whilst we're seeing less loans going out to investors, we're seeing property prices falling, but it's also then the number of people that can't service their mortgage and the concern for those who took up Labor's 5% home deposit scheme are potentially heading into negative equity. So these were the warning signs that were told right at the start when these changes were coming in. 36:00 But the government knows better than the experts and continue to go ahead. And this is what we're seeing. 36:04 It's a bit of a challenge, though, isn't it? Because we're a long way away from the next election. A bit of a challenge for the coalition because we've got prices. We know prices have gone up 400% in the last 25 years. So ridiculous. Prices just exploded. To the point where they were ridiculously overpriced housing. So now it's coming down. Nothing like that. It's coming down. And everyone's been talking about making housing more affordable. So how do you then respond in a policy way to what's happened? 36:31 Because if you respond in a way that says, oh, we're going to make sure house prices go up again, well, they shouldn't really go up again. 36:37 They haven't, from what I've been hearing of what they're all saying, it's more that the coalition is going to scrap the changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax. 36:47 But if that happens, they were what was pushing it up. 36:49 Yeah. So they haven't openly said they're going to push it up. So that's the issue. 36:53 Because then you say, well, you want house prices to go up. So then the question then is, are the young people going to say, well, I actually want to use negative gearing and ride the wave back up and go back up 20% and then the next generation can worry about it. It's an intriguing question. 37:11 It's a very tough question, John. You're absolutely right. And how we solve this issue. The problem is, is the home is people's biggest asset. So, it's often their nest egg and that's what you can then use to go and retire. So, you don't want to be seeing this enormous crash. And especially for those people that have just purchased a property. 37:31 That's right. 37:32 Which I think is just so frustrating that Labor would have known that they were going to be implementing these negative gearing and capital gains tax changes and still went ahead with the 5% deposit scheme, which just, yeah, interesting. 37:45 But then it's also going to be a problem for renters because if investors aren't taking out loans and investors aren't buying properties, then that's also going to make the pool even shorter and smaller for renters and that's already an enormous issue. That's going to be a problem. All those issues. Problems. 37:59 All of those issues. 37:59 Also, we just need more supply. Let's cut the red tape to ensure that it's easier to actually build some properties, and that would also help. 38:06 And a lot of resources, inputs, and builders, where are they going into? Data centres. Data centres are really at the middle of a lot of debates at the moment, I think. 38:20 Someone in politics is going to really latch onto it the way they did in the States and some of the, like in Texas, the Democrats. 38:27 We do need to find the right way to make this work because data centres can bring a lot of investment into your area. 38:36 You just want to make sure that it's done in a way that it's actually not going to impact the lifestyle of those that actually live there. 38:42 Yep. So someone's saying here, this is the point, something worth $660,000 and seven years ago is now worth $1.4. We've had a big increase. Huge increase. In fact, Anthony Albanese's investment properties in Marrickville, I remember people were talking about the place up the coast. I'll tell you where the real story is. 39:01 The increase in prices in places like that, which is ludicrous. So it couldn't keep going up like that. No. So anyway, look, we've only got a minute left here. North Sydney. Now then, red and black number plates coming out, are there? 39:15 For my plates. You know how many of you see people drive around with their sporting team? Well, it's Perth. It's Perth, but it's for New South Wales residents. There's issues with the WA government. But in New South Wales, if you're a Bears fan, jump onto my plates and get your Perth Bears number plates. So give your fellow drivers when you see the Perth Bears a honk and show your support. 39:36 Well, I'll say it for you because I know so many people who, and in fact I've got a mate I'm seeing on the weekend, loves the Bears. And they keep saying, oh, I've never really been interested since the Bears left the comp. This is their chance to get back in. And they can have their Bears number plate. 39:49 They can have their Bears number plate. You can buy them now. They went on sale already. 39:53 All right. Very good. 39:54 Bring on 2027. 39:55 You better have one in the car downstairs, I hope, soon. 39:58 I've actually ordered some. Good. All right. Yeah, I have. So you just wait. I'll be able to show you. 40:02 Thank you, Jamie. Your show on News 24 Sunday night. Sunday night, 7 o'clock. And we'll talk again very soon. Thank you. 40:07 You will indeed. 40:08 Got the news coming up nine o'clock. After that, we will have Cars with Trent and so much more. 40:19 Across Australia, this is Knights with John Stanley. 40:24 Good evening, everyone. Welcome along. If you're listening to us in Queensland through 4BC or our network stations, it's just after eight o'clock on a Wednesday night. I hope it's going well for you. And if you're listening in Queensland through the app, smart speakers, welcome along. We've got people listening right across the country just after nine o'clock in the southern states. If you're with us for our news hour, we'll be Interesting conversation. We touched on the housing issue a little bit. A lot of it's been discussed right through the day, but I've got a couple of thoughtful contributions on that, which I'll get to shortly. Also, if you are in Sydney, New South Wales Police are telling us there's a police operation underway around... 41:01 Canley Vale Road near Torrens Street at Canley Heights. There's a heavy police presence. So there's clearly been a serious incident there. This is at Canley Heights. And so a few of you have contacted us as well to ask what's going on. So there's a fair bit happening. Police operation underway. It's Canley Vale Road near Torrens Street at Canley Heights. heavy police presence there's an operation underway as we speak so as soon as we can give you some more information but by way of explanation for those of you in that area you may have been hearing a lot of activity uh that we are across it and we'll let you know exactly what's happening in that area as soon as we can 131873 of course is our number if you've got something you want to share with us 131873 0-4-6-0-8-7-3-8-7-3. 41:51 Wednesday night means we do this. So let's go first of all with this one. 41:58 And now on Nights with John Stanley, Drive. 42:09 Yes, Trent Nikolic, of course, he's our weekend broadcaster, but he's still our motoring editor. And before we bring him in, let's have my theme as well. 42:26 Yes, Wednesday night and you've got a question for Trent, a comment, an observation, something you'd like to run past us, you can simply get on the phone 131 873 and talk to us or 0460 873 873. Of course, if it's a sensible question, the sensible one will answer the question. And that is Mr. Trent Nicholas. Trent, good evening once again. 42:48 Good evening, John. Good evening, everyone. How are you, mate? 43:10 This is in Sydney, $2.7.9. But I'm told you can find it cheaper than that if you look around. So they are tracking down right now. 43:22 So, oh, yeah, I can see $189.9 at one of the metros. That's right. $199.7. So they have come down, which once – well, there was a time, wasn't there, where we thought that those numbers were high. 43:35 Not that long ago. 43:36 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, not that long ago. I mean, yeah, I reckon I was talking actually to a couple of people about this not long ago. I reckon we were sort of around the $1.40, $1.50 mark when we thought it was about right. Then they went up to $1.70 at one point. We thought that was a bit too high. And then, of course, into the $2 is just crazy. But yeah, I think sort of somewhere around $1.50 a litre broadly would be palatable, I think, to most people, John, it's fair to say. 44:04 Yeah, I think so. I think that's right. And in the end, I guess anything helps. And I know there's a lot of truckies listening to us. And I think over the last three weeks, we've had several truckies call different parts of our night show when they're on the road, moving between capital cities. And I think it might have been the duck that asked the question the first time on a Friday night. A fellow had just filled up and he asked him how much he paid and it was eye-watering. It was eye-watering. 44:28 It's big anyway, but it was bigger than usual. It is big. Yeah, it is big. I say to people all the time, John, please don't look at the price of fuel and then go and make a rash decision to buy a new car or a more expensive car based on the price of fuel right now on this day, this month of this year. In real terms, over the long haul... fuel is effectively still the cheapest thing that you put in your car. Really, when you talk about bang for your buck, compared to the registration, the insurance, tyres, servicing, all of those things, fuel and the repayment on interest and what have you if you're borrowing money to buy it, fuel is still the cheapest thing you put in your car. 45:10 So when someone says to me, I'm going to go and spend $15,000 more than I was going to to buy an electric vehicle, for argument's sake, because fuel's expensive... I say to them, how long would it have taken you to have spent $15,000 extra on fuel? That's a hell of a lot of petrol you've got to use to justify the cost of the EV that you've bought. So if an EV suits you or an expensive car suits you, by all means do it, but don't do anything rash just because the price of fuel is high. 45:37 Yep. Look, that's very, very good advice. If you've got a question at all, 131 873 is the number. Any questions at all, there's a bit of news around. And look, I'll throw some news in right now at 12 and a half past nine or eight in Queensland. On Friday night, I'm continuing my series of OnlyFans where I talk to fans of various sports and we've moved away from rugby league. And so this week I thought, what about motor racing? And I thought, I don't think I know anyone who's a bigger fan of motor racing than you. So I've got you into the studio. 46:08 And look, I just wanted to give people a taste of this because I said to you, I've never asked you where it all began. And, for instance, I loved our conversation a couple of weeks ago with Mike Tomalaris, who's Mr Cycling, who brought the Tour de France to Australia. And Mike was a big soccer fan, got a job at SBS, and they got him to cover one of the Commonwealth Bank Cycle Classic. And he said, I got into it, and that's how I started. So I thought, well, did Trent get a job as a motoring journo? And that's how it started. 46:38 But, in fact, you tell me that you're... 46:43 Just because I can hear the whole story on Friday, your mum was a petrol head. And I'm saying that in the nicest possible way. And so when mum would drop you off at school when you're what, five or six primary school? 46:56 Five or six, I think, kindergarten or year one. Yeah. Okay. And she would drop you off in what? Yes. 47:03 in an xw gt falcon that she was trying and and how how noisy is a v8 is noisy rumbling noisy obnoxious yeah noisy obnoxious wake up the neighbors kind of car that um my mum generally drove faster and harder than my father did i remember my my father always used to say to me your mum's a lead foot she's more of a lead foot than i am absolutely just 47:26 incredible no i i just i just i just wasn't expecting that and it's one of the most enjoyable conversations i've had so well we've known each other a long time and we've never talked about that you'll have to have a listen to it it's on friday night and then we're going to put the podcast up where there's it's there's a lot more details it's such a good story but i would urge you to listen on friday night for this man's because there's a lot more there's a lot more where that came from quite incredible 131873 is the number. Let's go to Frank, who's called in. 47:57 Hello, Frank. 47:59 G'day, Nick. John, how are you? Good, mate. 48:02 That's good. Listen, quick question. Nick, P-Planets are restricted with V8s and turbo cars. We've known that for years, right, since I was on my P's years ago. But with some of these EVs being so fast, and I mean... incredibly fast. Even the base models can probably match a V8 from the 70s and 80s. Is there any restrictions on Pupil's driving EVs? 48:26 Not as yet, no. I think there'll be a power to weight situation that will come in and I think they're going to have to do something about it because you would have heard me say many times before that even a slow electric car is fast, right? So even one that's slow is still genuinely fast. The reality is that that means then that P-platers are potentially going to be driving pretty quick cars. The really fast ones are already on a list that they can't drive. 48:59 But I think what they're going to have, so for example, things like an Audi e-tron GT or a Porsche electric vehicle they can't drive. But I think they're going to have to start looking at other things because there are SUVs that are ridiculously fast as well. So all of that's going to have to be taken into account in the same way that once upon a time A 1.6 litre turbo might have been acceptable for a P-plater to drive, but then they went, hang on, they're actually pretty quick and pretty powerful, even though they're a small engine. You need to really assume that outside of the basic electric vehicles, pretty much all of them are fast, and it's something that they need to talk about. 49:36 Yeah. But isn't it an example, Trent? And we talk about it in broader terms about, well, for instance, e-bikes, because now they're putting that off into the distance. They're still trying to work out how to regulate them. Meanwhile, they're just being sold hand over fist and more and more of them in the community. And all these things where they say, oh, yeah, we'll sort that one down the track. But the EVs have been around for a long time. And when you gave me a lift a couple of years ago in one, And if you're in a quiet street, you tap the accelerator and it just goes boom. 50:11 Yep, exactly. So I'm just looking at the updated list for New South Wales because the other complexity, John, is that every state is different, right? So I'm just looking at the updated list for New South Wales and under review, for argument's sake, is the new Mazda 6E and the new Mazda CX6E. Now, 6E is an electric sedan, CX6E is an electric SUV. So they're under review. But already on the list is Zika 7X, Zika 009, which is a people mover, a couple of the Volkswagen IDs, Tesla Model 3, Model Y, they're on there, Subaru Solterra. 50:45 There's Porsche, as I said, Macan, Cayenne, Taycan, all of those, obviously. Any of the fast stuff is on there, but things that you might not have thought, like a BYD seal is on there, a C-Line 7 is on there, the performance versions of them. But as I was saying, they're going to need to continually update this list because what You might look at a car in a dealership and go, oh, that looks like a small SUV. How fast could it be? But if it's electric and it's got two motors and all-wheel drive, it will be crazy fast. 51:13 Yeah. All right. So, Frank says here, I know for sure that Haval H6 plug-in hybrid EV four-wheel drive is P-plate band in New South Wales. They go by power to weight. So, there's... 51:24 Yeah, they usually go by power to weight. The thing is, though, what's going to be interesting, why they're probably under review, some of them, is because the weight of an EV is a lot heavier. So the power to weight ratio will be out of balance because the car's a lot heavier. What they might do, though, is start saying, well, we don't really care about that. It's the fact it makes too much power full stop. So I think they'll be looking at that and updating it as we go. 51:47 Constant request we have here. We've been doing it for years. We're getting this message and it seems to just coming through on a regular basis. Michael, increasing number of new cars, especially the EVs, know they have a spare tyre. How adequate are the repair kits? 52:02 How adequate are they? Yeah. Look, the problem is they're hit and miss. So I've had people who have used them and said they're absolute rubbish and I've had people who've used them and said they're okay. I would not want to rely on one to go any great distance at any speed. So if you can do a tyre repair kit and run at 40 kilometres an hour to get 10 or 15 or 20 k's home, great. But if you're between Wagga Wagga and, you know, hay... 52:31 in new south wales and you've got a big stretch of 100 or 110 kilometer an hour country road i wouldn't be doing it you you go up or down the coast queensland new south wales whatever it might be you're you're going on a two-week holiday you go to your normal camp place you arrive there and suddenly your tire's gone yes you've got the repair kit but rick is and and you're not anywhere you're gonna be able to replace the tire anyway are you no that's a lot of those areas this is the 52:56 Yeah, this is the other problem too. A lot of these electric vehicles have got very specific tyres that are big, they're very expensive. Certainly in regional areas, you wouldn't be expecting these tyre shops to be stocking large numbers of these tyres for every different type of EV that's on the road. So what's going to happen a lot of the time is the tyre shop's going to say, we can get you one, but it's going to take 24 hours, 48 hours, whatever it might be. So you could be stuck somewhere. It's why I always say, John, and I've said this to your listeners before, It doesn't matter whether it's electric or otherwise. 53:28 If you've got any vehicle that doesn't come with a spare, buy a spare from the dealer and put it in the boot when you go on a long road trip and just accept the fact that it takes up space. Your other option is, and we've spoken about this business before, I've dealt with them back when I was at Drive. It's a business called Road Hero, and you can go to roadhero.com, and they've basically got a space saver spare and jack and removal kit to suit every type of car. So you can just buy that. 53:58 So the space saver, so I've got the space saver on my... Yeah, that's right. So I put the space saver on, you can go, what, 70, 80? Is that right? Up to about 80 k's an hour normally, yeah. Say I'm a couple of hours away and I've got a certain type of tyre and the only tyre I can get at the local Jax or whatever is a different brand. I don't really want to do that. So what do I do? Can I drive home on the space saver? 54:21 You can, but don't go over 80 k's an hour. 54:24 And it doesn't matter if you go for the whole three hours at the 80 k's. 54:27 Yeah, that's right, exactly. So if you're in Brisbane and you're halfway to Sydney on a road trip and you get a flat and you've got to put your space saver on, you can leave it on, but you've got to do 80 k's an hour. 54:37 Yeah, and probably the thing to do, stay in the left lane, put your terry-toweling hat on and hope for the best. 54:42 Well, you would, wouldn't you? Yeah, put a Mr Magoo sticker on the back windscreen and away you go, yeah. 54:46 Let's take a break because you've got some news, and I've been doing this with you for a long time, so I've caught up now. I know GWM, BYD, Leap Motor. I know a few of the Chinese brands. I'm looking here. There's more of them coming, so I'm going to have to get my notepad out. You're going to teach me a few more. 55:05 They just keep coming. They keep coming. At 22 past nine or 18 Queensland. 55:10 A lot of feedback coming in for Trent Niklich, as always, when we talk cars every Wednesday night. 55:17 I think this is somebody who obviously would find EVs boring. 55:21 I reckon you're in that boat. Says here, can you even do a controlled burnout in one of these new EVs? Going 0 to 100 gets boring eventually. It does. Yeah, it does. He says, there's a few messages here in a row. He says here that they're more than capable of doing it, but they just won't do it really. These are the burnouts. 55:41 I yesterday, John, as I'm often caught doing when I'm not working, I yesterday went to a business and I'm going to be passing their details on when we have people trying to sell things. very valuable old cars. But I walked into a business that had a showroom full of 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s muscle cars, classic cars, just beautiful stuff, beautiful stuff. I could have been there for two days looking at cars. And I said to the guy who owns it, I said, I guarantee you in 30 years' time, we're not going to walk into this warehouse full of Teslas and electric cars and just rabbit on about how great they were like we are these cars. 56:20 You're just not going to do it. It's like, It's like looking at a bunch of 30-year-old fridges going, gee, that Westinghouse is amazing. You're not going to do it. They're an appliance. They've got no soul. They've got no character. They're all very much the same. And they're just a tool to get you from A to B. You're an old romantic. You know what? 56:35 I'm thinking about another part of the conversation we had. Look, I've got to save it for Friday night. And then we might talk about it next week. Because some of the – honestly, your love of cars is astonishing. Yes. And actually, really. Tragic. 56:49 No, not tragic. I loved it. 56:51 So anyway, that's coming up and we'll talk about it next Wednesday. Someone's saying here, this is Dave. If your car didn't come with a spare, you buy a spare. How do you ensure it's safely secured in case of an accident? Well, if you've got it in the boot. 57:05 Yeah, you tie it down. You've got to tie it down in Wednesday. in the boot. 57:07 Of course, you've got tie-down points. I know a bloke who's got a custom-designed British-made golf unit that sits in the back of his vehicle and he straps it down to give it some security. I've seen it strapped down. I know that it is. You know that. I have a 2007 Corolla, a full-size spare. Took me 10 minutes to change it the other week. That's from Victor. So, well done, Victor. 57:32 That's why you got one, Victor. Good on you. You know what? One night we might have a tie-changing competition. Mate, I've got you covered in that, don't worry. Really? Yeah, of course I do. You might be surprised. I'll have a trolley jack in the boot and a cordless rattle gun. You might be surprised. No, no, no. 57:46 It's got to be the old... No, seriously. 57:48 All right, the tyre brace. It's got to be the old manual... 57:52 What do they call them? The cross... Yeah, yeah, cross brace. I'll give you a five-minute head start. 57:58 Cross brace and the manual jack, okay? And they've got to be identical. And we'll do it downstairs and we'll record it. And we might even do it early next week if you're in here, okay? All right? Yeah, all right. Very good. I got you covered. You might be surprised. I wouldn't want to drive one of those tiny spare tyres from one side of Wagga to the other side of Wagga. Mark's at Wagga, surprisingly. There are far too many potholes already here. That's a very good point. Yeah, Mark's right. 58:25 Yeah, some of the roads are pretty bad. 58:27 A shame we haven't got Maynard here, but you can help. Oscar Piastri, is he split from Mark Webber's management? 58:32 He has split from Mark Webber, yeah. There's something going on behind the scenes. So basically, look, a lot of what... Mark Webber's been advising Oscar Piastri well before F1, right through F3, F2, and then into F1. What Webber did with him when he made that masterstroke of getting him out of the Alpine contract and into the McLaren contract was genius, right? So Mark and his wife have done a very, very good job of managing Oscar. At the start of this season, after how last season ended, Mark said, I'm going to be in the background a bit more. 59:04 I'll be less visible at race weekends because I suspect what was happening was everyone wanted to talk to Mark because they felt like they might get an answer out of Mark that they might not get out of Oscar. So Mark didn't want to make it all about him. So he took a step back at the start of this season. But something is going on behind the scenes. Oscar's had a stinker of a season. He can't get his head around the car. He's been slower than Lando everywhere. His teammates won three races. He's won none. Hasn't looked like winning one. Hasn't been a great year. And something's going on behind the scenes. 59:35 But he has split with Mark and there's been no mention of who his new management company is. 59:39 Okay. All right. There you go. You got the straight answer there. And look, just very quickly, because I've got a lot of messages from listeners here which want to get through, but I do try and find a different angle on stories. You don't hear the same old junk on our show. I like it. Yeah, I like it. So last night I was referring to golf balls last night, so I'll ask the same question of you. Could you use some sandpaper on one of those Formula One tyres to... You know, to get a little bit more traction on the road. 60:10 Well, yeah, let's just say if Australians were doing it, it'd be fine because the excuse would be everyone else was doing it. So that's the first thing. But is it legal? It wouldn't be legal, no. You're not allowed to mess with the tyres at all. Really? No, no. For this sort of reason. 60:25 So if they saw someone with some sandpaper in their pocket who was changing the tyres, there could be a big stink. And we know it happens, of course. It happens with golf. It happens with motor racing. If someone sees someone doing the wrong thing, they're immediately on the phone dobbing them in. 60:39 You've got to dob them in. You've absolutely got to dob them in. I mean, the F1 cars are put into what they call Park Fermé after qualifying and the race, and their tyre pressures are monitored to make sure they're not too right. 60:50 See, I said that as a joke. I didn't realise that you can't... 60:53 you can't touch anything the tires no way wow okay no way all right like they're even you know when you see the part of the car that's hitting the road and there's sparks coming off it at the start of the race there those components are measured at the end of the race and if they've worn down too much it's because the car's got too much downforce and then they get booted out so they even look at things like that and it could be a millimeter and you could be in trouble 61:17 But if you're in one of those, what is it, NASCARs, is that what they call? And they go on the oval track. So in that, which direction do they go? Say you're constantly turning left, right? Turning right. So you're constantly turning right. Well, you could sand the inside of the car so it naturally has, you know, the... 61:37 The best cheating in global motorsports been done in NASCAR. There was one bloke who built a car that was like a 90% scaled version of the 100% one. So it was just small enough to be more aerodynamic and lighter, but not smaller enough that you would notice it. And then another one, they said that you can only carry a fuel tank that has 80 litres of fuel in it, for argument's sake. So what they did was they hooked the fuel tank up to the roll cage and they could carry another 20 litres of fuel in the roll cage. And they said, well, you only said the fuel tank had to be 80 litres. 62:09 You didn't say we couldn't carry more fuel somewhere else. Yeah, brilliant cheating in NASCAR. 62:13 Brilliant. There's a whole story about cheating in sport. Yes, it's great. Anyway, let me go to Peter, who's got one for us. Hello, Peter. 62:22 How you doing, boys? Good, mate. 62:25 I couldn't drive a NASCAR if you had it in a roll cage. I'd smoke. 62:29 Well, they used to smoke in the old days, mate, during the race. 62:33 I know. 62:35 Your tongue sounded like Clinton Maynard, actually. Listen to that. 62:39 Four clicks out of a job. 62:41 Yeah, with his Formula One reports. 62:44 I go out bush, right, and I've done me tyres. I've had flats, and people, campers come around and say, you've got a flat tyre, and by the time we come back, I'll fix it. I'll put it... 62:54 Is it legal? You're allowed to put a plug in the tyre and do that or not? 62:58 Oh, mate, Peter, 100%. When you're in the middle of nowhere, when you're in the bush, when you're in the outback, you're basically allowed to do whatever you need to do to safely get yourself to the next town. Yes. My understanding is these days a tyre shop won't plug a sidewall or a tyre themselves. They don't do that themselves often. They'll do it in an emergency they prefer not to. I've had tyre shops take the tyre off the rim and patch it from the inside like we used to do with bicycle tyres back in the day. I've seen them do that. But as a general rule, mate, yeah, to get yourself safely out of trouble. 63:32 I've done all sorts of dodgy stuff with tyre plugs out in the bush when we have problems when we're off-roading just to get safely into a town. So, yeah, no problem. 63:40 All right. Good on you. Thank you for that, Peter. And the fellow that rang before, I know he's doing it deliberately. I'm pretty sure calling me Nick. Calling me Nick, yeah. Because as I say, I think he's hoping you start up a tape like I've got. But anyway. 63:52 We've got a running joke on the weekend just because one bloke called me Trev, not Trent. I know. It's incredible, isn't it? It's a running joke. What I might do when they call me by the wrong name, I'll just call them by the wrong name. I'll make up a name for them. 64:03 Okay, these things can last a long time. Yeah, I know they can. How about this one? This is from Jeff. 64:08 Here we go. I was driving our tipper on a rubbish run today. 64:12 I saw a bloke on a vintage six-cylinder Honda motorcycle. Looked like he was heading for the old Pacific Highway. His smile was bigger than Luna Park, and I was jealous. 64:21 Absolutely. 64:21 Was he wearing an old sort of... 64:23 I can imagine him with an old... An open helmet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Leather one, like the old... Fighter pilot. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, those old... Look, there are a few classic motorcycles you can ride that are more enjoyable than an old six-cylinder Honda. They're just a thing of beauty. So I'd be smiling from ear to ear as well. 64:40 I can't believe this. Dave says he's up to bringing in his HQ for the Wheel Change Challenge. We might do it in a couple of weeks, all right? 64:46 We're not changing other people's tyres, Dave. That's not the point of the exercise, okay? We've got to change our own tyres. 64:52 So I do mine. Yeah. Well, hang on. You've got about 10 cars. Which one are you going to bring in? 64:56 I'm going to pick the easiest one. Exactly. The lightest one to get up on the jack and the one that's got four wheel nuts instead of five. 65:02 All right. Well, I've got my wife. 65:05 I've got a choice of about five, all right? 65:08 Yeah, yeah. We'll see what we can do. Just on the question of the new brands coming in. So I mentioned, I was joking before, BYD, Leap Motor, there's Jayku. There's a whole heap of them. I'm getting my head around them. Now, Chang'an. 65:26 This is a big Chinese company. I've heard of it before. It's the first I've seen it. Chang'an. 65:30 So Chang'an is one of the last big – it's the last of the big four. So the big four brands out of China. 65:36 So Chang'an is launching with Depal and Nevo. 65:42 Are they the two brands? Yeah, that's right. So Depal was already in Australia, and it was being brought in and sold under a separate importership. But basically Chang'an, which is the head company in China, has said, we're going to take it over – and it's going to become Chang'an Australia, and it's going to be Depal Australia under that, and Nevo Australia under that. So think of Chang'an like General Motors, and then think of Depal and Nevo like Chevrolet and Pontiac. So basically there's a parent company, and then there's all the brands underneath it. Where it starts to get really confusing is basically... 66:15 By the end of the next 12 months or so, so once you've had an 18-month stretch, a brand like Cherry that started as Cherry, but it's now Cherry, Emoto, Jayku, Leepass as well, it'll have nine different brands in Australia, which is all part of that Cherry conglomerate. Nine. 66:33 It's crazy. 66:34 All right. Just here, Henry Smoky Unic had the 7.8 scale NASCAR. That's it. Smoky Unic. Yeah, that's right. There's that one. Yeah, that's right. Piers Morgan's having a go at us over the sandpaper thing. It's embarrassing. This is, of course, Piers Morgan, who always lords it over Australia. 66:51 On the rare occasions, they do well in the cricket. Well, the thing Piers Morgan needs to do is talk to the English cricketers about learning how to play cricket. Exactly. Australia, we might have cheated, but English can't play cricket at all. So get that sorted. 67:03 I mean, there's a problem with Piers Morgan. He's got probably the most successful YouTube show in the world. He does. Because he has everyone on there. So you'll watch one episode and you'll go, you hate him because he's expressing an opinion you don't agree with. And then the next thing, he's saying something you do agree with. 67:17 So he's got this broad range of opinions, which is fantastic. It is. It's good. And he seems to speak to everyone. So I don't mind plugging his show because I think it's pretty good. But if you want to watch it, not while we're on, please. Or Trent. Yeah, exactly. At 22 minutes to 10, 9 if you're listening to us in Queensland, that situation I mentioned for our Sydney listeners, this situation at Canley Vale, this is a big operation. 67:45 The police helicopter's involved. 67:47 Now, the area's been locked down. Local streets have been closed. So, look, we'll give you some more information because the suggestion is there are people on the run. Yeah. 67:58 There may have been a man seen with a gun at the Canley Heights Hotel. And so this is happening as we speak. So if you're in that area, there are a lot of police. 68:09 There has been, we've got police helicopter, at least one person still on the run. We'll get some information for you as it comes through. But there are unconfirmed reports. There may have been something happening at the Canley Heights Hotel. I only mention it because any of you in that area, Just be alert. 68:26 And that's what's happening. It's quite serious. We'll keep across that one for you. This is in Sydney at 21 to 10, 9 in Queensland. 68:34 Seven, ten and a half minutes to 10 to 9 in Queensland. That situation at Canley Vale, I mentioned a moment ago, 2GB's traffic guru, Will Bottoms, on the line with us now. Will, sketchy information, but it is very serious from what we do know. 68:50 It is, yeah. We believe that there's a message being passed out from the Polair helicopter, which has been overhead over the last couple of hours, that there may still be armed defenders on the run. So it looks like there's an incident that's taken place inside Canley Heights Hotel, and we have unconfirmed reports that there may have been someone with a gun sighted inside the pub. So obviously that sparked a... massive police operation. There's a lot of local police that have responded straight away and they've now been backed up by tactical police resources including the Bearcat. Obviously police with their guns drawn. 69:20 I'm told that there may have been one person who's been under arrest but they're still looking for others. So if you're in that area, it's around Di Lee's office and around the Canley Heights Hotel. If you're in that area, there are some local streets that are shut down at the moment and we have information to suggest that they're still looking for some others. 69:38 OK, good on you, Will. Thank you very much for that because it's important. And as Will was saying, and I think normally you might say, well, it's an unconfirmed report about what's happened in the pub. But given that you've got police overhead, you've got a heavy police presence, there are roads being blocked off, it's worth at least warning people this is a serious situation so they can exercise caution anyone in that area and you know what is happening there at Canley Heights. That's just near Torrens Street, as you heard earlier. from will we'll keep you in touch with that and let you know if there are developments at 16 to 10 9 in queensland trent nicklech is here we're talking cars and that let's go just quickly just on wheel changing in my wife's car got a wheel changing kit which has a 12 volt nomadic car jack and a 12 rattle gun to remove wheel knots my daughter could change tires when she was 16 that's from dave so those are those kits which do it all really quickly 70:31 Yeah, they set it all up for you. You just buy the kit and everything's in there. And Dave, I love the fact that you taught your daughter how to do it when she was 16. My sisters both know how to do it. 70:41 And I think it's important that they do because young blokes as well, but typically it always used to be the young girls that weren't taught. I think they need to be taught because we don't want them stranded on the side of the road. 70:51 Yeah, another one here. See a lot of young men standing next to a vehicle with a flat tyre on the phone, maybe to the NRMA. 70:57 Bloody oath you do. I can't help but think, just change the tyre. Yeah, absolutely. I see a lot of young blokes and I shake my head. I think to myself, how do you not know how to change a tyre? It should be really simple stuff. When you get a car, the first thing you should do, locate the jack, locate the wheel brace, work out where the spare tyre is and make sure it's got air in it. It's pretty simple. 71:14 You'll like this, because I think there's a punchline here you'll like, actually, Trent. Miles, we're considering purchasing an EV, not for green reasons, but to take advantage of the lease and tax benefits, allowing us to purchase a good car at a cheaper running cost, servicing energy. Understandable. And a petrol hybrid alternative. But we still have our manual V8 for fun, so we've got the best of both worlds. There you go. 71:35 So we've got... Usually you and I are the butt of the punchline, but I like that punchline. That's a good one. 71:40 All right. 131873 at a quarter to 10, quarter to nine in Queensland. You were working at Wheels Magazine as well, Paul. Paul's asking, but you're now our weekend announcer across the network. You still do work in the motoring area. I call you our motoring editor, so I hope I'm... 71:56 Yeah, you unofficially called me the station's motoring editor. So, yeah, that remains. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still doing all the car stuff. 72:02 Yeah. Now, news, of course, that you're going to enjoy bringing us. Europe may be watering down its 2035 ban on new petrol and diesel car sales. 72:11 surprise surprise surprise surprise they were enforcing rules that would effectively ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in europe in 2035 they've been voted down so it's not all sorted yet but basically what's happening around the world is manufacturers are starting to lose money trying to catch up with what they're demanded to do in regard to building electric vehicles people aren't buying them in high enough numbers and it's still a very cost ineffective way to do business outside of the Chinese manufacturers so in a lot of countries in Europe you've still got people saying hey we drive long distances or we tow caravans we drive across continents you know people from Germany drive through into France or into Italy or wherever it might be people drive big distances in Europe and so not everybody in Europe wants an electric car either and I think What you're seeing is governments who've done stupid things and put stupid mandates on things with a time point that was never going to be achievable are starting to say, we're going to have to have a look at it. 73:10 We might have to step back from it. So they were the 2035 ones for Europe. 73:14 I'm not going to hopefully get into an argument here because I've just noticed a message here from Brian from Fairfield. What's he got? Now, he's talking about the benefits of reversing into a driveway for child safety, pedestrian safety. Now, I go back, it was probably over 10 years, and I was working on the same station as Steve Price. And Price, he had, I think it was a public holiday, he had a three-hour shift ahead of him, and he found a council that was mandating that you had to reverse into your driveways, and so he thumped the table and was pretty angry. And in the first five minutes, someone's rung up and explained why it's safer to do it that way. 73:50 That's right. 73:50 And I heard it and I thought, gee, that makes sense. And I've gone into him after the break and I said, gee, that's stuffed your program, hasn't it? No, I'm going to ignore that and keep going. Because you needed something for the public holiday. How unusual for him. But anyway, I've always, because I now reverse into my driveway because I've got a carport, because when I drive out and we drive straight onto the footpath, I can actually see what's coming, if there's a little dog coming across or people. 74:16 It's infinitely safer. It's logical what Brian said. way safer i i i have a habit of reversing into every car parking spot shopping center we're on a driveway whatever it is yeah yeah if you can reverse in reverse in absolutely yeah all right very good thank you brian i i think it's just worth repeating you think it through and he's talking particularly about kids because kids if they see a well they see the front of the car and they instinctively go to the back because the car moves forward and then if 74:43 Well, think just of yourself as well, John. So just think of the logistics. You get to your driveway and you've driven to the driveway. You can see around you that there's nobody on the footpath. There's no kids on bicycles, whatever it is. And you think, OK, it's safe to reverse in. And then you reverse in safely. And then, like you said, when you go to leave, the nose of the car is pointing out. 75:05 Yep, exactly. It makes so much sense. Look, I agree with you. It does. I'm glad, actually. Glad. 75:11 Someone's saying here, people, why do they do this to me? Make me read these. Narcs? 75:14 Are they narcs? 75:15 You forgot to say the blokes who call road service to change a tyre first have to get their phones out of their handbags. Now, see, that's wrong on so many different levels. I wish I hadn't read that now. 75:25 Look, it's 2026. A lot of blokes carry handbags. We've got a listener, a loyal listener called, I think it's Sandy, I think it is. And I've been saying on the weekends. 75:36 You've been calling Sandy a woman. 75:38 Sandy messaged in and said, I'm very much a bloke. And I said, look, I respect that. And you can identify as Sandy the bloke. But as far as I'm concerned, you will always be a woman to me. Now, it's 2026. Always a woman to me. 75:50 That's a song, isn't it? 75:51 billy joel song song too it's a very good song and i think in 2026 a lot of blokes carry handbags maybe i'll start carrying on the the masters a very good golfer all right well the big man the big man told me my laptop bag looked like a handbag a couple of months ago he's got now that i think about it yes exactly yes see okay yeah that's right um 11 to 10 9 in queensland 76:19 Cars with Trent Nikolic. We do it every Wednesday night. Let's go to Jason, who's called in with a question about a RAV4. What's happened, Jason? What are we looking at here? 76:30 G'day, guys. Look, your name's Jason. Look, I really love the show. I've listened to both of you guys for a long time. Long story short, I bought a Toyota RAV4 2025, going back almost 12 months ago. It's come up to its first annual service. So I'd only just come up to 3,000 Ks on the clock. I drive the car very gently around town. I work and live here in Orange in New South Wales. So I've really looked after the car. I don't brake hard. I don't accelerate hard. 77:02 Anyway, I've dropped it off for the service at 10.30 in the morning. And I was expecting to pick it up at 1.30. And they've called me up at 1 o'clock and said, there's a problem with your car. 77:15 There's something that's getting in with the oil. But they said that there's an issue with your car. We're not exactly sure what the problem is. So we aren't sure when you're going to get it back. And don't assume that it's going to be covered by the warranty. We can't guarantee. Now, this is a Toyota RAV4, only bought within 12 months. And the dealership said to me, We can't guarantee that any repairs to this vehicle will be covered by the warranty. 77:47 What I'll get you to do, mate, is if you go back to the team and just give them your rego, your VIN, your name and phone number, all of those details, and I'll check it up with Toyota because, broadly speaking, unless you've put horrible fuel in it and there's a problem with the fuel and the fuel's contaminated, there should be nothing else that goes wrong with that car in the first 12 months that's not covered 78:12 by the warranty okay so just i'll get those details and i'll look it up we'll get the details and and we'll we'll give a follow-up but you can do something about it on the weekend as well uh as well so i think people hearing this are going to be intrigued by what uh what the aftermath of that is yeah i'll chase that up with toyota for sure can we very good all right thank you and at five and a half minutes to ten nine in queensland we're going to do this right now here we go This WBBL score update is brought to you by UE, official partner of WBBL fans. Yes, Andrew Lucas is our executive producer. 78:44 He's looking after this. What's the score, mate? Yeah, good evening, John. 78:46 Good evening, Nick, and good evening to all your listeners. 78:50 Hi, Anthony. How are you going, mate? Good, mate. The Sydney Thunder taking on the Perth Scorchers in the women's bid bash lead. The Sydney Thunder posted 5 for 159 at the WACA from their 20 overs. And the Perth Scorchers, they're 5 for 127. They need 33 runs from 31 balls. And just quickly, in the Sheffield Shield, a big 100 to Jake Wetherald playing for South Australia against New South Wales. He's 112, not out. Fantastic. 79:14 Can you change your tie? 79:15 He can't. I reckon he can't. You should see the look on his face. I reckon he can't. Was there panic? He looks it. 79:22 I'll prove it to you downstairs this week. 79:24 Well, we'll work on this. Not next week, the week after. I'm getting some... I'll need a couple of weeks because people are sending me notes. What do you mean you need a couple of weeks? 79:33 What, are you going to go home and practice? 79:34 No, no, no. I'm getting people telling me about cars that only have had three nuts per wheel. 79:41 Yeah, there are. 79:42 But I'm not going to tell you what it is. And I'll see if there's any advance on that. So this is going to be fun. Thank you very much. I know one of them. Look, reverse parking. In fact, someone says the motor track effect of New South Wales reversing out of your driveway is illegal. And that makes sense. It is common sense if you think it through. So we might deal with that again next week. I don't think anyone's going to dispute it. When you think it through, it is absolute common sense. Andrew doesn't know how to change a spirit. You don't know. He's pretending. 80:11 I'm sure he doesn't. 80:13 I'm all over a couple of weeks. We'll see who else will get involved. We'll get Levy. I can tell you one person who's very good at it. 80:20 Neil Breen. He's helped out our stuff. 80:22 He's been kept straight away. Thank you. We'll do it again next week, mate. See you, mate. 80:32 Now it's back to John Stanley right across Australia. 80:56 Evening everyone, welcome along. It is 7 minutes past 10 in the Southern States, just after 9 o'clock of course in Queensland. Wherever you are, I hope it's going well for you tonight. We've got a bit coming up, nostalgia shortly. And if you heard us talking last night about our late friend Peter Bosley who we lost, he was a good friend of mine and so many people left a great legacy. So we're going to pay tribute to him in our Frank's Treasure Trove segment. We've got Peter Ford joining us. An hour from now, we'll have tomorrow's headlines. We'll also keep across breaking news with that police operation at Canley Heights. 81:29 A very serious police operation where roads have been closed. Police are looking for someone they think might still be on the run. 81:40 Again, it's a very serious situation. 81:45 that's what's happening if you are in that area and you've seen some of that activity uh they're making sure and there are helicopters above as well uh obviously there's going to be a story to be told later but in the initially police have to work out whether there are people that need to be apprehended where they might be and that's why they're sending that message out here tonight and we'll keep across that one for you as well also uh we were talking with trent we were talking about Reversing out of driveways. I think this has come out seriously. 82:17 You have to reverse into your driveway and you drive out. Simple logic tells you what you can see when you're reversing in and then, of course, how much safer it is to drive out. 82:28 of your driveway and that's why it is in so many areas, the New South Wales Traffic Act and others, it's mandatory to do that. I'm surprised people still don't know and I'm getting notes from people about the various places where that has been mandated and it does make a lot of sense. Another person saying, please don't comment about younger men, younger generation changing tyres, they simply do not do it. Well, there are some here that claim that that's not necessarily the case. There's always exceptions. 82:59 And we talked about Sandy because Trent was saying he had a caller and he spent half the afternoon referring to the messages coming in from Sandy, assuming it was female. It turned out to be a bloke. 83:11 And Tommy, I love our listeners who do all this work for us. So Tommy's done some work here and says, according to AI, well... He hasn't done much work. He's just gone into AI. The global percentage is women, 89.2%, Sandy, and men are 10.8%. So there you go. So one in 10, Sandy. 83:33 One in 10 Sandys are males. 83:38 Okay, there you go. 131873 is the number. Before we get into Frank's treasure trove, we have a beauty for you tonight. Let's at 10 past 10 or 9 in Queensland do this. 83:49 Now it's time for John Stanley's Brain Game. Call now, 131 873. 83:55 Now, Price Tonight, this is from the team at Spinalese, but it is a Vaxipod Essential Oil Atomiser. So what you're getting, this helps you sleep. You can wake up more refreshed. These are great. The Vaxipod Essential Oil Atomiser freshens the indoor air. You can get it for you. You can give it to someone that you like. You might want to freshen the air in a room where... 84:20 Anyway, there's all sorts of possibilities. So sleep better, wake up refreshed. You also get the John Stanley Mr Magoo mug if you answer the question I'm going to ask tonight. So here's a question for you. Bingo. Now, I haven't played bingo for a very, very long time. And when you do bingo, there are all these calls that you make when you pull the bingo numbers out. So, for instance, I think they say two dozen for 24. That makes... 84:48 according to the list I've got here legs 11 and then 22 is two little ducks so as you come out with the numbers you come out with a line I hadn't heard this before I mean sweet 16 well and Valentine's Day they're obvious but apparently for the number I'm looking for the answer is a number and the Lord is my shepherd So I'll say the Lord is my shepherd and a number will have come out of the barrel. 85:22 The Lord is my shepherd and a number will have come out of the barrel. There's a good reason why that number is then announced with the Lord is my shepherd. All you need to do is tell me what that number is. 85:37 I could throw in one other clue. 85:40 131873, if you know what the number is, do I never stab at it? What number has come out of the bingo barrel when they say, the Lord is my shepherd? 85:49 One other clue might be Michael Jordan. 85:51 All right, you give me the number, you win the prize tonight at 12 past 10 or 9 in Queensland. 86:02 You got to accentuate the positive, eat limb. Minate the negative and latch on to the affirmative. Don't mess with Mr. In-Between. You got to spread joy up to the maximum. Bring gloom down to the minimum. Have faith or pandemonium liable to walk upon the scene. 86:32 Yes, let's go. Caroline's got, I think, the answer for this one. Hello, Caroline. 86:56 Yes, 23, Psalm 23. 86:58 Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Is it I shall not want? 87:04 I shall not want. 87:05 I shall not want, that's right. 87:07 I remember that one. Very good, 23. And Michael Jordan wore 23 when he was playing basketball for most of his career. There was some time when he was wearing 45 during his comeback. But well done, Caroline. You have won yourself that fantastic Vaxipod, the essential oil atomiser that freshens indoor air. from the team at Spinal Ease. So that's one you want to have a look at. It would be a fantastic gift. It would be perfect, actually. In fact, we could use it in a couple of our studios here, just quietly. The Vaxipod Essential Oil Atomiser freshens the indoor air. 87:39 And you also get the John Stanley Mr Magoo mug. And one of our listeners sent me a note much, much earlier today. 87:45 who got their mug, I think they got it within just a few days. So Luke, who looks after that, doing a really, really good job. Look, there's a couple of our Thursday night prizes that are running just a little late, but we're going to get all that sorted out in the next couple of days. And of course, if quite a while's gone and you haven't received your prize for our brain game, please let us know and we'll make sure we fix that as soon as possible. Quarter past 10, past nine, if you're listening in Queensland. 88:16 At 18 minutes past 10. 88:17 Past 9 if you're listening in Queensland. We go down memory lane every Wednesday night. Let's kick it off now. 88:30 Yes, Frank Houston is our resident audiologist for the entire radio industry, in fact. He's been doing it for quite a few years, digitising, restoring old tapes, old CDs, old sounds. And as we've said plenty of times, Frank, good evening. There's so much information that's been lost that hasn't been kept and hasn't been preserved and it can be a real tragedy and a lot of it is existing on the shelves of listeners that emerges. 88:58 The problem is that what's been missing is that it's the only copy in existence. That's right, that's right. Because we've got no other backups to get back to. 89:04 Yeah. Peter Bosley, who was a friend of mine who passed away at the age of 85 this week and a radio legend. Peter, fortunately, there's a lot of material of the great Peter. And I just want to give just a quick pricey of a pretty remarkable career. Pete was from Queensland. He was a jackaroo. Before he got into radio, he was famously in the late 60s, he was at 2km Kempsey when the local newspaper ran an April Fool's joke about 10 Russian vessels that arrived off the coast of the northern New South Wales town of Kempsey and that a whole lot of sailors had jumped off the ships because they wanted to defect and had headed for the beach. 89:46 And so the newspaper ran it. Pete was on breakfast. He was a very young man. And he actually said, this is happening. 89:53 and people were rushing to the beaches. They hadn't realised this April 1st. They were rushing to the beaches. 90:00 People were worried that the Russian fleet was there. There were people rushing to help these sailors who were wanting to defect and become Australians, and this was during the Cold War. Anyway, he barely kept his job, but he's always talked about it. And, of course, why would you? 90:15 It was one of the most successful... April Fool's jokes of all time. He then went to TUE in the 1970s and did a very successful drive time show, which was music information, as only Pete could do. He was regarded as the heir apparent to Gary O'Callaghan, and this was written many times. He then left and went to 2KY, and then... But in the 80s, that style of radio got shaken up and everything went news talk. And so Pete ended up hosting the Sports Today program and left that wonderful sports legacy that we've spoken about where really a daily sports show was the first time it was done. 90:50 So he was a legend of the industry. And I'm really happy because that drive show that Pete did in the mid-70s on TUA was very successful. Yes, it was. It was why people talked about him as a successor to Gary O'Callaghan. And you've got a fair bit of this drive time show. 91:07 Yeah, we do indeed. I think probably about an hour and a half exists of it, so we're going to play a few minutes. 91:11 We're not playing a whole hour and a half, but you've pulled it together. Yeah. So we hear him, we hear some music, we hear ads. Commercials, promo stations, IDs, the works. Yeah, so it's a real time capsule. Yeah, it's terrific too, and it goes back just over 50 years. Yeah, and so people know, because each week we tell you, this has come from reel-to-reel tapes, and generally they are better quality. Yes, they are. But you've restored it. 91:30 Yeah, well, we've tried to anyway just before it fell apart. Let's hear you. 91:33 Rhiannon, will you ever win? That's Fleetwood Mac. Good afternoon. It is good to be back. And thank you very much for all the wishes that have come my way. Have you been good for Uncle Rick while I was away? I hope you have. 13 after 3. Replace gold. Movie featuring Hollywood's biggest, newest star. And final. And commiserations to Canterbury, Bankstown. It was a good fight. And you only just got nutted. And... We know you're going to have another big season next year in 1977, but it's a Manly-Paramanta grand final. Went to see a game of that other football over the weekend. 92:05 I was down in Melbourne and went to see Geelong play North Melbourne. It's a funny old game, but by golly, they get some good crowds down there, about 70,000 people, I think, which wasn't one of their gigantic crowds. 92:15 It's quite an atmosphere at the MCG, and thank you very much to Peter Isaacs, who was tied up with the local Australians. We'll give you a clap in it, though. It's 21 past three. And you'll win a double pass to see the Missouri Breaks at the Century Theatre, and you'll be in the draw for the $6,500 Fiat Mirafiori. 92:31 929 6099. 92:36 Just before I tell you about Ian Parry-Oakton's show tonight, we've had advice from the Parramatta Leagues Club. Now, tonight, Ian will discuss the car repair rogues. Phone Ian Parry-Oakton and be heard tonight from 9 on 2UE. OK, we'll take some people to the pictures on Thursday night to see The Big Bus. It's a send-up, actually, but a very funny film. It's a send-up of all the disaster movies that were ever made. The preview is on at 8 o'clock Thursday night at the Paramount Theatre in George Street. Now, we're going to take the first 75 calls on a number I'll give you in a moment. 93:07 It's not our normal number. And the gentleman down there and his very, very willing and lovely helpers at CIC Film Distributors are waiting to take your calls now on 211 4122. 93:20 2-1-1-4-1-2. 93:23 The first 75 people through will win a double pass for Thursday night, and we'll do the whole thing again a bit later on. Now at 2UE, it's 24 past three. Go sun-seeking with Grace Brothers Travel. Thank you. I've just had a note handed to me that says, the winners in our pasta sauce competition, Mrs. Celia Roseberry and Mrs. S. Turner of Ashfield. He sang Beef and Tomato, would you believe? And you've won a double pass to see the Missouri brakes, and you go into the draw now for the Fiat. I made all that up, I think that's right. Is that right? 93:54 Spot on. Top news stories of the hour. 93:57 Bob Hawke will make an announcement on his political future later this week. A 26-year-old man has appeared in Glebe Court charged with wounding his wife with intent to murder her at Lillifield last Friday. Four Chinese seamen were injured when a lifeboat fell on them on a ship berthed at an island near Newcastle today. And the Bally Poker Machine Company has won the right to have its machines installed in Canberra clubs which ordered them. We'll have all the news for you at 4 o'clock and we'll talk about poker machines and how you jiggle the handles a little later on in the show. Good news! Lanchu Choice Small Leaf Tea is now also available in tea bags, specially packed tea bags for cup or teapot brewing. 94:33 More good news, Lanchu tea bag cartons also carry a bonus label, so you can enjoy Lanchu either in the usual leaf tea form or in the convenient tea bags and still receive the bonus label. Lanchu, the only tea bags with the bonus label. Lanchu is truly double value. 94:49 Here's a special cheer-up thought for all you snow lovers who missed out on your skiing weekends this winter. Don't despair, because the smart in thing to do is to head for Kooma during the week. You avoid the crowds during the week. After all, there's no fun like snow fun. 95:06 How nice. Here she comes. I'll tell you what. 95:09 I like the touch Too 95:21 A cable through from New Delhi. India's population as of March the 1st was 605,000, sorry, 605 million, 644,000. That's in an estimate by the Expert Committee on Population Projection. The committee headed by the Registrar-General estimated that the population went over the 610 million mark in the second week of July. And the figure we had through just a few minutes ago was 613,656,206. 95:49 This could be your lucky day. 95:52 Celebrated at Roseland's lucky 11th birthday today. 95:55 Some of you dubbos out there in Radioland are ringing the wrong number for those passes. Now, listen, you've got to pay attention. You've been very slack while I've been away. You're not paying attention. You've been ringing up Canberra Television. Now, you ring 2-1-1-4-1-2-2. 2-1-1-4-1-2-2. All right? And you're going to have to get your finger moving because they're just about all gone. 96:19 Down to be somebody that knows. And I also want to hear from a poker machine jiggler, because you've probably heard in the news that leagues clubs in New South Wales are taking their own precautions against poker machine cheats following a magistrate's ruling that poker machine jiggling is not illegal. And so a lot of the clubs now are passing by laws. explicitly setting handle-pulling ground rules, which were going to be pretty strictly enforced, and they're doing just that. In other words, you, in a lot of clubs, have to pull a handle straight through. You can't do what you and I do, Purse, and that's... 96:51 I thought you were allowed to do that. But if I've got any poker machine jigglers, anyone that knows how to jiggle a handle, I'd like to hear from them and find out how you do it. I don't know whether we should broadcast it, should we? We'll let everyone know. Yes, we will. Why not? with a strong recommendation that if you're not an expert, you don't try it, because the laws are pretty strict, and if you get caught, you'll end up in jail. But they fascinate me. I play them every time I go out to a club, and I've tried playing them slowly and pulling them through fast, and I've tried various different ways to milk them, but there's no way in the world that I've got the knack. 97:22 But maybe somebody out there has. They might pass it on to us. We won't try it out, but I'd be interested to hear how you do it. It's 12 to 4. We're going out to a club tonight after tea and... 97:32 I'd like to be able to pay for it afterwards, you know. 97:35 So if you can jiggle a poker machine, just give me a ring up on the sly on 929 5555. 97:41 That's the great Peter Bosley doing the afternoon show on TUE in 1976. I need to give you some background there because they used to call them the one-armed bandits because in the old days you pulled a handle. It was a mechanical handle, and there was a huge controversy because people had worked out how to jiggle the handle and try and manipulate the numbers so you could actually get a jackpot. And they'd worked out how to do it, and it had been ruled not illegal. And Boz, and I know he referred to Purse, his off-sider. 98:13 He's also a very good friend of mine. And I reckon Perse and Boz were hoping someone would ring up, and they certainly weren't going to be putting it to air. They were going to ask for some lessons, I reckon. 98:22 And the funniest thing is for that as well is that when people used to get a bit irate that the machine wouldn't pay out, they'd actually pull the handle with force and actually break it off the machine. 98:29 Actually, there were seriously people who figured that they'd worked out how to, and these days it's all, of course, you just push buttons. That's right. 98:36 Anyway, let's come back after this. 98:39 It was a good one, wasn't it? That is fantastic. 98:43 And if you know Boz and you know Percy, that had a little bit more. There's a little bit more to that than what the rest of you heard. At 29 past 10, 9 in Queensland. 98:56 28 minutes to 11 to 10 if you're listening in Queensland. It's Frank's Treasure Trove. We do this every Wednesday night. We'll keep you updated. We mentioned this earlier, this police operation at Canley Heights. We're waiting for an update from the police on that one, but there has been a search, heavy police presence, and they're still trying to work out whether there are people on the run. So it's a little uncertain, but there's concern that people... Dangerous people might be on the run. So they've closed some streets. They've got helicopters in the air. 99:26 We'll let you know what's going on there. And for some of you in South East Queensland, you'd be aware of this massive storm that's come through. A lot of people are without power, some 80,000 homes. This came through tonight in South East Queensland. Logan's been hit the hardest. 99:42 57,000 people without power, and there's nearly 80,000 across the Brisbane area without power. So we'll keep across that one for you as well at 27 minutes to 11 or 10 in Queensland. 99:54 Frank's treasure trove. We're paying tribute tonight to Peter Bosley. We heard him from the mid-70s. Now we go to the early 90s, probably, well, we're talking two, three years into his iconic Sports Today program. 100:05 Yeah, that's right. So this one actually starts with the Sports Today promo, who voiced from that podcast. 100:10 era as well the voice by Peter and the report opener also voiced by Ken Sparks and this air check also has a voice that may be familiar to some of our listeners as well as Peter's okay so this one's on a reel-to-reel tape and you've restored it let's have a listen to it 1991 hi this is Peter Bosley some fantastic sport coming up the 1991 rugby league season well and truly underway the West Indies and Australia do battle to determine cricket champions of the world Richie Benno will be there The fabulous autumn racing with the golden slip of the highlight. The United States, European and Asian golf circuits underway. 100:41 Can Wayne Grady or Greg Norman win another of the majors? The motor racing, the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix, the pant-back swimming and so much more. Sports Today, 6 to 7, Monday to Friday on 2UE. 100:53 On 2UE, the sports report with Peter Bosley. 100:57 And here he is with all the news. How are you? I'm well, John. A fascinating weekend of rugby league. North Sydney sitting on top of the Winfield Cup. Still awaiting news whether one of their stars, Mario Fenwick, pardon me, has to answer charges over a tackle on Parramatta's Andrew Langford as yet. We won't know about that for another... Oh, probably half hour or so. Parramatta lodged a complaint today. Latest on Laurie Daly, it was thought Laurie would be out for up to six weeks with a fractured cheekbone, but after a medical report today, not quite so serious. He will be out for between two and four weeks, but I guess he could still now play in that first State of Origin match on May 8th. 101:31 Expect to see Gary Freeman back in the Balmain side for the match against Eastern Suburbs. And Cliff Lyons, I would suggest, will come straight back into Manly's side to play the Bears on Saturday. I suppose he could start on the bench, but one would think he'll be straight out on the paddock. 101:45 Yes, I think so. And when you talk about selections of teams, I don't know how they managed to come up with a squad of 30, wasn't it, for Queensland? Yes, I've seen that. They left out Mark Coyne, Peter Gill and Wally Fullerton-Smith. I'm not too disappointed in the sense of St George having them. You should be doing cartwheels. Yeah but I think from their point of view they should have been in that squad and that's ridiculous selection. 102:03 Spoken like a true dragon. Pat Cash, who is defending champion at the Hong Kong Open Tennis Championships, has pulled out at the last minute. Richard Fromberg has won his first match at the Estoril Tennis Open in Portugal. A good match for Australia in the West Indies, with Mark Taylor getting a century against the Windies under-23 side. A welcome return to form for Mark. Been out of touch. Also good knocks from Boone, Jones, Waugh, and of course Bruce Reid was amongst the wickets on the weekend. Speaking of the weekend, Steve Elkington was one highlight for me, apart from the Bears. Great win. One of the big tournaments of the year. 102:33 I'll tell you an interesting point. I spoke with Barry Cassidy, our Washington correspondent, earlier today. He's a sports, absolute sports nut. And I spoke to him about Steve Elkington, and he said, is he an Australian? Because he saw all the news about the win, but the fact that Elkington was an Australian was not played up very much in the American media. So... Interesting point. He's got a bit of an American twang, hasn't he? But not as much as Greg yet. Plus the fact that he doesn't come home very often. 102:58 He came home for one tournament last year. No, that's right. Tonight on the show, all the Rugby League news. I'll talk to Brett Kenney today. You've probably seen the headlines on the back of the Telegraph mirror. Peter Fralingos and the story about Brett Kenney and he feels like quitting and one couldn't blame him after the Eagles' dreadful start. Richie Banno online from the West Indies. All the news in sport between six and seven, including another round of the two, his Rugby League Super Quiz. And we've got tickets to the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix on the weekend to give away. 103:21 Fabulous. All right. Well, ring for those and Boz will be here after six o'clock with sports today. But right now we're coming up to 4.30 and the best news in the business on TUE. 103:29 Yes, there you go. So there's Peter Bosley speaking to the bloke that was doing the drive time show at the time. And yeah, interesting there where they were talking about the rugby league, what was coming up and... 103:43 So many great names mentioned there, including Barry Cassidy, who was actually, you know, he was insiders and worked for Bob Hawke before that, but he'd gone to Washington and was doing reports for us out of the United States. And Wally Fullerton-Smith. Wally Fullerton-Smith, all of those great names. Now, this next one you've got, the last bit here of Boz, this was a broadcast, an outside broadcast, and he was interviewing, because he loved his golf, Peter Senior. 104:08 That's right, yes, straight from the 2KY mobile caravan, as it was known in those days, I thought. 104:12 Oh, so this one would be going back before Tioita. This would be in the 80s. Yeah, that's right. When he was working at 2KY. 104:17 Early to mid-80s, so it's a good one, this one. 104:19 Okay, here we go. 104:21 One, two, three, four. 104:22 Testing, just to make sure we can record our interviews later, which we can. 104:26 Just check this one as well while we're at it. And that's working too. Goody, goody, goody, goody, goody, goody, goody, goody, goody. 104:35 Right, joint tournament leader has joined us in the caravan now, Peter Senior. Pete, another 68. Good golf. 104:40 Yes, Pete, very happy with it today. The course is playing a little tougher than it was yesterday. I think the breeze has just got up a little stronger. 104:48 Mate, what happened mid-round there? I saw it went six, back to four, and then all of a sudden it was back to six under. 104:56 Well, the first four holes on the back nine you've got to be very careful of. They are holes that you can drop shots on. It was just a long path through the 13th hole that everybody has trouble. The green's so small it's like hitting to an Aspro. 105:10 And it gives a lot of the guys a big headache. 105:12 It certainly does that, but you got them back. Yes, I did. Okay, mate. Now, while you're equal leader, the conditions are freshening a bit. 105:21 Greg Norman, do you think he can fire another one of those rounds today? 105:24 Well, if he does fire, well, that's a shooting match, I think. It's going to be very hard for anybody to peg back a lot of shots on him. 105:32 But as I said, the course is playing a little more difficult than yesterday, and if he only shoots 68 or 69 today, then we're in with the show. 105:40 Right, and now quite a few people want me to ask you this. You started off playing in America this year. It was pretty disappointing for you. You go to Europe, one tournament, bang, you've walked out a winner. 105:52 Well, it's just one of those things. Everybody knows if they play golf a lot that you go through good patches and bad patches, and it was just unfortunate that I hit a bad patch then. 106:02 Talking with Brian Crafter, Jane had a lot of trouble in the States because of loneliness, I guess. You weren't exactly made to feel unwelcome, but... 106:12 It was very, very hard over there. Did you experience this yourself? 106:16 Yes, we did. The only people that we knew over there was Greg and David, but they sort of mix in their own groups, and the only people that we were mixing was Wayne Grady and his wife. 106:27 And being over there a year already, they had made friends, and, yeah, we did feel left out. 106:32 What will you do next year, Pete? Are you going to go back to Europe or give the States another go eventually? 106:37 I definitely will go back to the States. 106:41 My wife and I are going to take three months off golf next year, and we're going up the barrier reef for four weeks and just get right away from golf. 106:48 Well, mate, you're playing pretty well here, and you've had a very good year, and we wish you continued success. 106:53 Thanks very much, Pete. Yeah. You loved his golf. That was Peter Bosley, a raw tape. And, of course, Frank's Treasure Trove, Frank Houston. If people have got tape, anything they want to preserve, the longer they keep it, the more chance it is of degrading. They can digitise it. You do it. That's right. 107:07 It's straight on the email, which is frankhouston2. That's I-U-S-T-O-N and the numeral 2 at gmail.com. 107:13 Okay. And anything at all, just make sure and you can try and restore it. It's really, really important. Definitely, yeah. We'll talk to you next week. Thank you. Indeed. Thanks, John. At 221110 in Queensland. 107:24 16 to 11, 10 in Queensland. Before we go to Peter Ford, just on this police operation at Canley Heights in Sydney, police telling it's still ongoing. One person's been arrested. There's still a heavy police presence on the scene. We'll keep you updated right throughout the night. 107:45 Now on nights, the entertainment report with Peter Ford. 107:49 Here's every Wednesday night. We speak with Australia's leading entertainment reporter, Peter Ford. Pete, good evening once again. 107:54 Good evening to you, John. 107:56 Now, the news was emerging about midnight last night, our time, the downfall of David Williams. 108:04 I guess coming soon after what's happened with Russell Brand. Let's get straight into this one. 108:10 Yeah, well, there's a lot of tabloid newspapers feasting out on those stories. So, you know, the David Williams story, if those have been following this, you may have seen a lot of reports over the last several weeks about a celebrity, a mystery celebrity, who was taking out suppression orders to stop his name being linked to an investigation. 108:33 that ITV and The Guardian had done and that was David Walliams and is David Walliams and certainly what we've seen today in in real time I think has been the downfall of his empire which of course a lot of people will reference Little Britain which was a huge show no denying that but he also is incredibly successful as a children's author and in fact he is the most loaned author in uk libraries and i think he's done 60 plus kids books so far and a lot of people i think when we talked about it the other week i said when you do hear the name you'll probably think oh now i know why because there have been reports in recent weeks about for example harper collins said that they were no longer going to be doing books with him but not only that they were going back and deleting his entire back catalogue and also last week there was a story about a theme park called elton towers a-l-t-o-n not elton as in elton john and they had completely closed down a whole precinct of their theme park called david walliams world So you kind 109:41 of knew something was brewing, something was going to drop. 109:45 And now, of course, it is all public. So I think we have to say very clearly that he denies the various allegations that are being put forward, which are all about, you know, grooming and inappropriate sexual conduct in some cases involving violence. underage girls and we also should point out that nobody and there's a number of people who've come forward with their stories nobody has gone to the police scotland yard had had no complaints at all about the man and yet there's no doubt that his career is over he's now in a psych ward he's been threatening to commit suicide and certainly he's his legal team have said he's tried to do that twice in recent months. 110:27 So, you know, nobody wants that to happen. That's not a satisfactory outcome for his alleged victims. So it's a fascinating story and there's still more to come. I've got no doubt about it. 110:39 Yeah. So what will happen? I mean, as you say, we're not quite sure where it's going to go. And we talked about people being cancelled. So how's that? How do you think that's going to pan out? 110:49 Well, in his case, I think there's very obvious things that will happen. You know, for example, he has a movie coming out in January, which apparently at this stage is still going to be released. It's called FING, F-I-N-G. And he wrote the story originally, and now it's been adapted into a movie. 111:07 and he in fact is in it in a cameo they have said we're going to cut his cameo out but the movie's still going to be released uh then you've got things like you know here in australia seven plus for example you could still go and watch old episodes of britain's got talent they have taken all those episodes now out of the library and talking of libraries you know a lot of libraries will have to decide are we going to leave those books there for people to come and get and in fact parents i'm sure and he sells a lot of kids books here in australia parents will have that question is it okay for my kids to keep on reading his books you know the kids probably aren't aware of these stories and the allegations sort of as they are so you know i'm always in two minds about the whole cancel culture thing i'm not sure what you entirely achieve you know you take those books away from your kids what are you really achieving and in fact in some cases you can end up punishing other people who may be entitled to 112:08 royalties etc but you know people will you know cancel culture is exactly that they want to cancel you and stop you from making any kind of money yeah and inevitably i guess people are going to be asking you uh comparisons uh similarities with the russell brand case Well, Russell Brand's in prison now, and obviously the cops got involved, and that was the outcome, even though it's likely he'll have an appeal. 112:34 As I say, nobody has gone to the cops about David Walliams. So in that sense, it's quite different. But if you look at the allegations, and certainly in Walliams' case, they are still allegations, it all comes back to two things. One is, I think, a sense of entitlement. where these people were quite unfamiliar with the word no. And I think they were making money for other people, and so therefore they're almost protected. You know, HarperCollins were making a fortune out of publishing his books. 113:06 In fact, HarperCollins' staff were not female staff, were not allowed to ever go to his home alone. They always had to go with somebody. So they clearly knew there was a problem that they had, but they didn't want to face it because there was so much money coming in from his books being sold. So I think they're the two things that make them very similar stories. The other thing, well, the case of Russell Brand is a little bit different in as much as his image and his persona and his shtick was always very much about sexual innuendo and about his sexual conquests and a friend of mine was telling me some years ago they went to see him I think it was in Sydney and he from the stage said oh if any women want to come down and show me their breasts you're welcome to right now and about 40 women ran down to the front of the stage and lifted their tops and So, you know, that in no way does that make it OK to do the things that he's now been found guilty of doing. 114:05 But it does create a mentality, I think, of, you know, anything goes and I have this power. And I think that's a complicating factor, which we haven't seen with Walliams. 114:16 Now, we've had a series of people dying. We had, of course, our former colleague Peter Bosley yesterday. We heard of his death at the age of 85. Stacey Keach is an actor who I think we have a look at the body of work is quite enormous. But you always wonder, Stacey Keach, what face do you put to the name Stacey Keach? He's one of those, isn't he? 114:40 Well, he is. And I think that was in some ways to his detriment, because when he first emerged, he was going to be like almost the new Brando. He was thought to be somebody who will be one of the great actors of his generation. I don't think that ever happened because he and he's talked about this, that he wanted to do a variety of stuff. So in one sense, he was kind of all over the shop. I mean, his big hit was the TV show The New Mike Hammer. That was huge for him. But he did vary between doing great Shakespearean roles on the stage, doing kind of cheap movies that he thought might be fun to do. 115:16 And he was a very odd character. I mean, he even went to prison at one point for importing cocaine. He took cocaine, I think it was, into England. I mean, how stupid could you be? But he did. And so those sort of things, I think, were very much to his detriment. He was actually meant to come to Australia. Oh, this must be going back about 25 years ago now. John Frost was going to bring him here to do a production of Sleuth, you know, that play which was made into a movie with Laurence Olivier. That's right. And Michael Caine, I think. 115:49 he didn't at the last minute he dropped out of that and it didn't happen but yeah his his career was all over the shop but nonetheless it was a very interesting career he has been unwell in recent years but it's one of those hollywood stories that you think boy you know maybe it had been better managed it would have been a far more successful and acclaimed one yeah 116:10 Now, just going locally, somebody who I was lucky enough to meet on a number of occasions and spend time with, I know you're very, very close to the wonderful Maria Venuti. She had a stroke, what, 10 years ago. It was very significant. So you've been in Sydney today catching up with her. 116:30 Yeah, it's 10 years exactly, actually. And it sounds like an odd thing to go and, you know, celebrate with someone for. But you're celebrating the survival, the determination, the grit that she's shown, because I'm sure a lot of people remember Maria very over the top. 116:46 great performer in the clubs and on all big tv shows and then she kind of segued into a lot of acting stuff as well and she was just a great vivacious character and sending herself up and you know she had the all the great lines and but anyway 10 and she had a stalker a lot of people may not realize that she had this stalker who i think it was through the tv show fat pizza where she played bobo's mother which got her a much kind of younger audience and this idiot became obsessed with her believed he was married to her and turned up at her house one day and she had this massive stroke and that stalker still is out there somewhere it was never charged But, you know, on the day it happened, her daughter Bianca was told, you know, if your mum survives, she will never walk again and she'll never talk again. 117:36 And that has proved to be true. So basically, apart from her daughter, all the things that Maria loved, you know, performing and going to opening nights and parties, all of that was taken from her. 117:49 And I didn't know how she'd cope and she's coped so much better than I ever would have believe possible but what i'm leading up to is to tell you that i did see her we had we had lots of laughs and a few tears and uh you know she's well cared for by bianca and but life obviously isn't what it should be but she's got a youtube channel now And what Bianca's done with some help is get a whole bunch of different clips of the TV shows through the years, various acting gigs that she's done. 118:19 And she's got to add to it. She goes, I think there's about 30 videos on there so far. so just go onto youtube type in maria venuti and her channel will come up and it's a wonderful kind of retrospective not just of maria but the old days of television and it's a lot of fun a lot of laughs and this mostly is stuff maria when she was out there performing she'd be an absolute pain in the proverbial because she'd almost say oh can you get me a videotape of that darling and so you which produces hate uh So you'd always have to provide her with a beta or a VHS or I guess in more recent times a DVD or something. 118:55 And so therefore she's got this incredible library of things which has now been put up and more will be added to it. So it's fun to watch if you've got nothing better to do. 119:05 It's a terrible cliche for someone's a force of life, but she certainly was. And I can still remember it's 10 years ago now that all this happened. But when she'd come into a studio, you'd see her somewhere and she was so big and so big hearted. And she would just make you feel better. 119:23 when she was around she always had a good laugh and incredible charity worker you know always any charity ringer and say can you turn up and do this she'd do it you know so she didn't deserve to end up like this but she has and she sucked it up and getting on with life so check out her YouTube channel for memories of the old days yeah okay and I'd love to think that she might be listening because she should know that she is widely loved by so many people Pete as always great to talk to you we'll do this again next week thank you Good on, John. 119:54 Thank you. 119:54 Peter Ford with his weekly entertainment report at four minutes to 11.10 if you're in Queensland. 120:02 131873 is the number. Look, Roz is just talking about David Walliams, prolific well-known children's author. Kids should read the books because they've nothing to do with his sexual behaviour. It is an intriguing one where you draw the line in terms of the music of people who've been found to have done dreadful things and the movies and others. And then there's also the question of, and has been raised many, many times, of people... 120:28 Very high-profile people who've been demonstrated who have done, in some cases, a lot worse than some of the people who have been cancelled, and they seem to be getting away with it. Thanks for that. The news coming up soon. 120:55 Now it's back to John Stanley, right across Australia. 121:19 Good evening, everyone. Welcome along. Welcome to Wednesday night, final hour of the show. It's just after 10 o'clock if you're in Queensland through 4BC and our network stations. I know South East Queensland has copped something of a battering tonight. Large swathes of Logan in particular are without power. So, look, we'll keep across that for you as we go through the night. And as always, if there's something you want to... query, you've got something you've got to pass on, you've got some questions, please pass those on and we'll try and deal with it in our hour or through the night with Phil. 121:53 There's also been a drama at Canley Heights with a big police operation there, there were police helicopters, there was a person on the run, one person has been arrested, still a heavy police presence, they're still unsure whether there may be another person on the loose and so we'll, at this stage, that's what we know, police are going to keep us updated for the rest of the hour and through the night for many of you who did send us notes because you could hear and see some of that activity in the canley heights area 131873 is the number uh our tribute to peter bosley in frank's treasure trove that's going to be up as a podcast and i did mention earlier in the program uh that we uh we I was quite surprised by the number of people that seem interested when we were having Trent Nikolic as part of our car segment. 122:39 And Trent, a reminder to you, Trent does the weekend show now on our network, Saturdays and Sundays. 122:46 But he's still... 122:48 still our motoring editor as far as i'm concerned and so we were talking earlier about changing uh car tires and he reckons he could kill me i think that was the term he used in terms of the speed at which he could change a tire so down the track in a couple of weeks time we're going to have a little competition see who can do it so we'll let you know when that one's happening for those interested. And I know Trent's got a lot of fans and I did interview him for my OnlyFans on Friday night at 10.30, 9.30. 123:20 And again, it's not that. It's interviewing sports fans. 123:25 And he was talking about his love of motor racing and cars because he's a massive fan. And it's one of the most enjoyable conversations I've had because he was tracing it all the way back to his childhood. 123:38 as a little boy, how he became entranced by cars. And it is some story. So that's coming up on Friday night. You will really enjoy that one. Trent, our latest edition of OnlyFans. 131873 is the number. We give you tomorrow's headlines, this time every night. Let's do it now. 124:14 Our front pages, the Courier Mail and the Telegraph, they've both got a story. And again, these days, unfortunately, with the size of the government budget deficit, the size of government debt, our debt is a trillion dollars. It just gravitates, sometimes drops below, but it's around a trillion dollars. That's our debt. 124:37 The US is north of $20 trillion, the US government debt around the world is huge, but we concentrate on us and we are in a pickle in terms of debt. And so front page of the Courier Mail and the Telegraph, it's to do with a $3 million spend by the government. 124:58 on a film titled Pacific Rising. Now, apparently it's a film that was put together, a documentary at the urging of South Pacific nations, but it's copped it from the Telegraph on the front page of the Telegraph and the Courier Mail, Climate of No Change. Taxpayers slugged $3 million for doco. And they have said that the documentary will cost more to produce than the iconic post-apocalyptic film Mad Max. Now, Mad Max was made back in the 70s by George Miller. 125:33 I think George spent... Can you check with me? Can you check the last of the Mad Max films was made in about 2015? How much of the budget for that one? Because George spent a lot of money on that and it was an absolute masterpiece. But Mad Max cost less than $3 million. Pacific Rising will cost $3 million and will premiere at the COP31 climate conference. 125:58 Opposition says the $3 million in aid money would have been better spent on vaccinations or textbooks. Government standing by the investment saying it was made at the urging of Pacific Island leaders. So that's the one they've got on the front page of the Courier Mail. They've also got across the top of the paper and they'll have more inside this enormous wild storm that swept through southeast Queensland. Nice night saying storm grounds flights because it did affect flights. As trees take off, they've got images of... Cars covered in trees. It was pretty wild this afternoon and this evening in South East Queensland. 126:32 Logan is particularly affected. And they are saying still many tens of thousands, perhaps as many as 80,000 homes are still without power. Most of those in that Logan area. So that is the front page of the Courier Mail in Brisbane. Telegraph's got the same story. 126:50 They've called it Lights, Camera, Activism. Taxpayers bill $3 million for climate change film, 75-minute documentary. They haven't in the Telegraph used the comparison with the original Mad Max film. 127:05 But they're saying $40,000 a minute on a 75-minute climate change documentary set to be unveiled at the climate conference attended by Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen today. And yes, the last of the Mad Max films, it was $168 million. 127:24 So George Miller, what a great director. And certainly the big budget episodes, you go back to what he did with that original Mad Max, which was under $3 million. So look, they've also got on their front page... They've got a story saying shutting up shops, David Jones to close 19 stores in retail's darkest era. We've spent the last week, I think, having conversations about David Jones and the way to fix retail. I did suggest right at the beginning of the show, whoever these people are who are trying to save David Jones, the bean counters, maybe they should turbocharge customer service. 127:59 They've got a pretty good online presence as well. Maybe really ramp that up. 128:05 Hire a few more staff, really good customer service, back to the future. Maybe that's the way for them to do it. And I was slapped down by a few people who said that would send them broke even sooner. But I'm not sure what else they can do. Anyway, coverage of that in the Telegraph in Sydney. Sydney Morning Herald. 128:22 Their main story is the story that's been rattling around for most of the day, saying the federal government's budget overhaul of negative gearing and capital gains tax has been blamed for the biggest fall in home loans taken out by investors on record, with warnings the property market will struggle well into next year. These are Bureau of Statistics figures that came out today. 128:43 Investors' loans dropped by 30.6% in the three months to September. 128:49 Over the past 12 months, investor loans are down by 38.6%. 128:53 The drop is concentrated among investors who purchase existing homes. 128:58 In New South Wales, investor loans for new bills fell by 18.4% through the September quarter, but for existing dwellings, they collapsed by almost 50%. So what they're saying is across the housing market, There's been a fall, but the proportion of loans taken out for new builds as opposed to existing dwellings has actually gone up, which is the intention of these changes. But the whole market's gone down dramatically. 129:26 And that's the problem. Similar story across the rest of the country. Loans by investors for existing homes fell by 27% in Victoria, 40% in Queensland and by 38.1% in Western Australia. So that story's there on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. They've also got this one, and I'm just looking at it now. 129:47 This is activists going to court on claims of harassment against an MP. 129:54 This is a 43-year-old pro-Palestinian activist made up to 43 phone calls to his local member's office, swore at staff, called them names, threatened to attend the office of Susan Templeman, Federal Minister for Macquarie in person, and follow her staff in their cars. 130:11 She asked him to stop. He kept going. Courted to the Crown. which has charged McKell with the offence of using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend. His sample communications include, quote, if you don't answer the phone, you're going to see me in the street. And quote, my only option is to catch you on the street between the car and the office. 130:28 Tell Susan to respond to my emails. She's a coward, unquote. 130:32 So he's being prosecuted. He's described it as malicious. The Herald's got more coverage of that one as well. And look, there's also this story, and I've only got a picture on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. A Sydney entomologist, Tanya Latte, has been counting Christmas beetles for the past six years. She's got a citizen science project. The Geographic Society has given her a $30,000 grant to look at Christmas beetles. We are into that period where we're going to start to think about Christmas beetles and also cicadas. 131:06 So it might be one we can do on Friday night with the ducks. I'll take a note of that one. The Herald's also got on their front page this argument by the top police officer in New South Wales that the e-bike situation really needs to be in the hands of parents. 131:22 Now, there are so many kids with these powerful e-bikes at the moment. The New South Wales government has been promising since the start of the year to introduce some regulation and perhaps a minimum age at which you can actually use these things. But they've decided to put it off till after the election, put it into the too hard basket because they're worried it could be controversial and create a bit of a mess for them. So there's that one there. That's the Sydney Morning Herald. Look, they've also got a story inside... about a lot of angst within the Labor Party in New South Wales about pre-selections that are happening late and pre-selections that are being imposed by the Premier or others in head office without any democratic process. 132:07 But it's interesting because we're talking here, middle of November, elections next March, you've got a government that... is expecting to win. They're leading in the polls, but they're a minority government at the moment. You would have thought they'd have had their candidates in place, but that doesn't seem to be the case. So Sydney Morning Herald has all of that. Now I'll go across to the Australian newspaper. They've got the story of home loans. They say the price is fright. 132:31 Play on words. Loans in free fall. 132:34 And they've got Australia's housing market collapse is set to run deeper into next year with no recovery in sight, as lending figures showed. New investor and first home buyer loans in free fall. So, look, that's on the front page. But I actually think... 132:48 This story, I think this is a more important story. And if you've listened to us, we've been covering AI for quite a while. 132:55 And we did have Toby Walsh from the University of New South Wales. He's one of the experts in this country on AI. And he was saying in terms of data centres and the big tech companies want to build data centres here, governments are desperate for the data centres to come in because that investment is keeping the economy going. 133:14 And so there's this story. 133:16 The Albanese government's plan to lure lawless and unethical AI giants to Australia by compromising copyright protections for authors, actors and artists has been exposed by Anthropic. So the story here is Anthropic. 133:32 It's one of the big companies that wants to build here and build these big data centres. There's a huge one they're doing in South East Queensland. But as Toby Walsh was telling us when we spoke to him, they're trying to leverage the government saying, well, if you want all this investment, we want you to strip away your copyright laws and your protections for all your stuff so we can actually use it and leech off it. 133:54 And he's saying, well, most countries are saying no to the data centres. We've got plenty of space. We can move them away from the cities, but we shouldn't allow them to twist our arm and say, well, we're only going to give you the money and the investment if you strip away these copyright protections. It's a big story, this one. And that's on the front page of the Australian newspaper. I do hope... 134:16 People take that seriously because if you strip away the copyright protections, they can just use everyone's music, everyone's writing, all the creative output. They can use it to train their AI bots and all this creative work just disappears. And there was a story. And in that context, this was in news.com.au earlier in the year. News.com.au can be a, I guess I could call it tabloidy news site. But the Australian does reference this one, where throughout many parts of Europe... 134:48 What they're having is secondhand bookstores, book depositories. They're just being stripped, even where they've got almost like the Vinnie's things in there, the shops where they have used books. 135:04 They're just going and scooping up all these books. 135:07 They're putting them into these very large stores. 135:13 They've constructed an area where they've got the books, and what they do is they scan the books, they get all the information on the books, and they pulp them. 135:23 So they're using them to train the AI models and putting all the information, all the creativity and all the writing into the AI models. And the books are being pulped. 135:35 I find that really scary. You can find that story that appeared earlier in the year. And I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory. But when you look at the way the AI companies operate, I wouldn't be ruling that one out. Also a picture of Pat Cummins on the front page. They've got a shot of him, obviously been taken by a photographer, a candid... You can take shots of people walking down the public street. Picture of Pat Cummins. He's talking with his wife. They're having an animated conversation, so who knows what they're talking about. 136:06 But they've got it there on the front page. And there says, pressure of the trouble and strife. Tampa affair tests Pat's poise. Tampa, you see? It's not Tampa. It's Tampa, E-R. 136:16 It's a clever headline, unless someone hasn't got any idea what the story of the Tampa was. That was in 2001. So anyway, for those of us who remember the Tampa, that's a clever headline. It says, a man with the weight of his shoulders on his shoulders, a wife who seems to want him to do something. It could be any couple having a discussion on the Sydney street, but this was Pat Cummins and his wife, Becky, going back and forth in an animated conversation while the nation waited for answers on the explosive allegations levelled by his teammate and friend, Usman Khawaja. 136:47 Cummins will have to soon address Kawaj's claims that the whole Australian test team, including the bowlers, knew of what was happening. 136:55 So this is intriguing. So they've taken a shot, a candid shot in a public street. 137:00 It says on Wednesday afternoon it seems it was Becky. The fast bowler returned to for guidance in an intense conversation. He, sheepish and shoeless, she agitated and upset doing most of the talking. At times there was a glimmer of a smile. Now I'm trying to read on here whether they were listening to any of this conversation. So they've seen them having this conversation in the street and they've taken the photo. And yes, correctly, he's standing there and she's looking animated. 137:27 And so they're suggesting it was a conversation about the sandpaper thing. 137:31 It might have been that if you got to put the bin out, Why didn't you put the bin out? If you don't put the bin out, Pat, we're going to be stuck with that rubbish for the next two weeks and it's going to be hot next week. How did they know it was about... That's bizarre. 137:46 Am I wrong? Seriously? 137:49 You can't make any assumption about what they're... That's incredible. 137:53 It might have been about the bin. 137:55 I thought you walked the dog. 137:57 Who's going to walk the... Someone's got to walk the dog because he gets... 138:00 It could have been anything. 138:03 What, you didn't pay the rates? I thought it could be anything. 138:09 Wow. 138:11 What about that? 138:12 Anyway, there you go. And you are entitled. My expert on these things tells me you can't record what people are saying in public. So they can't have recorded the conversation. So they've got no idea what they're saying. You can take a photo. So they're assuming they're talking about Khawaja. 138:29 Wow. 138:31 Anyway, there you go. That's the Australian newspaper. And the Financial Review, they've got the story about new mortgages and loans. Real estate flashes red. New home loans suffer record fall. Arrears hit 14-year high. And reforms working, says the Treasurer. Now, Philip Coorey's got a story. 138:50 saying that an arguably viable government's under more pressure than ever. Backbenchers are fearful of losing their seats. There's a focus on Jim Chalmers and efforts to undermine him. 139:01 And it says here, one minister who'd be regarded as an ally of Anthony Albanese, he says it's unnecessary and unfortunate because the cabinet and government at large want to see Jim Chalmers do well. 139:12 He hasn't bucked up and people are getting jack of it. 139:15 So that's fascinating, that conflict within the Albanese government, the pressure on Jim Chalmers. Something's going to break on that one. But going back to that story again, I mean, you could take photos of any couple. You could take a photo of myself and my wife standing out the front and going, well, weren't you supposed to do that? And then they make an assumption of what we're talking about. 139:37 Unbelievable. Anyway, there it is. 139:41 Someone's saying here, unless they heard the conversation, how can you make an assumption about what they're talking about? 139:48 The picture looks like they're animatedly discussing something, but as I say, he might have forgot to put the deadline for the renewal of his Dragons membership. I don't think he follows the Dragons. I don't know who he follows. Anyway, it could be anything. There you go. I'm still speechless over that one. Anyway, that's the Australians' front page. Go and have a look at it when it comes out. 26 past 11, 10 in Queensland. 140:18 Probably people think it's boring when I play this intro, but then people expect it. 140:23 So can we do it again? 140:25 If you can come up with a better one, but can we give it? I like it. I like it. 140:29 Phil, Phil, Phil. 140:30 And it's Phil with an F, so F-I-L, or F-I-double. Phil, Phil, Phil, Phil. 140:40 I think it's catchy. It could be an earworm. Some kind of worm. It could be an earworm. Anyway, that's Phil O'Neill. He'll be here, of course, in about 36 minutes. What have you got for me? You have a scoop on me. No, I did this with The Australian, and it's essentially a photo of Pat Cummins and his wife, and they've taken it, obviously, from across the road. 141:03 And she's quite animated and he's looking and she's doing most of the talking. And so the story says he's under pressure to respond to the allegations, the sandpaper stuff. And it says he'll soon have to arrest the claims, blah, blah, blah. But on Wednesday, it seems it was Becky the fastballers had turned to for guidance in an intense conversation. 141:23 Give me a look at the photo, John. I'll have a look and see. 141:24 But they've got no idea what they're talking about. And I was saying they've taken this photo and assumed they're talking about the sandpaper thing. I said, it could be he forgot to put the bin out. He might have, maybe he didn't go and get a new lot of cat litter, anything. 141:38 I can see what the issue is. And it's really obvious. I don't know if you know, like being a lip reader, I'm actually a photo reader. 141:45 Yeah. 141:45 She said to him, where are your bloody shoes? Oh, that's right. He's got no shoes on. Let me have a look. 141:53 Is he wearing socks? Yeah. Oh, yes. She said to him, you've gone out without shoes. Well, she's barefoot, though. But she would be saying to him, he's probably said, yeah, but you're barefoot. And she'd have said, yeah, but you're a fast bowler. You can't. You could tread on a stone. You could be. That's what it would be. You could be out with an injury. Yeah. Yeah. 142:10 Yeah, that's what happened, John. 142:11 Obviously... Not what I thought, where he forgot to put the bins out? Because that becomes a big issue. 142:15 No, no, that's it. I don't know if you know this, John, but yes, certainly you'll be on Media Watch. Quote John Stanley. He's got that, you know, he's the man. 142:23 Well, I don't think I'll be on Media Watch. I think... Yeah, let's not be on Media Watch, no. 142:27 Go on. Well, I don't know if you know this because you aren't a member of the International Bald Men's Committee, are you? 142:34 No. So you don't get the texts. I can sign you up. 142:38 What is it? 142:38 It's a worldwide International Bald Men's Committee, Bunky for short. And we get texts whenever there's a baldness cure. 142:46 What have you got? A baldness cure. 142:49 Yep. From Taiwan. Taiwan. 142:52 An experimental topical serum, which successfully re-grew hair on bald mice. You don't really see many bald mice, do you? Come to think of it. So if they shaved the mice, then it would have grown back naturally. So I'm now questioning whether or not the guys from Bunky may have sent me on a bum steer. Anyway, apparently it works within 20 days. 143:16 Haven't tested it on humans yet, but I've put our hands up. And there's a possibility that, yes, we could, in fact, be foppish before you know it. 143:24 Wasn't the yeah, yeah thing, solving all of this 20 years ago? 143:29 Yeah. 143:29 And then we had stuff that you – and wasn't there spray on here at one stage being sold overnight? I had that. 143:35 Remember the spray on hair? Let me tell you two stories. One, when it came to yeah, yeah, it was more like yeah, nah, because it comes off. Secondly, back in the days when I was losing my hair, I spray painted that stuff into my hair, which is like paint. And I did an install with Peter Andre, and he was wearing white jeans. And he said, hey, good to see you, Phil, and patted me on the head and then realized my hair was wet. So wiped his hand on the rear of his white jeans, and there was a brown hand stain which came from my hair. So that's my claim to fame. 144:05 Yep. 144:06 All right. 144:09 That's very interesting because someone suggesting Media Watch might be interested. I think the candid shot of them and the suggestion they know what they're talking about. No, no, I've got someone saying that Phil's song should be on Media Watch for breaching copyright laws. No one knows which song we'll find out sound enough. Okay. 144:28 I don't want to be. I was on Media Watch once. I don't want to be here again. 144:31 When was that? Years and years ago. 144:33 What did you do? It was fake news, John. I was quoted out of context. 144:40 Can we find it? No! Okay, coming up tonight on the show, we have the paperboy, Jason Morrison. Also, we'll go live to Belgium, and we have Matt McLaughlin there for Remembrance Day Live in Belgium. That's coming up a little bit later on this morning. And also, Dr. Carl isn't with us. However, we do have the acclaimed astrophysicist and astrologer, Dr. Laura Dryson, who is going to answer a listener's question from David. David said... How can a day on Venus be longer than a year on Venus? 145:14 Which is apparently a case. 145:16 Really? 145:16 Yeah. 145:18 But you wouldn't be doing that shift, would you? Crikey. No. Longer than what I do on air. No, that's right. 145:22 Every night I feel like it's a night on Venus. Can I make a confession? Do I want to hear it? Does it have to do with massages? No, I did pledge last night that I was going to listen for the person who had actually been taken. 145:35 I got texts about it. 145:36 The person who had been taken and captured by aliens and filmed the inside of the alien vessel. You spoke to them. What was the story? 145:45 No, I didn't because we didn't get time because we had the news. 145:49 They were waiting for the interview and then they were taken by aliens before you could talk to them. 145:54 No, they were on hold. The on hold music was dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And they said, no, I don't need longer than this. 20 minutes, I'm out again. No, we didn't get time, so we'll do that Friday. I don't talk to them. I have video of them from 1979 having just been captured by UFO. 146:10 Okay, very good. 146:12 All right, fantastic. But thanks for saying that you weren't listening, because our listener said, I got texts at three or four with listeners wanting to know how drunk you were, and is that why you hadn't called into the show? To be honest, I had trouble sleeping last night. 146:24 You're too drunk this morning. I had trouble getting to sleep. It is difficult getting to sleep. I wouldn't know, mate. 146:30 Of course not. And... 146:31 Talking about baldness and cures and the like, we did mention the other night how James Willis, we suspect he might have gone to Turkey. But if Anthony Albanese is over there, do you reckon he might come back with a little extra on top of the... Well, maybe he'll get the comb over like Donald Trump. Yep. 146:48 All right. By the way, I didn't say that about James Willis. I just want to be... 146:53 Okay, good on you. Thank you. I'd rather be on media watch than trouble with him. 146:56 You're on in half an hour. 146:59 Yeah. 147:00 All right, good on you, mate. Thank you for that. There he is, Phil O'Neill, at 23 minutes to 12.11 in Queensland, just on Canley Heights. For our Sydney listeners, we have been tracking this for the last few hours. We did have quite a few of you for that area asking what was going on. We'll let you know there were... There were police helicopters. There's at least one person arrested. So police, very heavy police presence. They say now the police operation at Canley Heights has concluded. They say at least one person has been arrested so far. 147:29 Police are still on the scene, but they believe now the police operation has concluded. And it was going because they were still not sure if there was someone that they needed to get hold of. And obviously the safety of the people in that area is paramount. So that's the situation there for our listeners. Also, look, also just on this one also, we've got 80,000 homes. This is in South East Queensland. 147:55 And one of our listeners, Reg, who must be moving through the area there, there's nothing open, not even the servos. So we're talking Logan, where I think up to 60,000 places are without power from that big storm that swept through southeast Queensland earlier this evening. And there are other areas as well. Brisbane Airport was shut down quite... 148:15 quite destructive winds. And so at the moment, they're scrambling to get the power back on, but it sounds like it might be a while. So as I say, Phil will keep you across that through the night. And if you need to get any information or pass any information on, please do it either by email, text 0460 873873, or jump on the phone and give us a call at 22 minutes to 12.11 in Queensland. 19 to 12, 11 in Queensland. Look for what it's worth. There was one story on the front page of the Australian newspaper. 148:45 I better play the trigger warning. Malcolm Turnbull. He's actually at the COP Climate Talk Fest in Turkey. He's actually there as an International Hydropower Association president. 148:57 But he's also saying there should be an end to the generous renewable subsidies for batteries, solar panels, EV cars and the like. So that's an interesting one because in the end, I think there's almost a universal view that that's one area where you could... 149:16 hack into those subsidies. At the very least, introduce some means testing so that the people who can afford it don't get the subsidy as well. And you could save billions of dollars. So we'll see what comes of that. Anyway, it's now 17 minutes to 12. Speaking of saving money, our own household budgets. We do this each week with Joel Gibson. Joel, good evening once again. G'day, John. Now, you've got a couple of tips and one warning you have in relation to the early Black Friday sales, because they've been around for days. In fact, in some cases, weeks ahead of Black Friday, which is this Friday fortnight. 149:52 So where are we? 149:54 Yeah, Black Friday is the last Friday in November. It's the day after Thanksgiving in the US, which is how it began. 150:01 But it's sort of crept its way back right to the, really, even in late October now, we're seeing early Black Friday deals from some retailers. So it's really just a month-long sale period in November. But we did have a bit of a look to see if there's a sweet spot when you should buy, when the maximum number of discounts are available, the biggest average discounts. And I asked the Aussie price checker app that I work with, Zift, to have a look at this for me. They picked out 11 popular Black Friday products and had a look at the average prices last year in the sales just to see what had happened. 150:39 And what they found was really interesting because, first of all, prices went up. from September to October by an average of 4% across all retailers, across all those products. Then they came down by an average of 12% from October to the week before Black Friday, and then down slightly again in the week of Black Friday. So I think the takeaway from this is don't go too early, hold your nerve. The last two weeks of November, at least based on last year's data, which seems to be repeating this year, the last two weeks of November are the best time to buy. 151:13 Yep, okay. And look, again, you're lured into perhaps buying things you don't need because there's such a discount, but around this time you can buy stuff and do your Christmas shopping, get it out of the way. 151:25 Absolutely, and I think the research says around half of Australians do their Christmas shopping in November now and take advantage of these sales, which is a smart move because there are some really good deals around. Of course, the game that the retailers are playing is get you in the door with a really good discount on a particular product and then hope that you make impulse buys and buy other things that you didn't intend to. The game you need to play is to have your list of things that you want to buy for Christmas presents and or essentials around the house, things you are going to have to buy anyway, and then use the sales to buy those things for less without succumbing to the temptation to make impulse buys. 152:03 Energy costs, of course. We always talk about this. Make sure you check your energy bill. But you're saying that around about now there might be some deals around as well? 152:11 Yeah, there are. The biggest trend I've noticed in energy plans recently is these upfront credits, welcome credits that probably a dozen different retailers are offering. And some of them are up to $400 across electricity and gas just for joining, which, you know, that could be a month's free electricity and gas or more for a small household. So really worthwhile. Just make sure, obviously, that the deal itself, the pricing on the plan is good as well. You don't want to get your... your free welcome credits, and then find out after that that you're paying top dollar. 152:43 But this is the time when, you know, we're coming into summer, air-cons going on, and the biggest bills of the year are often the summer bills. So get on a good plan before you switch the air-con on, and you'll see a difference of hundreds of dollars probably in your summer power bill. 152:56 Yeah, and the other thing, if people have got streaming services, they've got telcos, they've got a mobile phone plan or bill, whatever it might be, you check those at this time as well? 153:08 Well, the telcos, they absolutely love Black Friday. I mean, most industries now, even the supermarkets are getting in on Black Friday these days, but the telcos do probably put some of their best... deals of the year out in the month of November. And so we're already seeing some of those drop. As I say, I think the best deals are probably yet to come in the last couple of weeks of November. But we are seeing, even just today, for example, we've talked about Boost Mobile, John. It's the only other mobile provider. 153:39 It's actually owned by Telstra now, but it's the only one that has full access to the Telstra network. at a lower price point than Telstra. And they've just launched, for example, a one-year plan, $300 for 500 gigabytes of data over the course of one year. So that's a special Black Friday deal. Amazim is offering $240 off NBN plans over six months, for example. And then a lot of the streaming services as well, Stan, Disney, Binge, KO, all have... 154:10 Good deals for new customers in the market at the moment, up to 50% off for a couple of months or even up to 50% off for four months in the case of KO, just trying to get people in the door. So worth having a look if you're interested in those. 154:22 Yeah, and the supermarkets as well, because we'll all be hitting the supermarkets ahead of Christmas, so they've got some specials to keep an eye on as well. 154:30 Yeah, well, what the supermarkets tend to do is roll a few different deals out over the course of this month. So at the moment, I think the one that's probably causing the most ruckus is Coles has brought back its three-month free deal on the Coles Plus Saver subscription. Now, some people will know how these supermarket subscriptions work. You pay a certain amount a month. It's $7 a month in the case of this one. But that gives you 10% off one shop a month. up to $50 off. So if you do a big coal shop once a month, maximize your discount, it more than pays for itself. 155:06 And in this Black Friday period, they often give people who are new to the program three months free. So that's come back. 155:13 We're going to see some more deals, I think, from Woolies Everyday Rewards starting next week. So we can talk about those next week when they drop. 155:22 But you'll see all sorts of deals from Everyday Rewards and from Coles and Woolies over the next few weeks. weeks. 155:28 And those fuel prices have started to track down. If you've got any advice on when people should strike, say you've got half a tank or maybe 60% full, so what should you do? 155:39 Yeah, well, they're dropping at the moment because the oil price has sort of come off a bit. And look, I saw some prices today that were under $2.20. We haven't seen that for weeks. So the advice at the moment is to wait if you can. If you've got half a tank, let it run down a bit more because the trend is downwards and things should get better. if you can wait a little bit longer. 155:59 Okay. All right, Joel, as always, fantastic. Thank you. We'll do it again next week. Thanks, John. Joel Gibson, we did say earlier, petrol prices are really coming down. You probably noticed that if you've been moving around, you just check your fuel out, you'll see they are coming down. So down a little bit more might be the time to fill up in the next couple of days. 156:17 11 to 12, 11 in Queensland. 156:20 Yes, it's going to be quite a cleanup in Queensland tomorrow. Of course, you'll be hearing about it on 4BC through the morning and through the night if there's any reports that you think need to be brought to the attention of our listeners. You've got a lot of homes without power going through Logan in particular. One of our listeners suggesting that the storms that affected the last Qantas flight to Sydney had to depart without checked luggage. They had to leave in a rush. to beat the curfew in Sydney. I'm guessing eventually they'll be able to land at Western Sydney Airport in circumstances like that, where, of course, there's no curfew. 156:57 So we'll keep across all of that for you. Also, just having a quick look at some of the stories that are popping up tonight. You've got these continuing talks with Russia. 157:08 And Ukraine over the war there. Well, the war is really just essentially an attack and an attack on Ukraine itself. More people injured overnight as the attacks continue. And it seems that Putin is still unhinged and unleashing. If you listened earlier, we were talking cars with Trent Nikolic and, well, sometimes we take a juvenile turn. So we're talking about a competition in the next couple of weeks to see who can change a tyre faster. We will do it. Hamish, thank you for all the texts about how to do it and do it safely. 157:42 Thank you. I'm taking that on board. In the meantime, we've had a request from John of Annandale to hear this song. So here it is.