Back to Back Barries podcast: what the Vic spill means for federal politics

I'm Tony Barry.And I'm not Barry Cassidy.I'm John Fane.But it's been a week, Tony Barry, where people have been defining themselves by who they're not.So I thought it would be appropriate to not be Barry Cassidy.Exactly.

And this is Back to Back Barries, a Guardian Australia podcast.John, welcome to the program, deputizing for Barry Cassidy.was a ABC Melbourne Mornings broadcaster.He started in 1889.

And you were occasionally yelling at me down the phone when you were in your role as press secretary to, I think, about 14 different opposition leaders in Victoria.

Maybe, maybe there was some word spoken, but you know, I've dreamed of this moment of interviewing you.and putting you in the hot seat.So this is a dream come true, of course.Well, I'm sorry to bring down the standards, but it's very kind of you to invite me.Well, in these dreams, it also included you apologizing and confessing you were wrong and then begging for forgiveness.But anyway, consider it all done.

Yeah.Excellent.

Excellent.

John, it's been a huge week in politics, but this week, mostly Victorian politics, which of course has massive federal implications as well.Talk us through what happened.

The Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allen, was defenestrated, replaced by her deputy, Ben Carroll.They're from opposite sides of the Labor factional divide, insofar as that still matters.It's called left and right, but it's in fact an alignment not so much now.these days on what people believe in, but more about power blocks.Hardly surprising, and we've seen the same thing happen in fragmentation in other political parties, including the Greens, which we probably won't get to today, but leaving that aside for now.Jacinta Allen, for reasons that I don't understand, refused to call a royal commission into allegations widely distributed now through the media, but spearheaded by Nick McKenzie at the Age newspaper.

of significant rorting and penetration by organised crime of what's called the Big Build.The Big Build in Victoria is a whole bunch of different infrastructure projects, any one of whichon its own would be significant.But put together, they create an extraordinary pipeline of infrastructure works, railway lines, new stations, tunnels for freight, hospitals, level crossing removals, a whole bunch of stuff.And the allegations, put simply, are that the CFMEU has been infiltrated by Barkey's and organised crime.You have to pay.

a surcharge to get a job, to keep a job, to keep other people out.And it's so closely integrated with various union, some still there, but mostly.long gone union officials, that it's almost impossible to untangle.Jacinda Ardern refused to call a royal commission into it, saying, no, that's not the best way to do cultural change.We're doing it in other ways.But it looked very much like a government that was trying to avoid being held to account for some of its own failures.

If she'd called a royal commission, in a way it would have been a royal commission into her.because she was the responsible minister for so much of the big build.So she declined to do so.It was toxic politically.I'm sure your polling will have been telling you much more detail than I know even, but it just became an albatross.So she had to go and she was replaced by the alternative, the deputy premier, who said, as soon as you elect me premier, I'll announce a royal commission, which she's done.

That is certainly what we saw in our poll and that was kind of the trigger and politically we saw that it just became, you know, it just eroded public confidence in her government and internally as well.Her authority was diminished.But I do know that when she became the Premier, Andrew's numbers, you know, he was such a dominant figure for so long, but all those strong politicians, they have a shelf life and there comes a point and it goes off very quickly and Andrew's numbers were starting to just come down off very strong highs.They were starting to dip and he had great timing and he pulled the pin and handed it over.Perfect succession plan with a six.-seat buffer.

But right at the start, voters in our groups were saying they wanted real change and their concerns straight away with Jacinta Allen were, it just seemed like carrying on.They described her as the acting CEO.Some were unkindly saying that she was a puppet of Daniel Andrews and he was still pulling the strings.She didn't differentiate herself.That's true.

She didn't outline a fresh new vision.The big thing for Ben Carroll, what is it, three and a half, four months out from a state election?He's going to have to do that.And if he doesn't, he'll suffer the same fate, surely.

Yeah.So if you were advising Ben Carroll, what would you be telling him now?He's got...First thing I'd say is don't wear a North Face jacket ever.

If you've got one, just take it out and burn it.Secondly, Make sure that anyone you appoint to a senior portfolio is not tainted, because if the Royal Commission you announce is going to do its job properly, you don't want senior ministers being called in and grilled.You want to put a ring fence, basically, your government from the past.So several senior ministers have left.I'm not for a moment suggesting they're the ministers who may have something to explain, but it's just a break from the past.So when he started off saying, I'm not Dan Andrews, I'm not Jacinda Ardern, that was a mindset.

We're going to have to see some sort of a picture painted by Ben Carroll and his leadership team that reinvigorates people's trust in the Labor Party.His opposition, of course, Jess Wilson, has never been a minister.never been in government, has multiple former opposition leaders looking over her shoulder, and still has some internal ructions, which we may or may not get to today.But the sort of stuff that's been going on around the Liberal Party elsewhere, about which you know far more than me or anybody else,The divide between the moderates and the fundamentalists, that's not gone away suddenly in Victoria.But I went and watched Question Time on Tuesday, which was Ben Carroll, the new Premier, he came in, it must have only been minutes after being sworn in.

You'd have to say his performance was suboptimal, trainer wheels, and the opposition for the first time in a long time.And I am one of those sad, tragic people who from time to time drops in on question time.Correct.

Yeah, yeah.I mean, it's fun.

It's kind of fun.There was no room.There was a queue of people waiting to get into question time.But he had trainer wheels on, and for the first time, the opposition actually looked like they had some wind behind their sails.In question time on the first day came from the Greens, though, and Ellen Sandell, the leader of the Greens in the Victorian lower house, not usually the sort of, you know, most strategic participant in Parliament, but she said to the new Premier, who had been the Education Minister, You've failed to resolve a big industrial dispute, a strike of teachers.If you couldn't fix the teacher strike, how are you going to fix everything else?

And I'm paraphrasing, but that was the thrust of her question, which was, I thought, fairly pointed and much better than the questions being put by the formal opposition by the Liberal and National Party, which were all a bit sort of scattergun and around the questions of trust.

Yeah, I think the future is unwritten politics, and I think people need to adjust on the Liberal side.that this is a different contest now.Jacinta Allen has gone.You can't just sort of cut and paste Allen's surname with Carroll's surname and think that the campaign continues.They now need to define Ben Carroll.And I can tell you in all our research, he's largely undefined.

A lot of Victorians don't really know him.They recognize the name.They might have a slight perception of him, but they don't have a concrete perception of who he is and what he's about, whereas they did with Jacinta Allen.

But they don't know who Jess Wilson is.either.So we've got two people vying in a state election who are largely unknown.

That's uncharted.She's got slightly more definition, but only slightly.And her differentiating factor was she wasn't Jacinta Allen.So therefore they were sort of running towards her on a preferred premier stage.She had a 20 point lead, which given they didn't really know a lot about her, was quite extraordinary.And it was sort of, I think it was one of those things that was, you know, you know, a problem for Jacinda Allen internally was that, you know, she was effectively trailing a person who had only been in the leadership role for less than six months.

So do we have ABC, anyone but Carroll, or ABA, anyone but Allen?Or are we going to see Jess Wilson has to actually come forward with a vision and a picture and say to people, this is the sort of government I would provide you with?

Yeah.Well, they've got about 120 days to paint the picture of who Ben Carroll is.So the government, Labor Party has to paint the picture of a reforming, change direction kind of guy.

And Andy Burnham compared to a Keir Starmer.

Yep, that he hears you, he's understanding, and he's going to take action on these things that are important to you.The Liberal Party are going to have to paint him as no change at all.Same horse, different jockey, all those sort of lines.The Little Party this week has had about 12 different messages by my count.And none of them seem to be research -based.They're just sort of throwing things at a wall and hoping some of it will stick.

One of them was Backflip Ben.Backflip is actually a positive for some new premiers.Peter Beattie was a master of sort of saying, I hear you, I'm taking action, changing direction.That was a virtue for voters.

But it's also an inside baseball kind of reference.You had to know what he was backflipping from, which is very important.you know, the sort of 2 % of people who follow the minutiae of state politics.And everyone else is wondering, what's he backflipped on?

Yeah.I mean, some voters will mark you down.They're like, you know, well, they have no, you know, they're backflipping.They've got no conviction.They're subject to opinion polls and media scrutiny.That's why they've changed their mind.

But if you execute it properly, like Peter Beattie used to, then it's a positive because they're just like, he's listening.

So let's have a peek behind the screens.Tony, I reckon it's a fair bet that a lot of people are going to suddenly lose their phone.in the next few months.Laptops will just vanish.Oh, my car got broken into, or we had a burglary at home.Don't know what happened to it.

Shredders, it's very old school.People don't keep paper files, surely, anymore.But shredders might be a bit more in demand.But a lot of people with the Royal Commission looming on the horizon will go, eh, OK, I'll just make sure that I'm I'm not going to get swept up in this.So we'll wait and see what happens there.I think there's also a note of caution to be sounded.

Some of the figures that have been sort of floated around about how bad things are.I'm a bit sceptical.I had a quick look at Snowy Hydro.Snowy Hydro was announced at, how much do you know?Off the top of your head, nut, $2 billion.What's it up to now?

That's in double digits.Keep going.So it's between $30 and $40 billion from two.So you get these massive blowouts on infrastructure when things don't go to plan.And when we get a Royal Commission looking at, you know, why did this tunnel end up costing X instead of Y or whatever it might be, sometimes there will be engineering answers just straight out, well, we found toxic soil that we didn't think was there and it had to be trucked away and dumped.so on.

So there'll be a bit of that.But I think it's all worth investigating.And for anyone to say, oh, we don't need to look at it, I think that was just, that was silly.

So let's fast forward to November.What do you think is going to be the result?

If anyone thinks they know what's going to happen, they should be shown the door and told, look, I'm sorry.I've got a snake that needs oiling.Just go away.

That's the correct answer.Yeah.

Yeah.You'd be silly to say, well, there's a whole range of options.The next few weeks will tell us whether or not the reinvigorated Labor government, with all the might of the machinery of the public service, which has been so politicized in the last decade of the Labor Party, they will start to crank up.Labor Party's really pretty good at running campaigns.Liberal Party, they're still fighting with each other over the religious insurgents.Interestingly, this week, Myra Deeming, who's been a source of much friction within the Liberal Party, she resigned from the Liberal Party, but she's still got litigation against the Liberal Party.

She's still got ongoing measures that are tearing it apart.The Liberal Party's still got all sorts of tensions about which you know far more than just about anybody, but certainly me.Their problems haven't just suddenly evaporated.So We'll wait and see.And then Pauline Hanson, she says next week they're announcing their candidates and so on.We'll see whether in fact that is like before, just a bunch of fireworks that go whoosh, and there's a whole lot of razzle dazzle, and then it all fizzles out.

Yep.Look, my tummy compass says Jess Wilson is the next premier, but Ben Carroll can afford to lose 11 seats and still be a majority government.And 11 is quite a lot.Geoff Kennett in 1992, I think he won 19 seats, didn't he?But he only needed to win three.So that's a very different formula.

A lot easier when you only need to win three to cast net wider.And of course, for Labor, it was harder to defend those seats.We also know that the Labor campaign machine, I don't think it's as fearsome as it once was, but I think it's still pretty good.The Liberal campaign machine is still very much untested.And it's obviously a lot smaller structure because of the function of being in opposition.

Can I test this with you?If the Liberals lose this year's Victorian state election, they may as well just shut up shop.If you can't win this one, what sort of a political outfit are you?

It is the most consequential election for the Liberal Party in history, and I know people love saying that term about every election, but it is.Because if they lose this election, then you've got New South Wales in March next year, and I think the New South Wales Liberal Party can get pumped up there.By pumped, you mean hammered?Hammered, yeah.

They'll lose.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.I think Chris Mins is a great political athlete.He's also got optional preferential voting on his side.So for a lot of those One Nation voters coming off the coalition pile, they might just vote one One Nation and no preferences go to the Liberal Party.And on top of that, you've got this ICAC commission into New South Wales Liberal Party in particular, which is, we've just had one week of eight weeks of an inquiry.John, have you been following that?

I've had a bit of a look at it.

And Angus Taylor, once his name is mentioned, and the brothers of the former Premier Dominic Perrottate, once they get mentioned, you suddenly go, oh, hang on, what's all this about?And it's just your good old fashioned rumcore all over again, isn't it?It's wonderful to see that the culture and the traditions set so long ago in New South Wales politics are being kept alive today.

Yeah.So you, former lawyer, it feels to me the special counsellor is laying down sometraps with her interrogation.

Oh yeah, absolutely.It's a marathon, not a sprint.And it's the old lawyer's trick, you don't ask a question unless you already know what the answer is.And people have been through several proofs and they've been questioned in secret and then they're brought out and they're asked to do it again in public.And this is what did Gladys Berejiklian in.You think you can get away with something, and then you find out they know much more about it than you realised, and you can't bluff and bluster your way through it.

So we'll wait and see exactly where it's going to go, but it's not looking good for some key people.And it's interesting, I mentioned Moira Deeming before, you know, this religious insurgence into the Liberal Party, post -Family First, if you go back far enough, that failed.So they all thought, oh, let's join up the Liberal Party en masse, and you've got the moderates.That's playing out in Victoria as, you know, creating friction, it's exactly the same in New South Wales, creating friction.

My favorite part of the evidence this week was a text message exchange between two of the characters involved, and one responded, don't put that in writing, and the other one was like, no, it self -deletes a narrator's voice.No, it didn't.So that was produced, which was humiliating.

And the investigators have ways of retrieving information.And, you know, there are more sophisticated platforms that are more secure, but yeah, these are amateurs playing in a professional league.

That said, I mean, I think there was some evidence later in the week that sort of said that, you know, Tony Abbott and Dominic Perrottet had been doing functions for the Liberal Party, for the sort of right -wing faction.Well, mate, that's hardly a newsflash.Hold the front page.Tanya Plibersek's been doing functions for the Labor Party.I mean, you know, I thought that was clutching at straws a bit.That's just the nature of branches.

You've got to be present for the branch members.So you wouldn't say there was anything, a knockout punch in the first week, but it was one of eight weeks.But I think that's going to have some federalimplications as well.

Where do you see it going?It's very hard to know, because you don't know the full extent of it.But it certainly is a distraction for the Liberal Party.And at the moment, they need clear air.If they need anything, they need clear air.And even given the fine balance within the Liberal Party, anything that interrupts the attempts by Angus Taylor to re -establish some sort of credibility, it's not going to help him.

Yeah.The great problem of course is, you know...I'm sorry, Mr. Hastie was out and about this week as well.Yeah, Deidre Chambers, what a coincidence.Exactly.I think also with the concern that Angus Taylor has got is that he may have done absolutely nothing wrong at all, but we did see some text messages purporting to represent what he has told others, which is a very different proposition than him actually directly saying something.

And of course, we all know in politics, bipartisan issue is that they do tend to exaggerate what others have told them and sometimes misrepresent.

Oh, in order to get this person across the line, you say, but I've already got so and so, so you want to join in.Yeah.And he will undoubtedly, he'll lawyer up, he'll come along.He'll say, that's hearsay.It's, you know, it's not even true.You can't verify it.

And I deny it.And we'll see whether or not he loses any paint.

Yeah.Well, we might take a break and then we'll come after that and we'll talk about...

How am I going so far?Am I meeting your standards?Sort of B, B, B plus.See me after class.

We'll take a break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about another Royal Commission that's happening this week as well.Well, welcome back.John, also this week has been the Royal Commissioner to Anti -Semitism.And Social Cohesion.Social Cohesion.

Always gets dropped off and I actually wish it was the other way around.It was a Royal Commission into Social Cohesion.and anti -semitism or whatever, but we'll get to that.Yeah, thank you for correcting me.What's been happening there?So what we're seeing is..

.And they had sittings for the first time outside of Sydney.They came to Melbourne, they heard some people in Melbourne, and then they've gone back to Sydney.I don't know whether or not they're travelling some more, but we're seeing a distinct pattern emerge.And this is a pattern that came out, in fact, adopted from the Bush Fires Royal Commission and then the Royal Commission into institutional abuse and sexual abuse in churches and community organisations like the Scouts and the like.You hear lived experience witnesses, not just experts.

And the Royal Commissioner takes into account and gives significant weight to the personal stories of people who have, in the case of bushfires, been burned out or suffered family losses and loved ones.Institutional abuse, you had people who were telling the story of their childhood and being abused by whichever different, either religious or secular order it was, or organization, sporting, life -saving, whatever it might have been.And here we're seeing the same people giving their personal accounts of what anti -Semitism has meant to them, and there are competing and differing accounts.There are people who are saying, well, you know, I want you to think about this in a different way.Think about the root causes.look at the conflict in the Middle East, for instance, don't just look at what happened on the streets of, well, certainly at the beach at Bondi, which is always overhanging this, but also what's happened domestically.

And we're seeing some fairly tough cross -examination coming from some of the lawyers who were there representing some of the Palestinian advocacy groups and some of the non -mainstream Jewish community organizations.Now, I'm Jewish.I was brought up Jewish and I describe myself these days as Jew -ish because I'm not observant.I don't participate in religious or other community events.I go to synagogues for weddings and funerals.too many of those, I might say, lately, but I'm still culturally completely, absolutely Jewish.

And I regard, and I might also say, All my adult life, and even as a kid, you experience anti -Semitism.I'm not sitting here going, oh my goodness, isn't this terrible?But there was barely a day in my, what, 30 years at the ABC 23 doing the morning show every day, three and a half hours on air, five days a week, there would barely have been a day, Tony, where there wasn't some form of anti -Semitic slur, abuse, reference, hate mail.I mean, You know, I opened the mail one day and all this powder came out and I had to sit there at my desk while the whole building evacuated and the fire brigade came in the hazmat suits and the special vacuum cleaner.And I thought, well, you know, does someone really hate me that much?What's going on here?

But putting all that aside, and I'm not saying anti -Semitism is not an issue, but anti -Semitism is racism, racism targeted at Jews.Now, my argument to whoever would listen to me from politics or the Jewish community leadership was always, You're actually stronger in combating this if you align with the Muslim community and its leadership, the indigenous community and its leadership, the Chinese, the African, all the other people in the community who also experience racism.And you're stronger together.This is why I wish it was social cohesion and anti -Semitism, not the other way around.But they don't accept that argument.They say, no, this is the leadership of the Jewish community.

They say, no, anti -Semitism is different.It's ancient, it's pervasive and so on.I don't accept that argument, but I'm not a player and I haven't made a submission and I'm not active in those scenes, but I'm watching this play out.And I don't know what you, you don't have a dog in the fight and I've sort of, I've got a little chihuahua in the fight, butthe 95 % of the Australian population who aren't Jewish or Muslim, what do you think?I think social cohesion and anti -Semitism's got worse because of the Royal Commission, not better.

My business partner, Cole Samaras, argues this all the time, the same point that you made, that - Oh, you mean I'm not coming up with something original?No, he argues that the Indian Australian community.You know, the Jewish community should be creating relationships with those different groups.Across the board.Yeah.And sort of building a consensus, a coalition, to talk about social cohesion generally, as opposed to specifically anti -Semitism.

But I've tried to get politicians from every level, federal and state, in this state.I haven't been around the country because I'm not, as I say, I'm not a player in this space.But I've I've tried to get people at federal, state and local government level to try and build some social capital.So we think nothing of building engineering infrastructure, economic infrastructure.We think nothing of investing in those sorts of assets, but we're not investing in social cohesion as an asset.And yet all that other stuff is useless if we don't get on with each other.

And we're not putting anything into it.And I'm absolutely sure that it should be a priority, and I hope Virginia Bell gets it, that one of the recommendations should be that it's actually the role of government to invest some social capital into social cohesion, into getting people to work across the divides, not just say, oh, it'll happen.And it used to happen much more.It's sort of happening less now as people, they sort of retreat, I think partly because of COVID.too.And I'd like to see governments accepting a leadership role.

And at the moment, when I have raised it with people at all sorts of levels, they've all said, oh no, that'll blow up in our face.To which I say, no, it's blowing up in your face anyway.You may as well at least be seen to be doing something instead of sitting on your hands.

Do you think, looking at the federal political scene right now and what's been happening in the last couple of weeks, How do you see the federal politicians responding to this, or have they just moved on?

I can assure you from personal, firsthand conversations with the key people involved, they say, until things settle down in the Middle East, we can't touch that.And I completely disagree.

Why is that?

I think you have to, in fact, double your efforts and say, whatever's going on over there, we don't bring it here.Whether it's the troubles in Ireland, in the Balkans, whatever it is, Most people want to say, look, that doesn't apply here.So I would like to see, and it's not just religious leaders between the Jewish and Muslim communities, not at all.It's secular leaders, sporting figures.I would like to see them sitting down, breaking bread with senior people in the community, showing leadership and saying, whatever's going on over there, we're here, we're here, and we get on with it.

So normally we start the programs by talking about federal politics and then working with working downstream.This week, of course, we started talking about two significant state issues, ICAC in New South Wales and the leadership change here.But we're going to end on federal politics right now.There's been some bouncing around in the polls recently.One nation hit the lead on a primary vote basis after the budget.The response was pretty ordinary.

Albanese took a 10 point hit to his favourabilities.And the government sort of lost a bit of primary vote share.And when you're coming off around 31, 32 percent, you can't afford to lose too much.And then One Nation, of course, she did the National Press Club speech.We started seeing some contours around her vote because she was offering policy prescriptions and sort of gave her opponents a target to hit.Yeah, she had to put some flesh on the bones and people didn't like it.

Yeah, she didn't have to put flesh on the bones is my argument.I mean, she's got the immigration policy, which for about 15 % of the One Nation voters, 15 % of 30 % of the Australian population, that is their driving reason to vote for her.But most of it is just an anti -establishment policy.you know, anti -two -party sort of sentiment out there.How do you think the last couple of weeks has played out for the government and for One Nation?

I think the Prime Minister's looked better.Sometimes the less you say and the less you do, the better your standing can be.And there's the old adage, if your opponents are doing a good job of destroying themselves, don't interrupt, just let them keep going.I've always thought, and I think history proves us right, that Pauline Hanson's always been a bit of a skyrocket.You know, she'll flare up and then there's a big dazzling display and then it goes, and it falls to earth and amounts to nothing.That may or may not be happening again.

We'll wait and see.I don't like her politics.I don't like her track record.But as they say, when you talk to your superannuation company, past performance is no indication of future performance.So we'll just have to wait and see what happens.But I think I've noticed the Murdoch media started targeting her a fair bit.

That's because I think the Murdoch media helped tear down the Liberal Party brand in trying to force it to go right, boosted her stocks a bit.um, by running some of her agenda.And now they've created this monster that they don't know how to fix.Put the, put the stopper back in the bottle and put the genie back in.Yeah.Yeah.

Put the toothpaste back in the tube.So I don't know how it plays out now because, you know, I think they've done a lot of damage to the liberal party by doing that.it so far away from the centre.

But she's so good, and James Ashby, her main advisor, they're so good at doing the social media side of things.They're winning that.competition.And certainly the Liberal Party are struggling to keep up.I think the Labour Party are doing a better job on the socials.I don't spend a whole lot of time sitting there scrolling.

But, you know, when I do, I go, oh, gee, that was slick.

Yeah.Yeah.I mean, it's not crazy caps stuff.I mean, obviously there are supporters of hers doing the crazy capital letters sort of stuff.But some of her stuff is very clever.And funny.

Yep.

Worked for Trump.

Worked for Farage.

Yep.Have you ever interviewed Hanson?

Oh yeah, several times.In studio?And Nigel Farage for an hour when he was out here too.Oh really?Oh yeah.He's a barrel of laughs and that's part of the secret.

He's just totally relaxed, totally kind of takes whatever comes.She's quite brittle.She's like Clive Palmer, easily takes offense, very good at dishing it out, very thin skinned when it comes back.

So that's some of the differences Farage and Hanson have.What similarities do they have?

She's very good at tapping into the bumper sticker zeitgeist, you know, getting things down to a small number of words, short attention spans, which Tony Abbott, your great mate, was also really good at.

Do you think she's going to be enduring though?

No.

Why?

No, because I think when you apply the blowtorch of some serious scrutiny, when people are standing in the queue at the polling booth going, I actually have to choose who I want to run the joint.you like tapping into the kind of, you know, blow the place up, up until you think about, well, who's going to pull the levers?And this is the Jess Wilson problem, the Victorian state opposition leader, who's brand new and still in her thirties and got one thing good going for her.She's a hockey player.Ages.Yeah, which I am too.

But she, you know, people thinkdifferently doing an opinion poll for you to how they think when they actually have to mark the ballot paper.

They did in Farrer and they didn't in South Australia.And you take Peter Malinowskis out of the equation and South Australian Labor would have performed very differently.

But I know you won't like this, but when pollsters get it wrong, sometimes it's because when people actually have to choose rubber hits the road kind of decision.It's different to expressing, getting a bit of, you know, shit off the liver, if I can use that expression on this podcast, which I hope I can.Yeah.Well, you won't be invited back.That's for sure.I think there's several reasons for that.

That's only another one.Well, that's all for this week, John.It's been a pleasure.It feels like our recent lunches, except no chopsticks and no yum cha cart walking past.Your shout.Yeah, yeah.

But hopefully we can do this again sometime.

Or I could say, back to you, Barry Cassidy.

Well, Barry will be back next week and he can tell us what's been happening in Gama and give his view on federal politics.We've got a poll out on Sunday night, which will be interesting.And we have a Victorian poll out very shortly after.So watch this space.Watch this space.This podcast was produced by Daniel Seamer and Karishma Luthria.

Executive producer is Hannah Parks.And John, you say the next bit.This is Back to Back Barries, a Guardian Australia podcast.