150 Daily Telegraph_S Ben English The Murdochs Trump Vs Harris The Future Of Media

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I'm Mike Boris and this is Straight Talk.

We've never seen anything like this in human history,

where a search engine is so utterly dominant on how we put our information.

And so it's unprecedented and terrifying in the sense that whatever you type in,

it's being controlled.

Ben English, welcome to Straight Talk, mate.

Great to be here.

You're the editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph, or All Things Telegraph.

What does Ben English actually do?

You're doing a million things at once.

That's the way it is with a modern newspaper.

We don't hold anything back.

The industry is actually in the fight of its life against an onslaught of social media

that has no interest in Australian society, has no interest in our welfare,

and is just interested in the attention economy.

Very untrusting of politicians.

There's got to be something, what's the hidden agenda here?

That would be the least trusted people, I think, in our country right now.

Maybe next to me, but yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

Definitely.

Yeah.

Ben English, finally.

Welcome to Straight Talk, mate.

Great to be here.

And I think the last time we caught up was in, you know, it's like I'm skiding.

It was in Vegas.

Was that a Greek restaurant, actually?

It was.

Nick was holding, put together a little gathering of people for a Greek restaurant,

in a Greek restaurant in Vegas, and a number of people there.

But we won't disclose who was there, but you and I were there.

And I remember Nick went to a lot of trouble.

He was in a lot of trouble with the, I don't know, call him the chef,

or whatever it is.

Yeah.

And I think it was lost on a lot of people, because one of the guests

who was sitting there actually didn't want to eat some of the food,

and all he wanted to eat was steak and chips.

Yeah.

I don't even guess who that was.

Yeah.

And poor old Nick, he was like, he didn't know what to say.

I can see the look on his face.

I said, mate, don't worry.

Let him have it.

It doesn't matter.

But you got in a lot of trouble.

He puts thoughts into things, doesn't he?

100%.

Yeah.

And, like, you wonder how people like that.

Yeah.

And then you deal with these people.

Like, obviously, you have the Murdochs in your life,

but these individuals are so incredibly busy and so incredibly successful

and so wealthy.

Yeah.

Yet here's a small dinner which probably was getting organized for three days.

Yeah.

The detail.

Like, you know, someone like Nick, and we're talking about Nick Politis,

otherwise known as Uncle Nick, the chairman of the Roosters team, the club.

He told me, it's very interesting.

Ronnie Coote, as you know, was recently inducted into the NRL's, I don't know what I call it.

Hall of Fame.

Oh, actually, as an immortal.

As an immortal.

Yeah, yeah.

I think 14th or something.

I don't know which one he was.

Yeah.

And it was a long time coming for Ronnie Coote.

And, of course, Ronnie played for the Roosters and he played for Souths, which is a pretty

big transition between the two clubs.

But Nick told me, I said to Nick, after it was announced, literally the day after it

was announced, have you got Ron's new number because he's not answering my text.

Turned out I saw Ron on the weekend and the reason he didn't answer my text he told me

is because he got 400 texts.

He just, it was overwhelming.

Yeah.

And Ronnie's just turned 80.

But Nick told me the day after that he'd already written a letter and sent it to Ron.

He wrote a letter.

Yeah.

And I thought, well, why would you write a letter?

Who reads letters these days and, you know, when you can go and text?

Well, actually, if a letter arrives at me and I've got 400 texts, but if I get a letter,

I'll read the letter.

100%.

And I thought, wow.

How insightful is that?

Yeah.

And I don't, hopefully I'm giving him his dues and I'm not over-egging the whole situation.

But for me, I thought, that's a pretty thoughtful process.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the art of letter writing is rapidly getting lost.

But it becomes much more special because of that.

Totally.

It's the same with me.

I remember the letters that I receive, handwritten letters.

There's sometimes some that you don't want to read, but there's some really special ones

I've received over the years and they stick out in my mind.

Yeah.

I'm the same.

And when my parents were alive, I used to always make sure I wrote something to them,

like Father's Day, Mother's Day, those types of things, birthdays, Christmas.

Made sure I wrote something in there, even if it was one or two paragraphs.

You come from this world, a world of communicating through text, because you're the editor-in-chief

of the Daily Telegraph, or all things Telegraph, because the Daily Telegraph today incorporates

the Sunday Telegraph too, doesn't it?

It does, yeah.

Yeah.

So is everything.

Yeah.

Everything the Telegraph group produces, that's digitally and the physical form too.

Yeah.

It's all my fault.

Well, it is your fault.

And we're going to talk about not being able to get hands on, well, the phasing out of

newspapers, because I actually still like to get a newspaper.

You're not alone.

At least once a week.

Yeah.

I like to read it once a week.

Yeah.

If possible.

Or if I'm on an airplane, I actually like to thumb through the paper on the airplane.

Yeah.

Mainly because it's harder to get off your device.

But as the editor of the group, what does Ben English actually do?

So is it like the old, I think his name was Peter Finch in the-

Yeah.

Remember that movie?

Yeah.

The network.

Yeah.

He's sort of sitting there and they're all in the room and you're sitting down and saying,

well, we're going to write a story about that and your story's crap.

What does the editor do?

What do you do, physically do there?

Yeah.

There is a bit of that still.

Still a bit of that.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm not, I'm on the tools from about, when I say on the tools, I'm actually looking

at the pages on a screen from about 5pm till 8pm when we go to press.

But you know, you're doing a million things at once.

That's the way it is with a modern newspaper.

Once upon a time you used to have your deadline.

Yeah.

And it was because you had to print the paper, obviously.

Yeah.

And you had to get all the stories actually loaded up onto the print or whatever it was

in the print.

Yeah.

So there used to be, I don't know, like five or six o'clock?

Yeah.

And then you-

Well, it's, yeah, it's really similar.

But now, but now it's sort of a bit more continual because there's something new comes up at

nine o'clock.

You've got to put it up.

We don't hold anything back.

Right.

So there's not a story.

It's funny, the only, it's because it's a complete anachronism to hold the story back

for print.

Yeah.

Basically because it just gets ripped off anyway and put up digitally, radio, whatever,

it just gets ripped off.

So we don't, we've given up that long ago.

We don't hold anything back for the paper.

The only time we do is when we're required to by, say, if we get a, what we call a drop,

so we get a story from the government or from another source and they say, well, it's embargoed.

Right.

Until 5 AM, which means you can, you know, you can put it to print and it hits the streets

at 5 AM, but you can't put it up online.

And the reason they do that is because they haven't caught up with us.

I mean, we're 100% digital and we basically reverse publish, if you like, back into print.

Everything's front loaded into digital.

And now the next sort of evolution is-

Yeah.

It's into video.

So we are breaking our stories now by video.

Well, how do you mean?

Like it's more like television.

Well, yeah.

I mean, we've got our own wireframe on our app now, which is called DTTV.

And you know, there's a little button on your app.

You click on it and there's a whole, there's 33 stories, which get refreshed quite frequently.

We've got a five o'clock bulletin of video and we break news of video.

Our reporters are not only writing stories, but they're actually presenting.

They're presenting them on video.

But it is competing with television then, to some extent.

Yeah.

I mean, it is.

It's competing with appointment media.

Yeah.

The 6 PM news.

Yeah.

So yeah, we have a bulletin of five, but we're also breaking news on video throughout the

day.

But we're not necessarily trying to disrupt them so much as to disrupt ourselves before

we get disrupted.

If we just stand still, we'll get run over.

So we have to keep on evolving our storytelling.

And they are too, by the way.

They're using digital.

Yeah.

They're using digital to keep breaking stories themselves.

They're not waiting until the six o'clock news.

Oh yeah.

They're going.

I mean, I have the Nine app, for example.

And by the time I get home, and if I get home in time to watch the six o'clock news, I've

already seen it all.

You have.

Either through you guys.

Yeah.

Through news.com.

Yeah.

Or through the Nine news or whatever it is on the app.

And I've got seven.

I've got all of them.

Yeah.

And there are other places, by the way, who break news, like the Daily Oz.

Yes.

For example.

Yes.

Who's been doing it for a long time.

But they break it in text.

That's right.

Yeah.

Which is sort of like, for a period there during COVID, I was actually very interested

in what they were doing.

But I must say, I do prefer to get the video version now.

Oh, well, increasingly, that's how people want to digest it, need to digest it.

It doesn't mean we give up on text.

It just becomes more multi-layered.

What we've discovered is two things.

Number one, our journos are actually really good on camera.

We never expected that.

Print journos would actually be pretty good.

They're quite articulate.

I would say that our print journos, they have a deeper subject matter knowledge.

So that's their comparative advantage over, not disparaging TV journos at all, but a lot

of the time they've got, they move from subject to subject and they've essentially got a scripted

product that they're presenting, whereas our print journos, they go deep.

And so that's what they've got.

So my remit to them is to say, listen, just talk to the camera as you're talking to me.

If you're briefing me about a story, what's really going on?

So, you know, just lift the kimono on whatever this story is.

And the second thing is that our readers love it because we're sort of taking them inside

a newsroom and there's still a fascination with that.

People still want to know, like you said, your first question off the bat is, what do

you do?

Like, how does it work?

And I still haven't answered that yet, but I will.

I've been waiting for you to answer that.

Yeah, I'll get there.

I'll get there.

But we take them inside the newsroom.

And so we've shown our conference.

So that's another important element of everything.

Yeah.

So every day is, we sit down with our key leaders and there's probably about eight or

ten of us and we talk through, we've got what we call a topic plan.

We go through those stories.

How do you mean?

Do you sort of say, okay, politics, sport, business?

Is that what you're talking about?

Yeah, all of that.

You've got like-

Crime.

Yeah, crime, of course.

Showbiz.

Yeah.

Yep.

So you've got the categories.

Yep.

They actually like, actually probably demarked.

In other words- Yeah.

Yeah.

We must cover sport.

Yep.

And then within sport, there are rugby league and AFL and-

All of that.

You know, NRLW or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

And do you do that like-

Yeah.

Really structured way?

We do.

So yeah, it is structured.

You know, there's a lot of chaos and there's stories coming at you all the time, but you

have to have that structure.

You have to have a lot of planning.

There's a hell of a lot of planning that goes into what we do.

So is your time spent on the planning side of things or is it more the tactical side

of things?

Mm-hmm.

Or is it more the tactical side of things?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's more the tactical stuff, sort of saying, shit, there's a new story.

We better talk about that.

Both.

Both.

So do you see pretty much everything?

Yep.

It goes up on a dashboard or something, does it?

Yeah, we do.

You guys have a, or you'd have a dashboard or your team's has a dashboard.

Yes.

We have data insights dashboard.

Yep.

Which is a bit of IP we've got called Verity.

And that tells us in real time what all of our readers are reading, how long they're

reading it for, what they're reading next.

And so that gives us some insights into where they're at.

And that's where the appetite is.

It's a tool.

It's not the only thing.

We've also got to use our own judgment, because our acumen and judgment can sometimes still

outstrips the computer, if you like.

Yep.

In some respects.

Yep.

It used to be called the tummy compass.

Yep.

So it's just sort of a combination of both of those things.

Yep.

But increasingly, we're looking to the data tools to help guide us in meeting our consumer

needs.

Yep.

Verity, is it?

Does Verity then also look at everything else that's up on the digital platforms?

For example, it might look at something the AFR is writing.

No.

It doesn't.

So we've got that as well.

And everyone's got these things.

They've got other tools called ChartBeast, there's Adobe tools that give you a snapshot

of what's happening elsewhere.

But that's not as accurate as your internal tools.

Let me ask you this, Ben.

For example, if somebody else, another one of your competitors, and there's not that

many, there's only really one in print, for example, and there's a nine group, but do

you say, well, that's a good story, we're not talking about it.

Yeah.

Do you then, does then Ben English go to someone over the, can you go and chase that

story?

Do you get to that level of detail?

Yep.

Or does your system, your dashboard, actually direct someone?

Yeah.

Direct so and so over there, go and do it anyway?

No, it's not there yet.

Right.

But AI's coming.

Yeah, but that's more an AI thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In other words, this story's got a lot of gravity.

Yep.

It looks like, you know, so many thousand people have read it somewhere else.

Yeah.

And it knows that, you know, Buzz, Phil Rothfield should be writing about it.

Yeah.

Because he's, I don't know, he's sort of semi-retired Buzz, but whoever is taking his place.

Sure.

Michael Karyanis.

Yeah, Michael.

Yeah.

See?

Yeah.

Chase it.

Well, it depends.

He probably already knows about it anyway.

Yeah, he does.

So sometimes you'll, you'll have to make a judgment.

If the story is big enough, if, if it's, if actually it's, you know, it's a, it's a seismic

yarn and you can't ignore it, then you go, okay, we've got to, we've got to beat them

at it.

We've got to come up with an angle that takes it forward.

You can't just regurgitate what they're doing.

If it's a so-so story, we'll ignore it.

And because, you know, we'll try and, we'll try and make our mark with our own stories.

And they do the same.

They'll, they'll, you know, we might come up with some, you know, compelling stories and

they'll ignore it because, you know, we've already made the ground with it.

I think there should be more of us supporting each other.

As opposed to competing with each other.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think in many respects.

I think it doesn't do this.

Well, that's amazing for, for someone coming out of News Corp to, I've never thought to

hear that.

I mean, collaboration, not collaboration, but whatever the word is.

Yeah.

Because you guys have been so over the years.

I mean, let's face it, Nine versus, let's go right back, Packer versus Murdoch.

Yeah.

That has been an age, age long battle.

Generations.

Goes back forever.

Yeah.

And like.

Yeah.

Down to pitch battles on the Prince sides.

Totally.

Yeah.

Actually real.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Totally.

I think.

Yeah.

Legendary.

Legendary.

So it, so it's got to, but here you are saying, you know, maybe, I don't know who your equivalent

is at Nine, but, you know, less, maybe we should perhaps, not collaborate, but work

together a bit.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm, I'm friends with them when we, we talk all the time.

And I mean, you've got to think about, you were talking about, oh, you know, our only

competitor in print is, is the Herald.

But of course, and that's true.

Right.

In Sydney at least.

Yeah.

But it's our competitor, our competitors, they, they go way beyond that.

Yeah.

It's, it's all, it's all the, the digital.

And time.

Organizations.

And time is a competitor.

It competes with everybody.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, my, my, my time.

100%.

My, my, me and the audience.

Yeah.

My time.

Yeah.

Because not only do you have lots of other people printing the same stories, but.

Yeah.

You've got it.

But coming back to, sorry.

Yeah.

Just coming back to collaboration.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We attack each other too much.

All right.

I'm as guilty of it.

We're all guilty of it.

The public doesn't, they just see attacks like basically undermining the media.

Yeah.

Now we're in the fight of our lives.

And I don't think they care by the way.

They don't.

It's all noble gazing.

They couldn't care less.

Couldn't care less.

Nine versus seven or you.

It's boring.

They couldn't care who's done what at seven or nine.

You know.

Yeah.

This allegation about the head of news or.

Yeah.

You know, like I won't say his name.

Sure.

But went on recently.

Yeah.

But if there's serious workplace issues that are at stake, yeah, I think it, you know,

there's no problem with reporting on that.

I guess what I'm talking about is just having, taking cheap shots at each other.

Yeah.

Is not helpful to an industry that's actually in the fight of its life against an onslaught

of social media that has no interest in Australian society, has no interest in our welfare, and

is just interested in the attention economy, is rapacious, is actually gouging revenue,

is not paying back.

And, you know, if we want journalism to exist, and I think we all do, I think we, I think

even people who kind of, you know, resent the media at different times would recognize

that the fourth estate plays a vital role in, you know, maintaining a functioning community

with democracy, with a democracy at its heart.

You need a functioning.

You need a vital and, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, healthy media sector.

So when you say the fourth estate, you're talking about media generally.

Media.

Media generally.

Yeah.

It's an old fashioned term for the fourth estate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It goes back to the French Revolution.

Yeah.

But you're not referring to the big titans.

No.

Like, you're not talking about Facebook or something like that.

No, no, no.

Yes.

I'm talking more traditional.

Yeah.

Mainstream media.

Yeah.

Right?

Because we, we are the ones who, like, you know, we have for a long time taken as part

of our mission serving the public interest and whatever that may be, you know.

And we may be misguided in what we think the public interest is, but at least we pursue

that.

Whereas I'm not sure that, well, I'm certain that that's not the case with those social

media giants.

So take me through that then.

So, and I, I'm quite enamored by the fact that you said serving the public interest.

That's quite a thoughtful comment.

Is that mandated to you from above?

Does Lachlan say that?

How, how does it work?

Or is it your shareholders?

I mean, who, who says this?

Yeah.

I mean, when you say, man, it, in a, in a sense it's mandated above in the sense of,

you know, the, the Murdoch ethos.

Which goes back to Keith Murdoch, Gallipoli.

And then, then what he did in, you know, in building from the, for, you know, the, the

papers in Melbourne.

And then Rupert took up the cudgels with the news in Adelaide.

And then the extraordinary career he's had.

Sort of, you know, coursing through the ventricles of our country, of our company is a, is a

set of values, set of principles.

And, and that informs us.

That's the mandate from above that I would, I would be talking about.

Those values would include, but are not limited to a skepticism of authority.

Would you call it any authority?

I would say, yeah, that, that's reductive, but yeah, I would say that's, that's right.

Yeah, definitely.

Definitely, definitely we're not cozying up to elites.

Yeah.

That's something that, that, you know, Lachlan's grandfather certainly embraced.

Certainly.

And, again, going back to the Gallipoli letters.

It was about.

Can you take me through the Gallipoli letters?

Well, it was Keith Murdoch who actually lifted the lid on the Gallipoli campaign and reported

back to our government.

And, and it certainly, you know, wrote some letters that were pivotal in actually challenging

the efficacy of that campaign.

and basically saying that our kids, our young men,

were lambs to the slaughter.

So, yeah, so in other words, as they're getting off the various boats

and things like landing on the beach.

Yeah, as you said, it was an ill-conceived campaign.

It was very poorly executed, et cetera, et cetera,

and it's quite controversial.

But it was historical in the sense that,

and I think this is one reason why Gallipoli is so, you know,

figures so large in the hearts of Australians and also in the sense

in our sense of nationhood is that it was the first time we'd fought

as a nation under our flag and it was also there was that schism,

there was that sense of, hang on a minute,

like we're serving the empire here and have we been betrayed?

Have we been just led into this slaughterhouse?

And so it was the first time there was a sense of separatism

and, you know, Keith Murdoch was pivotal to,

to all that and it was sort of those values of challenging orthodoxy,

challenging the, those who are in authority or ordained

to be in authority, that still is, you know,

very much at the forefront of, you know, our value system today.

You said something very interesting, you know, like I'm,

I wouldn't say I'm anti-authority but I don't like the system

just because it's a system and I tend to push against it.

Yeah.

And you said, use the words elite or you might say elitist,

I'm not sure, but the, the, the, like the self-appointed elites.

Yeah.

Which, you know, it's a big issue in America at the moment.

So, and, you know, we've got, we know what Murdoch position is on that.

Yeah.

And, and, you know, republics versus the democrats and like,

and funny enough, you can go right back to the, the civil war.

The democrats come out of, they're from the south,

they come out of the civil war.

Oh, yeah.

And the republicans.

They don't talk about that much.

But they should because it actually was,

it, that's, that's the.

They were pro-slavers.

100%.

Yeah.

And, and that's sort of where that whole game originated.

Yeah.

And, and, I mean, we'll just move along further because I want to talk

about Australia, but your job, but, but in,

we have something not too dissimilar in Australia.

I do remember the movie Breaking Marine, whatever,

first great Australian movies.

Fantastic.

About the Boer War.

Yeah.

And, which is when we got sent in there to do someone else's bidding.

That's right.

Gallipoli is not dissimilar.

Absolutely.

The same deal.

Yeah.

And I'm, now I'm getting, I'm getting all energized

by talking about this because.

Brilliant.

You've, you've hit me right on a spot which is quite tender for me

in terms of the elites and the, who appoint themselves

as the so-called self-appointed moral dietitians of our society.

Wow.

Yeah.

And.

That's our, that's our sweet spot too.

And they prosecute the shit out of it.

They do.

And they make you feel guilty.

Yeah.

If you're not part of the movement.

Yeah.

And that's like, I mean, that's what.

That's what we're all against.

That's your sweet spot.

That gives us.

I love that.

Yeah.

That's, that's what gives us our purpose.

Yeah.

Is actually exposing the hypocrisy.

Because there's always self-interest at the heart of it.

It's a lot of, you know, we call them virtue signalers.

Yeah.

You know, and there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of what I would call can't.

There's a lot of hypocrisy.

And it's.

Have you seen more of it?

Oh, it's industrialized.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Totally.

It looks like it's a production line to me.

Oh, totally.

Yeah.

And it's been monetized.

Yeah.

You know, so you see that with various causes that people can see, well, there's, there's

an opportunity to make a lot of money here.

So would you, I mean, I know, I don't know this.

I mean, I'm just, you know, you're the editor-in-chief at, you know, what we all read every day here

in, in, in New South Wales, Queensland through Corrie Mail and in Victoria through the Herald

Sun.

Yeah.

The stories are all shared.

Yeah.

You know, pretty much.

It's just one syndication.

Yeah.

That'd be right.

That's right.

Do you, are you interacting, I don't know if this is right or wrong, on a daily basis

with your, your global chairman?

How does that work?

Regularly, not on a daily basis.

So he doesn't say, hey mate, you know, this, we're just covering the election in the US.

Yeah.

We need much, much more.

Yeah.

Push, or the Australian election, which is coming up.

Sure.

We need much more push against.

Yeah.

Let's say the Labour Party.

No.

Interesting.

A lot of people ask me that.

They wonder about it.

There's a sort of, we call it Murdoch derangement syndrome.

You know, does he ring up and say, listen, I don't like that.

I don't like that brief on page eight.

No.

Or, or Lachlan for that matter.

But I do speak to Lachlan a lot because he's passionate about news.

He's passionate about Sydney and Australia.

But I have to say.

I have to say, hand on heart, he's never given me writing instructions on, you will have this position.

He's more just curious about how we, you know, what our take is on it.

I think what they're most passionate about is that we're running the paper well.

And that the business is being run professionally and that we're actually, you know, in sync with our audience.

I think that, and I don't think Rupert was any different.

Are we actually serving our audience?

So how do you work out what your audience wants then?

I mean, because I've often wondered about this.

Is it?

Are you, is the media forging and moulding public opinion and serving it to the public?

Or is the public making those decisions and requiring you to deliver what decision they've made?

Yeah, great question.

I think it's both.

I think the way that we best.

Influence sentiment, opinion is by breaking stories, you know, like by exposing things and which otherwise wouldn't be known.

That, that is what shapes opinion.

And then, and then of course the emphasis we give on different stories that also shapes opinion too.

So the front page, I know that people, you know, talk about the decline of print, but the front page still is an incredibly powerful instrument.

Is that, is that?

Is it as powerful on the digital version?

So for example, when I get my, my, I mean, I, I subscribe to the Daily Telegraph.

Yeah.

I actually don't look at the front page.

No.

I mean, I see what you say.

You go, um, some stories from the top stories.

Sure.

And it's signed by the newsletter.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I get that each day.

Yeah.

And then I get two, I get two emails.

Yeah.

Um, one's from you.

Yeah.

Not to me.

I mean, it's, you sent everybody, but it's, it's sort of same with the stories after

the day.

And then there's another one, which is the actual newspaper.

Sure.

But the front page is not that important to me anymore.

Yeah.

I look.

Digitally I'm talking about.

Yeah.

Digitally.

We, it's interesting.

Um, COVID was a bit of a game changer in terms of how people interact with the paper, right?

So a lot more people, uh, started reading the paper.

So as it's printed online.

So it's called, we call it a digital print edition.

And, you know, on your app, you, down the bottom, you, it says today's paper.

You click on it, up comes the paper.

Yeah.

As it was printed.

Yeah.

So, so a lot of people do do that.

But I don't find it that compelling, the front page is what I'm saying.

It's not as compelling.

Yeah.

No, because there's something about the tactile paper, right?

Yeah.

It's big for a start.

Yeah.

It's a lot bigger than you can, than you can get on your phone or your iPad.

Yeah.

I use the phone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so it doesn't have the same impact, but, um, we're still making money from the printed

product.

Wow.

Good money on it.

Right.

So, um.

Is that more cost control and as opposed to more revenue?

There's a lot of cost control.

Yeah.

Um.

But, but also, you know, there's, you know, there's still healthy advertising in print.

Um.

And it's still making a profit.

Well, Katie Page has, um, been very generous to you guys.

She's a great.

Katie, are you listening?

She's a great person.

Uh.

Passionate about print.

Obviously it works for her.

Yeah.

So thank you Katie.

It sure does.

Yeah.

Um.

And so look, well, obviously, and this is no secret, um, print, um, you know, circulation

is in a steady decline.

It has been for 30 years.

It has been for 30 years actually.

Um.

But it's still, you know, we still sell a lot of papers.

The, the trick of course, and this is what everyone's trying to do around the globe is

as that's declining, you get, you ramp up your digital engagement and consumption so

that when print runs out, you're still firing.

Do you think there'll be a day, because I remember when Amazon came along and every

bookstore in the world closed down.

Yeah.

And then all of a sudden, um, mysteriously bookstores started opening up.

In fact, Amazon opened up a bookstore.

Yeah.

It's so true.

Do you think there will come a day where we'll have no newspaper, physical?

Yeah.

Or do you think that the, I don't want to call it a romance, but whatever it is, the

tactile nature of.

Yeah.

Of having a newspaper.

Yeah.

Will sort of hit a level where it won't go below.

Yeah.

Maybe it won't grow.

Just a base level.

Yeah.

Baseline.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Look, the, the brutal economics will tell you that.

Probably there's no papers in 20 years.

Because there's no point having that baseline because the costs of running the baseline

but says we're not going to do it anymore.

You can't have a time.

A hundred percent.

You've got all these fixed costs.

Yeah.

That you literally can't justify unless you say, well, it's a vanity product, uh, that

we do for, um.

Brand or something.

Marketing purposes.

But I think that when you get to that point, you're going to, by all means, you can create

it, the DPE, but you don't have to actually send it to the print, the print site.

Yeah.

Um, I think it'll be after I'm long gone.

Uh, I think.

I think the papers are here for quite some time yet.

Um, I think, yeah, eventually it'll get to, you know, three a week, two a week, one a

week, but that's, that's a way off.

Do, do, do you know, I mean, I guess you do know this, but, um, do you have a, um, uh,

an analytical sense.

Yeah.

Or your business doesn't have an analytical sense of, um, the age and, and or generations

actually physically still buy the paper.

I know a lot of people still buy it and use it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They don't collect the data for you.

I mean, you would know in terms of what gets done.

We've got a pretty good idea.

Yeah.

And how do you work that out?

I mean, it's, I mean, not how do you work it out, but what are you finding out?

Are you finding out it's people over 60 or what are we looking at?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's over 65.

Yeah.

I think the average age print reader is about 68.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

Mine's my age.

Yeah.

But look, you've got the project to keep them alive, right?

Project 100 or?

Yeah.

I want them to go to 108.

Well, we've got to, we need to support you in that.

Now, I'd like you to support me in that because we actually together have the same interest.

We do.

The same demographic.

Totally.

But what I'm really interested to know too, by the way, is because Project 100 is not

just about old people living to a long age.

It's about younger people become much more aware of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, one of the things that's really important to us is younger people understanding

how much money they need to earn to live to 100.

Yeah.

Not, you know, because, you know, the current modeling that's, and I'm yet to, I'm about

to organize a actuary to do this analysis for me.

But the current modeling, as I understand the model and the inputs to the model, is

that there's an assumption that someone's, that's going to retire 65 years of age on

an average income.

Yeah.

Has for the last 35 years or since compulsory superannuation got introduced by Keating,

in the mid-90s, has been putting away in variable amounts, but between nine, now 12

percent of their wages into, or their employees have been doing this into a super fund.

The super funds, there's an assumption that they're earning 8 percent per annum or some

other number.

And the assumption is that you die at 81.

Yeah.

And the output is that how much money do I have to have between 65 and 81 to have nothing

on the, at the day I die.

Yeah.

Or enough to pay my funeral.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that money's coming out of what I put.

It's coming out of the way on the assumption that it earns so much over that 30-odd year

period.

And of course, if all of a sudden we now live to 100, anyone who lives beyond 81 is not

going to have any money.

Yeah.

And I'm really passionate about that.

Yeah.

And that's a big education program.

It's enormous.

So what does, say, someone like your organization become passionate about in terms of education

programs for your readers?

What are you trying to educate them about?

Are you trying to educate them about democracy, how important democracy still is?

Yeah.

Or are you trying to educate them about how important challenging the elites is?

I think it's about certainly those things, but it's also about enabling them to live

their lives to the best of their ability.

So it's informing them.

So it's gone beyond where you used to be.

Oh, very much.

How can you live?

Ben English is saying, for example, to me, a consumer, Mark, we'll give you stories.

Absolutely.

That'll help you live longer and live better.

Yeah.

And perhaps have a better life with your family.

And these are the things you need to know.

So it's such a great question.

And it's something we've been grappling with for some time, is that how do we justify someone

to subscribe to our product?

And it's not enough just to tell them what happened.

Because you can get that anywhere.

Get that anywhere.

It's commoditized.

Yeah.

Right?

So we've got to start increasingly tell them why, how, and what's next.

And what it means to you.

Well, you used to do that on Sunday Telegraph, Ben.

And you used to have Mad Dog.

Yes.

He used to do this section.

Yeah, the health.

Yeah, the health thing.

We've got the Barefoot Investor.

Yeah, you've got him as well.

Scott.

Yeah, Scott Pate.

Scott Pate.

Yeah.

So that's true.

That's true, right?

So the papers have always served that.

They've always had that breadth.

But we've got to reflect that in our digital products as well.

And that's why I love your Project 100.

I think it's a fabulous concept.

It's a step beyond what those guys are doing.

By the way, I'm not paid to say that.

No, no, no.

I understand that.

Genuinely.

I genuinely think it's good.

Thank you.

But it is a step beyond that.

I mean, we're working on getting it produced and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah.

But are you seeing – that's a pretty altruistic position for you guys to take.

But it's not out of – I mean, there's a selfishness to it.

And the selfishness is that unless we do that, then people are not going to subscribe.

So in other words, it's becoming nearly compulsory.

Oh, absolutely.

People are so demanding.

They're so – and they're promiscuous when it comes to –

Yeah, yeah.

How they digest it.

They jump from one to the other.

A hundred percent.

So we've got to give them a reason to come back to us frequently.

Be sticky, as they call it.

So we've got to do much better with health, wealth, education.

Are they emerging, Ben?

Are they really emerging?

They are.

Yeah.

People are wanting this.

They want what we call – it's what we call breadth of subject matter.

Like I said, everyone knows us to be fantastic in our coverage of NRL politics.

Yeah.

Showbiz and particularly crime.

But we absolutely need to offer a lot more than that.

Our consumers these days are people who are actually subscribing to us.

They're sophisticated.

They're informed.

And they demand, rightly, more information than that, more insights.

In terms of the education piece, which, I mean – and who would think of a newspaper

becoming educational or an educator, but – and I don't mean it in a condescending way for

newspapers.

I mean, newspapers are telling people –

Yeah, yeah, sure.

But it's more about – because there are a lot of people who are not sophisticated.

Yeah.

And traditionally, a lot of those people bought the telly.

Yeah.

And they just want to know about the local robbery or –

Sure.

Or whatever it was in the footy.

Well, that's changed.

And I think so, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think if you go back 20, 30 years, the – you know, where you could go for information

was so much more limited.

It's what I call limited.

Yeah.

Linear.

It's basically what you were saying.

You know, there's a very few owners of the information, and they fed it down to the market.

And now it's been completely flattened.

It's been atomized.

And so, how do we justify our continuing existence?

We're no longer – or we're less so much of a mass market daily.

It's more – we're actually, you know, increasingly serving a, you know, not niche,

but –

But a dedicated readership.

And as those readership levels have declined, the level of, you know, sophistication and

education has gone up.

So, those people who might have been buying the paper, you know, when we were selling

600,000 copies, you know, 40 years ago, they're getting all the information on Facebook or

Insta, a lot of those people who no longer buy the paper.

The people who are buying the paper or are subscribing to the paper, they're actually

very well-informed.

They're very well-informed and very well-engaged, leaning into the debates.

And then, so, if you – does that mean crime – crime sells in terms of –

It does.

It still does.

Does that mean crime, though, starts to take – in terms of what you guys produced –

Yeah.

Starts to take less of a front-line position?

Yeah.

I mean, look, we still want to be the best at it, and we have the best.

But I think we've got to – like, it's got to be part of a broader offering, you know.

So, that's where we're leaning in towards.

I mean, we won't – we're not going to – we're not going to – we're not going to

ever drop crime because, you know, you're right.

People, rightly or wrongly, they love reading about it.

Well, and I know it's one of the most watched podcasts.

Whenever I have a crime guest on my show, it pumps.

People love it.

They love it.

Crime, sex, and sport generally, but crime and sex kill it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Big time.

Why do you think – do you think that health, longevity, blah, blah, blah, you know, like

just a better life?

Yeah.

Because, you know, you guys have been writing about this for a long time.

Yeah.

But it hasn't emerged above crime.

It hasn't emerged above sport.

Yeah.

It hasn't emerged above politics.

But do you think as we – as a nation, we age and we become more wealthy because, you

know – and by the way, anyone who owns property in this country who's over 50 is now wealthy.

Yeah.

And they're looking for how can I hang out longer.

Yeah.

Do you think those aspects that you guys have been playing with and covering but haven't

promoted –

Yeah.

Yeah.

Will become – will emerge?

Will emerge up there?

Yeah.

I mean, it's equivalent?

Oh.

I don't – look, they're not as explosive, obviously, literally, they're not.

But I do think – I do believe people will subscribe for that subject.

If we – if the information is compelling enough, if it's engaging, it's interesting,

we tell stories as imaginatively as we do in other – you know, as we tell our crime

stories.

And I think it will engage.

I think that's – I think that's the key.

Yeah.

I think that is too.

Because your crime stories are good headlines.

Yeah.

You've got really good journalists.

Yeah.

If you've got a good journalist writing it.

Yeah.

And the – you know, it's captivating, especially if you put some imagery up about it.

But like if –

Well, it's like anything, right?

It's like anything, Mark.

You've got to humanise it, right?

Yeah.

And so, I mean, TikTok's sort of saying, oh, you know, it's all about peer-to-peer.

Well, it's always been about peer-to-peer.

It's always been like going back – you know, we started in 1879, the best stories were

always the ones which you could put a face to.

What's the illustration?

How are we – you know, what's the picture?

Where's the picture?

We're visual creatures.

Not just visual, but we also want to hear the story personally.

So, if you told a bland story about, hey, if you take this cod liver concoction, then,

you know, statistics say you're going to live this – who cares, right?

But if you've got someone who said, hey, I was on death's door and I started taking

this and now I'm actually doing 50 press-ups a day, probably read that.

And especially if it was in a video.

Yeah, video, even better.

Yeah.

And it was someone who was known.

Because, you know, I was – prior to you coming in, I did a podcast with a chap and

he's got this unbelievable new app and he's very successful doing these things as a technologist.

But he was talking to me about dementia.

And for people over 60 years of age, and that's a big part of Australia, and I dare say probably

a lot of your subscribers are over 60, the most searched illness on the – through all

the search engines is dementia.

Yeah, right.

Right.

People are terrified of it.

Yeah.

They are actually terrified of it.

Well, going back to what you were saying, right, I don't think many people actually

anticipate they're going to die at 81 now.

So chances are you're going to have some form of Alzheimer's or dementia if you're

going to live longer.

So there's anxiety around, am I going to have enough dough?

Yeah.

There's anxiety around, am I going to have my family around me, my friends?

Who's going to be white mass?

Correct.

One of my kids?

That's pretty much it.

And you say to your kids –

Be nice to them.

Yeah, well, they might all say no.

I've got four sons, they might all say, no, Dad stuffed that.

But they're important questions, I think, for us.

But I want to ask you this question.

You were a journalist originally.

Yeah.

I still consider myself one.

Well, yeah, but you're more, you know, like sitting at the top of the tree, sort of making

more decisions in relation to the strategy around the business and then probably looking

over – oversight on technology.

Yeah.

But do you still have a hankering to be a journalist?

Like, actually want to write a story?

Yeah.

Have you written any recently?

I did an interview with James Packer, which was a thrill.

Yep.

I read it.

Did you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Good.

Yeah, look, I did it as a Q&A, which I think, you know, I really enjoyed it.

I thought he was fascinating.

Did you have to go over to see him?

I didn't, no.

We just did it, you know, basically.

Online?

Yep.

And, you know, it was tremendous and he was so candid.

Yeah.

I thought it was – the feedback's been –

Incredibly candid.

Oh, incredibly.

Yeah.

Good on him.

I felt like James was purging a little bit.

It did feel that way.

Like getting it off his chest.

Yeah.

I thought it was cathartic in some way.

Yeah, very cathartic.

You know?

And it was really – I was really heartened by, you know, he seems in a much better place

now.

But anyway, I digress.

So, yeah, so it's got the blood pumping a bit.

But there's a thrill in actually editing a paper and editing the sites.

And that's like – there's a bigger canvas there and actually coming up with ideas and

then getting them executed is sort of a different sort of thrill.

So how does it work?

Does a journalist put the story up and – I mean, in the old days, someone would have gone

and corrected the grammar.

There's all of that.

Yeah, there's all of that.

But you don't do that.

I don't do that.

But it's more – like I said, we come back to – in the morning, we all get together

and the chief of staffs come in and they'll talk about –

Yeah.

And they'll have this topic plan and they'll go through what they're pitching.

They'll pitch, right?

And there's probably 50 stories they'll talk about.

And I'll – and then the other leaders will say, well, hang on a minute.

What about this?

Have you thought about that?

Is it a physical meeting?

Hmm?

Physical meeting?

Physical meeting.

Like you're all sitting in a room?

Yeah, we're all in a –

Right.

It's very old-fashioned.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah.

And that's where – particularly the morning one.

There's a morning one and there's an afternoon one.

And in fact, there's meetings well before that.

Like they start at six.

People start getting in at five.

They have their first.

They have their first sort of meeting talking about content probably at seven.

The time we have our main conference is 10,

but everything's been up and running for a long time.

And that first conference is where you have that really full

and frank exchange of ideas, you know, where you throw stuff around

and people pipe up and say, oh, I don't think that's crap.

You say, what about this?

And, you know, and –

Is it consensus type or is it you?

A bit of both.

Look, you know, someone's talking about it as a –

benevolent, sometimes not so benevolent dictatorship,

but I certainly try to cultivate a lot of voices in that room,

try and get everyone, you know, because that's how people get motivated,

if they're relevant and they're part of the process.

Yeah, and heard.

And once you get that going, it's fantastic, you know,

and then people are fired up.

The best newsrooms are the ones where people are just like just leaning into stuff

and excited.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they're just so excited and chasing something that they think's, you know,

a really good thing to go after.

And do you – and I guess the reward is getting a story up.

Absolutely.

For them to get their story up.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, there's all sorts of different things.

Like there's chasing a scoundrel and you're trying to get their image.

There's, you know, there's a minister gone, you know, gone sour

and so you're chasing the political story around that

or there's a scandal involving a cover-up or whatever.

There's so many.

There's so many different flavours to it.

I mean, all there's – there's the – like last week we did the Bush Summit in Orange

and unbelievable luck as far as we're concerned is that literally four days

before the summit, the Federal Environment Minister cans a $1 billion gold mine

just up the road from where we were holding the summit.

And so that was just a gift because then we could just absolutely –

This is the gold mine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is the secret business that wasn't disclosed.

Songlines.

Yeah.

And so we, you know, inside the business, well, let's have a lot of fun with that, you know.

And what that means is let's just go for it and find every angle and, you know, just –

and the way you have fun with it is by exposing details, is going after it

and digging into the story about, well, what was the process?

Who did the minister speak to or didn't speak to?

What about the mine operator?

Did they engage with the local Aboriginal community?

And it's in digging up those facts that the fun is had because you expose the gaps.

Does Ben English say to the journalist or the journalists,

okay, you go and find out, you know, whether the Labor Party above the particular minister

is in agreement with this outcome, both at state and federal?

Do you allocate sort of jobs?

Or do they know this stuff?

I don't know about that.

Sometimes I'll just say, oh, what about, you know, one of my reporters, I might say,

well, it's – I don't know.

I don't know what he's doing.

Could he do that?

But it's more me – it's the chief of staffs.

They're in charge of the staff.

I leave that to them.

I don't prescribe that because otherwise I'll screw it up because they've got enough –

they're juggling a lot of balls.

They'll know who they can allocate to it.

But the most important thing each day is prioritising.

You need to know what you're going after and that's maximum two or three stories

that you really go after and you throw your resources into.

There's an old saying that, you know, if you've got the front page sewn up

then everything else takes care of itself.

It's not quite like that but it's pretty close.

If you get that main story right then the rest of the paper sort of, you know,

it usually is a good paper.

How do you know how long to go after something?

I mean when's something sort of run out of – run out of leaps?

Sometimes I don't.

Sometimes I'm still obsessed with it and people are like, hey, the war's over.

You know, I'm like that Japanese soldier on the island in the 1950s.

Yeah.

But so, you know, that's why you have, you know,

a good sort of council of minds around you saying –

sort of pulling you up.

And do you – in terms of your teamwork because I guess that's what you're referring to,

do you tend to have people around you in that regard?

Like let's call it your in-house council.

I don't mean lawyers.

Yeah, yeah.

But counsellors or whatever the word is.

Do you rely on people that you've always known,

that you've worked with in the past for a long time, you trust, they trust?

Yeah, I mean there's a small group of guys and girls in our office who are brilliant.

You know, I'm extremely –

I'm extremely blessed.

A lot of people say this about their teams

but I've just genuinely got a great team around me and I heavily rely on them.

You know, there's only about five or six of them who, you know,

you bring in and you often will have what we call a crisis meeting.

We sort of – we love to call it a crisis meeting and sometimes it's 6 p.m.

and we go, okay, what are we doing here?

This is still a mess.

And you work through it and, you know, you work through that on longer term projects.

You actually work through it on something you've got to turn around

in the next half.

Where do you see – and I don't mean in terms of hard copies of newspapers

versus digital newspapers – but where do you see news organizations like yours,

like massive ones, in 10 years' time?

Do you see – and I'm – you know, hopefully they will be listening

but, you know, staff don't get nervous about this.

I'm not saying replacing staff.

But AI will have a big part of all this.

Yeah, it will.

And particularly the editorial stage.

The stories we want to chase.

Yeah.

There'll be some sort of – you might even have it.

There'll be some sort of software that'll be looking at what's going on in the world

and saying this is what everyone's talking about,

this is what readers want to know about, blah, blah, blah.

And it will determine what the editorial bent will be for the day or the week or the month.

Yeah, I mean, look –

Where do you see it?

It's going to be massive.

But, look, I'm more glass half full.

Yeah.

I see it as liberating our finest minds.

Our best journos to actually do what they do best,

which is, you know, uncover and expose and bring home stories that matter.

A lot of the time there's an incredible amount of unglamorous activity involved

in actually putting a paper out and actually pulling a story together.

A lot of calls that are not answered, a lot of emails that are ignored,

a lot of doors that are knocked on that go unanswered.

A lot of people don't answer it as well.

AI won't replace that, but AI will go a long way to helping that process.

More an enhancement.

Absolutely.

It's going to be a tool in ways that we haven't imagined yet,

but the ways that I already know about is going to be a fantastic aid to us.

You know, it can go – it can wade through –

you might have a hand side, say, for example, or, you know, in parliament.

Yeah, the parliament record.

Inquiries that committees have done,

and you can basically far more efficiently wade through that.

Council meetings, you know, which we don't have enough reporters to go to the council meetings.

Now, there's no replacement for actually physically being there,

but certainly AI can help with that.

It can also help – I'll give you an example as well.

Chat GPT, right?

So we just did it as an experiment.

We said, okay, we want to send a cadet to –

and we imagine that there's been a drowning on the central coast.

And we said, okay, Chat GPT, here are the facts.

A boy 12 has drowned at Yemina Beach at 10 a.m.

His body was found face down in the surf.

Ask five questions.

And so Chat GPT came up with, you know, questions like, you know, what was his name, da-da-da-da.

Okay, that's fine.

Ask us another five questions.

Chat GPT says, well, was there anyone else on the beach?

Were there any surf lifesavers there?

Ask another five questions.

And by the time we got to the 20th – and by the way, it's taken about three minutes –

it's asking questions that we didn't anticipate.

So that's story gathering, right?

That's a story gathering tool that could be really useful for young reporters

to hone their craft about asking the right questions at a press conference.

As an example, there's so many things that it can do that are going to help us.

Yes, it's a threat too.

But there's going to be –

there's going to be some help along the way.

And do you think that there's going to be – I mean, for me, for example,

I don't know if this is a survey one, but that's all I have.

That's the only tool I have.

I should ask Chat GPT.

But because I consume – because I have the ability to consume so often and so fast local news,

so let's take the Bondi Junction Westfield drama,

Yeah.

it was everywhere.

And pretty much everyone had the same information at that stage.

So I felt as though I'd seen it all and read it all.

I did sort of give myself a bit of an uppercut because that night I –

I won't say I lost interest in it, but my interest had been completely filled.

My cup was filled.

I couldn't get any more information.

Sure.

So I started watching global news.

Now, I don't know whether I'm an unusual survey,

but I was then became more interested in what was happening in the US.

Yeah.

And a little bit to the – and to the UK.

Yeah.

Which are my sort of two important areas that I like to know about.

Yeah.

In terms of news.

Do you think that news will become more local and – sorry, less local and more global over time?

Consumers becoming more interested in what's going on around – in the world far more –

is there far more weight attached to that than there has been in the past?

Or do you think people just really want to know what's going on locally?

I think it's the latter.

I think you're a really well-educated person.

You know, you've travelled the world.

You're a worldly person.

I'm not saying most people aren't like that.

But my experience is that hyper-local is where people are at.

They want to know what's happening in their world.

Right.

It doesn't mean they don't also want to know about what's happening in the States.

But there's no point me focusing resources on that because I'll never do it as well as anyone else.

What I can – what I do –

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So talking about him globally, let's talk about him.

Donald Trump, former president, or I think they still call him,

once you're president, he was president.

President Trump.

The next election.

So no doubt, you know, you're going to be covering,

you guys are covering it all.

Is Kamala going to beat Donald?

I mean, what do you think of that?

I mean, do you think that was like an unbelievably cute move in terms of timing?

It was incredible.

I think that the, well, I don't know, interesting your thoughts,

but I thought the Democrats timed that debate to give them options.

Yeah.

I think what the Democrats have done to reimagine her is unbelievable.

It's incredible.

It's incredible.

Her social media is like it's got nothing, but it's ridiculously good.

It's the Seinfeld candidate, right?

Yeah, totally.

You know, she's a candidate about nothing, but it's the vibe.

Yeah, yeah.

And the dancing, the look.

But it's amazing how suddenly Trump's the old guy.

Yeah.

And he looks at it.

Yeah.

And he hasn't worked it out yet.

Do you think?

He hasn't worked out how to, what the narrative is, you know,

and he's, it's not working.

He's not working for him to attack her personally yet.

No.

I think, I think if he sticks to policies, then he's every chance.

I haven't answered your question whether she'll win.

What do you reckon?

I mean, the polls got her ahead of the moment slightly.

They do.

No, I think.

Is it a popularity contest, though?

Like, I mean, has America moved away from policy to popularity?

Because we're talking about voting for a president.

We're not talking about voting for a party versus another party.

It's now.

Okay.

This is where I, where I, I think that, I think that if Trump successfully positions

her as part of the current administration and he sticks to policies, he just talks about

immigration, cost of living, and getting America moving again, and then he wins.

I'm not sure if he can, and I'm not sure if he's capable of it.

And I think the other, the other problem is, is that people look at him and they go, maybe

we don't want to move on from all the rancor.

And maybe this is our chance to break from that.

Rightly or wrongly, maybe he's associated with that.

But if, if you had a gun to my head, I'd say Trump wins.

Just?

I think he just gets over the line.

I think he gets Georgia.

I think he wins, he still wins Arizona and Nevada and maybe one of the rough states,

maybe Pennsylvania, and he gets there.

Does it make a difference?

That's a great question.

That's a great question.

That's a great, I think it's often overstated what difference it makes.

I really do.

I mean, people talk about Trump like, oh my God, if Trump comes in, it's just going to

be Armageddon.

Well, kind of wasn't when he was president.

In fact, on a, in a, on a foreign policy front, it was actually very sound.

You know, he didn't have any, any wars.

No, no.

He was actually very, you're right, he was quite sound and quite reasonable.

Very reasonable.

I mean, he's, he's a very good businessman and he kind of ran it that way.

And America was pumping before.

COVID came along.

So I agree with you.

I think it's a great question.

I think that we definitely overestimate the importance of whoever the incumbent is.

I mean, look, America's basically been running without, with someone, they've been running

in a vacuum for the last two years.

Biden has not been firing on all cylinders.

Nor has she.

And nor has she.

You only have to go back on, go back through the transcript about how she, how muddled

she is on so many issues.

But, you know, I must say she's been pretty good.

Um, in the spotlight the last four weeks.

Incredible, actually.

Well, you, you guys, um, you know, your organization, you, you, you sort of dig deep into the weeds

and you must be getting sort of lots of, um, information from the US.

Yeah.

This looks like to me, looks, it looks like to me, I've got no idea, but it looks like

to me it's all been coordinated below.

Like, it looks like there's a puppet master or puppet masters.

It does look that way.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist.

No, but I, but it does.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, right.

It looks scripted, right?

It looks, totally looks scripted.

Well, it's certainly because.

I know, and I'm talking conspiracy either.

I'm just saying just, this is power brokers managing a process and doing a brilliant job

at it.

Doing a brilliant job at it and, and aided and abetted by the vast majority of mainstream

media.

Yeah.

I mean, don't forget, um, the Hunter Biden laptop, um, was buried, was buried by Google,

was buried by, by Zuckerberg, was buried by Twitter before Musk took it.

And it was buried by all the mainstream, uh, networks.

The only ones that were running it were the Post, Wall Street Journal, and Fox.

And so most of America did not even know about it.

And yet it was a scandal.

It was a, it was a dreadful scandal.

So that plays a big, just to your point about it all being, you know, neatly scripted.

They're all, they're all dancing to that card.

Are we talking about like a, no, I don't want to get really weird, but is it like a cabal

of powerful people?

I don't know if it is.

Yeah.

But like, I don't know if you're getting together in a room, right?

Well, so, so it's not, it's not coordinated, but it's almost like an implicit signaling.

Yeah.

Market signaling.

There's signaling.

A hundred percent.

And, um, like I get it.

Um, you guys are saying that.

So we'll say how we're going to contribute.

Yeah.

Well, I'm Facebook and I'm going to say, I'm going to bury this.

Yeah.

Um, and, and then there would have been phone calls.

Yeah.

Definitely.

Mates.

I made this, this is rubbish.

You're not going to run that out here.

No, no, don't worry.

Buried.

Yeah.

You know, so it would have been more kind of at that level.

I don't, like, as I say, it wouldn't have been executive meeting saying, you know, this

is our policy, but you also have, um, within these organizations, everyone's signed up,

right?

So you're sort of pushing through an open door.

Everyone's all part of that mission.

Because I mean, during COVID, you know, Zach has already admitted that he, he buried certain

stuff.

Yeah.

About COVID.

Um.

Dangerous.

Totally dangerous.

I mean, you know, people would say.

I'm a, I'm a Murdoch editor.

Yeah.

Uh, well, what are you talking about?

Yeah.

Don't you guys do that?

You know.

Whether you do or you don't, it doesn't matter.

Yeah.

But maybe they're both dangerous, but, um, at least it's good to know that there's two

sides of the, there's some balance in the system.

A hundred percent.

And, and I guess that, you know, people's prejudices and their, um, and also their biases.

Yeah.

We're humans.

It always comes out.

Yeah, it does.

If you have the ability to write it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And like, if I look at, uh, the way someone writes a story, I mean, generally speaking,

I can see the language that they use is going to reflect their bias and the, and all their

prejudice.

It is.

And, and, and rightly so there've been concerns in the past about concentration of media,

but we've never seen anything like this in human history, um, where a search engine is

so utterly dominant on how we get our information.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so it's unprecedented, um, and terrifying in a sense that.

You know, whatever you type in, um, you can't, uh, it's been controlled.

So you must've breathed a sigh of relief when Musk took over X or took over Twitter because.

Yeah, well.

He sort of brought some, well, he brought another side of the story.

Yeah.

I mean, look, he's a, he's a grenade thrower.

Yep.

Uh, we need them in the world, right?

Yeah.

Uh, it needs to be a bit messy.

Rightly or wrongly, we, we do need it.

Well, I think that's where, uh, you know, uh, Trump is sort of in their mold too, right?

So.

So when you, when people say they don't like Trump, it's mainly like when you actually

push them on it, they, it's often quite slippery.

They can't actually say what it is they hate about him.

Yeah.

I think it's because he's obnoxious.

Yeah.

I think it's because he's, he's kind of goes against the grain of what, what people expect

a politician should look and feel like.

And sound like.

And sound like, right?

And so he's, he's that ultimate disruptor in that way.

And, you know, there's, there's a lot that's, um, uh, objectionable about that, but, but

also.

So I think, um, none of us should be surprised that he came along because we had, we were

basically served up crap for so long that there was, there was a vacuum there waiting

to be filled.

I assume he's the ultimate disruptor because he disrupted politics.

Yeah.

Without any right to do so.

Yeah.

But he saw the opportunity.

Absolutely.

And I have met him a couple of times and, you know, on the occasions that I interviewed

him once, the only interview he did in Australia, I had, he gave me a half hour interview.

It was during the TV series and, um, he of course owns The Apprentice.

He's one of the owners of The Apprentice.

And, um, so he, he, he offered to do it.

He offered me that he, I could do it and we could get footage for a show.

But, um, I, the thing that I took away from was this pre-president, um, he has to be for

me the most, the penultimate or the, the ultimate, um, marketer.

He's the most marketing person when you go to market your own brand.

Genius.

Ever in history.

Well, that's a lot coming from you.

There's, you know, there's a lot of people who are up there, but, but in modern history

at least, obviously there's some ancient, you know, JC was pretty good at it, but he

still lasted until today.

But, but Trump in modern history has to be one of the most ultimate, the ultimate, I

think, um, self market, uh, self promoters.

And I don't mean that.

I don't mean that as a narcissist in a narcissistic way.

I just mean putting himself in a position to disrupt politics as, as it was always seen.

Yeah.

He has a genius.

There is a genius.

There is a genius about it.

Even in the way he speaks.

Yeah.

And, uh, cause I can tell you the language we hear on television is not how he speaks

one-on-one.

Really?

No.

He doesn't talk that way.

So it's a deliberate.

It's deliberate.

Wow.

It's a well crafted.

Yeah.

Like whether it's others have crafted for him, I don't know, but it's well crafted.

The language.

It's instinctive though, isn't it?

He, he does it.

He does it.

It's a performance.

Yeah, it is.

It's like, it's showmanship.

Oh, he entertains you.

At its best.

Oh, he's incredibly entertaining.

Even if you hate him.

Yeah.

You're still entertained.

You're still mesmerized.

Because you want to watch him to hate him.

Yeah, you do.

Like you want to watch him to criticize him to somebody else.

Well, it's no accident that the, the New York Times, uh, the Washington Post, those, uh,

left-leaning mastheads of the States had their greatest subscription growth after Trump won.

It was the best thing that ever happened to them because they, they had something to rail

against and, and people rallied to them to say, well, why should we hate Trump?

And they articulated it for them.

Do you think that we, I know we don't have presidential elections in Australia, but like,

do you think that, um, our, we are starting to move a little bit towards that territory

and it's nearly becoming, when we, our polls do this, but prime ministerial elections, I

know we vote for our local member, but we are starting to move that territory.

I think we are.

Um, and you see that this week where, uh, Jim Chalmers.

Has attacked Dutton.

Yeah.

Attacked the man.

Um, policy, it's harder to actually win the argument on policy these days.

The soundbite is getting compressed.

And so they go after the guy.

Um, which I think by the way, is a sign of insecurity.

It's not very Australian either, by the way.

No, I'm not sure if it works.

We, we play, we don't play, we play the ball.

We don't play the man.

Yeah.

That's not.

Aussies don't like it.

No, I, that's what I think too.

Yeah.

And I, but my gut feeling is politics is borrowing from what they see in America.

Oh, definitely.

And, uh, it's nearly like they're, I mean, particularly when it comes to labor and the

Democrats, labor on Australian, the Democrats, US, I think that it feels like to me that

they're nearly talking to each other and saying, listen, we're going to election coming up

too.

Is there something you can help us as your, you know, uh, compatriots in the same cause?

Yeah.

Um, we now elect selection or hold our position in Australia because it's important for you

as a Democrat.

Um, if you, you know, as a Democrat leadership.

Sure.

For Australia to be similar.

Yeah.

With the Labor Party.

And I, I just get, that's just the thing I feel.

I don't know.

Certainly, certainly in terms of political strategy, there's a, there's a heap of exchange

of ideas.

Oh, there is?

Yeah.

There's actually individuals who've worked on both campaigns.

Wow.

It happened with Keir Starmer.

It happened, um, also on the conservative side, uh, where Crosby, Texter, um, you know,

um, they helped out with the, the, the conservative campaigns in the UK.

There's actually a, a Labor guy from Australia who's working on the Democrats campaign.

So there's, there's definitely, um.

And we'll come back to probably to work on it.

Totally.

There's cross-pollination there happening in terms of.

So that is the, that's the real deal.

Definitely, yeah.

Because I, I suspected some, I just feel it because of the way, like they're polling every

week.

Oh, yeah.

And, you know.

And the small, so at the moment, well, what, you know, this is actually written about the

weekend.

I'm not making this up.

They were saying that the small target strategy that Kamala is, has adopted.

May in some way have been borrowed.

I mean, maybe it's overstating it, but they're, they're suggesting that, that, you know, does

emulate in a way, the way, um, Albanese, um, had a successful campaign in that he kind

of was able to successfully present himself as a, as a, you know, a no damage alternative

that, you know, I've got a safe pair of hands here.

There was not much policy, uh, you know, not, not huge policy discussion during that campaign.

It was mainly just, I'm not Morrison.

Yeah.

Well.

It's funny you should say that because I've been thinking about the upcoming election.

By the way, I have a prediction, so I'll, I'll boldly say to you, um, I think, and I've

said this a few, cause I, I still do lots of talks and lectures on the economy and I,

and I said recently, I said, if labor calls an election before the end of this year, you

can pretty much bet that come February next year, we're going to have a recession because

they know the numbers better.

And anybody else, cause you know, they're talking to treasury all the time.

Right.

Um, and labor will call that election because they don't want to go into it.

They don't want to go into election mode.

In a recession.

In a recession because that, that's just good night.

Yeah.

Um, it doesn't necessarily follow if they don't call election before the end of this

year that we won't have a recession next year.

Sure, sure.

Cause there could be other administrative things.

But it means that there definitely will be one if they're going to call it.

A hundred percent.

Right.

Um, and, uh, and we are seeing a little bit of noise at the moment and a little bit of

ball passing and like pushing the blame across the RB.

I, I'm getting signs right now and, uh, you know, cause you know, and by the way, what

I think is quite interesting is that the RBA was appointed by this party and in fact by

the treasurer yet now he's coming home on the RBA, the RBA more recently, very sort

of, um, interestingly, but sort of pointed to the fact that they're working against the

government at the moment or the government's working against them.

That's right.

Um, they didn't say as much, but.

You know, you could, that could, that sort of can be inferred.

There's a coded war going on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And I, I find it quite interesting and, uh, I, I just, my gut feeling is, um, something's,

something is brewing.

Yeah.

At the labor level.

I think they're getting nervous.

So on that, can I just turn it back to you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, do you think, I mean, we're talking about this narrow path that Bullock has to sort

of try and navigate, right?

And.

I don't think there is a narrow path.

It's binary.

It's one or the other.

Right.

It's either recession or no recession.

And I think, I think it's got to be recession.

Okay.

So therefore her bias should be towards cutting rates, right?

Yeah.

Um, no.

Therefore she should say, therefore, um, well their database.

So they're going to say, yeah, yes, I, the bias will be, but they're never going to,

she's never going to say it.

No.

So she's going to hold rates.

Because she doesn't want to have inflationary expectations, right?

No, no.

She doesn't, and she doesn't want to beat, do what her predecessor did.

Yes.

So she's not going to say anything.

So she's just hold rates.

I think she's been very good by the way.

I do too.

She measured.

Yes.

And, and by the way, she hasn't got upset with the government because like the government

is actually spending money at state and federal levels.

Yes.

Not just one, but at both levels, which is actually making her job a lot harder.

It is.

Because the money's not being spent so much in infrastructure, but it's all the employees

that the government's employing.

Yeah.

In all the various great outcomes, NDIS, they're all things that need to be done.

Don't get me wrong.

Yeah.

But maybe a little hold on, like a freeze on.

Yeah.

Would be a good idea because every single person of the 36,000 people they announced

are going to be employed in the last budget at a federal level, they're all going to be

put into one of these pockets.

That's right.

And they're all going to get paid a lot of money and they are getting paid a lot of money

and they're generally speaking being pulled out of organizations like mine and CBA and

everyone else.

There's capacity constraints in the private sector.

Correct.

And we have to pay more money than to get a person.

That's right.

So all my, my only alternative then is to increase my, my pricing.

Yeah.

You know, which I, we can't.

In our industry because, you know, we have a standard price that pretty much everyone

charges, but, but other industries can, can charge and that by definition is going to

be inflationary.

So there's, there seems to me from, to answer your question from the governor of the Reserve

Bank's position, I think she knows and, you know, we only have to go back to the great

Paul Keating who, you know, people don't like him.

He is very divisive.

But you have to say he's probably one of the smarter treasurers we've ever had.

Yeah.

And he did some great things, you know, at the time, you know, Keating boarding compulsory

superannuation, which has turned out to be a great relief against the Australian purse

when people retire, given we've got an aging population.

I would dare say that all needs to be recalculated, but it doesn't matter.

Sure.

He did deregulate the banking system, so it allowed people like my business to come out

and to put pressure on the bank.

He did a lot of things to lend at the right price.

He did a lot of stuff.

Floated the currency.

Floated the currency.

Yeah.

He did a lot of great things.

But he also did something really important in 1991, I think it was.

He was treasurer at the time.

He said, this is a recession we had to have.

Yeah.

And if you look at the stats right now, and she'd be looking at the stats all the time,

we have never had as bad statistics in a data sense in terms of GDP, et cetera, retail sales,

et cetera, as we had back in 1991.

We have to go back.

30 years to see the same numbers.

And I could only say to you, because he was always honest, Paul, which is why he lost

his election in 96, because he was probably too honest for us.

But he did say we had to have that recession to curb inflation.

And my gut feeling is she's probably saying the same, but won't say it.

And I think the treasurer probably knows it.

Yeah.

And I think the treasury numbers, we're going to get some numbers out in the next couple

of days.

But he probably is terrified.

And he's going to start pushing the blame down the other end of the bookshelf.

Well, look, Albanese quite rightly said before the last election that, because he was asked,

well, how are you going to drive real increase in wages without unleashing inflation?

He said, because we're going to get productivity gains.

So he hasn't delivered on that.

And I think that's the most-

He delivered on the first part, but he delivered on productivity.

Delivered on the first part.

But the most critical thing in my mind is the second part.

Yeah.

It's hard to get productivity gains.

But you certainly don't get productivity gains by making the industrial system more rigid.

And I think that that's where it's going to come home to roost for them, is that they've

introduced some draconian restrictions on businesses, and the latest one being the right

to disconnect, which are just ideological in nature and absolutely anathema to productivity.

And small business growth.

Well, small business, that's where it's really the rubber's hitting the road, right?

Yeah.

I mean, you'd be saying that, would you not?

I'm totally saying it.

Like, you know, 70% of every person that's employed in this country, gainfully employed

in this country, works for a small business.

Most small businesses work on the premise that they don't have premises, so people actually

work from home, because rent's so high, commercial rent's so high.

Yeah, yeah.

And it makes sense for people to work from home, because a lot of these things are ministry

roles.

Yeah.

Well, productivity means if I'm, you know, if you're working for me and you work from

home, that if I, it probably means that you're going to stop at three o'clock because you

might want to pick your kids up.

Which is fine, but you want to pick up tools again at eight o'clock.

Yeah.

And I know the banks operate in this way.

I mean, most of the banks who talk to my brokers talk to them at 7 p.m. at night.

Yeah.

You know, the credit people, ring my guys up, my brokers at 7 p.m. at night.

And it's flexible, right?

Correct.

So if all of a sudden I can't ring my guys after five o'clock, then how am I going to

get my loans approved?

Yeah.

So, and all small businesses are affected like this.

They all have flexibility.

They have to have flexibility.

Because if they don't...

If they don't provide the flexibility to their staff members, the staff members have

so many choices where they can go and work.

Go and work for the government or go, never go to work.

Well, we had a front page story today about how hopeless our councils are at approving

development applications.

If you had them in the...

If the councils were the private sector, they'd be...

They wouldn't be knocking off at three o'clock and having an RDO every nine days.

And those applications would probably be getting done more frequently.

That's...

There's an example of where the state is a dead hand on...

Productivity.

And that's why the federal government would never solve...

They will never build 1.2 million houses.

Never.

Which is their five-year target.

There is no chance.

And by the way, they need 1.2 million new houses over the next five years based on what was

previously considered to be the medium-term immigration numbers.

Yeah.

Which has already been blown out of the water.

100%.

So, you know, like...

So, therefore, I do think if we go back to, you know, the next election, I do believe...

I do believe there is a big chance that the government will call an election before the

end of this year.

And I don't know what the timing will...

I don't know how long caretaker periods work.

But, like, I would say watch this space in the next month.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's what I think.

Yeah.

I don't dispute that.

Yeah.

And it is becoming a personality game, as you said.

It's about keeping Albanese clean.

So, you don't see Albanese talk about any of these things.

No, no.

He uses his attack dogs.

He's running the Kamala Harris style.

Yeah, yeah.

And he's using Jim to attack on this or, you know, Penny Wong to attack on that or someone

else to attack.

So, they're all the baddies.

Yeah.

But we just keep him pretty happy.

And I wonder, I mean, I put it back to you.

Do you think Australians would buy that?

I mean, do you think...

What do you think?

Do you think Australians...

No.

Are like American voters?

No.

No, I don't.

Well, it's compulsory.

So, it's different in that regard.

But do you think we're more wired into the games that people play?

Yeah, I think so.

I think so.

I think that we are skeptical, very skeptical by nature.

Yes.

Very untrusting of politicians.

Yeah.

There's got to be something.

What's the hidden agenda here?

That would be the least trusted people, I think, in our country.

Maybe next to me.

But yeah, definitely.

Journalists and media politicians.

Yeah.

We're all on that.

No.

I think that's right.

I think that Australians also would be very wary about kicking a government out after

one term.

Right.

Because they don't...

Like, you know, we believe in a fair go.

Yes.

We want to give them a chance at having a crack.

But just to your point earlier, like, people are hurting.

And they're hurting when the power bill arrives.

They're hurting when they see how much the mortgage is or how much they're going to pay.

Their rent's gone up.

And rightly or wrongly...

Well, actually, you know, they can sheet that home to this government.

And the reason is, is because they actually fought the last election on the cost of living,

how it's going up under Morrison.

So will your paper prosecute that?

I mean, is that what you do?

Is that what your paper or your news outlets will...

Do you, as the, you know, the main editor guy, did you say to your team,

well, let's call this out.

Let's...

Because that's news.

Let's call them both out.

Yeah.

Okay.

But...

But...

But the Liberals didn't say anything.

No.

But then again, they're going to have, they're going to present their pitch to the nation

and we have to interrogate that.

Yeah, true.

But yeah, definitely.

We, I think it's a mistake to, it was a little bit like The Voice.

So we didn't declare our hand on where we stood on The Voice.

We just chased the story.

And watched the developments.

Yeah, watched the developments.

And very much Australians just made up their own minds.

They didn't need any guidance from us or anyone else.

But they determined that.

You know, I think it can be overstated, the influence that papers have on how people vote

on election day.

It's important.

It's one element, you know.

But I'm in a game where, the game I'm in is actually being trustworthy and actually presenting.

I think our journalism has to be above reproach, particularly with the...

I think our journalism has to be above reproach, particularly with the fact that we're in the middle of an onslaught from social media.

That's our point of difference.

Is it, you know, we've got professional journalists who live in your community.

They pay the same bills.

They, you know, they drive cars on the same roads.

That's our point of difference.

Is that because social media journalism is not edited, is not controlled?

Well, it's derivative from us.

So they rip our journalism off.

But then they put their own spin on it.

No, they just don't live here.

What they'll do is, they don't put a spin on it.

They just shove it up there and just let the algorithm do it.

It's work, right?

But my point is, is that they're not here.

Yeah.

They're in, you know, they're in California somewhere.

And do you think, I mean, if you were asked to advise Anthony, who, by the way, I've met him once or twice, but from what people tell me who haven't met him, he's a good bloke.

Lovely bloke.

Like, I don't really know him well.

We've been to footy a few times together.

He's actually, he's a great, he's a great footy lover.

He loves his house, isn't he?

Yeah.

He loves his site.

He loves footy generally.

Yeah.

I mean, he comes from a...

A really humble beginnings.

I mean, I like his whole story.

I get it.

That's true, yeah.

But if you're, you know, you're an influential person.

Yeah.

Would you suggest to him that he should do, he actually should expose himself to more, more media?

Because he doesn't really do that much media unless it's very controlled.

He gives you the sound bites.

But actually, I don't really remember seeing him sit down with anybody for a long time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, look, I don't think, like, he's not, he's not as...

He's not on the level of some of the American politicians.

He's certainly a lot more available than that.

He does a lot of stand-ups, a lot more doorstops.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I wouldn't have that criticism of him.

I think, for example, if we said, mate, we want to do a sit-down with you in three weeks' time...

He'd do it.

We'd probably get it.

Okay.

You know, I wouldn't criticize him on that, on that front at all.

And what do you think about Dutton then?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is Dutton playing the reverse game?

Is Dutton just saying...

I'm not going to say too much.

Yeah.

You talked about nuclear.

I get that.

But other than that, I don't need to say too much.

Yeah, I think he's been...

Just let Anthony...

I think he's been very, very disciplined.

And to your point, he's kind of been very selective about when he talks.

And that's obviously a deliberate strategy because you can sound very shrill very quickly.

We saw that with Jodie Mackay in New South Wales.

I mean, that was a disaster because she was just bagging everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Actually incredible.

Incredibly measured.

Incredibly.

But also magnanimous.

Yeah.

He's very happy to give credit where it's due.

I saw him at the opening of the Martin Plays Railway, like the...

What do we call this?

Rail link thing.

Yeah.

The Metro.

Yeah.

And he congratulated Dom and he congratulated Gladys.

Yeah.

Which...

And you're right, it's magnanimous.

Actually, he's actually a really decent person.

Oh, he is.

Not suggesting, no, anybody else is not, but he's a very decent guy.

Yeah, he is.

And smart.

Very smart.

And when you look at Chris Minns, you don't actually see the Labor brand

on him, right?

Yeah, that's clever.

Yeah, it's sort of like what you see is just him instinctively responding

to things.

And I think that he's a new brand of politician in that respect

and it's incredibly effective.

The opposition cannot lay a glove on him.

No.

Well, no one even knows who's, I mean, we know who Speakman's,

we know who his opposite number is.

But, well, I know, but a lot of people wouldn't know.

And Chris has sort of put himself out there.

He's so far ahead of everybody.

He's like 10 seconds ahead of everybody else in the 200 metres.

Yeah.

He's so far out ahead.

It's like he's the only one in the race.

But he's also, I think he's also enough of a realist to know

that that can end very quickly.

So I think he's, you know, he's very,

very determined and disciplined at the moment.

He knows that this housing crisis will just swallow him up

and spit him out unless he stays on top of it.

So I guess it brings us to the story of, is it Warwick Farm or Rose Hill?

Rose Hill.

Rose Hill.

Yeah.

That's a shit fight.

Poor old Peter Volandis is being dragged into it.

Yeah.

Whereas, in fact, it's the Australian Turf Club.

Yeah.

So it's not him?

No, he's a regulator.

Yeah.

So it's the Turf Club that owns,

but of course that was an opportunity for Volandis' detractors

to use this as an excuse to have a crack at him.

Which has sort of worked.

Yeah, well, to an extent.

But Minns backs him or backs the idea.

Well, I think it's a good idea.

I think, and he recognises it.

It's not a good idea.

It's a great idea.

Well, it's compulsory because we need more housing.

We need more housing.

And it's definitely the most attractive tract of land.

Where people want to live in Sydney, in the basin.

Yeah.

And you can get 25,000 homes in there.

The metro will go through there.

And you'll basically set up, safeguard the racing industry

for the next half a century, if not more.

So how does the controversy get legs?

Well, I think that the ATC would probably,

if they had their time again, have approached it differently.

They would have done a lot more.

They would have done a lot more stakeholder engagement.

Like as in consultations?

100%.

They should have spoken to the trainers

and actually presented the vision of where they want to take racing.

And I don't think they necessarily did that as well as they might have liked.

So when that story comes into the editorial room,

whatever you call it, you know, the morning meeting.

Sure.

What do you do?

What's your first reaction to that?

You rub your hands.

Yeah, a bit of that.

But, I mean, it's stunning.

It's a stunning piece of, stunning revelation.

You've got premieres and.

Everything.

Chairman of the NRL.

Yeah.

Names.

Massive.

Yeah.

And also, like Rose Hill is, there is incredible sentimental attachment to it.

You know, the Golden Slipper's been there for more than 60 years.

And so, yeah, what do I do when that happens?

It's like, right, let's get our heads around it.

You know, what do we think?

We basically do what you do with any yarn.

You just.

Let's get the facts.

And then sort of, then, you know, the answers will sort of make themselves apparent.

So do you have, but do you get sort of, is there a nervousness about the urgency?

Because we've got to get this up.

Do you say.

Oh, yeah.

You've got two hours or.

So I've got to express it.

I probably shouldn't say what it is, but basically let's call it fast and dirty,

which is basically get the yarn up.

Get something up straight away.

Get it up.

Yeah.

Right.

And then let's build on it.

Yeah.

Refine.

Because it is a game of speed.

Yeah.

So the speed is quick.

I mean, sorry, quickness is important.

Yeah, because your SEO, search engine optimization authority is determined by one important component

is speed.

Right.

That, you know, the engine determines that you've got more authority if you're first.

Right.

So speed is very, very important.

Yeah.

So the digital world has changed things a little bit.

A little bit, yeah.

Yeah.

You can't just sort of, you know, take your time.

You've got to get it up.

And then continue to add to it, add to the richness of the story.

And, you know, there's a whole lot of components that go into that.

So I just want to find a question.

I mean, do you see anybody or anything out there that can disrupt between the two main

news outlets, which is Nine and News Corp, or Daily Telegraph?

Yeah.

Do you think there's some threat there?

Because I remember many, many years ago.

When Don Argus was the CEO of NAB.

Yeah.

Don Argus was asked this question.

It was in the AFR.

It was in 2002 or three.

Yeah.

And they said, what keeps you awake at night in terms of the banks controlling the market?

Yeah.

And his answer to that was, funnily enough, someone like General Electric coming to the

marketplace.

Yeah.

And becoming a bank.

Yeah.

And of course, they bought my business.

Yeah.

Because as soon as I read it, I went straight to them.

Genius.

Thank you.

Thank you, Don.

But if I'm asking you the same question today, what worries you most?

What keeps you awake?

Where I went to straight away was retail media.

What's that mean though?

What's retail media?

Well, you mentioned Amazon, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Amazon's got enormous retail media.

Yeah.

Like on their, through all their assets, they've got content.

And they could easily just.

Well, they will hoover up a lot of attention, a lot of revenue that way.

So, Woolworths has their own media.

They have their own digital magazine, physical magazines.

All of the big companies have that.

And they're hoovering up revenue as well as the social media outlets.

As an advertising revenue.

Advertising.

Or subscription.

No, no.

Advertising revenue.

Absolutely.

It's a reach play engagement.

And so, they're hiring journalists.

Banks are hiring journalists.

They're all hiring journalists.

So, what keeps me up at night, I suppose, is that, and the other corollary to that,

is talent.

It's so hard to hold on to and attract talented journalists because they all go to uni.

I do a communications course and all the lecturers are saying,

oh, don't go to the media.

There's no future in it.

Well, of course, there's a future in it.

But they just don't see that in the universities.

So, talent, the pipeline of talent is one of the toughest things.

And does that mean, therefore,

Ben, that perhaps you need to, the word infiltrate sort of comes to mind,

but engage with the universities?

Yeah, we are.

Go and see someone like David Gonski and say, how can we assist?

So, we do that.

We've got campus partnerships with, well, in Sydney,

we've got three campus partnerships, Western Sydney, Sydney and Newcastle.

What about UNSW?

No, I haven't got them yet.

If you can help me out.

I can.

I can.

David, who's, I'm an alumni there, and David would definitely be interested in talking to you.

Oh, terrific.

Okay, great.

We'll take that off.

Yeah, no, totally.

Brilliant.

And that involves us giving, you know, guest lectures,

getting the students to come and they do internships.

And we certainly, like, we give a free subscription to the students

and we try to serve up content that's relevant to them.

And hopefully that's an investment in, you know, future, you know,

full-blown subscribers.

You get that sort of pipeline of engagement.

So, yeah.

But that's absolutely.

That's absolutely critical to our mission to remain, you know, viable.

Because you're right.

I mean, unless the software can write for you, which perhaps may be the case one day.

But right now, in order to be a news business, you have to have talent to write the news.

Yeah, you do.

And it's all the more precious, you know, that, as I said at the outset,

I'm fortunate to have a good team, but you can't take that for granted.

I probably spend, you know, you asked me, actually, the first question you asked was,

what do I do?

I probably spend, you know, four hours out of every 10 on talent development.

Wow.

And my team.

It's absolutely critical.

Have you got an aging talent pool?

No, it's a good mix.

Is it?

It's a good mix.

Yeah.

So, we've got a good cadetship program.

I'm fortunate.

I mean, that's actually the money from Google to license our content.

Pays for our cadetship program.

And it's so critical.

Because it's sort of injecting that fresh blood.

But then we've also got the Grizzle Oil journos that are there, too, who are fantastic.

Well, that only sort of says that your retention's been very good.

I mean, like, because, I mean, everything's about recruitment and retention.

Yes.

So, maybe the recruitment's more difficult because there's less pool to recruit from.

There's more people trying to hit that pool.

Yeah, you're right.

Retention is critical.

Retention is, I mean, like, if I look at, you mentioned Mark Karanis,

which one of the younger rugby league journalists.

Yeah.

I don't know, or Michael, maybe he's 40, I don't know.

Sure.

But then you've got Buzz, who's, like, my age.

Yeah.

Buzz 100.

Buzz, did you hear that?

But you've still got him there.

Yeah.

Because to keep Michael, you need to have.

Absolutely.

You need, he wants to look, he looks up to Buzz.

A hundred percent.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And that's sort of, like, you know, if he wasn't there,

it's going to be hard to get a whole lot of footy journalists.

He's the inspiration.

And it's the same with Mark Morey as our crime editor.

Yeah.

And then Josh Hanrahan, who's just freakishly good.

And they're, like, you know, the odd couple.

But they work together well.

Mark Morey's got a head for crime.

He does, doesn't he?

He's just, like, I look at him, he's on TV.

I can't remember where I see him now.

He's probably on something.

He's on TikTok a lot.

Just ask him.

Yeah.

And I think he's got a head for a crime writer.

Oh, he's brilliant.

And just on that, just sorry, quick.

I mean, I'm going on.

I've been going too long.

I'm getting wound up.

But just on that, I remember in the days when Hardo was there,

that we were talking about a long time ago,

they were always connected with the cops.

Yeah.

And, you know, they did a lot with the police because, you know,

they needed to get information.

That's still the case.

It still works that way.

Yeah, very much.

Yeah, because.

It works both ways.

Yeah.

Correct.

Because sometimes the police want something.

Yeah.

I mean, it doesn't mean we don't hold them in account.

Yeah.

But you definitely have to have a strong relationship and have that back

channel.

Yeah.

Ability to have those back channel conversations.

Yeah.

And what doesn't really compromise you anyway because, you know,

just because you're talking to, you know,

the crime commander for New South Wales,

it doesn't necessarily mean you've got to support the commissioner.

Sure.

If she's in the, you know, in the headlines for some reason.

Yeah, that's right.

And because the crime, the head of crime,

he'll still talk to you because he knows there's a need for that.

That's right.

So I sort of get that.

But the old days are pretty close.

I mean, I haven't really been, you know, around.

Yeah.

I am still involved with the police but in terms of I do stuff for them.

Yes.

But do you still play that game sort of?

Yeah, very much.

Sir Mark Murray would sort of be talking to the-

All the time.

Yeah.

And me too.

You know, it's really important to have those relationships because also,

like, I have to have a very strong contact book and be in constantly

contact with a lot of external parties.

Otherwise, you know, you asked me before,

how do I have a sense of what's important or not?

I have to be out and about a lot.

Yeah.

And, you know.

So does that mean your life is sort of, you know, you're always on?

Pretty much.