Ask Us Anything: Should we change the date of Australia Day? + Mark Carney’s DAVOS Speech + How to effectively manage time?

0:00I'm Adam Schwab. I'm Adir Shifman. And this is The Contrarians with Adam and Adir.

0:09And we are back. Episode 172, Ask Us Anything. Please don't forget to keep sending your questions through. We love getting, we've got the smartest listeners in Australia, in the world, in fact. So we love getting your questions about business, tech, growth, anything you want to ask us, we'll have a crack at. Michael, first question. All right. The first question this week comes in and it's a topical one from Lucas. With Australia Day just passing, it seems every year the country ends up in the same debate. Should we keep or change the date? I realise it's a challenging issue, but where do you guys sit?

0:45Adir, you're the wokest member of this trio. Hang on, you don't know that I'm not woke? Yeah, I think you're fairly straight down the line. Well, I think we should cancel it all and put it in a bag and throw it into the sea. Firstly, I will say every year there might be a perennial debate, but every year the number of people that just wants to leave it alone grows. I don't know if you noticed that, but like it is. I was about to give you a few stats on that actually. It is skyrocketing. This is how I feel about it. I feel conflicted. On the one hand, I'm very sympathetic to the argument of Aboriginal people that they got royally shafted by the English coming here and treating them terribly over the next 150 to 200 plus years.

1:34So I'm very sympathetic about that. I don't know if that day of the 26th of January is commonly felt as an invasion day, but like if it was, I would get it. On the flip side, you know, I don't understand what people's issue is with just loving this country. Like you can travel the world and even with the Victorian, you know, crime issues going on at the moment, This is still pretty close to the safest country in the world, the most comfortable country, the friendliest country, a country where almost everybody has food and shelter and just a good and happy life. And I would have thought that would be a great thing to celebrate on Australia Day.

2:13And instead we have these idiotic marches going on, hating on the country on its official day of celebration. So, like, that makes me angry. If I was going to find a compromise, it would be this. I think there should be a day, which is a memorial day, for First Nations people to acknowledge that they were here first and the terrible stuff that's happened to them over the last 200 years. On the flip side, I just want them to be part of Australia. And my happiest day might be, this is maybe controversial, my happiest day might be when everyone with First Nations dissent says, we don't want our own flag anymore.

2:52We just want to have one unified Australian flag. Like, that'll be my happiest day. And so maybe the end, and also I don't want to move Australia Day because it's such a good time of year. Like, everybody loves that time of year for Australia Day. And so then put it to winter or something. But I don't really care that that's the day that the first fleet came. Like, that doesn't feel special to me. So this would be my compromise. It would be something like this. If you had to do it, I think there should be a Memorial Day. I would do something that is kind of akin to what Israel does and puts Memorial Day, military Memorial Day and Terror Victims Day back-to-back with Independence Day to say these two things are inextricably connected.

3:27And think about doing something like having Memorial Day for First Nations the day before Australia Day. And so that kind of kills two birds with one stone. And personally, I don't care if that's the 26th and 27th or 25th and 26th or moving Australia Day to the last Friday or Monday in January so everyone gets the extended long weekend. I don't mind it, but I do think this could all be solved by slotting in a formal Memorial Day for First Nations, kind of back-to-back with Australia Day, and then we can all celebrate Australia Day. Yeah, I think that's an interesting concept. I think what's really interesting is, and you touched on it in your intro, is how views have changed.

4:08And if you look at even two or three years ago, we're sort of running at about 60-40. So 60 % sort of wanted to keep the day, 40 % wanted to change it, getting close to 50-50. I'm excluding people who had no view. It's now 81 % want to keep it, which is pretty staggering. So this is a, I think we've just seen just a revulsion to this sort of far left wokest views that I think we can have a lot of sympathy for our Indigenous people, our First Nations people, but I don't think we necessarily need to change that. I think your suggestion of multiple days is a great suggestion. It's a reverse Solomon in some ways, and it hopefully recognises the trauma that the First Nations people have encountered.

4:47Obviously, it's not them. It's their ancestors' ancestors, but nonetheless, and we can still recognize a day that hopefully brings us together. So ultimately, if 81 % of people want to keep the day, I'm just sick of this vocal minority, whether it's Palestinian supporters, whether it's people who want trans men in women's sport, whether it's the tiny minority of people, both in the Western countries, who seem to dominate the debate. And you saw it with the whole riotous festive debacle. This is a tiny number of elites led by people like Louise Adler who tell us what to think, tell us what to say.

5:19And I'm sick of the elites standing on their ivory castles in their universities, getting $2 million a year, taking it from taxpayers and telling us what to do. Enough's enough. I think it's time we revolt. We shut these writers' festivals down. We shut these universities down. And we go back to what people want and start again. I think the majority of people just want to have happiness on Australia Day and no protests. and like this protest mentality in the West, it just has to come to an end. I can't think of anywhere that is a better place to be in the entire world than Australia Day in Australia.

5:55Like I was in Sydney. It was fantastic. But I saw helicopters, police helicopters flying overhead and circling because of these protests. And I'm not advocating like the loss of the right to protest, But my gosh, like what are you protesting against? The best, greatest place to live in the world. It's just totally ridiculous. So I didn't deliver on your woke hopes, I don't think. But in fairness, at least I played with the majority. So I delivered on populism, which is kind of, it's a good booby prize, I guess. I think for the record, I'm certainly not a fan of the counter protests either. So I'm not a fan of the invasion day protests.

6:35I'm not a fan, nor am I a fan of the court, I don't know, anti-immigration protests or whatever they call it. I think they're all bad. I'd rather see none of this stuff. As you say, it's dividing. It's small minorities of people. There's get too much voice. Either you should embrace what this country is all about or what the heck are you doing here? Like that is the thing I really don't understand. Some people are born here. I get that. But even if you're born here, lots of people emigrate. There's no obligation to keep living here. And so there are values in this country, I think the same 80-something percent or more, kind of agree on the core values of this country.

7:14And like, if you don't support them, what are you doing here? There are plenty of countries to go to where you can go and hate the values or the country that Australia is. I think Australia is not the time for that kind of stuff, if there's ever a time. So I think we're very much aligned in our views on this. Excellent. Mike, question number two. Okay, this question comes in from Frankie Bryant. For Ask Us Anything, I was just watching Mark Carney's Davos speech. I had to go through it twice to take it all in, but it's definitely worth listening to the full thing. I feel like someone finally has a plan for us all to follow in these crazy times.

7:55So your thoughts on that and maybe also some context on the speech for those of us who are not across it. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs is leverage. Financial infrastructure is coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. Well, I watched the speech and then, you know, there was a Q &A with him afterwards. He was much worse in the Q &A than he was in the speech.

8:37Like he kind of struggled to construct answers to some things and dodged a few questions. And I don't know, I've got to read, just like, I don't know, Google who said this quote, the greatest four words in politics, which is all politics is local. It's absolutely true. Like what we shouldn't forget is Mark Carney, when he talks at Davos, is talking to the Canadian electorate because he wants to be re-elected. And so we shouldn't forget that. You know, what I thought of his speech, so his speech was basically saying, it was full of soundbites. That's one of the reasons people love it. Like one of his soundbites was something like, nostalgia is not a strategy or something like that.

9:16Now that sounds great. It's kind of vacuous, to be honest, but like it sounds amazing. So people love things like that. It's like air masquerading as wisdom. Like his fundamental core themes were the world has permanently changed away from a rules-based order and we're not going to be bullied by the US and middle powers have to stick together to fight against the great powers and oh Canada would be my summary of the talk and how great Canada is. I thought one-third of the speech was really high quality. One-third of the speech was lies. and one-third of the speech was naive. That's how I broadly – what I think is good is that the good one-third – by the way, you could never imagine elbowing up and giving a speech like that.

10:03Firstly, it wouldn't have coherence. And secondly, just like taking a public leadership position and putting himself out there, even if you don't agree what he's saying. There is at least an element of leadership involved in doing that. I think the third that was good was talking honestly about the fact that the free world, let's call it, cannot be strong without the US as the center point of that strength. And if the US isn't going to be that and it's going to become unpredictable, then the other free countries in the world need to reorient themselves and think more about, I don't know, hesitant to say some collectivism that doesn't just revolve around the US.

10:43So I think that was generally right. And speaking in favor of some fundamental Western values is right? I think the stuff that is lies is him sales pitching Canada as this place better than any other place in the world. It is a great place. So is Australia, but it has its problems. And I think focusing on all of these external issues, which was the crux of his speech, while internally Canada is basically becoming unsafe for Jews. There are big issues going on in Canada. They have the Australian issues, but much worse than Australia. The same university set of issues that we have. Like there are big problems in Canada.

11:20I thought that's what I mean by consumption for a local audience. Like that was a really, I did not find that honest at all. And I do, I love Canada and we all love Canadians. Like this is, I feel very similar to Aussies. And the bit that I thought was naive is this idea that you can kind of just be friends with everyone. That like the Western countries that are free and believe in liberty, et cetera, you can have a relationship with them. and also with totalitarian dictatorships. And like we can all just be friends. That would be great. Like I think that would be a wonderful world but it's totally naive and I think also dangerous.

11:55And I don't think that's the right message to be sending. So I think it was a complicated speech and I didn't have the heart eyes that other people had about this speech but I definitely thought it was much better than our own leadership could do and there were certainly some very good parts of it. That's a great summary. I think a lot of what you said was just a lot like bullshit really. Like he was essentially, you're right, he was completely pitching to a local audience. I think it's a tragedy that who was the guy who he really loved in Canada who lost because Carney had that Trump slide essentially.

12:27Rule for the Habs and the Haviots. I really love that guy, Pierre or whatever his name was. Yeah. I was devastated. He just sort of got rolled by Carney who sort of swept to power on the back of this massive anti-Trump sentiment. So that was sort of – And Carney's a banker. We shouldn't forget that like – He ran the Central Bank of the UK badly. And an investment banker, like we can get – like, and look, obviously we have no – like, some of my best friends are investment bankers. Like, I'm all in favor. But we shouldn't forget that, like, politicians have previous lives. And, you know, this guy was a central banker most recently.

12:59So, it's – we should understand his background and where he's coming from. He's essentially a lifelong bureaucrat in many ways. He was – he went to Harvard. He went to Oxford. But this is a guy, he spent 13 years at Goldman Sachs and then Bank of Canada for 2008, 2013, Bank of England, 2013 to 2020. And then a bunch of UN stuff. So this is a bureaucrat who certainly presents very well, and in many ways, the antidote to Trump. But I think, yeah, I think the fawning over his speech is purely a backlash to people who don't like what Trump's doing. I think domestically, I hate what Trump is doing in the US.

13:34I think terrorists are ridiculous and the ICE thing is performative, cruelty. I think a lot of what Trump does domestically is horrific. I think what Trump's doing globally has probably been broadly positive, very positive in the Middle East. Venezuela is still sort of out for debate, but probably positive. What's going to happen in Iran looks to be potentially very positive if we can overturn that tyrannical, murderous regime that's killed 30 ,000 people in a few days, more than it was many that was killed in Gaza in three years. So I think looking at Trump through a single lens is just impossible because he's just both good and bad, and very good and very bad at the same time potentially.

14:09And I think Carney, I think he adds almost nothing. He's just a complete politician who is playing to an audience of left-wing, rabid left-wing Trump haters. And I think to lord him for this speech is a waste of time. I mean, he was speaking to a very sympathetic audience of global bureaucrats and technocrats predominantly who are diplomats and so on. And so I think the – you didn't hear the Q &A afterwards, I assume, right? No. I mean the Q &A was just sarcastic, snide mocking of Trump in its questions, I would say. To Carney's credit, he did give Trump quite a bit of credit where credit was due.

14:54Like this guy is walking a tightrope, but he really sounded like a politician and only a semi-coherent one. But I just think the snide remarks of Trump and making fun of him, it doesn't help anyone. Like America is still the most powerful country in the world, the biggest economy, the biggest military, and fundamentally the country that the West relies on in order to keep totalitarian dictators from starting wars and attacking us and doing nefarious things. So I just think this whole narrative, which is like we hate the US under Trump. You can hate Trump. I just – I hate the turning against countries because you don't support the leader.

15:37I mean that is – that's the Israel problem. It's the US problem. Like I would say God bless America. We need them to be strong and successful in order for the Western world to be strong and successful. I think a lot of what Cardi is playing at is the theme that you've got to stand up to Trump. inverted commas, strong man, and the leaders that stand up to him get a better result, and the leaders that kowtow don't. So I think this is his attempt to simply stand up to Trump and try and get a better deal economically for Canada, which I think probably has some merit. Clearly, nobody wants US and Canada fighting.

16:12Nobody benefits from this. It's one of the biggest trading partners. I think maybe Mexico's bigger, but certainly up there. Neither Canadians nor Americans benefit from this, so from this sort of mini Cold War in the northern border of the states. So I think we clearly want these countries to be on good footing. Hopefully they improve relations. Whether this is the way to do it, I don't know. I think much of what Carney said is fine. I just think the lauding and the adulation of him is ridiculous. Well, let's not forget, every time Carney criticises Trump, he gets more votes. So this is a great way to win Canadian votes and to make sure you hang on to Canadian votes.

16:48I will say one thing that is most of all of the stuff that's going on in the US at the moment, the thing that worries me most, which now seems to have calmed down, was this more explicit than an intimation of American soldiers potentially going and invading land owned by another liberal democracy. Just the Greenland stuff. Yeah, and so I have this kind of historical view, which is if you want a world at peace, you just have every country in the world as a liberal democracy because they have no history of attacking each other. Well, that's Thomas Friedman's McDonald's theory, which actually has now been debunked.

17:28Well, McDonald's is everywhere now. That's the problem. He's had this theory that two countries that have a McDonald's have never been to war, and that was the case till relatively recently. Till McDonald's expanded to countries that were maybe not very friendly countries, right? But definitely liberal democracies, post-World War II for sure, like liberal democracies do not go to war and so I think that would have set a terrible precedent because the more countries that become free and democratic, the less likelihood there is of global war. So I thought that was – but, you know, and that was a big part of Carney's speech, right?

18:06He did talk – and that is the bit that I thought had some merits. It's like people do need to say, look, I think the way to get what you want from Trump is largely to let him be the king in the room. And that's how you get what you want. That's Albo's strategy. I don't think it's a bad strategy, but I think Greenland might have been a bit different in terms of what needed to be done. Let's go to super quick back with question number three, just a moment.

18:38Mike we are back question number three over to you final question this week from Mark in Newcastle Mark says Adam and Adir I admire the work ethic you both speak of frequently on the podcast but with you both being so busy how do you formulate your time to be productive with each day being so short. Do you have a PA that keeps your diary and can make decisions on your behalf? Or do you do it all yourself? Time equals money. Well, the number of things you do in a day is ridiculous. So how do you manage your time? I guess to answer the last point, I've never had a PA. I've got an office manager who helps me out with some stuff, but I certainly manage my own calendar.

19:23But do you click on a calendar and say from nine till 10, I'm going to put this meeting and type this stuff in. Exactly. Really? I want to space my day out in a certain way and I don't think anybody else can know exactly how I want to space it out. Obviously, you've had an EA for a long time. I'd be interested to hear your take on this, but I've found it's more inefficient to have somebody else do it than for me to do it myself. By the time you give them instructions and then it's not right, you've got to change things, I find it highly inefficient to have an EA. In terms of just how do I fit stuff in, I just try and be to that point as efficient as possible, try and maximise every minute, every day.

19:56if I'm sort of in a sort of hierarchy down. So sort of external meetings are the most, called Sancrasact, obviously, actually, Pod's the most Sancrasact, external meetings. Things like speaking to directors and board members and shareholders always take precedence and then sort of clients and customers and sort of a cascading down, then obviously internal whips, and you'll sort of move stuff based on that hierarchy. And then wherever I have gaps, I'll be generally emailing or sort of chatting to people randomly. So there's sort of a, I have a sort of hierarchy of day where I try and just make it as efficient as possible.

20:25And as you know, I run a zero inbox as much as I can. So I use the inbox as effectively a to-do list. So I try and get back to emails as quickly as possible. If it's a personal sort of question message within sort of a few seconds of seeing it, and if it's something that takes time to think about, obviously I'll devote more time to it. But just try and get as much stuff as done and try not to procrastinate. So if something comes through, just attack it straight off. If you need to have a hard conversation, have it straight off. Don't think about it. Just do it. So I don't think there's any great science to it, but just try and be, be or just use every minute of every day as best as possible idea you have a obviously you do have an ea who sounds like the most patient person in the world how do you manage all this you well you and i have very different skills and by that i mean i do not have the skills that you have and so if i was in charge of managing my diary and i made like if you said let's catch up and i said yeah let's catch up on you said let's do this time on this day and i'm like sure and i didn't have someone i could loop in i just wouldn't turn up because like my ability to um manage the operational side of life is exceptionally poor and so predominantly like i have help to try to juggle all of these competing demands and make sure that i try not to forget anything that's going on and that i can use like different people find different things mentally exhausting i find anything operational to be mentally exhausting and like the problem with operational stuff is it never ends and so it's like problems with your kids like you think you've solved the problem but Like it's just made room for the next problem.

21:54And so like, that's how I feel about ops. So that's why I have help on that. You know, I started doing something maybe a decade ago, maybe longer that has really helped me dramatically. Cause I think both you and I are people who feel this terrible and dumb feeling. I assume you feel it as well, which is if you're ever not filling up your day to the max, then you feel like you're lazy and a bit of a loser. And like, why the hell am I not doing more? That's how I feel with every day, by the way. Like if I'm ever relaxing. Yeah, something's wrong. Then I feel like what the hell am I doing with my life?

22:29Why am I relaxing, right? And like I have to force myself to say I need space. And so what I did is I created this sheet, one pager, divided up into separate sections. It's a weekly to-do list and I can put all of the stuff. I look at the previous week and see what carries across and I put it all in on a Monday and then it's got each day of the week and then I can plan each day what I want to get done during that day to tick stuff off. What kind of stuff are you putting on this? Is this like do the washing or is it much more sort of intellectual? No, well, it's not do the washing, but it might be talk to my son about how he should be investing the money that he's earning.

23:07Like that was one of the things on here and set up and make sure he's got access to his bank account. It might be like a catapult thing like, you know, make sure this document gets out to the CEO and he's finished. door. So it would, because I'm involved in so many different things, it's very broad and it's so easy to forget things. So that's one thing I do that has been life-changing. I used to do that years ago. I used to have this sheet of paper as well with a dozen things on there and I just cross them off every time I do it. You know, there are different kinds of people in life and I'm a person who likes to check things off.

23:41That is how I feel accomplishment. Yeah, I think that's everybody. who doesn't like to check something off? So I don't like using tech for this stuff, but a lot of people do. You use your inbox. You and I have opposite inbox attitudes. Like my current inbox unread, it doesn't even say a number, but it would be some thousands. My text message unread is 503. And so different people do it differently. The other thing I'd say is this, remember I told you about this? I went through a period where I blocked out everything into categories on half hour blocks that I spent time in every day for like a month to see what was chewing my time and to make sure I was prioritizing my time on the right things and I wasn't.

24:20And so in that way, I made sure, for example, that I leave lots of space for spending time with my kids and parents, as an example, and I'm very particular with that because I'm not going to put that in on a diary or a to-do list. And so I was very specific about saying all of this busyness, and it's a very long answer, but I got to a point where this is where I think a lot of people are because I was here. You do a ton of stuff every day, but what you do feels like you've done nothing at the end of the day because it's all just, oh, I've got to clean this thing up. I've got to do this little thing.

24:57I got to, and I, what is really important and the reason I did this list of to-dos is I know these are the things I have to achieve this week. And at the end of the week, they need to be ticked off and it will stop just lots of activity and wheels spinning. And I think that was what was transformational for me. Well, you're mini-gamifying your day-to-day life, really. Exactly. Until you have like confetti dropping off like Robin Hood, that'd be even nicer. That's just stuff to clean up. I think we're very similar in many ways. You just obviously, you have an EA who you use for a lot of stuff, I think, who sounds like she's brilliant.