Atlassian Sacks Thousands, Koala to IPO, Grace Tame’s Disgrace, Star Directors Get Off, Best AI Platforms and Biggest EV Adopters

24:34You think Trump is plus and minus a million standard deviations. I think domestically he's hopeless and foreign policy-wise he's generally pretty good. Victorian Premier Sinta Allen says her decision to start paying for plum public board roles, many of whom occupied by former Labour MPs, will drive major events which help Melbourne achieve the ranking of the world's best city by Leisure magazine time now. Oh, I did see that. Have you seen a more absurd comment? No, I felt like, because we're very proud of Melbourne. We want Melbourne to be amazing. But I feel like anyone that's ranking Melbourne as the best city in the world hasn't been here.

25:06Has had a lobotomy, I suspect. Or paid. No, it apparently came from people who live in Melbourne. God knows where they found these panels. Well, I can suggest - And they went to Brunswick and found Greensboro. Well, maybe they rang up and said, where should we interview people? And someone in the government got hold of it and said, these are our safest cities. Yeah, exactly. I did find it, I mean, like we're being very cynical, but like I found it implausible because look at the rest of the cities on that list. Oh, yeah. Guess what number two was? I can't remember now, but I remember looking at them and thinking I'd rather be there at the moment.

25:36Sydney was 21, which is ridiculous. Ridiculous. Because this is Time Out. This is a tourist publication. Does anybody read Time Out? What the hell is this thing? I don't think so. But as much as we love Melbourne, I still love Melbourne. I just think it's got problems at the moment. But as a tourist, it is very hard to make the pitch that outside sporting events, Melbourne is the better place to go like there's a harbour beaches I don't want to sell Sydney but like Sydney food's gone a lot better because of hams I mean like even their coffee is good now like I'm in Sydney all the time twice a month like I feel very at home there we are very the one thing Melbourne has is we've got much better more and better hotels in Sydney because we've actually built a bunch of hotels in Sydney hasn't that's about the only thing I can think of and food the best thing this country has got I think like for tourists and I feel sorry to say this about Perth now because Perth is a lovely city, but it's far away.

26:28Yeah. The best thing we've got is that all of these cities on the eastern beaches are one hour away from each other by plane and endlessly serviced. And like, you know, people should go and visit Adelaide as well. I actually love Adelaide. Oh, it's great. And I want to say I love Canberra, but like - Canberra's okay. I hope we've got listeners. I don't mind Canberra. A lot of people don't go there. Hobart's great. You're not going to get stabbed in these cities. Yes, that's true. Look at your phone stolen like Mike in these cities. But we're very lucky. We're very lucky to have so many good cities a one hour flight away.

26:58Number two was Shanghai, by the way. But yeah, so it's formal labor figures. Shanghai, much more boring city than Melbourne. Take out, take out Badong. I mean, nothing going on in Shanghai. One of the most dynamic cities on planet Earth. but it's only one, but Shanghai's not great. Like, a million cities. I've been to Shanghai multiple times. Yeah, it is a lot. It's a fun city. Hong Kong, way better than Shanghai. Now? Yes. Singapore's better. Yeah, heaps of cities better. Taipei, why is that on the list? That's better than both of them, This list is bullshit. but former Labour figures who have benefited from government appointed roles Tel Aviv is that on this list?

27:29I don't have the whole list best tourist city in the world possibly who knows former Labour premiers I'm doing a quiz but this like usually you haven't read you haven't read the quiz last week with the sports teams I can't recognise the mockers this week's quiz I don't even have the quiz I've got a quiz coming hold on that I've got a one question I've got a quiz coming up come on government there's only a few things i uh you'll send a message to mike and you'll say just wipe out all of the dears conversation on this topic so i can just talk about the i've actually got the full list up so if you do want any reference he doesn't care about the list he cares about the victorian government uh so former premiers steve braxton john brumby ex-ministers martin picula james molina and martin folly who was a horrendous health minister they all voted on this they They all have plum roles.

28:22So Martin Pakula, who has pretty much no corporate experience. You can question me. I know what roles these people have, some of them. He's something to do with the Grand Prix. Martin Pakula's head of the GP. Do you remember who previously head of the GP? Ah, no. Paul Little, one of the greatest businessmen in Victoria's have produced. That's right. He's actually sold the most expensive house in Victoria recently. Steve Brax, he's got the breakthrough Victoria. Of course. Your bet noire. Is that Brax or Brumby? No, it's Brumby. That's Brumby, yeah. Brax and Brumby are okay. Yeah, but Brumby got, well, Brumby was okay until he got the breakthrough of Victoria.

28:53Yeah. But don't forgive him for that. That's not him. He's just the puppet for that. Well, who are you going to blame if not the chairman? Dan Andrews. All right, but like, come on. Anyway, so Paul Little, who was a billionaire, great businessman, didn't get paid. Now, McCall, with no business experience, suddenly he's getting paid. So that just shows what a joke this government is. That's a joke. So that's jobs for the boys all around. And Martin Foley is being paid almost$200 ,000 a year for multiple board roles. This is the guy who oversaw the quarantine disaster. So can you find a more incompetent person to give$200 ,000 a year to?

29:21They find the most hopeless people. Let's give them every role we can find. Although, to have to do multiple roles to get to$200 ,000, that's not great. Can you imagine how little work's involved, though? I know, but Brumby is on. You know, there's limits to what you can get paid as a public servant. Sorry, on these boards, right? Yeah, it's like$80 ,000. So Brumby has the maximum available pay for Breakthrough Victoria. I don't know what it is but I think it's 300 350k or something yeah like come on yeah it's a joke I got a monologue coming up before I get to my monologue was this not a monologue no that was semi monologue I got a full monologue coming but what have you got I've got more interesting things than your monologue I mean not to diminish your monologue I think you'll like my monologue I possibly will what can I I'll tell you something I need a big golden microphone I'll tell you a couple of little things like Kyle Sandilands yeah Kyle's got one going I reckon I'll do a couple of very quick things and then I'll tell you something you can get worked up about so here's the one Here's a one-question quiz.

30:15Do you know that there's a French aircraft carrier? There might be more than one. Heading to the Strait of Hermose. Do you know what it's called? This is not the quiz. The Francois Mitterrand? Well, you're not far off. It's Charles de Gaulle. You should have gone for more prestigious than Francois Mitterrand. It's called the Charles de Gaulle. You can have a guess at this. It's got something on board its aircraft carrier. Does it not sail on weekends? I'm surprised they work at all. but I think actually the French military they get a lot of stick because like World War 2 didn't go well for them but like basically they need to give their own advice on how to roll over well I think that the French soldiers like you know they've got the foreign legend as well I actually think they're not French they're prepared to fight well that's actually a good point no I think they are prepared to fight and so they're actually going to help the US certainly didn't fight the Nazis that well they were not great against the Nazis in fairness to them they were all like a little puppy dog World War 1 did not go well for them they were not in great shape after world war one right so but um but there you can't we don't want to criticize them at the moment because they're actually trying to participate in this thing right and so but spanish but how about yeah much better than spanish at the moment um look i just want to emphasize what i know you feel the same way when we if we criticize the spanish actually we're not criticizing the spanish we're criticizing the spanish government like the spanish people they're great i know lots of them yeah their soccer amazing yeah the government dreadful right so um so this aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, which I'm sure I've butchered how to say that.

31:44It has something on it that I guarantee no American aircraft carrier has on it. Something good, very good, that no American aircraft carrier would have. Oh my God. Is it right? They have a bakery that makes 2 ,000 baguettes a day. That's pretty good, actually. I can't believe you nailed it on the first guess. That's actually a bloody good idea. That's what they've got. And then I told that to a French person and their response was, 2 ,000 baguettes, that's not many baguettes. A normal bakery makes 800. They've got a brandy manufacturing facility. I said maybe they're busy because of the croissants as well.

32:19So that's one thing. Here's another thing. I think it was an interesting bit of nostalgia, okay? And so - That's actually not a bad idea to put on these big aircraft, or what it ships, to get like franchise food on there and they can make money and they get happy. Oh my God. Can you imagine they put a Macca's on an American aircraft carrier? That's not going to go well. They've got to put a Macca's and then a ZenPix store or something. Justin Hams could put something on a destroyer. You get Chris Lucas doing a chin-chin on there. It'd be great. That's just what we need. Why shouldn't our servicemen get great food?

32:45Well, it doesn't really matter in Australia because we don't deploy to support our allies anyway. That's true. So it's fine, right? I'm sure Hamas and Ed would help Penny Wong and Santa Fe. It's possible. So something nostalgia. By the way, nostalgia, I could be wrong about this, but I think that word might be from Latin. Probably. Sounds like a word. Home and Elja is pain. I think it's the pain of not being at home. I think that's what nostalgia means. That is it. Is that right? From Greek and modern Latin. Greek. I said Latin, but it probably is Greek. And so here's some nostalgia for you. Pretty Woman, that movie.

33:20Big mistake. You've seen that movie? Yeah. You've seen that movie? I haven't. I think nothing like, what's the word I'm thinking of? Nostalgia? No, nothing like glorifying prostitution to really - Well, this brings to the next point. So do you remember what car Richard Gere drove in that movie? It was on a Porsche, was it? It was very famous that he drove this car. No, it was a Lotus. Okay. It was a Lotus Esprit. Exactly. It was a Lotus Esprit. A car that originally had an engine much too small for its looks. Like the BMW i8, which looks like an old electric car. It looks like a supercar. It didn't act like a supercar.

33:55You don't want to do things like that. And so in this movie, it was very weird that he drove a Lotus because it was a very fringe English brand. And so this is what happened. How much do you think Lotus paid for that? back then it was 1990 yeah a million bucks zero and so zero and so they went to Ferrari and they said we want a Ferrari for this movie and Ferrari said we don't want to be in a movie that's got prostitution they went to Porsche Porsche said the same thing and also who knew how successful it'd be then because Richard Gere wasn't particularly big Julie Robertson they went to Lotus Lotus said well no one knows us anyway be good for some people to know us they put their car in the movie Lotus has a GP team right It does have a GP team.

34:36And they go and put the car in the movie. And then that year, they triple their sales of Lotus. It was also one of the top movies of the 1990s, not the top movie, potentially. Yeah, because I couldn't work out why it was such an obscure car in the movie. But anyway, that's why. You can buy a second-hand Lotus Esprit now for not much money. As in maybe the underpowered ones you can probably buy for 40K. Yeah. And a decent one you can probably buy for 100K. Like they're a very underpriced old supercar. Yeah, probably for a good reason. imagine the upkeep on those things. Yeah, but people love buying these kind of cars.

35:07If you buy a Porsche 911. Not for me. Oh, 911's different. My friend's got a 911 that he bought. I think it cost him, I don't know, 250k to buy it. It's like from 1970 or something. In the last five years, it might have doubled. 911's a category of their own. I know, but the reason these cars go up is because what happens is that men who are in their 50s and 60s, they think about the cars that they thought were amazingly cool when they were kids. And then they overpay for these cars. But then what happens is they get older and die. And those cars, they start going down in value. And so you can buy, you know what an E-Type Jag is?

35:39Yep. So you can buy one of those now and they're going down in price because the people that thought they were cool when they were kids, they're dying, right? And so this is - The Tata hasn't helped the whole Jag, pink Jag thing. That's true. But I think those classic cars are immune to that. Yeah. And so people talk about classic cars as an alternative asset that's outperformed everything. And there is truth to that, but you very much have to buy the right era of classic cars. I like any asset. Yeah, like any painting. You got to buy the right artist. Yeah. So can I tell you the thing that will get you worked up?

36:08Yeah. Okay, so. I hope it doesn't clash with my monologue. Is your monologue about being able to say, death to America on the streets of America? Oh, it's close to that. All right, you do your monologue rather than me. You do yours. Is yours a Mamdani thing? I'm not specifically Mamdani. Are you going to talk about his lovely wife? No, I'm not. I'm talking about an Australian version of what you're about to talk about. So his wife is in favor of the October 7 attacks. Absolutely loves her. But it's okay. Because, why is it okay? Because the US is now a Palestinian state. No, because she said it as a private citizen, so that's fine.

36:41That was Mum Dhani's excuse. He didn't say she doesn't support October 7. He said she's a private citizen. She can support whatever she wants, right? Now, I think, so there are protests in the US that are going on where people are yelling death to America on the streets of the US. Americans. Americans. Yeah. And so I thought about that a bit and I thought, it's unusual that that's not illegal. Because there is free speech, but then there's also let's tear down our own country. And so I had a bit of a look at this and the US is the country where that is the least illegal. It is so heavily protected by the First Amendment rights.

37:17And so what do you think about England? Do you think you could yell death to the UK? You can't say anything in England. You certainly can't make social media posts criticizing rapists. They'd better put you in jail. So if you try to yell death to the UK in England, technically it might be legal. Practically, you're going to get arrested under a whole lot of laws. You can't even fly a UK flag now in the UK without being arrested. An actual UK flag. It's a symbol of racism now. Oh, well, no. The actual UK flag. But this is the opposite. UK has lost the plot. You might think, though, if you can't fly a UK flag, you could yell death to the UK.

37:49Yeah. But you can't. They'll do it up. And so what do you think about Australia? Do you think you could go into the streets of Australia and burn the Australian flag and yell death to Australia? I'm sure you can do that. What do you think, Mike? I think you probably could do it, yeah. You can do it. You can do it in Australia. And so I was trying to figure out why you could do it, and I was reading all that. There's lots of commentary about this. One argument is actually it's a good pressure release valve so that the people that want to actually cause death to Australia don't go underground and plan death to Australia.

38:20That's not the greatest argument, I think. No better arguments. And so, you know, this is an interesting question because when we were thinking about, when I say we, like people that believe in liberal democratic values, thinking about what should and shouldn't be permitted, I don't think anyone really envisaged that there would be so many people that genuinely do want to tear down liberal democracy. It is an interesting question and I don't know the answer to it. I mean, I guess you're going to go into this, but I was actually quite interested to hear what you thought about whether it should be legal to yell death to Australia and burn the Australian flag in the middle of Sydney or another capital city?

38:56I think it probably shouldn't be, but also I'm not sure the cost. It's one of those moments where the costs of enforcement probably outweigh the benefits of enforcement. And what are you going to do, put these people in jail? Well, I would. So if it was illegal, I think probably you need to – that's what I say about really terrible antisocial behaviour. Like, I know that people are going to accuse me of now being disproportionate, the greatest insult that exists in the modern era, disproportionate force, right? As if proportionate force is going to end any conflict. Like you slapped me in the face, I slapped you exactly as hard.

39:30Neither one of us is really suffering. How does that end? Like that can't end, right? And so I think you've got to take a couple of those first offenders and be disproportionate and put them in jail for like five years. And then I think it will stop pretty quickly. So I think that you have to use deterrence. You don't get five years for murder in Victoria. So I think getting five years for burning a flag is probably a long shot. Yeah, well, maybe it would need a bit of a different government. But I think you have to be disproportionate in the penalty and then the deterrence will kick in because whoever wants to say death to Australia and burn the Australian flag, they definitely don't think it's worth five years in jail.

40:06And so I think it will stop. I don't like it, but I'm not sure it's what I'd be... I'm also not sure. I'd first be getting rid of machetes first before the flag burners. Well, you can arbitrage machetes, can't you? Well, you could arbitrage guns, that's for sure. Ready for my monologue? Well, you should say that's a nice segue into my monologue. It's actually a very good segue into my monologue. I can do both sides of this podcast now. I know you so well. Don't you think, Mike, the natural thing that he would do is say that's a good segue into this? That's his usual linkage. Former Australian of the Year and Victims' Rights Campaigner, Grace Tame, surprised many last month when she led protests in Sydney calling for a global intifada.

40:45Tame backed up her controversial statements in financially and morally bankrupt ultra-left journal Crikey this week. I'll quote some of Grace Tame's comments in her vile, hate-filled peach, which she drubbed, ironically, the difficult truth. Tame claimed, Israel President, and I'm quoting here, Isaac Hertog stands accused of inciting genocide and he represents a rogue apartheid regime found to be committing genocide in the Gaza Strip by the United Nations. Saying someone stands accused... By the way, so far none of that is true. I'm about to get to that. But that's actually untrue. Well, he does stand accused of genocide.

41:17By who? By her? Yeah, anybody can accuse anybody. It's a classic straw man. So Herzog has been accused of genocide by South Africa, which is largely a failed state and which is making its case based on cherry-picked evidence, of course. South Africa, meanwhile, has been accused of being supportive of Vladimir Putin's conduct in Ukraine and the failure to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is actually wanted for genocide. So South Africa hasn't exactly got a lot of credibility in any of this stuff. Tame was fraudulent when she claimed Israel was found to be an apartheid regime. The International Court of Justice has never found Israel's committed genocide.

41:49It's actually still deliberating on the case and no verdict has been handed down. It appears Tame deliberately lied and the inept editors of Crikey didn't bother to make the most basic fact check. I'm not sure they forgot to fact check it. That is quite probable as well. Let that one go through to the keeper. But it gets worse. Tame claimed that language means different things to different people. The Arabic word for intifada, and I'm quoting this directly, by the way, the Arabic word for intifada literally means to shaking off or uprising, and is often used in reference to two periods of Palestinian resistance that began with labor strikes, boycotts, and peaceful protests against Israel's violence.

42:28End of quote. Of course, the second intifada, which lasted five years, resulted in the death of almost 1 ,000 innocent Israeli civilians, many of whom were murdered by Palestinian terrorists. This happened in restaurants, buses, shopping malls. Innocent people, many of them children, including the 15-year-old Malky Roth, an Australian who was killed by Grace's terrorist friends in a pizza shop. Grace Tame claims to be a victim's advocate for the rights of young girls, albeit she claims for a global intifada, an uprising that led to the murder of a 15-year-old innocent Australian girl in a restaurant.

42:58She should go and meet the parents of Malky Roth, whose father was very outspoken about it. That was a pizza, that was a Sparrow chain pizza restaurant in the middle of Jerusalem, just full of kids and whoever else, and a suicide bomber, probably not much older than those kids, went in there and blew himself up, and the shrapnel went and killed all of those kids and maimed a whole lot of other ones. She should go and just get a bit of an understanding of the human side of what she's actually saying here. And while Glacetheim appears to support the cause of Hamas, she says nothing of the Hamas fighters who committed violent rapes on October 7.

43:36Even the far-left European Union, now a basically sworn enemy of Israel, determined that Hamas fighters committed widespread sexual and gender-based violence in a systematic manner, using it as a weapon of war. One cannot claim to be an advocate of women's rights and girls while remaining silent, or even worse, supportive towards a force that used sexual violence as a systematic tool of terror on October 7. This, of course, isn't about politics. It's about fundamental consistency of character. Many are calling for Miss Tame to be stripped of the Australian of the Year honour she received in 2021.

44:05Perhaps a deeper realisation is that the Australian of the Year award itself has lost its way. When a symbol of our national character becomes a source of division and misinformation, it's probably time to stop awarding this prize altogether and find a better way to honour the values we hold dear. Okay, good. So now I can disagree with something that you said, because it's not easy to disagree with any of that, frankly. There are some high-profile vocal women on what I'd call the extreme left in Australia, not just in Australia, but let's talk about Australia, who not only do they ignore the rapes of October 7 that were videoed by the perpetrators and put on social media, but they deny that they happened.

44:45I mean, it is just, that is terrible. So I tell you why I disagree with the last bit of what you said about, I'll tell you my views on stripping the Australian of the Year and awarding of the Australian of the Year, etc. So I think there are lots of people who spout the hateful lies that Grace Tame spouts. She's not alone. But I tell you why I find her much more betraying to me as an Australian. It's because she received the Australian of the Year Award for something that I think we would very much aspire to holding as Australian values. She was obviously abused as a kid, and instead of turning into a victim, which she could easily have done, she stood up and owned it and said, I'm not going to be forced into being a victim, and I'm going to go and publicise it and fight back.

45:36There were laws that didn't allow her to speak. So her accused, or not accused, she was found guilty, obviously. He was allowed to talk about her, but she wasn't allowed. And she overturned those rules, and she was instrumental. So I think we all supported her. We can say that is the characteristic that we can call courage or bravery. And refusing to be a victim. That's why this is so ironic that she's sunk so deeply into false victimhood, right? But I think that was a great person to give the Australian of the Year Award to. And I could not be more supportive of her having received that Australian of the Year Award.

46:11The problem is people who receive that Australian of the Year Award, maybe there's not enough engagement or I'm not sure it might not be anything you can do about it but like they should then if they're going to use that as a platform ensure that they're apolitical. I thought what she did and the way she reacted to Scott Morrison when he was Prime Minister that was inappropriate for someone that was Australian of the Year. Now I was a fan of Scott Morrison. Scott Morrison's slimeball though so I don't have an issue with that. It doesn't matter what you think about him. No it does matter. It doesn't.

46:43It does. You can't compare Scott Morrison to supporting Hamas, which is what she's doing now. I don't compare it. But what I say is that if you're going to take an award that is meant to represent all of Australia and everything that's best of Australia, then you should strive to be non-partisan in the way that you engage publicly. Because once you're partisan, that politicises that award. And then people like you say we should stop giving out the award. No, but I didn't have an issue with that. I have an issue with her effectively defending rapists, which is what she's effectively doing now in a roundabout way.

47:14Listen, that is just the most... To criticise Scott Morrison, like, everybody in Australia criticised Scott Morrison, but to effectively claim gobyes in farther, let's support a regime that kills 15-year-old girls. When you're meant to be an advocate of 15-year-old girls, you can't compare the two. But you can say anyone that does that. Pat McGorry shamed himself with his supporters, the Palestinians. He's another Australian... And who's that soccer guy? I'm kidding. Craig Foster didn't win Australia of the Year, thank God. No, he didn't win Australia of the Year, but, like, he's kind of beloved in Australia.

47:39He marches next to the picture of the Agatola. Yeah. I mean, it's just ridiculous, right? And so I think what I'm saying is that behaviour that you characterised is terrible no matter who does it. It's terrible that she's done it. But what I think is… But why do we need this to strain the water? Well, I think it's good. I think it's good to acknowledge… I think she's destroyed it. And I think we need to, in honour of her, remove it. And that can be her legacy. Do you really want to let someone that has made terrible choices and has done the wrong thing, the consequence of that is they destroy something that's good?

48:11But I don't think it's good. Well, you thought it was good when she got it, though. It's a good acknowledgement of, like, this is the best of Australia. I think it proved wrong in hindsight that people then become bad. Patrick McGorry, the same thing. Like, he's also lost it. That's two people that got the award, right? That's 20 % of the last decade's recipients. And, like, maybe – I don't really follow it very closely, the Australian of the Year. But what about the other 80 %? I don't think – this is – you know your favourite saying, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. So this is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

48:41I think it's good to represent and acknowledge. I think it's also really hard to award these awards. Because you know what's good about Australian of the Year? All of these medals that they give out, what are they called? The OEMs. Yeah. So you can get that by just being rich. Doing a job. And doing your job as a public servant or being rich and giving lots of money. But you can't get the Australian of the Year like that. Patrick McGraw did. What did he? For the mental health kid thing. I know, but that is not a day-to-day job that someone's doing. Which is his job. Like, I think that's - He's paid for it.

49:10he made a material contribution. All these questions on that now. There are, but that's what he got it for, right? And like, it's easy to go back. I think Carrie Pickmore should have won this year. Someone else won, like a, whatever, the astronaut person. Like, Carrie weighs millions of dollars for brain cancer and the astronaut did a job. So they get it wrong more than they get it right. No, well, I don't know. Maybe. I thought the cancer people, Richard and, I forget the other one, they absolutely deserved it, but I can't think of many that deserved it. So you've gone from arguing against the award to just arguing that they don't give it to the right people.

49:38Which is why we need to get rid of it. That's exactly why I'm arguing the same point. Someone is always going to think that a second person is more worthy than the first person. Well, the problem with now is someone who's claiming globalising Tefada as an award winner. I don't think we can get rid of this award. We need to get rid of it so we can stop calling her Australian the Year because we're getting rid of the award. But what if the award she would have gotten was like an OAM? The lowest of those ranks of awards, right? That's very different. What if someone who was given the highest of those awards?

50:06AC, I think it is. Yeah, AC comes out and says these things. Well, you can strip. Yeah, I think then you strip. That you can actually strip. Yeah. I don't know. I think whenever you give something out and you give acknowledgement in any way, there is a risk that the person that you acknowledge is going to use that platform for evil. Which is what she's doing. And so do you want to not give anything to anyone? Yes. Then you want to go back in the Joan Koerner government of promoting mediocrity and nothing special for anyone. I think when you come from, we say, they're not going to give like a Bondi survivor, for the Australian of the Year.

50:38So, like, the good guys aren't going to win this. Well, I think it was the Australian of the Year, that was after Bondi, wasn't it? Yeah, Australia. Well, there is no doubt, in my view, that that should have gone to someone associated with that massacre. You got a nominator earlier. Maybe, right. But, like, I would – and so that person might – someone that saved a whole lot of people at Bondi. I actually don't want to use anyone in particular. There were a few people. Yeah, a few. They might get an award, an Australian – maybe it's not Australian of the Year, but some Australian award. And then down the track, they might go and do stuff that you think is grossly inappropriate.

51:11It doesn't mean wipe out the awards. No, I think - What do you want to hear? You comment, Mike. Well, it's interesting because Greystone won the award in 2021. It's 2026 now. So, like, I mean, if you win the award one year, are you, like, if your actions 20 years later impact it, should we get rid of the whole - Well, your argument is how long do you have to be a good person for after winning the award? I think this award's been so disgraced by her that it should cease to exist. But I guess in that sense, and I totally hear you, but what is the, is there a level of activism that someone who wins the award can?

51:49You mean like an AC to get stripped of it? No, no, I'm saying like - What's the limits of what you can do? I'm going to use an example. The death of people, I think is probably where you hit the line. We agree with that. This is really different, but like, for example, Dylan Olcott won the year after Grace Tame. I'm pretty sure Adam Goodes won it at one point. both of whom used that platform for their own cause. I think Dylan was a good winner. I question Adam Goodes. Sure, okay. Mainly because the incident it had with a young girl. But Dylan, I think, was a worthy winner. Yeah, but I guess my question is, like, how much activism can – if we're giving them the platform, are they allowed to be activists for their causes?

52:26Do you know what I mean? But this wasn't Grace Thames' cause. Grace Thames' cause was – True, yeah, that's true. She's completely flipped on her. Her cause was the exact opposite of what you're saying now. You've taken the most obvious extreme example of inappropriate behaviour ruining an award and then you're bringing that all the way back and you're saying because there are no angels who walk among us and we've all got human weaknesses and none of us is perfect, let's just not give the award to anyone because of the risk it entails. This is why it was a monologue, not a duologue. I think I can see the point that you're making with the hypocrisy.

53:02He's very smart and he's gotten to manoeuvre his way around this argument to create an impossible argument to contend with. I think there's benefit to the award despite the argument you're making, though. That's my perspective. And so let's say, people, let's say unbelievably, the government does not take heed of what you're saying. Shockingly. And continues. I'm sure Penny Wong will agree with me. Would you, would you, would you, do you think the award should be able to be removed from someone? Totally. So I don't. Okay. Because that will just be politicized. But it's already politicized. I know.

53:42But like, what will happen is all of the awards will be, no one's going to take this award off Grace Tame with the current government. You agree with that. But then the government. I think she'll lose it pretty quick. Well, that's it. But they might take it off some people that you think should, like, why are you taking it off that person? and that's a good person, well, maybe Tony Burke doesn't think that person is good because if Tony Burke doesn't take it off that person, he might not get re-elected in his electorate. And so I think once you - Let's not get rid of the whole thing. Let's get Somalia up on.

54:12All right. Well, I think you could get rid of the whole thing, but that would be a better thing to do than stripping it off people. Yeah, okay. That's fair enough. I actually think a lot of the situation with Grace Tame right now and her remarks, not to excuse them, obviously, for one second, I think a lot of it is relevance deprivation syndrome where she used to be really important and someone that the media was very interested in. But that wanes. There's been four or five other people that have received that award now. And so it's tough for her to deal with the fact that no one's really interested in what she's got to say anymore.

54:42And the only way to get interest is to be extreme. On that note, let's go. We've got some really juicy business stories coming up. We'll be back in just a moment.

54:57And we're back. And Sarah Thompson's Street Talk this week reported that IPO hopeful Koala has fetched an enterprise value of$260 million, representing 10.5 times pro-forma forecast EBITDA for this financial year. A term sheet sent by the online furniture retailers bankers on last Monday said institutional bids into the$68 million IPO were due last Wednesday and will be followed by a retail offer on March 24. Of the$68 million being raised at $340 per share. $20 million will go towards paying down debt, and$48 million is earmarked for secondary sell-down by shareholders. Sydney's perennial partners will vend about 5 million shares into the IPO, netting$16 million.

55:37Upon listing, it will be Koala's biggest shareholding with 22.7%, closely followed by founder Danny Milham and Mitch Taylor. Danny and Mitch have agreed to escrow arrangements, pledging not to sell Koala shares until the day after it has posted 2027 results. Then the trio is allowed to sell half their respective shareholdings, followed by FY28 for the other half. IPO forecast shared with potential investors included$330 million in revenue for the 2026 financial year, representing 20 % growth and$25 million in EBITDA, up 111 % on the previous year. I think you know about this sector all too well.

56:13I mean, there's nothing negative to say about this IPO as far as I'm concerned. The price is very good. They'll be very unlikely in my view to like miss their prospectus guidance. I think it's, they're going to hit their prospectus. They obviously wouldn't have. They'd be conservative for sure. Well, there are. I mean, it's not, wouldn't be the first time it's happened, but I feel like this is much. We're not selling down. So there's no, they've got no incentive to overstate. I think one of the founders is selling 12 mil of stock. Oh, Mitch is, but Danny's not selling anything. And Danny's CEO.

56:38Yeah. And I think they've basically, it's a good news story. They've taken a business that was quite a dreadful business for a while and almost went broke. Did almost go broke? Yeah. I think they might say they didn't almost go broke, but based on things that various investors were saying to me at various times, they were pretty desperate for a cash injection. They took debt in the end, right? And so maybe almost like going broke, but definitely they were very out of favour for a while. This is when Danny wasn't there. I'm not sure, but obviously that didn't go well either, right? Because he's back.

57:05We know he doesn't exist anymore. We've always brought it, but it feels like Danny returning has been... What year did he return? About two years ago, I think. and it coincides with our massive, it could have been coincidence, but also could be his return. I know. So I'll just say a few things that line up. So he came back. The market had no tolerance anymore for pouring cash into loss-making businesses. Retail, direct-to-consumer retail, it was super on the nose. So they couldn't go around and just raise more money regardless. And it's hard to know how much of it was in train before he got back or how much of it was a conscious decision based on his milk run experiences versus how much was just forced because if you don't do this, you're going to go broke.

57:49But whatever the case is. Well, they may have been doing it anyway. Yeah, they turned around a business that was looking at the very least like a bit of a sick business on the inside, and they turned it around. And I think that they're giving investors an opportunity to buy into a business that is profitable, that is growing, that I'm not even sure. Look, they've got margins that are like 65%. I don't even know how they get these margins at such low prices. Like, it's actually astonishing to me. And so, this could be scale, right? Yeah. And so, look, the truth is this. It's a horrible time to IPO a business.

58:24Like, I think they basically just said, we tried last year, then all these things happened. We tried this year, all these things happened. Forget it. We're just going to do it cheap. I think it's pretty cheap. Well, 260 EV is crazy cheap. Oh, well, they've got, yes, 260 EV is crazy. I know there's EBITDA versus, that's a big difference here. Nonetheless, like, this is a business that's growing really quickly. I mean, they tried to list for five. To me, it's the fact they were paying debt implies that there's some sort of kicker on that debt. They need to get that debt out of the way real quick.

58:50And this is the only way they could do it. But nonetheless, I think this is great. Or they borrowed it on bad terms. Because they were desperate, right? But either way, I remember when I was trying to list the 500 like a year ago, we thought, oh, it doesn't sound great. But now they've massively grown income and they've halved the vow. So this is a great buy. But you know, it might tank on IPO. I don't think it'll tank. The markets are bad. I don't think it'll tank. I think it's so cheap that a famous last words. And no one wants direct-to-consumer retail right now. It is still such an un... I love it.

59:19I think there's some DTC. There's some DTC around the world that's still popular. There's not everybody's Allbirds. There's some businesses that are going, all right. And this business is not Allbirds. Obviously, Allbirds is lost. These guys are making money and growing fast. So there's a lot to like about it. And Allbirds' bigger problem is it's unclear how they're going to get to be able to make money. That's the Allbirds problem, right? Whereas I thought Koala, it's like what we think about Atlassian. There's always a road to be able to be profitable. It just depends whether you're prepared to do it.

59:49And I always felt that way about Koala. The difference is these guys being able to keep growing while making money, which has been what's really impressive. In fact, their growth hasn't slowed at all, I don't think. So I think this is a – to me, this could be a billion-dollar business. They keep going. Give it three years. There's no reason why this couldn't be a billion-dollar business. So I think – I'm saying this based on pure speculation. I think you can possibly buy this in the aftermarket. You don't have to race into the IPO. they're not raising much money in the IPO. So I don't think there needs to be a ton of pressure to buy this in the IPO.

1:00:18I think you can buy this over the next whatever, but I do think it's hard to say anything bad about this, to be honest. I think it's great to see when companies don't overstate their valuation to an IPO. Maybe they take a little bit of a haircut on their own shares if they're selling down into it, but it just shows they're respecting the market. I've listened to what the market said. The market said 500 was too much. We said it was too much. They've come back at half that price with a much better business. And the underlying business is performing really well, which is a great sign. So you say it can be a billion-dollar business.

1:00:46I tell you what I'd want to see for this to be a billion-dollar business. I'd want to see 50 mil of NPAT growing at 25 % to 30%. Yeah, I agree with that. And then I think that's… 100 mil of EBITDA, 50 mil of NPAT, probably something like that. Yeah. Which I think they need to. And the question is, what margin could they do that on? Now, this is not going to be able to generate 20%. We can even talk about EBIT margins. It won't generate 20 % EBIT margins because the prices are too low. And they really, you know, this is an interesting conversation about brand, right? Their brand is strong, right?

1:01:18But they don't have pricing power with their brand. Like their brand is strong and known for being like a cheap and cheerful kind of July suitcases kind of brand. July's not cheap though. July's expensive. No, I don't agree with that. Or maybe it can be like as you buy, but it can be like as I buy, it's not cheap. It's Samsonite pricing. You're buying from Kmart. No. It's cheaper than Samsonite. It's cheaper than Samsonite. Not massively though. and so like that's expensive it's good but i think both of those businesses struggle with pricing power despite strong brands okay and this is why like when everyone does these brand awareness studies and oh wow your brand's really well known that doesn't mean you've got pricing if you're known for being cheap and cheerful you don't have pricing power you get acquisition cost you get cac benefits right and like you know like all the other you know whatever forgiveness right And so basically I think that they're going to struggle to do better than, I'm going to say 10 % to 15 % EBIT margins.

1:02:13So let's say 13%. So 13 % is a seventh, one-seventh approximately. And so we can just multiply the profit by seven that you want to EBIT. and so if they want 50 on the bottom line and you put the tax back in 30 % so multiply it by 1.4 and that takes you to 70 and so now we have to multiply 70 by 7 and so we get to 500 and so do you think that they can get there? Yeah, I think that that looks like not a difficult thing for them to be able to do and so that's going to give them like a 10 % like impact margin. What impact margin now we don't know though we do know. We'll find out soon. when they say that.

1:02:57So it's a long, I went kind of a bit of a long way around to calculate it, but the bottom line is, I think they won't have a 10 % NPAP margin when they hit 500. So that's a bit of the caveat I'd say. I think they probably need to hit 700. They're at 350, right? Yeah. So if they grow at 24 % a year. 330, but yeah. 330. So if they grow at 24 % a year, they're growing faster now, right? They're growing at 32. But let's say they slow to 24. That means in three - 20 % growth this year. 20 % revenue growth? That's what Sarah's reported. Okay, so 20 % revenue growth means they'll double in three and a half years.

1:03:32Five and a half, yes. And so let's say, because they need a bit more than doubling, let's say in four years they get to 700 mil. Yeah. Maybe in four years they could be a billion dollar business. That's the kind of time for them to think about. Yep, that's right. I think we're all very supportive of the guys and great job to get this far. Moving to a less positive story. Although, just lastly, if they're growing at 20%, I'm not giving them a 20 times end pet. Really? Yeah, I think it should be. I know you probably love the Peter Lynch, what's it called, peg? Price earnings growth. Price earnings growth, which means, I mean, it's a weird concept.

1:04:01If my earnings per share are growing at 20%, then you should be prepared to pay 20 times earnings. And so a peg of one is like whatever, and then anything below one is a bargain, and anything above one is worth. And so I don't necessarily subscribe to that. I think it's the multiple that you want to pay, in my view, is some combination of the growth, which is your upside, and the margins you're generating, which is your downside protection. And I think 20 % at a 10 % NPAP margin, 20 % growth at 10 % NPAP margin does not deserve 20 times earnings. I think it may be a bit harsh, but anyway, we'll see what the market does.

1:04:39Moving to a far less positive story. In a shocking 20-minute video call last week, a stumbling Mike Cannon-Brooks told Atlassian staff that 1 ,600 of them are being fired in the next 20 minutes. The casualties incredibly included the company's CTO, Rajiv Rajan. The company's Australian operations have been hit particularly hard with 30 % of the 1 ,600 or 480 people coming from the local workforce. Cuts come after a really difficult period for Cannon Brooks, who was the co-chief executive with Scott Farquhar until September 2024. And while Farquhar remains on the board, Cannon Brooks has been the sole CEO since Scott stepped down.

1:05:15The last year in shares listed on the NASDAQ reached$458 in 2021 and have fallen 80 % since then. Atlassian said to incur charges of between$225 and$236 million connected to the restructure under the terms of the redundancies Atlassian are paying departing staff 16 weeks pay plus one week for each year of service. Meanwhile, Atlassian expert and friend of the pod, John Stensholt, filed an outstanding piece from his private jet last week reporting, of course with Perry Williams, who I think does all the work, that a secret lunchtime crisis meeting at billionaire Scott Farquhar's$130 million Sydney mansion less than two weeks ago led to Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannonbrook's shock announcement.

1:05:53The article reported that Farquhar and Rajan were locked in talks for more than three hours at the billionaire's Point Piper abode. With Cannonbrook's not walking up in person to this fairly critical meeting, he dialled in on the basis that he had a sick child. You'd think that Mike can afford a couple of babysitters. But anyway, last month, when reporting Atlassian's financial results, which were yet another massive loss. The embattled CEO claimed AI is the best thing to happen to Atlassian. Alas, it wasn't so great for the 1 ,600 workers now re-entering probably the worst job market in Australia in two decades.

1:06:26Well, I mean, I don't think we can say it's the best thing that's ever happened to Atlassian because it does imperil them severely. But these job cuts might be the best thing that's ever happened to Atlassian as a business and its prospects for profitability. We can argue they haven't gone far enough. in terms of if you want to get profitable. Like they probably need to get rid of 5 ,000. And I'm not encouraging this because we don't want to see people lose their jobs. But as I said in my LinkedIn post that has garnered like unusual amount of positive attention. Yes, I thought it was a very good post.

1:06:54Had they simply said three years ago, we're not hiring people. We're going to just let people, natural attrition, like people always resign. You lose 10%, 15 % every year. They would have been at 5 ,000 people now. They're at 10 ,000. They've got to get to that 5 ,000 number. They're making, as we talk about, over a billion at that level, with not 2 billion. and they'd be justified the$20 billion valuation. Instead, they've got this top-heavy workforce and they've got the share price getting smashed so they've got to pay these people in hugely dilutive shares now to keep up to the status quo. So this doesn't do enough in terms of what he's trying to do.

1:07:23So I want to tell you some data that will feed into this for you. So I've been talking to a lot of people who are CTOs about what percentage of their code base is being generated by AI and what percentage of their workforce they think in the dev space will still be there in five years. The highest I've heard from a major company, I'm not going to say which company, 89 % of all code being generated by AI. I think the average is more like around 40, 45. Some are zero. We're at 60 and we'll be at 80 in two months, I reckon. And so the most extreme comment I've heard about staff numbers is 10 % of the current staff.

1:08:02That's the most extreme. but I think 50 to 70 this is development stuff development stuff because it's different yeah yeah development stuff these are all software businesses software businesses slash marketplaces I think this is going to sound terrible and I just want to emphasize my son's doing computer science so I'm in their court on this right but the truth is and I think computer science is still a good degree to do because fundamentally you've got to know how this stuff works right but losing 30 to 50 % of your dev staff in five years compared to today that seems to be almost a consensus from the people that i'm speaking to that's my view is totally different that my view is we'll have more we're obviously a growth focused business but my view is we'll have much more development staff and our aim is as we grow we're not scaling the customer service team as much for example and not scaling the operations that's that's we have a heap of people in those areas what do you what percentage of your workforce would be devs 20 okay so it's predominantly it's not like a software business In a software business, 80 % of stuff or 60%.

1:09:03I want to increase our development team because they've been more efficient now. I know. And David Sachs is on all in. We've had 20 years of not being able to get enough of as much devs as we wanted. Now we can make devs more efficient. Isn't there more reason to get more? Because if I can get a developer that cuts my workload for CS by 10%, that means I can double the business without having to hire more CS people. Yeah, the challenge is though, there's limits to what people can do. And so if all the mid-level development jobs are much more easily done by the AI side of things, then it's going to be hard to know what you do with all of these people because there's limits to how much you can deploy.

1:09:43I think the challenge would be on the more experienced, potentially older devs who aren't embracing AI as much as the younger devs. They're probably making it a bit harder for themselves, whereas if you've got the younger developers who are much hungrier and just more AI native, they can be much more productive. and you think a junior dev might be low hundreds or even lower than that, whereas a senior dev could be multiple hundreds. So you're actually reducing costs without reducing numbers. If you're not embracing AI, you are like the delivery driver in 1940, hanging on to your horse. You're like the horse and cart driver in 1920.

1:10:16That's right. Even later, right? I would say like, yeah, absolutely. I think there is no place for a developer in the future that has not embraced AI. Yeah. Totally agree. So I think Atlassian's problems are, like, if it would have done this when you, as you said, We did not just me, it was both of us. We're arguing about this. They would be in a totally different position right now. Yeah. And really, like, they're facing two simultaneous problems. One is get profitable. And two is figure out how they are going to have a vibrant business in three years' time. I think they've got two risks they're dealing with.

1:10:52Their big problem is, like, they should have been, they were profitable 2015. 15 so they were profitable pre-listing they were great great business making good money good margins and then they listed and the share price started going up and up and up and they spent spending more and more and more money and they suddenly become business and went from being a great business to being a terrible business that can't there's lost 3.6 billion dollars and has not made a profit in 2015 this is and they should be this is a 20 year old but they should be churning out profits over the last five years they should be making billions a year yeah we give this the give themselves the buffer now to change.

1:11:23You have golden windows and great periods. And Scott and Mike realised they sold into this golden window. So whilst employees were taking a script and they were selling. It's a shafting for those employees, as we talked about the whole way through. Well, they've been shafted twice. They've been given this Dodd stock, the shop 80%, and now they're being fired. Like it's the ultimate shafting. At least they get accelerated investing. The greatest bait and switch was the, you can work from anywhere. We've got this great. And you see, there was a couple of, and Capital Brief had some, had some pretty good inside word.

1:11:52This is a quote from an Atlassian person. I'm in absolute shock they did this via email. They added, I can't understand how they fell so far. And the numbers tell a similar story. Atlassian sits at 3.1 out of five stars on Glassdoor. This is a business that was obsessed with these kind of metrics. And with culture and values rated just 2.8, a long way from the company that wants to find what a technology workplace could be. I don't really rate those platforms very much. Glassdoor is junk, I get it. But these guys were, you can work from home, you can do everything. and they still can't get a good bar store review.

1:12:21I'll tell you a better metric for you. At the height of post-COVID, there was this amazing precinct going up in Sydney. They were the centrepiece of this tech precinct. Now that tech precinct is not happening. No, it's happening. Alassian's is. The precinct is no longer a tech precinct and Alassian's building is there but they're trying to lease it out. Sublease it out. But when they did this building, they were working from home at the time. So what they were thinking is just, baffling I wonder how many people were fired who work from home versus work in the office well I think almost everybody works from home is the problem is there yeah but I would have thought that that'd be that like my gut feel is the people who are working from home go first because there's no proximity the challenge nobody feels that Scott and Mike work from home Mike's traipsing around the world and even worse his sponsorship with the Williams team is the Atlassian's the name sponsor of Williams it's the Atlassian Williams team $50 million a year for a business that's losing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars a year is just unforgivable.

1:13:22This is, like, these guys own super voting shares, so they can't be voted out. But, like, there's no, absolutely, Mike should not be running this business. He was a great, let's not, like, till 2015, this was an incredible business. They started from nothing. They were early, I was 2002 on SAS. This was still crazy early. Like, I was stuffing around in backpacker apartments when these guys are building this incredible business. And these are people who have just lost their way. And only they can find their way. I think when I write these LinkedIn posts, I wasn't really attacking Mike, but I wasn't praising of him.

1:13:54He's a really easy target now because the right hates him because he's a sanctimonious and sort of do-gooding, virtue-signaling environmentalist who drives around on private jets. And the left hates him because he's rich. So he's hated by everyone now. So the poor guy can't win. And then he's got this business that's unfortunately in this period of existential threat. It's like he can't help that AI came now and the people are now, like people are sacking business, so they've got less seats. So this isn't their fault. What was their fault was they should be making profit during this golden window of profitability over the last 10 years, and they weren't.

1:14:26So I think, so I'll be more positive about him, obviously, because of the people I know, I hear much more positive things about. I know you're not criticising him as a person. Like I hear positive things about him as a person, et cetera. It obviously hasn't been through the greatest time recently. But I do feel this very strongly. A few years ago, when this whole, whatever was going on with Mike and Scott was going on. And I think everyone knows they weren't best mates for quite a while, right? And I don't really want to speculate beyond that. But that would have been the perfect time to do like the Eric Schmidt-like Google approach to the world and say, let's bring in an independent CEO who's very experienced, will be a triumvirate of doing this, but will give this person the power.

1:15:08And I think some very different decisions would have been made in a business with someone that had been brought in specifically to build the next phase of this business and didn't have the emotional baggage that all founders do and should have. But by the way, this makes a mockery of your endless pitches for founder mode. Wouldn't I tell you, I said founder mode comes in and out of fashion. And I think these guys are possibly doing their bit to make it go out of fashion again. Because I think, broadly speaking, you're much better off betting on founders than non-founders. And you wouldn't bet on founders for the first sort of, 15 years of this business, just till probably 2016, this was an unbelievable business.

1:15:46It went from zero to - I'd even say more than that. It's still a$20 billion business, let's not forget. And just because they overhired does not mean it wasn't an amazing business. It just was an amazing business not being run well enough. I think they've really, like they bought, so they bought Loom, which is a disaster now. But that was all post-COVID. Yeah, they bought Loom, they bought DX, 1.5 billion, and they bought the browser thing on the worst possible. This is billions of dollars. They need all the money they can have. Post-COVID has not been a great period for them. That's really the bad period.

1:16:14That's really bad. But I think that is to ignore the fact that pre-COVID, they should have been tightening down, making great money. Like you think Microsoft made money straight away. Apple made money straight away. Google made money pretty quickly. All these great businesses made money super quickly. These guys couldn't, like, they did make a bit of money initially, but 13, 14 years after being in business, they weren't making money. That's just catastrophic. and all the while Mike and Scott were selling down shares every single day to like three or four you know your famous I don't know what we haven't got a name for the index yet but your famous index these guys are now getting up there they've sold 8 billion on a 20 bill now the amount they've sold is getting it's getting to 50 % with the valuation that's significant obviously still have a stake but it's this is we've now reached the point where Atlassian is now sort of a not a meme stock but a meme in terms of this is almost the reverse don't be able It's the poster company for problems with AI, I would say.

1:17:14That's one of its big issues. When anyone talks to me about which companies, which SaaS companies do you think will be imperiled by the rise of AI, Atlassian is always the number one or two company that people mention. And I think they find themselves in a difficult position. But it's unfortunate because if you said five years ago, what's the one industry or group of people that are no chance of being displaced by tech it would have been tech people developers so i think this has been a huge shock to everyone really yeah and also the fact that it was so richly valued was another problem like if it's just been valued even like salesforce it wouldn't it would have fallen well 40 if we're honest we can say we can gloat about the earliness of the short call and the consistency but we should also say no part of us shorting it was we think fundamentally their business is going to be displaced by the next wave of technology it was just it's crazy overpriced and not being run properly yeah and there's some agency like um like challenge cost agency costs in shifting to a for-profit model yeah this was a surprise to everyone yeah wrap up our quizzes have become so popular now i'm going to give you one just before we sign off one little quiz um this is ev sales as a share of new car sales per country.

1:18:31Okay. So who's got the highest to who's got the lowest? There's about 50 countries here, so I'm not going to ask you everyone, but can you directionally... I'll be terrible at this. I think you'll be okay. There's a few pretty obvious ones at the top, but it gets a bit... There's only two. There's a country and a region I'm going to go for, and then I'm cooked after that. I'm going to say both of them, and then Mike can just finish the rest of this, as he always does. So my country that I think might be strong is China, and my region that I think might be strong is the Scandinavian countries. Yeah, so China is top 10.

1:19:03So I'll give you that. And Scandinavia, absolutely, is very, very high. Mike, can you guess number one? And more importantly, the percentage. I was shocked. The percentage. Oh my God. Shocked. This percentage is the bigger part of the question. There's no way I'll get this right. So I'll piggyback, obviously, off Scandinavia and go Switzerland? That's actually not in Scandinavia. Isn't it? No. Switzerland is about number... It's in Europe. I'll give you that. It sounds like a country. Sweden, Sweden. Sweden's number four. And then, so then Denmark. Number three. You'll never get number two, by the way, which is not Scandinavia.

1:19:39You have to go for Norway. Norway? Norway? Yeah. The reason you have to go for Norway. Always Norway. You have to go for Norway number one because basically - The richest. They're the richest with this, and the most hypocritical. Yeah. Because all of their country's wealth is from gas. Yeah. Okay. I think it's oil, right? Is it gas or oil? Oh, I thought it was gas. Who knows? Whatever. Fossil fuels, we can say, right? And you said number two is not Scandinavian. If you get number two, I'll buy you lunch anywhere you want. You buy me an electric car? I'm going to say something. I would, bro. You might have said it.

1:20:06If you get it, I know you're cheating. There's no way you'll get it. No way. That's why I'm offering you lunch anywhere you want. Do you think it's a country that has a big domestic production? Like Thailand has big domestic production. You'll never get this. You'll never get it. Is Japan or South Korea? We can say that because that'd be too obvious for number two. Japan. Japan's like number 48. Will you say a continent for us to guess for number two? You're actually not that far off continent-wise, funnily enough. Asia? Yeah. Is it Taiwan? No, I'm giving you too many clues, but you're not getting lunch now, but you keep guessing if you want.

1:20:38You'll never get it. Vietnam? You'll never get it. Singapore? No. Philippines? Fiji? You're getting closer. Mongolia? Russia? No. Ukraine? No, no. That's further away. You're getting close. Close to Mongolia? You're getting a lot closer. You're not like next door, but you're getting closer. I'm trying to think about obscure countries. Kyrgyzstan? You named a neighbour. Kyrgyzstan, no. Kyrgyzstan, no. You named a neighbour early. Someone named a neighbour early. A neighbour of this country. Nepal. Bangladesh. Nepal. Nepal. I've been to Nepal. I guess the Chinese cars. I've been to Nepal not long ago.

1:21:17Yeah. I didn't see electric cars. I just saw... This is 2026, so... I just saw motorbikes and things which I don't even know what you call them. Remember, it's a share of new car sales. They probably don't sell any cars. No one sells us. By the way, did you say you just got elected to power in Nepal? I did not say that. Like, this is a country that's had Marxist democratic governments that have ruined the country for a long period of time. Argentina style. So there's some 35-year-old DJ slash musician, non-politician, that's just been elected in Nepal. Man out of my own heart. Could be some hope.

1:21:45Yeah. That's right. Your mate, your DJ mate. Norway was number one. What percentage of new cars are EVs in Norway? 100%. 82. You're not far. 97%. It's pretty incredible. I just went extreme. I mean, like, you know. Nepal, 73. Denmark, 61. Nepal, 73. What does that mean? 73 cars that were sold in Nepal last year were EVs. Sweden, 61. Then you've got Iceland, Finland, Netherlands. All Netherlands. Iceland, 300 ,000 people. Yeah, but 57. And then you've got China. Then Belgium, Portugal, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland. Then UK at 33. Austria, Israel at 31%. Germany at 29%. then France, Thailand, Latvia, Spain, Estonia, Lithuania, etc.

1:22:27Australia's down about halfway at 14%. Australia's 14%. Yeah, it's all those BYD cars all over the road, basically. You see them everywhere. The US is in the top 50. Yeah. New Zealand's 8%. It's weird that US isn't on here because it goes down to 1%. Oh, no, sorry. US is on here. It's 10%. Apologies. And so, you know, do you remember the company Better Place? Yeah, Evan Thornley's business. Yeah, Evan Thornley was running that business. It was a bit too early, wasn't it? Started by an Israeli. Yeah, they were an electric car business and their main focus was on battery swaps, not charging batteries.

1:23:01I thought it was chargers. Nah, so you would drive into like a petrol stationing kind of thing and a machine would remove the battery. Charging was too slow back then, wasn't it? Yes, and swap it. And so the motivation behind that business, because it was an Israeli-started business, the motivation was to reduce oil dependency because of the risk of Iran and all of these countries. I mean, so precedent, right? That was 2010, though. It was just too far ahead of its time. Yes. But I think that today, like, I mean, people are still trying to roll out networks of chargers. But I think today what's become clear is there's going to be no dominant single business that has like a network of chargers.

1:23:42Yeah, because they would buy their cars from, Renault, I think their cars were. that have these custom built Renault made these cars so they're electric with a battery that could just be flipped out and a new battery put in and I think no company will come to dominate like that. I think the three and EVs are a subset but look at the three technologies that are going to be so in my mind so impactful to how we live day to day. There's other technologies to do lots of other stuff. One is obviously self-driving. I've talked about the length I'm not going to go into detail again but the self-driving will just change the way we live like be able to put kids in the cars and not etc.

1:24:14Older people can get around much more easily For sure. Other one is VTOL. So I'm going to go short, shortest haul to longest haul. So VTOL, which is vertical takeoff and landing. This reduces helicopter costs by about 80%. So suddenly you can go, where this opens up is regional houses. So for example, you can have a holiday house an hour away, get there in 10 minutes and it costs you 100 bucks. You know, there are some safety problems with helicopters. But VTOL are much safer. Frequency of accident is not good. But VTOL will be, you know, if you're watching the JFK stuff, which is light plane, but like VTOL has a fixed wing.

1:24:45it's got like eight engines so you don't have the engine issues that choppers have you have a lot of single engine choppers is it electric powered it's electric powered and it'll be autonomous at some point it's not yet so you're going to have so the autonomous thing stops you having the crashes the fact that you've got multiple engines stops you one engine fails it's a much safer way to travel than a chopper and it's a fraction of the price I think that opens up regional areas it opens up the way your holiday changes all that kind of stuff third thing is supersonic flight with boom boom supersonic leading the way they're doing test flights now they'll potentially be in the air by, and this is, they've got hundreds of orders through like United, and so this is big airlines that are effectively funding them through their orders.

1:25:22We're talking half the, half the, like, better than Concorde. So getting to, Australians getting to the UK in 10 hours, Australians getting to Bali in 2 hours, get to LA in 5 hours. That is, so these three games, and we should have these technologies within, certainly within 15 years, possibly within 10 years. Yeah. Self-driving. I'm shocked that Elon hasn't been focused on supersonic flight. Yeah. All his rockets, right? It's pretty specialised. Boom's the only one that really got this. That's his, like, that's right in his real house. I think he's only seen maybe so many things he can do. I doubt that.

1:25:53Yeah, maybe. Anyway, he hasn't. But Boom's going really well. I think maybe now it's a good time to buy a few-year-old second-hand electric car. They're so cheap on the market now. Nobody wants them. And all of this - I love electric cars. All of this panic about batteries, like, you know, like it turns out to be, the battery life might be actually - Oh, it hasn't changed at all. Well, it might be longer than all of the other parts of the car. Like - I've had a Tesla now for more than four years. Yeah. Had it serviced once. They weren't even serviced it. They said, you don't need a service. Obviously, I can charge it at work.

1:26:23I can charge it at home for 10 bucks. What about battery fluid? Do you change a battery fluid? No, maybe they don't want to service. I don't even know what that is. I just read about it. I don't do anything. The only thing I ever do is put the windscreen wiper fluid in. Right. That's all I do. And that happens like once every six months. So I think maybe, maybe I'll end up there. But no, there's no good convertible electric cars. That's the problem. people don't have electric cars. They're faster. They're cheaper. Everything about them is better. They're boring. No, they're not boring at all. They're much more fun to drive.

1:26:53They're boring. It feels like driving a go-kart around. They're so much more zippy and fun. No one ever beats you off the start. Like, it's just a better... I'm sold now. But what else do you want from a car? You want to get there quicker and cheaper. And be fun. They're fun. They're more fun than a, well, your buddy, maybe Porsche 911 or whatever you have. You know me, I don't care about cars. I've got an old car, right? Rolls-Royce. I've got to buy something. I've got to buy something new. We'll see. Thank you, guys. We'll call it a day. It's a great episode. Action-packed, fun-filled. Great monologue, of course.

1:27:22Is that going to be a regular thing, your monologues? What do you think it should be? Maybe we'll throw it to the listeners. Well, I don't think you want my answer. You should skip me as the question. You need to go on. You know, now that Kyle and Jackie O are gone. There's a space. You can go and say, I've got an idea. I think I might win the ratings with monologues. And then even if you win the ratings, you'll have less listeners than this podcast does because no one listens to radio anymore. yeah it's true so thank you everyone I'll be back on our Saturday Ask Us Anything episode and see everybody very soon