Greg

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

Neil deGrasse Tyson: “There’s an intellectual scientific vacuum that is descending upon the US and that has consequences. If you’re okay with the US losing its scientific leadership, you will get the country you voted for. That country is one where we will no longer innovate. We will be less secure, less healthy, and less wealthy because some community of people who influence what this country is do not see the value of science”

[Aaron Smith @aaronsmith]

Thank you, Dave. I appreciate you reaching out to ask what you got wrong.

The clip we’re discussing is less than 90 seconds long. What I’m about to do demonstrates Brandolini's Law: where the amount of energy required to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude greater than that required to produce it. Or, in this case, it takes around 600 words to correct 90 seconds of your economic fan fiction.

1⃣ Between 0 and 30 seconds

You begin by confusing government debt with the Future Fund and appear to suggest that the Future Fund can't exist along side Govt debt.

They’re different things. One can exist without the other, and in Australia they do.

Australia's Future Fund was established in 2006 with an initial govt investment of about $60B. Its first annual report, in 2008, showed assets of around $64 billion - not the $100B you suggested.

Then, at around 27 seconds, you talk about the Future Fund as though it ceased to exist (you used the word 'had' as in past tense).

It still very much exists Dave. In fact, it's grown every single year since it was created. Today it's worth around $270 billion, or over $330 billion once the other funds under management are included (eg Medical Research / Housing Australia / Drought).

So before we're even 30 seconds into the clip you've managed to confuse government debt, the Future Fund, its size, and whether it still exists.

That’s a lot of economic history to get wrong in under 30 seconds.

2⃣ Around 32 seconds

You then claim Kevin Rudd used the Future Fund to "flush money through the economy".

Again, that’s simply false. The Future Fund wasn't used to fund the stimulus. It wasn't used to build school halls. It wasn’t used for any of the things you’re describing. In your defence, you do briefly flirt with the possibility that you don’t actually know what you’re talking about. Sadly, it was a very short-lived relationship.

The GFC stimulus was funded through government borrowing.

For context, construction approvals were collapsing, more than a million Australians worked in construction, and the objective was to stop unemployment exploding during the worst global financial crisis in generations.

You're welcome to argue that was the wrong policy (but you didn't). You’re not entitled to rewrite where the money came from.

3⃣ At about 44 seconds

You say, "I might be wrong".

I concede you were correct during this part of the video.

4⃣ From 44 seconds onwards

You make a series of broad claims about the GFC response.

Yes, government debt increased. That's true.

What you omit is that Australia's stimulus largely went directly to households rather than primarily rescuing financial institutions, as happened in many other countries.

The aim was simple: keep people spending, businesses operating and Australians employed while global demand collapsed. It's known as counter-cyclical fiscal policy.

Whether you agree with it politically is your business.

The specific outcome for Australia isn't contested though - Australia was one of only two economies in the OECD to avoid recession during the Global Financial Crisis. There's no reality where that wasn’t a comparatively impressive outcome.

The money didn’t need to "trickle down". The entire point was that it started at the bottom.

5⃣ Government debt

Throughout the clip (and in life generally) you repeatedly return to the theme Labor is responsible for Australia’s debt (which btw is comparatively low).

Here are the actual numbers of net debt added by each Govt since 2007.

> Rudd/Gillard: about $190 billion over six years.
> Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison: about $366 billion over nine years, around two-thirds of which pre-dated COVID.
> Albanese: about $75 billion over four years.

Those figures don’t support the story you've been telling people. And that’s really the issue.

This isn't about getting one date wrong or misremembering one statistic. Nearly every claim in your 90-second clip turns out to be either wrong or misleading.

If you're going to publicly lecture Australians about economic history, the bare minimum expectation is that you’ve first acquainted yourself with it.

Because once the errors have been pointed out, as they have been to you multiple times, every repetition stops looking like an accident and starts looking like a strategy.

Given your very public coffee with Angus Taylor last week, perhaps people are entitled to ask what that strategy might be.

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

Zohran Mamdani: “Democrats have been branded as socialists for longer than I can remember. I remember President Obama being called a socialist almost every single day by Republicans and it didn’t stop him from delivering not just on his first term but his second term. People are hungry for a vision of the Democratic Party that has more to do with the New Deal than the raw deal that so many Americans have been forced to accept”

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Good by Max. Very kind of Ukrainians to take a moment away from fighting for their lives to remind us all what democracy and civil society look like when you're willing to fight for it. Unlike so many in the West, they don't take it for granted.

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

Jared Kushner holds no government position.

Yet he is our Middle East Envoy.

The Saudis have paid him $100M and invested $2B in his firm.

He pushed for Saudi nuclear enrichment over the objection of national security officials.

Today his father-in-law made it happen.

But what about my paintings…

[Sulkhan Metreveli @Sulkhan]

Zelensky is signaling he may reverse himself under pressure from the streets. Predictably, I keep reading that this would make him look weak.

I hold the opposite view.

The unbending leader is a Soviet inheritance — the czar who cannot err, therefore cannot correct, therefore compounds every error into catastrophe. Putin is currently demonstrating the end state of that model.

A leader who can be argued back into the right position by his own citizens is not weak. He is governed. That is the entire technology of democracy: error correction running faster than error accumulation.

Last summer Ukrainians argued him out of gutting the anti-corruption agencies. He reversed. The state emerged stronger.

Strong leaders don’t need to be right the first time. They need to be correctable.

The correctable ones are still standing when the infallible ones fall.

[Olena Tregub @OTregub]

People saying, “Don’t worry about Fedorov, he’ll have a great political future anyway,” are missing the point entirely.

People are not protesting for Fedorov’s political future.

They’re protesting because Fedorov, as Minister of Defense, gave them hope. Hope that Ukraine could adapt, innovate, protect its soldiers, and actually win this war. Hope that someone was finally thinking about how to save lives, not just manage the system.

This isn’t about one man’s career.

It’s about the loss of confidence that someone competent was in charge of the institution responsible for defending the country—especially with another brutal winter approaching.

People aren’t marching to save Fedorov.

They’re marching because they fear losing the hope that Ukraine can do better.

[Aaron Smith @aaronsmith]

Days of Our Lives had less backstabbing, fewer implausible twists and a much more stable cast than the Victorian Liberal Party.

[Alexander Clarkson  @APHClarkson]

Yermak was useful to Zelensky because he provided a scapegoat over public backlashes in response to political blunders.

Now that human shield is gone and all blame hits Zelensky directly.

[Rev. Benjamin Cremer @Brcremer]

If our Christianity causes kids to go hungry, the sick to go without healthcare, the stranger to be unwelcome, and the needy to be treated as "parasites," all while billionaires get richer, we've profoundly misunderstood the most basic elements of Jesus' teachings.

[David Pocock @DavidPocock]

Fossil fuel companies are spending tens of millions on over 260 programs aimed at children.

They're trying to purchase social licence and influence young Australians.

With 87% of parents and grandparents saying these programs should be publicly funded, our schools and sporting clubs shouldn't be relying on fossil fuel money.
https://t.co/tga8lK58Hb

[Acyn @Acyn]

AOC: I actually think the more important advice that I would give would be to my incumbent colleagues, which is: you will create a self-fulfilling prophecy by deciding who these young women are before you’ve met them.

And if you are already panicking and sending little messages in your group chats about how these people need to be reined in, tamped down, and shown their place, you are creating the antagonistic dynamic that we do not need.

These are two young, talented, intelligent women who got elected against all odds, against millions of dollars. Perhaps there is something we can learn from them.

[Clare O'Neil MP @ClareONeilMP]

Credit where it’s due.

Good on Andrew Hastie for taking a stand.

Politics demands courage, not weakness.

[Mandy Arthur @mandyarthur]

My dad is not my “dad”.

My mom left an abusive marriage with my father when I was 8 months old.

We were homeless for a little while until she found the man who would raise me.

She had credit card debt and not much to offer. Just a baby girl and a toddler boy with cerebral palsy.

The man who would come to be the only true father I ever knew sold his vintage motorcycles and his only vehicle to pay off her credit cards and take care of us.

He was a young teacher, and she would be a stay-at-home mom.

From the time they married, I never rode the bus, never ate a school lunch, and never came home to an empty house.

He biked to work every day, sacrificing to support our family.

He was there for every soccer game. He bought every prom dress. He invested endlessly in my hobbies.

Over time, his consistent belief in me built my confidence. He took me to photography and digital art conferences where I learned valuable skills that helped me launch my first business.

I always knew that, no matter what, I was never alone, never unloved, and never without the full support of my dad.

Decades later, I asked him why he fell in love with my mom. What drew him to her? A homeless woman with two small kids isn’t really a catch.

He told me, “I didn’t just fall in love with your mom. I fell in love with you too.”

Happy Father’s Day to the men who chose to step up for those who other men let down.

You are the real heroes.

[Dr Monique Ryan MP @Mon4Kooyong]

Tomorrow, we'll be legislating on illegal tobacco imports. I'll be moving an amendment to stop politicians and political parties from accepting money from the tobacco industry.

Let's see how people vote on this one.

[Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @rshereme]

A world renowned historian Timothy Snyder, in a recent interview with Newsweek Polska, offered a warning that Poland’s leaders would do well to heed.

“The war of memory is much more comfortable for Polish politicians than the real war,” Snyder said.

“They can say: we are right, we are innocent, I know history. But one must begin with what is happening now, not with memory. If you skip that, you start with a lie.”

On the controversy over Ukraine’s honoring of the UPA, Snyder cautioned against judging such decisions without context: “To judge Zelensky’s decision to name a unit after the UPA without the context of almost four and a half years of war would be a mistake. This is the longest war of this century, longer than the First World War. It produces emotions that are difficult for the West to understand.”

He also noted that Ukrainians and Poles remember different chapters of the same history: “Ukrainians think about the UPA mainly through its third phase, the struggle against the Red Army after 1945. Poles remember the first phase: 1943, when the UPA killed tens of thousands of Poles in Volhynia. The mistake is to forget the rest of the history.”

And his sharpest warning should concern everyone: “On the battlefield, Russia will lose. In Warsaw and Kyiv, Russia will win the war of memory.”

Stripping President Zelensky of Poland’s highest honor was not an act of wisdom. It was an emotional response that elevated historical grievance over present reality. Ukraine is fighting the longest war of this century, and Poland’s security depends on its survival. To turn an ally into an adversary over unresolved history serves neither truth nor justice – it serves only Moscow. That is the trap Snyder named.

The war of memory cannot be won. It can only be exploited – and there is one power waiting to exploit it.

[Rex Patrick @MrRexPatrick]

I’ve had a massive win in SA’s Court of Appeal that’ll open up Govts to greater scrutiny all around the country💪.

Transparency battles are rarely fought on an even playing field; they’re uphill all the way, but the view from the top is worth it. #auspol https://t.co/z3KglIKslS

[Michael J Wyllie @michaelJwyllie]

Can we have Laura Tingle back at the National Press Club please. 🙏🏻

[Larissa Waters @larissawaters]

Laws to strip women of abortion rights in SA were defeated last night, due to the tireless work of advocates fighting to protect access to healthcare.

But it was shameful to see Labor Premier Malinauskas vote alongside right-wing MPs to trample abortion access.

[Garth ..... Gasu - ガース @gasugasu1984]

SBS was created under the Fraser Government in 1978

SBS is almost 50 years old

It should be seen as a cultural icon not an institution to be abolished