Fotis Kalis

Greek-Australian radio show presenter with a keen interest in political and current affairs, history and social media

[Fotis Kalis @Evdomada]

@PeterWMurphy1 He will still unfortunately succeed in achieving a hung parliament or winning the next election. @AlboMP has done nothing to win his base back. They can’t see the parallels with the Biden/Harris loss to Trump

[Justin Brash @just_brash]

Avi Yemeni is frustrated that the kids in Melbourne didn’t let him interview them like he did with Charlie Pickering. Instead they just kept yelling “fuck off nazi”. The kids are ok. #PaulineHansonProtest.

[Tom the whistleblower @blowingtom2]

Not a drag queen, not a trans person, just a Bishop of the church. It’s always the same. Religion is an evil part of so many lives.

[ABC News @abcnews]

#BREAKING: The former Bishop of Broome, who at the peak of his powers was one of the most senior and long-serving Catholic clerics in the country, is found guilty of sexually abusing multiple young men.

https://t.co/eZj3QHklRC

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

They raped a man.
They gang-raped him.
They raped him so brutally that he had to be hospitalized.
Doctors documented the injuries.
The video of the assault was leaked.

Now the rapists are free.

This is not just unlawful and immoral. It is sick!

#ThisIsIsrael

[Leftwing Bastard @_SocialDemocrat]

I saw a woman yesterday. In Bairnsdale! Full hijab! I was scared. God knows what she might do. So as I quietly and nervously walked forward I said “Hello.” Do you know what she fucking did? She said “Hello” back! The nerve of the woman! Bloody terrorists! #auspol

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

This is happening in plain sight while Israel's defenders in the West gaslight us about 'the only democracy in the Middle East'

[Canada Hates Trump @AntiTrumpCanada]

“Dr. Fauci belongs in prison! We’d never inject unnatural chemicals like the COVID vaccine into our bodies!”

[liam cunningham @liamcunningham1]

They are all our children. Look what we’ve allowed happen to them.
The genocidal apartheid regime are doing it and the ‘West’ are their cheerleaders.
And our silence permits it.

[stranger @strangerous10]

David Shoebridge slams Jillian Segal who refuses to release conflict of interest docs claiming they’re “private”
Segal, stumbling, then claims her conflicts are actually “public”
Shoebridge “if it’s public, why do you object to them being published?”🔥
Trainwreck💥 #auspol

[Tom the whistleblower @blowingtom2]

Who would have thought that the same Alan Jones arrested in a London toilet block all those years ago would end up in court today charged as a sex pest 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

[Aaron Smith @aaronsmith]

It’s impressive how consistently One Nation fails at the absolute basics.

Donation disclosures. Accounts. Compliance.

Every routine administrative task seems to become an ordeal.

Which explains the lack of policies, shit candidate vetting and Pauline not turning up to work.

[Aaron Smith @aaronsmith]

Dave, you've responded to a detailed fact check by introducing an entirely different argument.

Whether government should be smaller is an interesting discussion. It just isn't the discussion we were having.

We were discussing whether your description of Australia's economic history in a 90 second clip was accurate.

It wasn't.

What I think is extraordinary isn't that you got things wrong. Everyone does. It's that you've conceded precisely nothing.

Not one factual error. Not one correction. Not one "Fair enough, I got that wrong".

You have a remarkable ability to turn economic fiction into confident public performance. The problem isn't just the mistake. It's that once the performance is over, the fiction is simply left behind for your audience to keep repeating.

You haven't acknowledged that you confused government debt with the Future Fund. Your reply now explains how the Future Fund grew from around $60 billion to $255 billion which is a baffling addition, given you previously spoke about it as though it had ceased to exist.

You haven't acknowledged that you claimed the GFC stimulus was funded by the Future Fund. Or that your broader account of Australia's response to the GFC was wildly misleading.

Instead, you've simply changed the subject, which is a perfectly respectable debating tactic, provided nobody remembers what the original discussion was about.

When the errors are painstakingly explained, you don't correct the record. You simply move on, leaving the misinformation behind for your audience to repeat as though it were true.

I’m reminded of a line from Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses - Explaining this to you has become rather like trying to explain Norway to a dog.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

Israel can do so.
Ban any gathering of 20+ people in the occupied territory, with no explanation (if Palestinians).

That's what apartheid looks like: different rights based on identity.

That's why Israel deserves isolation, and its leaders investigation and prosecution.

[Mike Carlton @MikeCarlton01]

The Liberal Party is a magnet for these smarmy, callow, 20yr old twerps who believe they’re God’s gift to politics. The rapist Lehrmann was one, but there’s a herd of them.

https://t.co/XYQ2051Inb

[Bob Carr @bobjcarr]

More Jewish settler violence supported by IDF directed at Palestinians. Question for Royal Commission: does the behaviour of this ethno-nationalist state fuel antisemitism? It must. It’s why 80% of Australians now have negative views of Israel.

[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.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Oh fuck you. FUCK you. You don't get to do this now. You don't get to turn around and go "Oopsie poopsie, we made a mistake!" This was YOUR genocide, motherfuckers. YOURS. You chose it. You own it. Forever. The stench of the rotting corpses in Gaza will follow you for all time.

[Peter FitzSimons @Peter_Fitz]

Is it me, or is that level of aggro, a bit jarring?

[Dr Monique Ryan MP @Mon4Kooyong]

Today, Pauline Hanson has described family, domestic and sexual violence as a 'two-way street' while telling women who suffer abuse they should simply not "put up with it".

27 of the 37 women killed in Australia this year have died as a result of domestic violence.

Eight were women killed by their sons.

Minimising that horror by gaslighting victims of family violence, shows both callous disregard for people's suffering and a complete lack of insight into the complex hardship faced by women living in abusive situations.