Jodi: Hello and welcome to Covered a podcast that helps you figure out what's going on in the news and how you feel about

Annie: Here to guide you through the biggest stories of the week, we are your hosts, journalists, Annie Pullar and Jodi Lee.

Jodi: this week's episode we dive into the budget backlash that's following the Albanese government everywhere it goes.

Annie: Also, Rugby League stars devastating MND diagnosis.

Jodi: and a shooting at a mosque in California carried out by two teenagers who authorities say were inspired by the Christchurch massacre. ⁓ But let's now take a look at our honorable mentions. These are the stories that are worth putting on your radar, don't quite warrant a deep dive.

Annie: Yeah, first up, Israel's ambassador to Australia has been summoned to Canberra to explain the treatment of 11 Australians on board a flotilla bound for Gaza. A video posted to social media shows far-right Israeli Minister Ben Gvir taunting the group upon its arrival to Israel. Now, the group has been detained. Australia's Minister Penny Wong has called it shocking and unacceptable. ⁓

Jodi: An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been called a global health emergency by the World Health Organization. So far, ⁓ 130 people have died. It's crossed into neighboring Uganda and there is currently no vaccine for this particular strain of the disease. An American doctor who was working as a medical missionary in the region has tested positive this week. He's been evacuated to Germany. When Donald Trump, the US president, was asked if Americans should be worried about this, he said, ⁓

Annie: doesn't give a lot of reassurance. Moving on, Ahmed El Ahmed, the Bondi hero who tackled and disarmed one of the gunmen during December's terror attack, is allegedly the victim of an extortion attempt by his own brothers. Now the public raised about $2.6 million to support him after his heroic actions. Now two of his brothers have faced a local court accused of demanding $100,000 each from Ahmed, with one allegedly telling him during a phone call and I quote, will put your head under my boot, break your other arm and smash your face. Now Ahmed gave a statement to police, his brothers were charged last week and this very private family feud is about to become a lot more public when it goes before a local court in the coming weeks.

Jodi: Yep, now this final honorable mention is perhaps my favorite of all time. A radio station in the UK has prematurely killed off the King. Yes, you heard that right. Not ideal, but this particular station told listeners that his Royal Highness was dead this week. The program cut to a formal announcement that King Charles had died. They played God Save the Queen and then they went silent for 15 minutes. It was a full blown commemoration, a moment if you will, to pause. course the King was very much alive. He was in Northern Ireland with Queen Camilla, devastatingly embarrassing for them. The station manager apologized personally to the King and of course blamed a computer error. ⁓ the perils of AI. But with that, shall we get to our very first story for this week's episode?

Annie: Yeah, we of course are kicking off with the budget backlash or the business revolt if we want to call it that because if you have been anywhere near social media this week you already know the government has had an absolute shocker of a week.

Jodi: It's an absolute understatement. This has probably been the single worst week for the Albanese Labor government since it was elected, certainly of its political life. To put it simply, basically, Albo and his government has become the laughing stock of young people and small business owners, particularly on social media. ⁓ It's not a quiet undercurrent of frustration. It's overt. It's in your face. It's the subject of memes right across the social media stratosphere. And as I said, the people leading the charge are really young Australians that this budget professed to be helping.

Annie: Yeah, I have to say I have shamelessly been buying into this. have not been able to put my phone down all week. you know, Albanese has had quite the career change this week from plumber to tradie, Tyler, hairdresser. My personal favorite was the Pilates princess, him on the reformer, also the lunchbox co-founder. But of course, small business owners across the country have turned this into a full blown movement. They've almost declared social media war against Anthony Albanese flooding Instagram, TikTok. leaked in any platform that you can think of with these AI generated images of Albo actually standing in their business or welcoming him as their silent partner who allegedly pockets 47 % without ever having to show up. Wouldn't it be nice? I know. When a journalist put this AI movement to him this week at a press conference, this was his response.

Jodi: What a life. Ideal job. Yeah, you laugh, but like it's one thing to be taken the piss out of by your constituents. It's another thing to laugh in their face and to make a joke it when it's put to you by a journalist. From a communication and reputation standpoint, this is a really bad look. ⁓ He's really showing a sense of disdain and frustration and almost says like he just doesn't really care. the reality is that ⁓ many of these business owners that are posting those kind of tongue in cheek memes have run the in their own businesses. They've looked at their own books and realized that ⁓

Annie: Yeah.

Jodi: What this budget actually means for them is a step backwards, not forwards.

Annie: Yeah, and it's why that smug response has, you know, sort of thrown so much fuel on the fire for our business community. And we've covered the CGT changes a fair bit on our previous episodes, but I think it's worth this recap because it really goes to the heart of why our startup community, why our business leaders are so angry. Now, as we know before this budget, if you built a business and sold it, you received a 50 % discount on your capital gain. So on a million dollar profit, you paid tax on just $500,000 under these new changes that discount is now gone and it's been replaced with this inflation index model and a minimum 30 % tax on the real gain But here's the catch for founders on higher incomes that rate can creep right up to 47 % Hence the AI means it was previously as low as around 23.5

Jodi: It's just insane when you think about it, like those two figures that you just gave, it's an almost doubling of the amount of tax that you pay. And it's just such a shame because what we should be doing is encouraging people to think big, to dream, to be innovative, to try new things, to take risks, particularly as young founders, and to start a business because no founder goes into a business thinking about the exit. Correct me if I'm wrong. I just don't think that's necessarily the way people approach it. And yet, Every business owner will inevitably have to leave, whether it's they sell it or they go insolvent, but it's just why are we capping people's potential before they've even started?

Annie: Yeah, well that's the big crux of this argument here and business leaders are not being quiet about it. 40 founders under 40 have actually signed an open letter to the prime minister this week calling it an aspirational ambush. And I think that language is actually quite light when you consider the impact that it's having on these people. What's worth noting is that these founders aren't against all of the changes. They support removing the capital gains tax discount on housing and property where the lines become blurry and what they actually can't accept here is that the government is extending those same changes to shares, businesses and other assets. And what our business community is essentially saying is these are two completely different things and the government is trying to treat them as one.

Jodi: Yeah, it's so true. I mean, that's exactly how I've lived and how I've made my own financial decisions because we are so far behind the generation ahead of us. Just for context, that's obviously Rachel Wild. She's a hair care and a skincare entrepreneur who has a really big following on social media. What I found fascinating was she was invited to a round table with treasurer Jim Charmers ⁓ and her point about young Australians trying to not even get ahead but just keep up in very different means than the generation before us is I think worth drilling down on. She's obviously said that young people are investing in shares, right? Jim Chalmers has been singing from a very different song sheet. If I'm correct, he's been saying that only around one in 10 Australians under the age of 35 is invested in the share market. But ASIC's own data, so that's the Australian Securities Investments Commission, Own data from April this year, not two months ago, found that 18 % of people aged between 18 to 28 own shares and 23 % own crypto. And so when Rachel Wild put that discrepancy to Jim Charmers, he said he'd have to go away and look at where the discrepancy was, why there was such a difference. It's really not a great look for a treasurer that's just purported to hand down a budget that's meant to be in the best interests of young people that he allegedly doesn't even know what these young people are doing with their money.

Annie: Yeah, I mean, he was actually hit with this discrepancy on a podcast on the Daily Aus this week and he didn't even have a response. He just said, I'm going to have to go run those numbers. And I think ⁓ that gap there really sums up the broader problem that this business community are flagging. This is a government that doesn't seem to fully understand who it that they're targeting and who it is that they're hitting. You have Tanya Plebiscite going morning television this week, essentially not able to the ⁓ changes around discretionary trust. And then also we're seeing fighting within Labor's own ranks.

Jodi: Well, this is the most outstanding development this week. I'm not surprised. So Chris Minns obviously, Labour Premier of New South Wales, really, if you think about it, should be in lockstep with federal labour on big issues like a federal budget. no, Minns has come out swinging and he's hit out at Albanese in a press conference this week, necessarily with respect to CGT and the changes there, but when it comes to bracket creep, And he's basically said that he doesn't, he's demanded that the federal government urgently fix bracket creep. What's even more interesting is fixing bracket creep is a policy that the liberal coalition, that is a federal opposition leader, Angus Taylor said that his party would target, his party would go ⁓ fast after in his budget apply speech this week.

Annie: Yeah, so basically a civil war playing out within Labor's own ranks and the nightly which is owned by 7 West Media had a great front cover ⁓ after this press conference. They put and Albo side by side with the headline Fight Club ⁓ you may think that this is just sort of internal rifting, that it's Labor politics, the political football being tossed around, but ⁓ think it is actually a lot bigger than that ⁓ in the broader sense because Minns is probably one of the more popular ⁓ in the camp right now and he's not being ideological here he has skin in this game his government has spent the last two years negotiating pay rises for nurses teachers paramedics and police and those pay rises are now pushing workers into those higher tax brackets so you have a situation where Canberra is essentially clawing back what New South Wales is trying to hand out meaning Minns's own policy is being undermined by his own federal government I hope that makes sense minutes.

Jodi: Yeah, so what you're essentially saying is workers are demanding more from the state government because the states pay for those resources like schools and hospitals and police forces. So they're saying, please give us more. So Minns is dishing out more money, but because of bracket creep, more of what Minns dishes out actually gets taken away from those workers in federal taxes. It's nuts. ⁓ I love that fight club. That's so good. Of course, to add fuel to the fire, all of these allegations were put to Jim Chalmers, the federal treasurer. And again, he responded to journalists with that smug sense of disdain that's just doing this government absolutely no favors. He couldn't hide his irritation quite frankly, which is really poor having just handed down a budget. He took a swipe at Chris Minns, his New South Wales colleague, and he claimed, and this is a direct quote, that's not how marginal tax rates work, rather than actually addressing the substance of what Chris Minns said. Just, you know, very condescending.

Annie: swing the axe here but I have to laugh because what would you expect from a government that has a leader that has never spent a day working in the private sector? Anthony Albanese went from student politics at Sydney University straight into federal parliament. He has never run a business, he's never made a payroll, he's never ⁓ people in a private sector or set up ⁓ know business structures like discretionary trusts. ⁓ I think that disconnect is really showing now.

Jodi: political standpoint and this is definitely going out on a limb, he also hasn't been able to land anything politically. If you look at it, his career as Prime Minister started with the big promise of the voice to parliament going through. That fell flat on its face. Social cohesion has never been more fractured in this country. He presided over Australia during the time of this country, the worst terrorist attack this country has ever seen, and now in professing to try and revolutionize the game for young Australians, he's basically slammed the door in their face once again. So ⁓ it's probably an F on Albo's report card for me. But I guess the big question is whether any of this actually changes the government's behavior. Like they don't seem open to questions from journalists. How are they going to feel about genuine feedback from the business community? ⁓ You know, these aren't just founders posting memes to social media. They're making these are people that are making real decisions about business. that then have flow-on effects when it comes to the economy. And that's really going to say a lot about whether or not an Albanese decides to act on the back of this feedback. There is a coalition backed campaign. So that's the Federal Liberal Coalition campaign called Stop the Tech Tax ⁓ that launched this week. It claims hundreds of founders are already getting advice on whether places like Singapore, New Zealand or the US makes more financial sense. Look, I've got to say it's never been easier. to be in opposition than it is now.

Annie: ⁓ absolutely. you have to, you know, I don't think there's any question in why business owners are looking offshore. We sort of did a deep dive on this. Singapore has no capital gains tax. New Zealand has none on business assets and the US sits at around 20 % for long term gains. So the whole pitch in these markets is come here, ⁓ all, bring the risk, ⁓ something and we're never going to punish you for succeeding. In fact, we're going to incentivise it. And that feels like quite the opposite of what this budget is saying to Australian founders right now.

Jodi: Yeah, I think it's very telling though that within 24 hours of handing down the budget, the government had flagged potential ⁓ loopholes for the startup community. So basically, there's a clause apparently in the budget papers acknowledging startups unique circumstances and flagging that there will be consultation with the business community ahead of the 2027 deadline. So I mean, already they're just getting ahead of the backlash, whether or not that's enshrined in this legislation remains to be seen.

Annie: At the same time, this Labor government is now trying to offer founders a seat at the roundtable. I mean, at least they're trying to do it. Albanese is also pushing at the very same time to get this legislation through Parliament. He obviously holds a majority and with green support, he thinks that this can be done as soon as possible. What I found really interesting is right across the political landscape, you literally every leader throwing shade on the Labor government ⁓ right now. ⁓ Nationals leader Matt Canavan actually did press conference also this week calling on Albo to actually call an early election, which I just don't is ever to happen. ⁓ But the fact that he is saying this out loud, I think ⁓ really shows you how much political caps the government has burned in such a short amount of time.

Jodi: Yeah, and the polls are really reflecting that. So NewsPoll has this as the second worst budget for the economy since 1988. That's almost 40 years. 52 % of voters say that they will be worse off. That's more than half. That's a problem. You don't need to be a mathematician to know that. And the Sydney Morning Herald's resolve political monitor has something we haven't actually seen for some time. That is Angus Taylor, the opposition leader, leading Albanese as preferred prime minister for the first time 33 to 30 so it's it's it's tailor's to lose at this point.

Annie: But I think if we do look at this from a holistic point of view, Chalmers has come out, he said that he would have been really surprised by a bounce in numbers five days out from a very tough, a very controversial budget. And look, I think that is a really fair point, but the polling is almost besides the point now. You know, have 40 business owners that are signing this open letter. You have a labor premier breaking ranks. You have businesses looking offshore, looking to get out the door of Australia. I think you can try your best to rush this legislation through. parliament but you just definitely cannot legislate your way back into people's trust.

Jodi: mic drop. I risk of making people feel ever more despondent than we just did with that budget backlash story. Our second story this week is harrowing and I just feel like there's no easy way to get to it. So I might just dive in if that's ⁓ Fuck and I'm honestly really emotional about this. This was a really harrowing week in Australian sport.

Annie: Hmm.

Jodi: ⁓ beloved rugby league player, South Sydney forward, new dad, Jai Arrow, announced his medical retirement from the game. ⁓ Medical retirements from sport aren't new, know, sometimes a niggling injury or various other reasons, you know, for somebody to call time on their career before they'd potentially have liked to. It's always really tragic to see somebody have to step away from something that they love so much and do so well. ⁓ But Arrow's diagnosis and the way that the news was broken this week. I think shattered every Australian heart into a million pieces.

Annie: Yeah, I think it was the way that it unfolded. A press conference was called and Jai Arrow was there sitting alongside his coach, but he didn't actually say anything. And that in itself, I think, said everything. ⁓ Rabbit O's CEO Blake Solly read a statement on his behalf that Jai Arrow had written himself announcing that he'd been diagnosed with a neurological condition. It was incredibly hard to watch. I actually cried watching this press conference. Arrow was visibly distraught. ⁓ you could just see that he was shattered, he was sort of holding his head in his hands. It was almost one of those moments where you wanted to look away and the club later confirmed that this neurological condition was motor neurones disease and this is a man that is just 30 years old.

Jodi: Yeah, and just to see, you know, Wayne Bennett sitting next to him, arguably one of the greatest rugby league coaches of all time, the same person who gave him his first grade to boo, you know, a decade ago up in Brisbane, to see Bennett so visibly shaken. I think he said he had goosebumps and he just said, you know, it's the last way that you want to see someone retire. I think that's probably a valid point to explore to discuss what is MND. I know it's something motor neurone disease we hear a lot about, ⁓ in particular instance, I think it's really critical to understand how it impacts somebody and their body.

Annie: as we've mentioned, it's a neurological disease that attacks ⁓ motor neurons, the nerve cells that send ⁓ from your brain to your muscles. So walking, speaking, swallowing, breathing, really any kind of movement function, ⁓ of it gradually stops working as those neurons slowly die. And it didn't take long before a very courageous Jai Arrow exposed ⁓ toll that this disease ⁓ already having on him in such a short amount of time. While he didn't speak at that press conference. did sit down with Nine's NRL reporter Danica Maison where he invited her into his home and I want to play you a clip now. ⁓ crying again.

Jodi: That is just...

Annie: Yeah, so sad.

Jodi: It's so sad and look, I do not profess to know Jai Arrow at all, but I have interviewed him and just to think, you know, what do we may now? He's saying the disease has progressed for him since November. Like I interviewed him in September on stage at South's Best in Ferris awards. He won the George Piggins medal. He was crowned best in Ferris for season 20, 25. And I just remember when he got up on stage, he sobbed like a baby. you know, the good happy tears, good tears because he was being recognized for having this standout stellar season. All he could talk about was the fact that his partner was at home. They just welcomed their first child. She was so, she was so young, their baby that his partner wasn't able to come to the ceremony with him as so many of the other players partners did. And he sort of, he was just, you know, a young bloke with the world at his feet. And there was no sign of any kind of illness or difficulty. And then you fast forward to now and you know, heart just breaks for him.

Annie: and he obviously had absolutely no knowledge of ⁓ was to come. I think a really common misconception with MND is that, ⁓ you know, because you're experiencing all these physical changes, people often associate what's happening to your mind as similar to dementia, but that's actually not the case here. You're apparently very cognitively aware of what's happening to your body. You're very aware of what's happening around you, ⁓ is just ⁓ so cruel in its own sense and there really is no cure for MND yet. About 800 Australians are diagnosed with this disease each year and the average survival time after diagnosis, which it honestly pains me to say out loud as we speak about this young man, is two and a half years.

Jodi: there are some standout, you know, there are some, some. ⁓ glimmers of hope. Having lived in Melbourne for so many years, obviously the first person I think about when you talk about MND is Neil Danaher, obviously the former Essendon Bombers player. coached Melbourne, comes from a really famous footy family. Danaher was diagnosed with MND in 2013 and since then not only him but his entire family, his kids, his wife, his siblings, everybody around the Danaher family has rallied together. They've obviously established Fight MND, that organization. And they've raised more than $115 million to find a cure for this disease. It's so insidious, but they've done such a brilliant job. There is hope there. And last year he was named Australian of the Year. So I dare say it's never been a cause that's been more front and centre for Australians than it is now.

Annie: Yeah, and hey, there are exceptions. He's been living with this for 13 years and doctors told him that he would die 10 years ago. He can no longer speak, ⁓ but he does use apparently his eyes to communicate along with this specialized machine, which is just incredible to watch where he can convert his movement into words. And for his new book, which is called The Power of Choice, he actually told the Australian and I'll read you this quote, ⁓ your attitudes, your effort, your response and the meaning you make from what happens. I mean someone that has an attitude like that I just applaud wholeheartedly but his wife has described watching him and the decline of this condition ⁓ as watching someone being slowly tortured.

Jodi: obviously Dunahoe's an AFL great, but rugby league has its own history with the disease. Carl Webb, who was a Maroons forward, died of MND just two and a half years ago. He was 42. Scott Gale died of this disease at 39. And then obviously there's been a number of players from rugby union globally who've also been diagnosed and subsequently lost their lives. So it's nothing new.

Annie: but I think it does sort of bring us to a question here that every contact sport is no doubt going to have to reckon with or at least have to raise. And that's whether there is a link between head trauma and MND. ⁓

Jodi: I think the honest answer is that scientists and researchers still don't know. There's no direct causal link, but ⁓ concussion and head injury has been identified as a risk factor for MND. ⁓ The NRL and various organizations around it have done research on this. Some of the numbers are interesting. So during the 2019 NRL season, there were more than 15 diagnosed concussions for every thousand hours of match play. And a rugby league players association report last year found that 60 % of RL players continued to train after suffering a suspected concussion during that training.

Annie: Yeah, and I think if we go back to MND, I think the thinking from the researchers isn't that head injury directly causes this insidious disease. It's way more nuanced, way more complicated than that. The theory is that repeated head trauma disrupts something called the blood brain barrier. So that's the protective layer that shields your brain from environmental agents that can damage really sensitive cells like your motor neurons. And once that barrier is compromised or disrupted in any way, those cells become increasingly vulnerable.

Jodi: fascinating was in spite of how insidious this disease is and how many famous and beloved Australians it has impacted, MND isn't actually a notifiable disease in Australia yet which means it doesn't have to be reported to health authorities. So my understanding is that MND Australia is trying to change that, they're pushing for that. ⁓ reform, ⁓ because notification means data is recorded and more data helps with better and more accurate research and better research means that hopefully we find a cure really soon.

Annie: Yeah, wow, I didn't know that. ⁓ You can only hope that that does pass. you know, we don't know Jai Arrow's story at all. We are obviously just reacting like the rest of Australia right now. We don't know what his history of head trauma has been, what the progression of his own symptoms has been like. And frankly, that's not really our right to know. But we do know, and as he mentioned to Danica Mason, that he wants to fight really hard. He wants to try every new trial, every new drug. And he said that he wants to inspire younger generations. Thanks.

Jodi: Yeah, and his, his statement ended with the words love you all. That was what he wanted to leave people with. So maybe we'll leave it there and move on to our third story, which I'm now just realizing in hindsight is not a mood lifter at all. So I apologize in advance for the sentiment of this week's episode, but I guess that's just the news.

Annie: to talk, talk, episode.

Jodi: Yeah, it's pretty dark. Who knew the budget would be the most lively story we covered this week. We want to turn to the US now, where sadly, and I can't believe we reiterate these words yet again, there's been another mass shooting. We make a deliberate choice on this podcast not to cover every incidence of gun violence in the US because frankly, there are just too many. But this one has a really alarming and dark link back to Australia.

Annie: According to the FBI, the two teenagers behind the attack ⁓ on a mosque, ⁓ a place of worship in San Diego Monday, were inspired Brenton Tarrant. So that's the Australian ⁓ who massacred 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch in New back in 2019 ⁓ and whose ideology ⁓ is still seemingly inspiring killers seven years after tragedy. ⁓

Jodi: Yeah, so San Diego is a Californian city of about 1.4 million people in the south of the state. It was Monday morning, as you said, two teenagers opened fire on the Islamic Center of San Diego. It's the largest mosque in the city and inside were hundreds of people, including 140 small children.

Annie: and this is wild. The reason those little kids got out safely actually comes down to one man. The security guard who was out the front, he was the first to ⁓ the attackers before he was killed, ⁓ he did manage to trigger this lockdown, which meant that by the time these two shooters, ⁓ teenagers tried to go door to door inside that mosque, the children had already been moved to another section. ⁓ attack then spilled into the car park where two more men tragically lost their lives before the attackers then fled and they were found dead nearby having actually turned the guns on each other.

Jodi: Yeah, the San Diego police chief literally said that Abdullah's actions were pivotal in saving hundreds of lives. So it was an incredibly heroic thing to do and a profound understatement to be honest. There are three men dead as you said as a result of this one of them is a security guard who ran towards the danger so that those little children were able to stay safe.

Annie: and in the days since investigators like most big investigations have been piecing together who these two attackers were and what drove them to do this. They were 17 and 18 years old, both male, and they had actually never met each other in person. They found each other online and discovered that they both lived in San Diego. They apparently wore, you know, body worn cameras. They live streamed the entire attack. Over 30 guns were seized from their family homes, ⁓ but most importantly, they left behind a 74 page manifesto which was filled with neo-Nazi ideology, ⁓ white supremacist rhetoric, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. The FBI pretty much summarized it saying they did not discriminate in who they hated.

Jodi: 74 page manifesto really is everything you need to understand here because I remember vividly when the Christchurch massacre unfolded. Brent and Tarrant wrote a 74 page manifesto and these two teenagers, Clark and Vasquez, they knew exactly who Tarrant was. Apparently they titled their own document, The New Crusade, a Sons of Tarrant debut manifesto. They listed him as one of their heroes, they called him a saint, they matched his manifesto page for page and they modeled. their own livestream directly off his.

Annie: I think what makes this also chilling is that ⁓ didn't just carry out a massacre. At the time of his sentencing, which was during COVID, prosecutors actually made clear that the live stream and the manifesto that he conducted were deliberately designed to inspire copycat attacks. He ⁓ ⁓ isolated, angry and disenfranchised young men to find it and act on it. ⁓ this week, counter extremism researchers ⁓ confirmed that these two hackers in the US followed that blueprint almost exactly. ⁓

Jodi: Jesus. know, that language around franchising is chilling. What's even more alarming is that Tarrant was still able to achieve this so-called goal of his from behind bars. He's serving a life prison sentence in New Zealand. ⁓ What's interesting is after Christchurch, Australia is one of dozens of countries across the world that signed up to this thing called the Christchurch Call. ⁓ is, along with media companies and ⁓ internet businesses saying that they wanted to ⁓ together to stop the spread of hate. and violence on social media. And yet this latest ⁓ killing spree in California was live streamed on horrible sites across the dark web for hundreds of thousands of people to see.

Annie: which I think sort of poses the question, has that treaty of sorts actually worked? Because this isn't just an American problem or a policy that's far away. When you look at what's happening in our own backyard, the picture is kind of deeply uncomfortable here as well. I spent some time on the ASIO website this week and the figures are genuinely alarming. Far-right extremism now accounts for up to 40 % of ASIO's entire counter-terrorism caseload. That's up from around 10 to 15 % before 2016 and ASIO has actually warned that online extremism content is now radicalising people in days and weeks, not months or years.

Jodi: Yeah, and it's not just people, it's also young people. know, the AFP has investigated 35 people aged 17 or under since 2020, the youngest being just 12 years old. And ASIO's Director General revealed that they found that 12 year old on a social networking site, talking about live streaming a school shooting before targeting a mosque. So these are very real threats that we have not only overseas, but here in our own backyard in Australia.

Annie: Yeah, and it's exactly kind of how this is all unfolded clearly in San Diego. One of the shooters actually, his own mother called police the morning of the attack to report her son missing along with her car and her firearm. She had no idea what he was about to do. And these were teenagers who found each other in an online space, essentially radicalized each other and then carried that radicalization into the real world. And it's worth noting that Australia just introduced obviously that ban on social media for those under the age of 16. The conversation around that has mostly been about screen time and mental health, but this is the other side of that argument. know, platforms are where this is happening and it feels like we're not really moving fast enough to hold people accountable.

Jodi: Yeah, it's almost like the gamification of violence. But honestly, I wish that this episode had started and ended with the radio station killing off the king. Because that was, it was all downhill from there for me.

Annie: I'm so glad you found a lighter way to end this because I was like it just feels like such a depressing way to seal this episode but we do hope you I mean you are up to speed with the week's biggest news which is albeit a little bit depressing.

Jodi: He's alive. Long live the king. Thank you so much as always for listening to Cuphead. We'll see you next week.