Annie: Welcome to Covered, a podcast that helps you figure out what the hell is going on in the news and how you feel about it.

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

Annie: And on this week's episode we dive into

Jodi: Labour's attempts to fundraise Against One Nation backfire spectacularly,

Annie: Trump's America threatens to derail one of the biggest sporting events in history.

Jodi: And Australia is in the midst of a baby drought, why we are having fewer children than ever before. But before we get to those stories, let's dive into our honorable mentions for the week. These are the stories that don't quite warrant a deep dive, but are definitely worth getting across. And the first honorable mention this week is that race riots have continued across the UK this week in the Irish city of Belfast. ⁓ It all unfolded after a video of a man being stabbed in broad daylight on the street went viral. It was so violent. Are that the alleged attacker attempted to behead his victim? The victim is a man named Stephen Ogilvy. He lost an eye in that assault and is currently in a coma in hospital. The man accused of the attack is a Sudanese asylum seeker who came to Ireland legally. The city has essentially erupted in riots. Homes have been set alight, families have fled. Migrants are also being doxxed. That is, the addresses of their homes have been made public.

Annie: Yeah, next up, the NRL world has been reacting this week after a former player came out as gay. Kane Evans, who played more than a hundred games across the Roosters, Eels, and ⁓ Warriors, is only the second male player in the codes history to ever come out as gay. Evans was really open about how difficult this decision was. In an interview with Nine, he ⁓ he talked about struggling with drug addiction, homelessness, and suicidal thoughts while he was hiding his sexuality. Saying that he'd been fighting a war within since he was about 15 years old. His former coach did come out and say that he was incredibly proud of him, but was also honest that the game still has a long way to go.

Jodi: What a hero. ⁓ well our last honourable mention this week might seem a little bit self-indulgent, but it's also incredibly relevant for people like you who like to keep across what's ⁓ making news. This week it's been an absolute bloodbath across the Australian media landscape. The company Southern Cross, which merged with the Seven Network earlier this year, announced that it was making 300 people redundant across the country. ⁓ there are some reports that the business had rolled out an AI software, which meant that it was able to lose that many staff. ⁓ Its profits have also slid. Nine isn't immune either. It's announced that it's winding back regional news operations on the NBN network, ⁓ winding back local bulletins on the Gold Coast and northern New South Wales from the end of this month.

Annie: I mean, it is a really ⁓ scary state of affairs for journalism and and probably a sign of something bigger that we've spoken about before, which is, you know, mainstream media struggling to keep up and shedding the very people who tell your stories. But ⁓ don't fear Jodi and I are here to do that for you. And this week there have been plenty of stories the last few days in Australian politics has literally felt like watching a fight break out in a schoolyard. It's been like an episode of MAFs. It kicked off when Anthony Albanese, the Labour Party leader, emailed supporters asking them to chip in twenty-seven dollars each to, in their words, stop One Nation. And then the woman at the center of it all, Pauline Hansen, had plenty to say. As always.

Jodi: Look, you can't ⁓ you won't die wondering with Pauline Hansen, and she's not a woman of few words. At the start, she called Labor's sort of fundraising campaign absolutely disgusting, only to days later copy it exactly. Only she asked One Nation voters and supporters not to donate $27 each, but $29 each. ⁓ there was also a live tracker on the One Nation website that showed you how much money the party had managed to raise. And they went live with this slogan called Fire the Liar. Basically calling Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, a liar and encouraging people to vote him out. the pitch, which is so great, is Albo thinks twenty-seven dollars buys him the right to silence us.

Annie: Talk about one-upping each other. Like I feel like the the Albanese government has come out, done this, thought we can really make a movement around ⁓ curbing nation's momentum, and then Pauline Hansen has just hit them square in the face with this. But ⁓ this the bit that I think ⁓ should make Labor's campaign team kind of want to hide behind closed doors because ⁓ the wasn't even one nation. Sky News host Peter Credlin, who always has a lot to say, had used it on air days earlier. ⁓ Speaking about Albanese's broken tax promises and many other broken promises. One Nation's chief of staff, James Ashby, apparently was watching it at the time, and he told Ben Fordham's ⁓ host on 2GB that he decided to pretty much steal it and run with it, and ultimately it worked. By the end of the day that they'd actually launched this fundraising drive, they'd raised over a million dollars. That counter on the website is now sitting past 2 million. I'm pretty sure it's etching closer to three. And this has all come from about twenty-eight thousand donors.

Jodi: That's so insane, such a meteoric rise, ⁓ both in support for One Nation, which we've spoken a lot about, but also just in cash. Like we're we're supposed to be in the middle of a cost of living crisis and everyone's like, nah, here are all my hard-earned, my hard-earned dollars straight to Pauline. In fact, people were donating so much money that there were actually claims that that counter, counting every dollar was fake or rigged. ⁓ Ashby, who you mentioned, the sort of head of the campaign for One Nation, came out and said, look, it'd be a bit rich if we went live with a campaign ⁓ titled Fire the Liar, and we were in fact lying about the amount of that we'd raised. Fair point, play on. ⁓ Albanese obviously came out. He sort of ⁓ said, ⁓ you know, I'll let Hansen engage in negative activity. I'm sort of not to be dragged down by this. But his Foreign Minister Penny Wong was happy to engage in this conversation. She went live on the Today Show with the inimitable Sara Sarah Arbo, I should say, to defend Labour and it did not bode well for her, bless.

Annie: Sorry, bullshit you don't care about this fundraising. I can't buy that for a freaking second. This is a party that is literally the most popular in the country right now and you're going on national television saying, ⁓ we're not worried about that. I mean, I I don't know what she's trying to sort of present herself as there, but it's a very hard line to hold when, ⁓ know, twenty-eight thousand Australians have just proved that they do care a lot. ⁓ we've spoken about before, you know, big donors and billionaire backers aren't unique to one nation. Every party runs on serious money. ⁓ what's remarkable here is that none of this scrutiny around Pauline Hansen is actually sticking.

Jodi: Yeah, well because the twenty nine dollar voters, or supporters or donors, if you will, don't care. Like, you know, Sarah Arbo said it herself. Like it's clearly working because the money's rolling in. It's a publicly funded campaign. That means that Australians out there on farms and in cities and living in apartments, ⁓ don't care. They they they don't have an issue with Pauline Hansen. In fact, they like her so much, they're happy to give her money. It's it's actually so crazy. ⁓ but the reality is Those are people who are angry. They've had so much to say for so long. They don't feel like they've been heard. And so One Nation seems to be what's offering them ⁓ a voice. And that's, I think, so many people are getting behind Hansen. Meanwhile, the Liberals under new leader Angus Taylor are really having their own quiet crisis about what to do about One Nation. A Liberal MP this week floated a sort of seat-sharing deal so that they didn't have to split up the Conservative vote. ⁓ Taylor shut that down pretty fast, ⁓ Tony Abbott is the new Liberal Party president, ⁓ the former prime minister, and he hasn't ruled out basically ⁓ offering preferences or swapping preferences with one nation.

Annie: Yeah, there seems to be a lot of inner inner fighting around what that might look like. But I think what is clear is that Pauline Hansen, as it stands in the political landscape, is like Teflon Don. ⁓ just can't be broken. ⁓ and she's so confident she's even wading into other people's fights all the way down in Victoria, your home state.

Jodi: ⁓ yeah, well my my where my heart lies in the great state of Victoria. ⁓ yes, because in Mel well, across Victoria there was a second slogan campaign. So we obviously spoke about the fire, the liar, against the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, but the Victorian premier Jacinta Allen has been victim of her own kind of slur campaign, if you will. ⁓ there's this billboard truck that's been seen driving around Melbourne CBD for a couple of weeks with an AI-generated image of Jacinta Allen and the phrase

Annie: Yeah.

Jodi: ⁓ across it is Ditch the Witch. It's basically got Alan in like a witch's hat, a wart on her face somewhere. it's not pretty. It's pretty ugly in fact. But Pauline Hansen weighed in on this and she basically told Jacinta Allen, suck it up, sweetheart.

Annie: I mean, I'm not laughing at that 'cause I do find that a surprising response from Pauline Hansen, considering she has been the subject of many

Jodi: Sorry, you're sur You're surprised? Come on. You're not surprised.

Annie: But she has been no, but she's been the victim of so many gendered attacks, and I know that she wouldn't agree with Jacinta Allen by any means on a political level, but surely as a female, you can understand that these gendered attacks probably like surely we're past that by now.

Jodi: I think it's important to make this distinction and certainly people will ask this. ⁓ is it only gendered because Jacinta Allen is a woman? Because when we were talking about an attack on the Prime Minister being called a liar, that there was gender wasn't didn't come into that ⁓

Annie: Yeah, I think I was I was trying to think about the distinction between this and where I sat, but I think there's a real difference between going after someone's track record and going after their gender. If you look at the Fire the Liar campaign, that was a very clear momentum built towards a prime minister who has broken plenty of party promises. Take the the latest CGT negative gearing changes as an example of that. There's been plenty more. The voice to parliament. For me, that's fair game. Game Ditch the Witch. And I don't know if I'm looking at this holistically, but for me, that isn't about Alan's record. That isn't about her policy. That isn't going af after the issues that Victorians care so desperately about, which is a state that is in serious debt and a cost of living crisis. That's kind of a clear attack at a female gendered term, meaning she is a witch, let's throw a ward on her face and let's distort her image and let's let the state poke fun of that. So So I don't know, I'm not saying that she sits in this victim camp because let's be honest, she was deputy to Daniel Andrews and they didn't really play a nice game in Victoria for a long time. So I don't know if the victim game goes so far, but when it comes to speaking about a gendered attack, I just think there's a real distinction between what one nation is doing to Labour and what's currently happening to Jacinta Allen. Does that make sense?

Jodi: Yes, and I think it does make sense. And the other thing to note here is that there's also history with this term, Ditch the Witch. So it was actually when Julia Dillard was elected as our first female Prime Minister ever in Australia that this slogan Ditch the Witch was on posters as people protested outside Parliament House in Canberra, which is just freaking nuts to actually conceive. And standing in front of them was former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, so or sorry, rather than opposition leader Tony Abbott. So That was arguably one of the ugliest moments in Australian political history, certainly for women in leadership. ⁓ and it was obviously then Gillard's own response which became equally as famous. Let's roll that tape. No, no, no.

Annie: I mean, it will never get old, that misogyny speech. It's made such Yeah, and it's it's crazy 'cause it made this resurgence on TikTok like a year ago. Cause you have to remember that was back in like twenty eleven. So I think I was still in school. It didn't really mean anything to me at the time.

Jodi: It's iconic shit. It's iconic shit. And I can't hear that. I actually can't hear that you were in school in twenty eleven. Let's just tell the listeners, so was I.

Annie: We were all in school in twenty eleven. But the point of this is Since Julia Gillard was attacked with this Ditch the Witch slogan, it hasn't really happened again until now, which is why it's such a big deal. ⁓ This time round, Gillard, Anthony Albanese, even the Victorian opposition leader have all seriously condemned this billboard. They've come out, they've called it disgusting. ⁓ The Liberal Coalition Party have said that they had nothing to do with it. ⁓ But true to form, as you mentioned earlier, has doubled down, saying, you know, that she's been called a witch. sure many of many other terms for a very long time before Alan. And if the shoe fits, wear it. I mean, just into Alan's response to that has been pretty sharp. She said, Pauline Hansen chooses to barrack for the bullies. I choose to fight them. ⁓

Jodi: Such a Victorian word. ⁓ the one thing I will say though, I just hate that argument, particularly from women, that if you coped a standard coming up through the ranks, then it's fine and acceptable for another woman in today's day and age to be copying the same. That's just bullshit. ⁓ but I think what's really interesting is the timing of this slogan against Jacinta Allen, this kind of campaign of hate against the Victorian Premier. Obviously, Victoria goes to the polls in November. Labour's been in government since 2014. That's 12 years of a Labour government. As you mentioned, Dan Andrews and now just into Allen. she's only been premier since 2023, and it's been under serious pressures. You know, Victorians ⁓ came out of COVID only to cop the Iran War, cost of living pressures, debt, and huge crime, soaring crime rates across Victoria. A new poll actually has Labour's primary vote down south at just 23%, behind the coalition on 27 and One Nation on 25%. Alan's net approval is minus 37, and 62% of voters want her replaced before the election. So they want Labour to take another party leader to the election. And the spill talk is back. Basically, next week is Parliament's last sitting before the winter break. And some people in the Labour camp basically see it as the final chance to oust Alan.

Annie: Yeah, I think another interesting part of this whole campaign is you have to look who was behind this billboard in Victoria, because typically messaging like this is planted by an opposition party. That's pretty normal tactics. ⁓ but as I mentioned earlier, the liberals and nationals, they have a clear conscience on this that they say they had nothing to do with it. And then it later unraveled that there was this Melbourne brothel owner named Franco Puglio, along with some other local businesses that pretty much teamed up together to fund the bulk of. This. Now he's come out and said that he isn't sexist. He just quite plainly doesn't like Jacinta Allen. I guess my argument to him is just get a little bit smarter with your campaign messaging. If you're making profits off women's bodies, then why target a female in this way? I don't know. Just use your brain a bit harder.

Jodi: Or maybe it's such a valid point. I hadn't thought of it like that. But maybe that's exactly why he just doesn't respect women. I don't know. Not to say that ⁓ not to say that sex work isn't empowering, but I just I don't know.

Annie: Yeah. Well, I think we'll we'll we'll leave that. We'll park it and we'll move to our next story, ⁓ which I actually had to do a fair bit of convincing for this one to get over the line this week.

Jodi: Yeah, I hate it. Yeah, well quite frankly when you came to me and said I think we need to talk about the FIFA World Cup, I thought, ⁓ do we?

Annie: I've become a soccer fanatic over the last 48 hours. ⁓ and I look, I know I have a tendency to drag you into things that you really didn't ask for, but I'm asking you to come along the ride with this one for me because it's so much more than just a football story. The FIFA World Cup kicked off earlier this week. It's being billed as one of the biggest tournaments in history. There's 48 teams from 48 nations, matches across the US, Canada, and Mexico, and ⁓ Australia's very own soccer roos all part of it. They play in Turkey. This ⁓ they play against Turkey, I should say, this Sunday.

Jodi: Well there is the reason to care.

Annie: Well, we absolutely love jumping on a bandwagon in Australia. But the real reason I felt like we needed to do to do this story ⁓ has very little to do with what's actually happening on the pitch. It's actually what's happening off the pitch that's causing all this controversy. This has become one of the most politically chaotic sporting events in living memory. And I think it tells you everything you need to know ⁓ about where America is at under Trump's thumb.

Jodi: There he is, finding a way to weave himself into every story. Now I know why Annie wanted to talk about football. ⁓ I think though are right, it is political to some degree, and it probably warrants a conversation about FIFA, the governing body of world football that runs the World Cup every year. It's basically been trying to rebuild its reputation since the twenty twenty two World Cup was held in Qatar. Obviously, Qatar is a country that doesn't support a number of

Annie: Yeah.

Jodi: where a number of rights just simply don't exist, that extends to gay rights. And FIFA basically said to players that want they stopped them from wearing armbands in support of LGBTQIA plus rights. And they threatened to essentially like penalize them on the field if they disregarded that that ruling. So they've now moved the entire competition to America and the organisation basically hoping that it could be a fresh start and can wipe the slate clean.

Annie: Exactly. It was supposed to be this big restart. And the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, essentially made a calculated bet here. His sole objective was to get close to Donald Trump, get his full backing, make this the biggest World Cup to ever exist. And he's really made good on that promise. He's been at the White House at every opportunity. He's been on stage with Donald Trump. He's been calling it or billing it essentially as the most inclusive World Cup in history. I think the problem that everyone underestimated here. Is when your host, Donald Trump, spends 12 months making half the world feel incredibly unwelcome, and you've gotten too cozy with him to say anything about it, this is where this situation has really fallen apart.

Jodi: Yeah, by unwelcome, you're basically talking about a US president who since returning to the White House has made immigration his number one issue and has gone incredibly hard on it. More than half a million people have been deported from the United States in the past year. ⁓ the military has been deployed to American cities. We've seen that. Immigration agents conducting raids in communities across the country. ⁓ two American citizens were actually shot and killed by ICE agents earlier this year. So Donald Trump has effectively spent 12 months making the world world feel unwelcome in America, and now America is hosting the World Cup. And a lot of the nations that are really passionate and incredibly successful at football are the same demographics that are now being booted from America.

Annie: Yeah, and among those nations is Iran. Iran actually has a football team, they qualified, they're in the tournament. Their support staff, ⁓ unsurprisingly, were denied entry to the US entirely. So this team is now based in Mexico. They're having to drive across the border to play their games. So they're sleeping, they're then getting in the car, driving, playing, returning, which sounds extraordinary until you actually remember that the US and Iran are are literally at war right now.

Jodi: Yeah, like very strange timing. A ceasefire that was supposed to bring an end to months of back and forth between the US and Iran is already crumbling. I mean, I almost worry about speaking about these ceasefires on the podcast because by the time the episode hits listeners' ears, it's probably already over.

Annie: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, even today they've come out and said that it's all back on the cards again. But as you said, it changes very quickly. But given all of that, you can kind of understand why Donald Trump isn't exactly rolling out the welcome mat here. But here's the catch: it's not just Iran. Fans from more than a dozen countries simply can't get visas. There was this one referee from Somalia, and this kind of breaks my heart. This was going to be the first Somali ever to officiate a World Cup. ⁓ he fly Into Miami, has the visa in hand, and they stop him at the airport and send him home because his country's on the travel ban list. So it's crazy to me that these logistics weren't thought through. The US since hasn't ruled out actually having immigration agents at the actual matches. ⁓ Amnesty International, which is a large charitable group, has called it a human rights emergency. And these are some of the best athletes in the world at the absolute peak of their careers and the politics of this host nation is essentially threatening to derail everything.

Jodi: I mean, my personal view is that sport should have an amnesty from all these things. If you train incredibly hard and you're the best at what you do and you compete under a flag, you shouldn't be penalized by the actions of your government. Wait, do I agree with that?

Annie: Yeah. Ha ha ha.

Jodi: I don't know. But it's obviously not the first time, right? Like you only have to look back to Melbourne and Novak Djokovic when he came to Australia ⁓ for the Australian Open and, you know, hadn't been vaccinated against COVID-19 and they holed him up in a p in a hotel ⁓ in Carlton. I remember standing at the base of the hotel, like staring up at this tennis grate as he peered through the window. it's mayhem and he got detained and then he was deported and wasn't allowed to play in the comp.

Annie: I mean it's ⁓ it sounds pretty familiar, sport and politics once again colliding at a border. ⁓ I think point is fair, but for me the scale of this feels really different. That was one player, one government decision. This is an entire ⁓ war and an immigration crackdown essentially spilling onto a sporting event that is supposed to bring the whole world together and FIFA kinda has its hands ties because the president's become so ⁓ buddy buddy with Donald Trump. He can't do anything about it.

Jodi: That's FIFA's fault. Like you can't let an organise the the head of an organization can't just go and do whatever they like and then expect that there won't be any consequences for their work.

Annie: Yeah, very true. I think what I also found outrageous is the price of the actual tickets at the FIFA World Cup. Have you seen this?

Jodi: No.

Annie: Okay, if you are an Australian who actually wants to go over and watch the Socceros, tickets on the resale market for Australia versus the US game, which is being hosted in Seattle, are going for $30,000 Australian dollars for one game. To put that into perspective, at the last World Cup back in 2022, the cheapest ticket to walk through the gates was like $150 Australian dollars. So I don't know if that's inflation or cost of living or what what the fuck's going on, but ⁓ a lot. ⁓

Jodi: Wow. I actually saw a video because obviously the New York Knicks are in the playoffs and I saw a video someone was vox popping people on the street just to segue into expensive sports tickets and they said to this native New Yorker, how much did you pay to see the Knicks? When they lost, mind you, the Knicks actually went down and this man said he paid fifty thousand dollars for his tickets.

Annie: Yeah.

Jodi: Yeah, I hope it was worth it. But speaking of ⁓ very expensive things, I have this for a segue. Our next story is that Australia is in the midst of a baby bust. And in case you hadn't noticed, that's basically the opposite of a baby boom. ⁓ our fertility rate has hit a record low of one point four eight children for every woman of childbearing age. But the interesting thing here, I think, personally ⁓ as a woman in her mid-30s, is just the framing around all of this. Because for me, the questions are always why isn't w why aren't women having babies? ⁓ like there's a wave of women who are just protesting and refusing to have kids. And that's actually not really the story here. The bigger driver this research has found is couples who had previously, in previous you know, years had three or four children are now stopping at one or two, which Might I say means that you might not have been with us.

Annie: Well I was about to say I'm one of four, but it is really rare to see women my age. I'm well, yeah, now in entering my thirties and a lot of friends are having kids, but you know, you you don't really see anyone wanting to have four kids anymore. And I think the whole point of this story is when you ask why, the answer is overwhelmingly financial. The experts make the point that having kids isn't exactly a free choice. It's it's shaped by so many different ⁓ material constraints. The cost of raising a child, housing, ⁓ employment, childcare, parental leave. A lot of couples pretty much who love a second child say that they're just not able to work, make it work in the state of this economy. And with a second child, something always has to give, right? Like you've got to scrap the holidays, the sports, the travel, that that kind of disposable income doesn't really exist anymore.

Jodi: the cost is staggering, ⁓ and you only need to start just doing some back of the envelope maths to see that. I read a really sobering statistic the other day basically ⁓ Puts to bed any argument that we have it just as good as generations before. It said that if your parents made $100,000 30 odd years ago, in today's day and age, you would need to make upwards of $250,000 to be able to live anywhere near the same lifestyle that your parents did. Which is crazy, because that is still an exorbitant amount of money for many people in our day and age. The issue with the fertility rate in Australia is that. The decline has so far been masked by huge migration numbers. So we've had enough people coming into the country to mask the fact that we're not giving birth to as many. But the economic flow and effects of that are going to become really problematic. It means basically long term, we're going to have fewer workers in the system and a much smaller tax base to be able to support what is then an aging population. Because if we're not having kids, then nobody's growing up, they're not studying, they're not working. And the older generation who didn't have those children then need someone to look after them.

Annie: Yeah, and I think the big question so many people would be asking is if this is such a big issue, what is the government actually doing about it? And if you look at ⁓ past responses, the standard kind of go-to has just been panic. And throw cash at it. So previously, ⁓ this has happened before. It's been called a a baby bonus. The baby bonus, remember? And it was sort of dragged out back in the mid 2000s. three grand a kid, ⁓ with that famous pitch line at the time, have one for your husband, one for your wife, and one for the country. How patriotic. ⁓

Jodi: The baby bonus, yes. Wait, is this what the pullers did? When were you born?

Annie: I was born in 1996. So they must have had the they had true for the country.

Jodi: ⁓ just thank you.

Annie: Anyway, did this actual baby bonus work? Well, the answer is it it barely scratched the surfaces. It almost acted as like a sugar hit where people were initially impressed by it, but then kind of did the maths and realized that this three grand wasn't exactly gonna match the cost of living of having a child. the analysis found a small first year bum, but it cost about eighty-six thousand dollars ⁓ per baby, and it mostly caught what's called a demographic echo, which is people just having their kids anyway. It didn't really help promote people to have more children. Yeah. ⁓ Why wouldn't ⁓

Jodi: ⁓ so they just cashed in. ⁓ that's interesting. So when I dug when I dug into the baby bonus, because I thought, ⁓ I wouldn't mind some cash to procreate. that I actually was reading, it didn't actually increase overall numbers, but ⁓ it just changed the timing of births. So baby basically there was a rush on ⁓ pregnant women trying to book in cesareans and inductions so that they would have their children on the right side of the payment deadline and they'd be able to recoup the cash.

Annie: Right.

Jodi: Apparently July 1st, the day that the bonus started, was the single biggest birthday in Australia for 30 years. Which kind of makes sense. Like if you're up the duff anyway. If you're up the duff and you're kind of in that drop zone, you might as well try and get some cash for it.

Annie: I I think that kind of tells you everything about cash or how cash moves the timing. ⁓ but it also holds up globally. If you look at what's happening abroad abroad, there's been a 50-year review of thousands of these policies that found a relatively weak link between incentives and actual births, because as we mentioned earlier, the handout is always very small next to the real cost of actually having a child. ⁓ the financial assistance only lifts fertility. by about 0.14 children per woman. A lot of stats here.

Jodi: ⁓ yeah, but you know you talked about like the international benchmark. This is so wild because I feel like the only country we ever talk about is Hungary. But enter Hungary into the you know, Hungary has entered the chat. ⁓ they you know, there there's kind of a cautionary tale for throwing the entire kitchen sink at women's fertility and trying to lift the birth rate. ⁓ they basically went all in. So up to five percent of gross domestic product. ⁓ they made income tax free for women who had more than four children. ⁓ there were grants for families that needed to want or wanted to buy a minivan to all their multiple children. So for a short time it was successful. They were able to lift the birth rate to one point six three, but then it fell right back down to one point three one. Like that's essentially where it started. So what this basically says to me, and as a woman, I could have fucking told you this, like you can't be bribed with cash to have a child. Well, certainly I couldn't. A one off payment does not equate to a lifetime commitment of a small person.

Annie: ⁓ God no. Why am I getting flashbacks of Elon Musk when you speak about Hungary? I feel like he had s

Jodi: No, we're just getting flashbacks to Elon Musk because we did a story very early on in the piece about how he built ⁓ you always come back to Mask. He built a commune and basically was trying to get all these women who he's had children with to move in and I don't know, live like his sister wives. Anyway, we digress from the fertility rate. Elon Musk is not the solution to raising the world population.

Annie: The home evening. Yeah. Okay, well, my question is if cash doesn't do it, what might? ⁓ because this is the bit that I found genuinely hopeful, if we can call it that, ⁓ really flexibility could be the answer here. More than half of younger Australians with no kids, or one kid, say, working from home or a modified four day work week would actually encourage them to have more. And it's not just a feeling. A study across 38 countries found that just one day a week working from home, literally Shifted fertility, get this, by 0.32 children per women. So in the US, working from home was linked to about 291,000 births in a single year.

Jodi: Well, I mean, that makes perfect sense, right? If you can put a load of washing on in between your Zoom meetings and then duck out at three o'clock to pick up your child from school and then come back and continue your work day, ⁓ you know, it's such a loaded word, but I would imagine that it makes the juggle just that little bit easier. ⁓ interestingly, we spoke about Jacinta Allen and Victoria. This is a policy that she's kind of taken to the election. She is trying to enshrine the right of Victorians to work from home. ⁓ arguably for this and and other reasons, and she's come up against huge opposition, so it's unlikely to happen anytime soon. Aside from solving the housing crisis, which we talk about ad nauseum, the other elephant in this room is childcare. there are so many issues with the childcare system in Australia. Firstly, it's a f federally controlled, ⁓ Whereas the school systems are state based. ⁓ the other thing is that most childcare centres are for profit. So one of the criticisms many people say is that these privately owned businesses are just trying to better their bottom lines and they're actually not overly concerned or at a co at the cost of the care to the child. Like it's just such a flawed system.

Annie: Yeah, and I I think it's actually a really scary time to be a working mum because you have childcares, which in many cases are being turned into these money-making enterprises, and really the safety of the kid, like we've seen in so many headlines over the last twelve months, the safety of the children are really being compromised. But the last piece for me, which I found really interesting, because this has changed a lot even in the last ten years, is parental leave, which is where men actually come into the picture. So it's stretching out to twenty-six. weeks now with super included, but it's paid at minimum wage, which locks a lot of families out. And there's this stat that got me: men take just 17% of primary carers leave because workplace stereotypes make them feel like they actually can't. Which is kind of telling of a system where you can see that it's trying to change, but the narrative kind of remains the same and people or a lot of men don't really want to go against that fold. I think people are playing their roles here. It's like the men go to work, they have to make the money and the women typically take the leave and look after their babies.

Jodi: Yeah, and I will say, as a woman of childbearing age who doesn't have children but is surrounded by friends who do, ⁓ you start to really see the inequality. Like you can believe and be raised in an environment where you are told that you are equal to men as I was, but you do get to this age and you start to realise that the system hasn't caught up yet. You know, my partner gets more than twice the amount of parental leave that I do. The other thing I was reading was and that's just based on

Annie: Mm.

Jodi: us being in different industries. But the other thing I was reading is that, you know, another really viable solution to this is to offer women who are pregnant ⁓ additional leave for things like scans, morning sickness. It is such a physical job and you actually don't think about this. It is such a physical job to carry and grow a child. And women are just expected to pitch every day in the same way as everybody else and just get on with it. ⁓

Annie: Right.

Jodi: So there's so many structural changes that need to happen, but I you know, as much as I'd love a bit of a handout, dare I say it's not cash that's gonna solve this problem for Australia. Well before we round out today's episode, our listeners may not know that we've just celebrated Annie Puller's 30th birthday, and so I thought that I should bring a little gift to this week's episode. ⁓ and based off ⁓ probably the most iconic moment of the pod so far last week, I brought a little tape, which I'd like you to roll. Roll the tape!

Annie: She sworn me to secrecy that I haven't watched this, so it's been quite an effort to get it on here.

Jodi: So ⁓ for those people who can't see this video, this I just when I stumbled across this, I knew it was the perfect gift for Annie. It is New South Wales premier Chris Minns who last week she called a dilf. If you missed that, go back and have a listen. ⁓ him impersonating Annie's other favourite person in Donald Trump.

Annie: Okay. ⁓ ⁓ yeah, I mean, I was about to say he's not only a dilf, but he's ⁓ clearly got talents in acting world. So let's let's send him to Hollywood and put him on the world stage. ⁓

Jodi: ⁓ my god, happy birthday.

Annie: Yeah, that is a freaking good impersonation and he would have had to have practiced that, which is even funnier. Like imagine him going into that radio interview, like practicing the Donald Trump impersonation.

Jodi: Mm. If I if we see Chris Minnes around around the place I'll ask him to do an Elon Musk Phoenix book.

Annie: Yes, please.

Jodi: That's all we've got time for this week. Thank you so much for tuning into Covered. ⁓ please like and subscribe wherever your podcasts will see you next week.