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 news stories of the last week. As always, we are your hosts, journalists Jodie Lee and Annie Pullar.

Annie: On this week's episode, Treasurer Jim Chalmers hands down what he's calling the most ambitious budget in 25 years. Negative gearing, capital gains tax and trusts all on the chopping block facing major reforms.

Jodi: Opposition leader Angus Taylor is tonight as we record delivering his budget reply speech. In it, he's announcing a big cut to migration and a plan to offer welfare to Australians only as the coalition faces a massive existential threat from one nation.

Annie: remain stranded in the Netherlands after being caught up in a deadly hantavirus outbreak on a disease-riddled cruise ship that has left three people dead.

Jodi: We'll get stuck into those big stories very soon. But for now, let's take a look at our honorable mentions for the week. These are the stories worth putting on your radar, but the ones that don't warrant a deep dive.

Annie: our first honourable mention, a man police say shot and killed his pregnant ex-partner, her friend... ⁓ and Harant in the New South Wales town of Lake Cargellico has been found dead. ⁓ Ingram's body was located about 100 kilometres from where he was last seen next to his ⁓ ute and also a firearm. His licence was with the body ⁓ for a town of 1500 people who have been locking their doors for months while this manhunt has been playing out, the mayor says ⁓ finally brings a sense of closure.

Jodi: Well, here's an update on a story we've covered on the podcast before. The problems at the Carlton Football Club went from bad to worse this week with news head coach Michael Voss was stepping down. It was widely reported that Carlton's board had told Voss that his contract wouldn't be extended beyond the 2026 season. Carlton is in a world of pain. They've won just one game this season and the club was recently fined $75,000 for its handling or its mishandling of Elijah Holland's mental health episode. in the game against Collingwood.

Annie: And finally, potatoes and micro sleeps ⁓ don't know what they have in common, but it appears they are a winning combination. That's apparently what's helped a year old American woman break the record for the 250 mile or 405 kilometer marathon. ⁓ Rachel finished the race in 56 hours. Just want you to sit with that. 405 kilometers in 56 hours, beating both men and women for the top spot. She said, in a distance like that, it's less about fitness and more about the body's ability to combat stress. I think I need to sit down with Rachel and get some tips.

Jodi: Well, speaking of stress, why don't we talk about the biggest story that's been on everybody's radar this week? Of course, I'm talking about the federal budget. Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers handed down his fifth budget in parliament on Tuesday night. And depending on who you ask, it's either the most significant tax reform Australia has seen for decades or it's a string of broken promises from a government desperate to win over young voters. But make no mistake, this is really the budget that Jim Chalmers has been dying to hand down ⁓ since 2016 when Labor first flagged taxes on wealth assets. The big question though is whether or not young voters will in fact be better off under these new changes.

Annie: Yeah and the centrepiece here really comes down to property. For decades people who own investment properties have had two tax advantages that ordinary Australians don't. And the first is negative gearing. If you have never heard of those terms, well you certainly have now. That's if your property costs more to run than it actually earns in rent and the government lets you pay less ⁓ on your wages to make up the difference. The second big ticket item that we're hearing a lot of is the capital gain. tax discount. That's when you sell and make a profit but only pay tax on half of that profit. So this budget takes both of those away for anyone buying an existing investment property from now on.

Jodi: It's certainly radical reform. But in addition to property investors, the Albanese Labor government has also had the wealthy in its sights, particularly families that rely on legal structures like trusts to disperse income across family members and essentially pay less tax. They will now have to pay a minimum of 30%. So the same as you and me and everyday worker and their income tax.

Annie: Yeah, but before we get into the nitty gritty and detail of this, I think it's really worth understanding who this budget was really aimed at because it's very clear ⁓ from the outside that this wasn't just a tax reform. This has been a very methodical political strategy. And when you look at the numbers, the under 40s demographic are about to become the largest voting bloc in this country and Labor desperately needs them. They want to hang on to them to win them. I think what this government has done is drawn a really clear line on one side those who make their money from assets, properties, shares, investments and then on the other those who quietly make their money from work, their sole salary. So for decades the tax system has quietly favoured that first group who's relied on multiple income streams. A nurse and a landlord earning the same amount on paper just don't pay the same tax, the landlord pays less. This budget I think is Jim Chalmers attempt to fix that and to make sure that the people on those wages know exactly who is behind all of this.

Jodi: Yes, and you're bang on, most of the people on those wages are young people starting out who haven't yet had the chance to accumulate assets. We've spoken about this on the podcast before, the idea that the Albanese Labor government has slowly started inviting content creators new media inside the budget lockup. And this is exactly why. It's reason you saw the prime minister during the election campaign sitting down with Abbie Chatfield, sitting down with the Daily Aus because ⁓ it that if it wants to maintain its strength, particularly as the coalition fades and loses support, If Labor wants to continue and stay in power, arguably for another term, it needs to win over those young voters. What I found fascinating was even before the budget papers had dropped, the government had posted a 30 minute ad to multiple social media sites calling this budget housing reform. And it was a really deliberate strategy that went straight to the audience that they were trying to win with as little friction as possible, essentially bypassing most of the mainstream media.

Annie: Mmm. Yeah, well, I mean, as you say, the framing was deliberate, but the language was equally as deliberate. You would have heard multiple terms associated with this budget, particularly intergenerational inequity. They've called it a responsible, a reforming budget. The government's message here is quite simple. Previous generations... ⁓ got rich and made their wealth off property, young people have been locked out, they haven't had the same opportunity and this budget is attempting to level that playing field. But does it actually do that? Well, yeah, this is the huge criticism and I think this is where it gets really complicated.

Jodi: the clear areas where I can't really see it assisting is with the capital gains tax.

Annie: Hmm.

Jodi: You just hit the nail on the head that a lot of young people have been locked out of the housing market. And so a really popular strategy, and you would have seen this all over social media, there are people spruiking it everywhere, is for young people instead of trying to get into the housing market is to invest in the share market. And I found these statistics really fascinating. In just the last year, the percentage of Gen Z and Gen Y Australians who own stocks has jumped from 13 to 28%. That's more than a quarter of young people who are now buying into the stock market. But this budget makes that strategy far less rewarding because the capital gains tax discount is now gone not only for property but also for shares. So when you sell them and you make a profit you're now going to have to pay the government minimum 30 % on those gains.

Annie: Yeah, so what I'm hearing is the very people they're trying to help are being hindered in this process and experts are warning that if investors actually exit, they leave the rental market, we could start to see this mass displacement of renters, which then sort of ⁓ results in less supply. see rents hike up, which is the exact opposite of what this budget promises to younger Australians. Like the hypocrisy here is clear to see.

Jodi: Yeah, well, these are a lot of the criticisms. We should add that as with everything, there are some benefits. For workers, is some relief. So there's a $250 annual tax offset for over 13 million Australians and $1,000 tax deduction that you can claim this in the next financial year without any receipts. That's kind of like instantly $1,000 off your taxable income, plus you get that $250 relief. baby boomer generation that is claiming so far that they've been left behind in this budget, $3 billion goes to aged care. ⁓ But the insurance discount for over 65s is being scrapped hitting around 3 million seniors with higher premiums. And the NDIS is a big one. It was a labor policy to begin with, but we know it's been riddled with problems and ⁓ has created a huge budget deficit. $35 billion has been cut from the NDIS, which means 160,000 people will be removed from that program by the year 2030.

Annie: So definitely some imperative reforms, also some sugar hits along the way, but I think if we get down to one of the biggest issues on voters' minds, is any of this going to fix housing? I know that's a really big and loaded question here, but that was the big promise.

Jodi: Yeah, I want to call it the million dollar question, but if you realistically look at house prices in Australia, it's more like a two and a half million dollar question. The reality is we won't know for some time, but analysts are definitely not unanimous on this. They're very varying ideas and opinions about whether or not this will improve at all young people's ability to buy a home. Treasury's own modeling still has price house prices in Australia rising. That's a really important thing for people to note. Having said that the growth is

Annie: Yeah. you

Jodi: expected to slow. So treasury modeling says it will increase by 4 % a year instead of 6 % year on year. It's a slowdown but it's not certainly not a situation where we expect to see house prices falling and as you touched on rents are also likely to increase. Treasury estimates an increase in around $2 a week which is somewhat modest but it's not really relief that people are hoping for.

Annie: and there's a lot of irony in this because the biggest winners here may actually be existing property investors, those baby boomers who have clocked up all of this property and are holding onto it, the very people this budget claims to target. Everyone who already owns an investment property is protected under the old rules because the changes are being grandfathered and the family home stays completely tax free.

Jodi: Yeah, what's interesting is the government keeps touting this term intergenerational inequity. and it really wants young people to feel hard done by in comparison to the older generations. But a lot of analysts are saying they've baked in the intergenerational inequity by grandfathering the negative gearing and capital gains tax reforms. The other thing worth noting is that there is a historical precedence for this and people don't necessarily talk about this very much. So in 1985, the Australian government got rid of negative gearing. And what we actually saw was house prices skyrocket to a point where two years later they reached introduced the policy and it didn't just happen here it also the exact same thing happened over the ditch in New Zealand. They got rid of it, realized that house prices and rents skyrocketed and then the next government brought negative gearing back in. we've seen this happen before there's a precedence for it and yet this government now believes in 2026 it's the right thing for Australians.

Annie: so this just proves that we've been here before, not once but twice, and we're now making ⁓ same, well, depending on who you ask, the same mistakes of the past. The government argues that this time is different ⁓ the concession is restricted rather than scrapped entirely, which ⁓ guess is a fair point, but I think the precedent of all of this is really hard to ignore.

Jodi: So the question about dampening demand is a really interesting one. The opposition has pointed to the government's own budget papers which estimate that 35,000 fewer homes will be built due to dampened investor demand. that's a reduction in the number of new homes built under these policies, which sounds incredibly counterintuitive. Opposition leader Angus Taylor has ruled out coalition support for obviously most of this budget. But here's the detail that sort of tells you everything you need to know. He won't actually say whether a coalition government would reverse these changes if it came to power in 2028 at the next election. So if you're not going to undo it, my question is how hard are you really fighting it and what impetus is there for Australians to vote about a change of government?

Annie: Yeah, well, even when we do vote in our government, ⁓ I think the biggest question on many people's minds is do these promises even, you know, are they even enacted? Because I think I'm sitting here along with many other Australians with a massive bone to pick. Albanese has time and time again during last year's election campaign said that he would not touch, that he would not change capital gains tax or negative gearing. Less than 12 months later, what do we see him do? Well, he does exactly that. I think the point to make here is that people People make financial decisions, investments, retirement plans around government policy. They vote for leaders based on their livelihoods, based on their life. You can't just rip out one of the most deeply embedded pillars of the Australian tax system and expect the country to just quietly roll over and accept it. I think the broken promise argument here is very real. And integrity does matter in politics. When you tell people one thing and do another, that is not simply a changed view. That is a broken promise. The Today Show's Sarah Arbo put that directly to the Prime Minister this morning, playing him an exchange back from 2025 where he said he wouldn't touch any of this. I just want to play you that segment now.

Jodi: So what gets me about this and I, a number of journalists have put this directly to both Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers this week is that yes, the situation might have warranted a change but when they campaigned a year ago and promised at that time not to change these policies, intergenerational inequity was very much in existence back then. The circumstances for young people and their inability to enter the housing market has not changed.

Annie: All Mmm.

Jodi: in any material way over the last year. and Jim Chalmers has actually admitted ⁓ you know, this budget was handed down, ⁓ that the was made very last minute ⁓ to change reforms. ⁓ He's blamed on like war in the Middle East, global circumstances, but... The fact of the matter is these are bald-faced lies. And this government has become so cocky and dare I say arrogant you heard it in Anthony Albanese's tone when he was first asked the question. He was frustrated that journalists were pushing him on whether or not he'd change these policies. This government has become so arrogant with the massive majority that it holds, they changed the stage three tax cuts and there was really no voter backlash there. They're now touting this line that they think constituents care more about changed reform than they do about the government's changed opinions. And they're banking on Australians having very short memories.

Annie: Yeah, I think they're also treating Australians as idiots. mean, this is a Prime Minister that said 50 times to the media that he wasn't going to change these policies. And it was really funny, the talking points actually got leaked to the media of how they handled this question around broken promises. So it's very clear that this is just an orchestrated campaign that they think that Australians are going to forget about and we're all going to move on. ⁓ But I think if we look at this, we remove our anger, our own personal feeling toward the situation, the harder truth here is that I don't think Jim Chalmers expected to get 94 seats. He didn't expect the coalition to be this diminish this fracture. This is a government that saw its window. It took it and it ran with it. If there was ever a time to take a risk like this, it was now.

Jodi: Yeah, but being in a huge majority doesn't give you the right to treat Australians like mushrooms. That is, you know, keep them in the dark and feed them shit. And I would really urge all of our listeners to challenge this notion of intergenerational inequity. Baby boomers, our parents' generation didn't get rich by extracting some value from a property system and market that was rigged in their favour. They worked hard, bought houses that were in short supply and held onto them. Supply is, and demand really is the issue here. It's a supply problem. It's always been a supply problem and we still live in a supply issue. There still are not enough houses for the amount of Australians who would like to buy one.

Annie: Yeah. I think it's fair to say that this budget and change in policy doesn't fix supply, it shuffles who owns the existing stock. So if we're serious about this intergenerational equity that the government keeps ⁓ hammering down, that's the problem that we need to solve here and it's one that's been left on the table.

Jodi: Yeah, and there's another message that's baked into this budget that we haven't actually discussed and it is this used to be a country of aspiration. We used to be the lucky country where you could come here and really anything was possible. Think about all the amazing migrant stories you've heard from people who came here with nothing, know, a couple of bucks in their pocket and built massive families and massive empires. What this government is now saying, particularly with the capital gains tax changes, is if you have aspirations of building a business or an enterprise, you might want to actually move overseas, go somewhere like Singapore because you're going to be taxed through the nose if you try to do that here in Australia. And this statistic that the AFR had this week was alarming. Australia's capital gains tax rate used to see it at around 25 percent. It was one of the lowest in the OECD world. But under these new settings, it's set to rise to between 23 and 47 percent. That's almost half of every dollar that's made being given back to the government as tax. That's among the highest globally. The US is currently sitting at twenty three point eight percent. The UK is at twenty four percent. The Netherlands is at thirty six percent. But here in Australia, we could be up much closer to 47.

Annie: So basically what you're telling me is we've gone from the near bottom of this table to the near top in a single budget night. Yeah, great. Glad to be here.

Jodi: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, but ⁓ for our second story, we're actually going to look at the other side of the coin. So tonight opposition leader Angus Taylor is obviously handing down his budget reply speech. It's really interesting to see what the coalition is going to do with this policy. It still needs to pass through parliament. But the bulk of what Taylor is planning to announce tonight has already been leaked.

Annie: Yeah, in true Canberra fashion, most of it was already out before he even opened his mouth. But I think what it already tells us is that this budget is shaping up to be a direct fight with Labor over housing. Both sides agree that it is broken, that something needs to be done, but where they completely part ways is how to fix it. You have Anthony Albanese saying, tax the investors. And then you have Angus Taylor on the other side of that coin saying that migration could be the answer here.

Jodi: Yes, and this is a hotbed issue just like the Albanese government is targeting young voters. The Liberal coalition is obviously going for an issue they know fires people up very quickly. It's very easy for the coalition to say that migration is the solution here. So what Angus Taylor is basically

Annie: Really good.

Jodi: putting forward as their strategy for this is to link housing with the number of people who arrive on our shores. And he says he would cap the number of migrants at the number of new homes built the previous year. So essentially one person in and there needs to be a house for that person before another migrant can arrive. To give you the statistics, last year about 300,000 new migrants arrived in Australia, but only 170,000 homes, new homes were built. Under Taylor's plan, it's effectively a 40 cut to annual migration.

Annie: I think this is a serious logistical challenge. While it sounds quite good on paper and at least they're putting forward a solution, I think ⁓ you have to look at the ⁓ industry as a whole because it's one of the most migrant-dependent workforces currently in our country. If you cut the migration intake, ⁓ you potentially cut the very workers you need to build these homes. ⁓ that would allow you to bring more people in. it's just this circular problem that the coalition is going to be heavily pressed on over the next couple of days. They're going to need to deliver answers as to how this would actually play out.

Jodi: Well, Taylor's response to that supply issue is a $5 billion housing infrastructure fund that he says would kind of help unlock or bring to the market 400,000 new homes. And he says that that sort of will happen. by way of his government funding utilities, roads and services that are needed to open up new developments. Because it's one thing to take vacant land and dump a number of homes on there, but if people can't get in and out of that suburb, can't readily access things like schools, healthcare and jobs, it becomes just... very unrealistic for people to move there. To pay for it, the coalition says it would get that five billion by scrapping Labor's flagship housing programs, that's the Housing Australia Future Fund, and help to buy all of it gone. His argument is if you cut the demand and then boost the supply, we can let the market kind of ⁓ equalize on its own and do the rest.

Annie: I mean it sounds like an ambitious plan but I think also another big headline out of this response is the welfare component because ⁓ this new policy new ⁓ would be blocked from accessing any welfare support that's including the aged care pension, job seeker, the NDIS which as we know has already taken a knife. ⁓ wouldn't be able to touch any of this until they become Australian citizens, which puts a massive burden on ⁓ migrants living in our country and their ability to settle in our communities and to adapt to a way of life here.

Jodi: Well, you would think it would certainly make migrants think twice about landing here in Australia if it meant that they wouldn't be able to access a number of welfare programs, including free health care. didn't know this, but at the moment, permanent residents who are living here legally but haven't yet been given citizenship can access up to 17 welfare programs. Now, they're obviously not front of the queue like citizens. Some of those programs have lengthy wait periods, some lasting up to 10 and even 15 years. So it doesn't necessarily mean that people are showing up, hopping off the plane and going straight to a public hospital but they are able to currently access care if they need it. ⁓ Taylor obviously wants to take a knife to that policy but interestingly he was asked on Breakfast TV this morning whether this was just ⁓ an attention-seeking policy if you like or an attempt to try and turn voters heads away from One Nation, that far-right party that would typically go for a policy like this.

Annie: Honestly, can we just get a little bit more creative with the slogans? Putting Australians first, if I had a dollar for every time I'd heard a politician say that, I honestly think I would be rich and I wouldn't be so worried about this budget that is being handed down.

Jodi: so differently. thought nice and simple straight to the point. I feel considered. I quite like it. And the other

Annie: You She's hooked. Angus Taylor's got her.

Jodi: I will just say back in my very, very early reporting days, he was the member, he is the member for Eden Monero. And I remember interviewing him on the side of a highway and kind of looking up at him because he's so tall and strapping. And I thought, not a bad sort. Anyway,

Annie: ⁓

Jodi: It's worth noting that the Liberal Coalition hasn't knocked back every policy in Jim Chalmers budget. Angus Taylor says he does provisionally support the $250 ⁓ tax offset that's been announced for workers. He does obviously understandably have an issue with bracket creep. That's essentially when your wages rise with inflation so much that you get pushed into a higher tax bracket. and you end up paying the government more of your wage. His answer to it is to automatically adjust tax brackets in line with inflation so that it can't quietly push everybody into a higher tax rate. It's one of the more substantive policies that differentiates Labor from the Liberal Coalition.

Annie: and when it comes to Labor's negative gearing and capital gains changes, Taylor definitely isn't mincing his words here. He's been quite ⁓ clear saying that he will fight every single day to stop that legislation getting through Parliament, which ⁓ a strong line to take ⁓ you remember that he also wouldn't commit to reversing those same changes if the coalition does win the federal election in a couple of years time in 2028.

Jodi: Yeah, I guess this comes down to the big question for me is whether or not the Liberal coalition can mount a strong enough argument and competition against Anthony Albanese's Labor Party to have a real shot at this at the next election in 2028. Chris Ullman, who's the ABC's federal political correspondent, had some incredibly terse words to say on this. His choice of phrase was incredible. He said Angus Taylor has one shot in the locker. that he's a dead man walking leading a dying party and that Taylor really has to go hard or go home when he announces his budget reply. You've got to remember that the Liberals have just knifed one after the other leader in the back. Taylor is sort of the Stephen Bradbury who's fallen over the line at the last hurdle and is now set to take the party to the next election. So he really needs to pack a punch or it doesn't matter how many lies Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers tell, Australians are just going to go for it.

Annie: Picking up what you were saying, the Farrah by-election which took place last weekend is really proof of how disenfranchised the Liberal Coalition party is right now. Farrah, if you're not familiar, is a regional seat in southern New South Wales. It was held by the Liberals for 77 years. It only came up because former Liberal leader Susan Lay quit politics after she was rolled as a leader. It was a sensational outcome and what we saw is one nation's chokehold essentially extending even further.

Jodi: No, One Nation walked in and wiped the floor with its opposition. Obviously, we know that Barnaby Joyce has recently joined the party. They're obviously ⁓ heavily appealed to that ⁓ regional kind of center. ⁓ Farah sits across Albury, so it's just kind of along the border with Victoria. But 40 % of the primary vote is what One Nation picked up. The Liberal primary collapsed to 12 and the Coalition directed its own preferences to One Nation in Farah to keep out independent. ⁓ they essentially helped One Nation to win.

Annie: Well, I think that right there, those numbers tell you everything about where the Liberal Party's head is at right now. They're being squeezed out of the cities by independents and Teal candidates. And now out of the regions by One Nation, not even frickin' Western Sydney is safe at this point. Angus Taylor himself has acknowledged ⁓ this week that the coalition is not seen as a party of conviction. Yeah, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

Jodi: but it's not just a question of whether or not Angus Taylor's reply will land. It's whether or not Australians are even still listening to the Liberal Coalition. ⁓ said ⁓ much about how it's on its knees. They've stabbed it in the back, leader after leader. They lost seats like Farah and that ⁓ trend, the orange tidal wave, if you like, of One Nation is set to spread right across the country in the lead up to the next federal election. ⁓ really does only have one shot to make an impact to come up against the strength of Jim Chalmers.

Annie: Yeah.

Jodi: budget reform, whether you like it or not, it is decisive policy. ⁓ And so Taylor needs to come up against that and match him toe for toe. He has one shot to get it right. whether he does pull it off, I guess ⁓ time will tell.

Annie: Well, if you listen to Chris Yuleman, he's a dead man walking. So I think this is Angus Taylor's chance to prove that the Liberal Party can stand on its own two feet. But it got me thinking before recording this podcast, because I feel like every year the budget drops, everyone loses their minds for a week. and then we all go back to normal and forget about all of this. Though something tells me this one might stick around for a little bit longer. I do want to move far away from the budget now and onto our next story, which has actually been dominating headlines for the last few weeks. And I have to be honest here. It didn't really hit me or gauge my interest until I started seeing these insane pictures of passengers in protective clothing and hazmat suits being carefully kind of maneuvered off this disease riddled cruise ship. And I just, was like, what the hell is going on here? I need to know more.

Jodi: Well, I hope it didn't quite hit you because that would have been arguably fatal. But I think the reality of this story is so much wilder, more serious and more dangerous than I had understood too. Once you go down the rabbit hole it's genuinely confronting. It's been slowly unfolding in the background for six weeks and at the center of it, perhaps most frighteningly, are five Australians who are on board this ship.

Annie: You So the MV Hondus is a Dutch expedition cruise ship that set sail from the tip of Argentina ⁓ back on the 1st of April and it was headed for Antarctica. There were nearly 150 passengers ⁓ and crew on board 23 nationalities. And really what started is ⁓ this, you know, adventure spontaneous holiday turned into ⁓ has become a trip for so many people on board. Five days in, ⁓ a year old Dutch passenger basically falls ill with a fever, he gets headaches, chills, sweats. ⁓ Then days after that, he's dead. The following day, the captain addresses all of the passengers on board and I just want to play you a snippet of that now. ⁓

Jodi: It's amazing how quickly something you say on camera can age. It aged so poorly, a little bit like Albo's first grab earlier, but that captain has literally said that the man died of natural causes, which is baffling. What passengers on that ship didn't know was that that man and his wife are believed to have been patient zero. So before they boarded that ship, they were on like a bird watching tour or something in Argentina, and they're believed to have come into contact with infected rodents. Then they've boarded the ship. He's died. But the whole time his wife was in the cabin with him and was also on board that ship, she got off to sort of offload her husband's body. She was airlifted to South Africa. And then two days later, she died. And then about a week and a half after that, another woman, a German woman on board the ship died too. So that's three people after you've initially told everyone on board that he just died of natural causes.

Annie: It's literally a horror movie. Like, imagine being on that ship. And I think at that point no one even knew. You had three people dead before global health authorities had even confirmed that this outbreak was happening, let alone the rest of the world having any knowledge of it. And I think it's worth pausing here because if you're anything like me, you probably have no idea what hantavirus actually is. So I went on a little bit of a deep dive and I'm going to give you my best medical synopsis here. It's basically this umbrella term ⁓ that covers more than 20 viral species, which is carried by rats and rodents. What makes this outbreak particularly alarming is that this specific strain involved is called the Andes virus. It's the only known strain that can actually be spread people through close and sustained contact. ⁓ actually no specific cure here and it ⁓ an extremely high fatality rate. once people are infected.

Jodi: Yeah, which makes the captain's natural causes argument even more chilling in hindsight. Like these people were living in such close quarters. They call cruise ships like a floating Petri dish. They were shoulder to shoulder at the dinner table for weeks without knowing that they were being infected by this.

Annie: and you just have to see this plea by an American passenger who was on board. He took to social media. You can just hear the desperation in his voice.

Jodi: That is so heartbreaking.

Annie: It's just so dire, like these poor people are just stranded and stuck on this disease-infected shit, like you honestly couldn't write this.

Jodi: I know. And you also think added to that, they've saved all this money, you've taken time off work, it's supposed to be their holiday of the year and then this ends. What I found also equally just... bizarre and stressful was finding someone that would actually take the ship became its own crisis. So the ship spent days anchored off the west coast of Africa while officials tried to work out like what do we do with this boat? Then it headed for Spain's Canary Islands and the local president refused it entry. Given what those islands went through during COVID, you can kind of understand the reaction, but the Spanish government overruled him on humanitarian grounds. Obviously, look at that poor man sobbing. The ship finally docked on the Monday. ⁓ and basically then 147 people from 23 countries were all confined to their cabins waiting for their country's name to be called so they could all walk off in their protective gear that we saw in those images. It's horrific! Have we learned nothing from COVID?

Annie: I'm not laughing. I really don't want listeners to think that I'm laughing, but it just it's so bad that it's almost unbelievable. The head of the World Health Organization personally flew to the Canary Islands where this ship finally did dock to coordinate this extreme evacuation, which I think tells you just how seriously this was being taken behind the scenes, but I don't know maybe it was too little too late at this point.

Jodi: let's just come back to the Australians for a second. they, the Australians were, even though A in the alphabet is right up the top, the Australians were among some of the last to be able to get off the ship. There were ⁓ five Aussies and Kiwi. They couldn't get commercial flights home. So the government had to step in and like essentially repatriate these poor people. ⁓ They were evacuated the Netherlands first. Then they were waiting in Libo again because they couldn't get a connecting flight. ⁓ The good news is that in the last 24 hours they've been able to secure a charter flight through the Australian government to come home, but after struggling to find a crew that was willing to operated under strict quarantine conditions. This group, and this is where I just have this sick sense of like deja vu from 2020, this group of people are expected to land in Perth in the next 24 hours and then they have to go into quarantine. They go into the Bullsbrook Centre for National Resilience which is apparently just outside of Perth for at least three weeks. of isolation and I am having as somebody who survived the COVID pandemic in the state of Victoria, I need a moment.

Annie: well this facility, I actually have gone down a whole new trail with this. It was actually built for COVID. So these six people are heading to this Bullsbrook Centre for National Resilience. That was a $400 million exercise. It has 500 beds. It was finished in 2022 when the pandemic was practically on its way out the door. And it's...

Jodi: Well done, WA, well done.

Annie: So it's been called the white elephant. It's been this really expensive piece of real estate that's just been sitting there at one point, it actually nearly got turned into a prison. Now it's finally doing what it was always meant to do, which honestly feels like the most 2020 sentence I've said in a while. But I'm curious to know besides the COVID 2.0 point, what are experts actually saying about this?

Jodi: Well this is where I obviously went on a deep dive because I'm definitely afraid that this is all going to impact us and we won't be able to leave the house. The World Health Organization has been very deliberate about reiterating that this is not another COVID-19 pandemic. The science obviously supports that as well. The anti strain of the hantavirus requires close and sustained contact. It doesn't move through populations the way that COVID-19 did. But when the head of the WHO is personally coordinating a lot of these movements and repatriations and a 500 odd bed quarantine facility is being readied for the arrival of just six people, you can understand why tensions are a little heightened and people are a little cautious.

Annie: Yeah, and I mean, the science is correct and the science might say that this isn't a repeat of COVID, but from where I sit, nothing about the conditions surrounding all of this ⁓ seems to have changed since the pandemic. I mean, if you look at it... A virus jumps from a rodent to a person at a landfill in Argentina. It then somehow manages to get itself on a cruise ship. It crosses the Atlantic ⁓ and the world spends two weeks arguing about which will actually take this ship. ⁓ A local government turns the frickin ship away. ⁓ And then countries can't exactly agree on one streamlined quarantine plan. So here you have the politics, paralysis, ⁓ that part feels somewhat identical to the pandemic.

Jodi: are two things here that are very clear to me. The first is that it makes no sense to holiday on a cruise ship. You can catch gastro, COVID-19 or the hand virus. Just a terrible idea all around. The second is that this quarantine facility in WA with 500 odd beds should have been used to create new homes for migrants and Australians hoping to crack into the property market. And we really could have solved two problems. And there we go. We've circled right back to the start.

Annie: ⁓ with circled pullback. think that's a perfect way to end the episode. We've done a full 360, another huge week, and we really hope you feel covered with the week's biggest news.

Jodi: Thank so much for joining us on covered. Please like and follow our podcasts wherever you listen.