And it's like, were they psychic 20 years ago that they predicted it? Or is it that that's become in our kind of collective consciousness that that's what a robot or that's what a Barbarella sci-fi film should look like? Yeah, I think it's got to be.

You know, you quite imagine, you know, you ask a poll of people to draw a picture of what they think a robot looks like.

It'll be the same genre.

It's all going to be that.

And then that's, isn't that funny? Because that, in a way, we're anticipating future on our perception of something that we guessed about in the past.

Exactly, exactly.

And that's a really interesting thing.

Yeah.

I mean, they're not subject to these laws, are they?

Yeah.

Look, a couple of things to unpack.

The prime minister definitely went into this national cabinet meeting intending to get all of the states and territories on board with his preferred, uh, kind of principles for these national standards, which would be that renewables predominantly powered, um, data centers.

Queensland and the Northern Territory were not keen on that.

The federal government, particularly Chris Bowen, the energy minister, had essentially threatened to just veto them with Commonwealth legislation that would override the state, and it honestly took me a f- quite a few phone calls this afternoon to figure out what exactly had happened.

It was, uh, quite a mess out the other side of the national cabinet press conference.

What's going on here?

What I'm against is problem gambling.

He doesn't want to be seen to be launching some big culture war against the industry.

We've already seen Pauline Hanson, the One Nation leader, gravitate that way.

I had a Labor source tell me last week that the last thing they want is Pauline Hanson running around the suburbs saying that, you know, "This is just the latest in a line of sort of nanny state measures," be it, you know, forcing someone to log in to watch porn or restricting gambling, that they don't want that message pervasive in the community.

So there's sort of the political and economic considerations.

The less generous interpretation is, of course, that the gambling companies, th- th- the sporting codes in particular, even the media companies, are very powerful lobbyists.

They obviously want to maintain their business model, and there is certainly a belief that's been prosecuted by the likes of the Greens spokeswoman on this issue, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, that the Prime Minister has been quite lenient toward that lobby.

And I've said to the government, "If you are not prepared to do what's needed here, we'll take this out of your hands and we'll do it in the Senate ourselves," because the majority of senators know that what the government has put on the table is not good enough.

What are the main changes that the Coalition, the Greens, and the crossbenchers are asking for?

There's some similarities.

There's been an increased focus in what's being talked about as inducements.

This can be anything from a prompt sent to an account holder, you know, on blast or maybe on a Friday saying, "The footy's on tonight.

Here's a bonus bet," to some of the more what's been dubbed predatory behavior, where people are really targeted.

They're known to gamble or wager on, on certain sports at certain times.

They're offered increasing incentives to keep coming back to gambling.

Where do you think this draft gambling ad bill will go?

Claire, does it matter?

Look, I think it will eventually matter if we get to a point, um, where this trip is disclosed on the normal register, where we see that maybe it was the donation of a specific individual or entity.

Um, and even if it is just used through party funds, for example, that could raise questions.

We know that One Nation successfully raised quite a lot of money in their, quote-unquote, "Fire the Liar" campaign, where they sought donations to campaign against the Albanese government's tax, uh, changes.

So I think it will, it, it will matter if we eventually get an answer that is pretty well anything other than the trip being personally funded by Pauline Hanson, because of course there is a lot of scrutiny now about the influence on her party and, and the conduct of the party, given how prominently they're featuring in the polls.

Is that accurate so far?

far?It's certainly accurate.

I think the way I've been looking at this conference is not to say that it is less democratic.

[laughs] But look, let's put it into some more context as well, Claire, because the oil and gas companies, they do pay other taxes as well, right? And state royalties.

Yeah.

So the PRRT is a tax that just applies to the profits, and it specifically allows for companies to deduct their losses and expenses as well.

So it only really kicks in once they're well and truly making money, which is something that, you know, opponents of it say is too weak.

So representatives from the sort of broader industry groups say that for the financial year '24, '25, that all of the different taxes they pay, which includes company tax, state royalties, so that goes into state government coffers rather than the feds, is about $21.9 billion.

So they're trying to say that the comparison to the, the beer tax is, is not very fair.

I mean, I would add to that, that obviously beer companies also pay company tax.

... derive more revenue, and I, I guess-