Mark, what is your reaction to this parliamentary inquiry?

It's really one of shock, Kate.

We had not ...

We knew that Parkinson's Australia were agitating for this review but we have a, a system in Australia where chemical regulation is manifestly independent of industry and, um, and government, and which uses science as its sole point of reference for making decisions in relation to its effect on human health, safety, and the environment.

The APVMA engaged in a very lengthy process.

The process started many, many years ago, but the, the more recent reviews, the process of making submissions, examining all the science, and coming to a decision by this independent science-based regulator took, uh, at least two years, and the final, the final product was the decision in, in June.

And we had no inkling as to how that was gonna play in the end until the decision was made.

What did you make of what he had to say?

He's had a mixed bag of results across his farms.

Williams was typically pretty good and had 27 mils there and Out at our eastern extremities, we had jagged sort of...

Well, I understand from a neighbour, I haven't ticked out our gauges out there yet, but around sort of high 30s, which was a very late-night surprise when I got a text message to say that we'd gotten that much.

But in the middle, it's still a bit skinny.

We're sort of around that... we've got about 15 to 20 and whilst that's rain that we really welcome and need and that it's certainly as we get towards the finish which is predicted to be a really hard finish it's a relief to know that we can get the crops to the finish and um and go somewhere towards cost recovery and which has probably been you know one of our really poor years maybe even this old one that's sort of we're sort of 100 we were at about 135 mils for the for the year in that patch.

And this brings us up sort of 150, which is still only about 43% of our yearly average.

And you touched on the frost.

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I would say motivation for people can be different in so many different ways.

For me, I kind of have to think back to like we spoke before on what really captured me into getting into this field.

And remembering that presentation and that we're actually making a difference in people's lives.

As cliche as it may sound, we are there at their worst times.

And we're there to make a difference.

And we're there to comfort them and be an answer, especially whenever that worst time of their life is going on.

Like what are some things that maybe would help to push things in a positive direction when you maybe have that difficult team member who is really not or is on the struggle bus with motivation that day?

And Mark, having a look through the crops, what are you noticing in some of those paddocks that have had those extremes, the really low temperatures, you know, minus five and a half on a couple of occasions and the lack of rainfall? What are you noticing? Oh.

I've done crop tours in each of the last Fridays going backwards.

And if I go back a couple of weeks, it was a week and a half ago, there was a huge amount of crop stress.

Leaves were drooping on canola.

Cereals were starting to lose leaves and going yellow.

A week later, after a little bit of rain, we had sort of 7 to 17 mils through our patch.

at the start of last week, and that kind of freshened things up.

What sort of attitude do you take into a season like this?

What does a CIA case officer, a specialist on Iran, actually do? What does that mean? And I've read on your Substack that you wrote, "Espionage is not just about lies, it's more about the truth." Tell us what you mean by that, specifically when it came to your work on Iran.

Uh, salam, Negar.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's, uh, really a pleasure to be here.

Um, yeah, let me, uh, I'll, I'll address the, the last thing first in terms of the truth.

Uh, being a case officer, um, is a, is a, uh, an, an Iran specialist, that's what I was.

A case officer is an Ir- an operations officer.

Hmm.

So their country, the current regime, the Islamic Republic, it's survived now for over 45 years, and it... sure, it's had its internal dissent, economic pressure, repeated confrontations with the West, but from your vantage point, what has kept this regime in power when so many folks have predicted its collapse?

Yeah, that's a, that's a good question.

Um, first of all, they did things inside Iran with the, with their own country.

It was n- it wasn't all bad, let me put it that way.

They, they did things like they im- they, uh, improved transportation, they improved health, they improved education.

Uh, um, fluency i- in, in reading, et cetera, is very high, even among women.

They're not...

What did that experience, though, teach you about the d- the, uh, d- dangers, really, dangers of mirror imaging and analytical assumptions, and how should those lessons apply to how we assess, say, Iran's nuclear intentions today?

Mark, what's your assessment of this scheme?

Well, I think it was well-intentioned, but I think they've probably been badly advised.

It's been quite a clumsy scheme and kind of, at the end of the day, reinforces the maxim that governments should never interfere with markets.

Unfortunately, it's distorted the markets in a way that's caused, as you heard yesterday, real financial harm to many players that weren't invited or able to participate in the scheme.

There's many other threads to this in terms of the messaging that's involved.

You've got a government interfering with a market which has distorted the price and the supply chain, and it's also can be characterized as providing government support for an industry, and that can play badly when, when you've got foreign governments.

They start using this kind of stuff as a trade negotiation lever, like we saw with China when th- with the, the tariffs on barley and they came out and, uh, suggested we were indirectly subsidizing our farmers.

When there were all those concerns raised about fertilizer supplies, though, was it essential that a scheme like this was established?

And how are you going up there?

Williams has had a similar pattern of rainfall, but we've had good rains there lately.

So we've had two instalments of low 20s millimetres.

It's looking quite good there actually.

Even though we've had a fairly dry spell, we haven't had a lot of frost, which has been good.

It's now pretty cold, but we haven't had those early frosts that slow things down, so the canola looks really good.

Our cereals at Williams were sown at the end of our program at Williams, so they've got a long way to go, but we know that Williams is a pretty reliable area and it usually gets the rain and a soft finish at the end, so that'll be fine.

Has the pressure and the worry about diesel and fertiliser eased a little bit?

So how workable are the new reduced application rates?

Look, they are...

Firstly, I'll say they are... much higher than what the APVMA announced in its provisional recommendations back in July 2024.

And that's a good thing? That is a good thing.

They are now at rates which are workable.

They are not yet completely in alignment with market or with current practices.

They're using other chemistry in conjunction with those lower rates.

So is it a matter of time before it's banned? Because there's certainly strong arguments on the other side of the ledger.

What was your assessment at that point?

So when speaking with her and then assessing her, we checked the pads that was placed underneath her and essentially noticed that she was having pretty significant postpartum hemorrhage or bleeding after that childbirth.

Postpartum hemorrhage is still the leading cause of maternal mortality worldwide.

So our concern is quickly increasing for this mother because we know that she can lose a lot of blood very quickly and that we're going to need to start treating her.

With her, as we're recognizing this, we're telling the sending physician that he now has two advanced patients to find transport for because we're in such a small rural ER environment.

they don't have the resources and staff to manage this type of circumstance.

So essentially we're helping them then find transport for the mother, which doesn't necessarily need a specialty team, just needs a ground transport, of which we're long enough into this call that a ground transport truck actually finally becomes available and we contact them.

And that's exactly what this crew did.

Were you the squirrel guy?

No, I wasn't the squirrel guy.

I was not the squirrel guy.

But, you know, as we know, there's stuff in history and there's been pictures of like dead drops using dog shit and, you know, and using animals as stuff.

And, you know, it's kind of out there.

So God knows what.

What the Iranians say and what they know is usually two different things, obviously.

Or does the IRGC, is it so big with the Basij that it's got its claws so deep that they're like fucking stuck? And so are we with this regime for the next 25 years?

What's the specific threat here, though? Because not just you, obviously, but church and religious leaders, Christian, non-Christian, Islamic, they've all raised a cry about this.

Correct, but it's wider than any particular religious institution.

There's a much wider net of charities and not-for-profits that are caught in this.

So the proposal is to tax discretionary trusts, of which there are about 840,000 in Australia, and a lot of small and medium enterprise business activity is undertaken through these trusts.

Almost one third of the entirety of the business sector within Australia is These trusts are able to distribute to charities and not-for-profits that are tax-exempt amounts that are never see tax.

So they pass through the discretionary trust to the charity untaxed.

And effectively, private business operators are therefore able to give tax what would be the equivalent amount in their tax rate more to the charity? The proposal is that these trusts will be taxed in the trust itself at the rate of 30%.

And what sort of numbers are we talking about though, Mark? Because I've read a wide variety of numbers, but I mean, how much money potentially could be lost to the charitable and not-for-profit sector?

What holes are these institutions filling?

There's a, an underlying philosophical discussion in this.

It, it's a question of political philosophy.

So, uh, we might even say that the state is the latecomer into this conversation, the modern welfare state in particular.

So there's a, a thread of academic discussion around the concern that the ballooning of the welfare state has atrophied civic associations through which most of our community engagement is undertaken.

Edmund Burke, the English political philosopher, famously called civic associations the little platoons, which he said express the first principle of our public affections, the very first link in the series by which we proceed toward a love of our country and love of mankind.

The ballooning of the welfare state to meet local needs has actually served to undermine the expressions of local concern to meet local benevolent need.

I, I've read a wide variety of numbers, but I mean, h-how much money potentially could be lost to the charitable and not-for-profit sector?

Mm.

Except as you said, through exercise of statutory power or legislative power, I should say.

But there are even limitations on that, 'cause the body of law, it's not an easy thing to unwind the common law.

It's a blunt instrument to incur when, with, uh, legislation.

No, I'd like to make a point here, John, which is a point I make, um, in the book somewhat, and it's tracing the thought that, you know, we often say that politics is downstream of culture, but we rarely appreciate, and Judge, you have done so in the work, Choiseul's Decision and Singh and Commonwealth and others.

But so we say that politics is downstream of culture.

We don't pick up often that culture is downstream of philosophy, and how much the world we live in is contingent, in the sense that it didn't have to turn out this way.

What's the thesis? Tell us.