... and wondering what was, what was gonna attack you there.

Yeah, it was like, it was like going into those ghost trains at the, uh, the fun fair with big unexpected eight-legged surprises just hanging on around the corner.

Yeah.

You know, in the end, we're all, we're all in the same business, same kind of aims, really.

And I think if you look at both our client base, um, and the vendor base, it's, it's apparent that we're, we're, we're truly an international player.

And I think being able to speak to people in their own language is absolutely unbeatable when you, when you're trying to make them feel comfortable and appreciated just as, yeah, just as the way we'd want to be treated by our suppliers as well.

But are there any signals or lessons here for the upcoming Victorian election?

So I think when I look at WA and I look at Victoria, they are the two states where Labor was strongest at the end of the pandemic.

You know, WA closed the state down.

There was a joke at one stage that Mark McGowan, like his approval is like 85%.

I think there's been an election since then which they...

So I think...

There will be a natural correction because there was just that huge vote of approval that sort of kept together for a couple of cycles.

Do we know if people are actually buying what One Nation is selling there?

But how are you, if you are integrating AI into your business, but probably more broadly, how do you see AI playing out in like the whole health and longevity space?

It's going to be huge.

It's a big topic.

And I've had a lot of meetings in this area in the last few weeks.

And it's really amazing what we're having now coming into the marketplace in terms of robot medicine.

And some of it's going to be excellent, particularly the areas that we're interested in fall prevention.

We've now got robots available that will go into nursing homes and retirement villages and actually assess gait of people in the retirement village and work out which ones are high risk falls that you can then introduce into balance and strength exercises.

so...

Are there any orders that result from these chain requests, for want of a better phrase?

You know, occasionally, Rich, we do get the odd order.

But proportionally, I'd say it's a much lower hit rate than what I define as average.

And a lot of the time... you're not really sure whether you're just providing, are you the second or third quote because they've already got the thing bought? Because one of the truisms is a lot of those companies in that part of the world, they'll go out and they'll shop a requirement and then you quote them, they go back, they make a sale, and then they come back and say they don't have the sale but they could have it if they could have a few bucks a discount.

That happens and you just have to... well, know whether you've got wiggle room or if it's somebody you've never heard of before, you stick to your guns.

And we tend not to move on pricing, not because we're nasty, but just simply the fact we give everybody the same price and, yeah, it

Joe, the broker, showed up

tomorrow and he's got an amazing portfolio, would I be interested? Yeah, for sure.

the government is the f- the force of not change.

If you, if you step back a little bit and squint your eyes, you can see the change up.

It's around the, the shift in tax policy through the budget to make the point that we're actually shifting a system so that it's less favoring investors and those already with capital and more to wage earners.

I think a lot of the bits that were negotiated through in different parts of the platform, particularly around energy transition, um, around some of the, the economic sovereignty issues, are just creating breadcrumbs to build off.

And also, you know, there were some other interesting, um, shifts in policy, including setting out a roadmap towards dental in Medicare, which has been sort of a, a long-term objective I know of the, uh, of the health minister, um, which I thought was interesting.

So I, I reckon what they're saying is, "We're not just holding the territory," because you're right, that's really exposed at the moment from, from populism.

But it's kind of starting to set the seeds of what the forced choice next time's gonna be.

Mm

Right.

So it's been very lovely to see the regular people come alongside and welcome them in and help them feel that they're part and parcel of everything.

Even if they just come once in a while to what they feel is church, they appreciate that something else is going on, which is equal.

And I think that has been a hard part in the past for things like Messy Church, where in the past you have families coming to Messy Church, but there's no integration and people have found that a real barrier.

Well, how are we all part of the same church? Oh, they don't tithe or they don't give.

We don't talk to them about money because they're like an outreach to them.

So it's taken me by surprise how to see that there is equality and understanding between that where we are.

Could you just speak into that maybe?

I'm guessing you're going to say it's never that simple, though.

No, not always.

Some operators, I mean, they'll start copying everybody they know in the world onto an email chain that looks like a pirouette marketing scam.

So annoying.

Yeah.

And then an engineer might point out at some point thinking that maybe it's the main autopilot computer.

But hold on a minute.

else can happen? What else can go wrong?

What is the danger for that in politics, in political life?

Well, we're seeing it now.

If everything is relative and there is no anchor point, people create their own realities, and at, at some point, everyone has a curated reality.

And I think one of the things that is being observed in the undercurrents of, of this document is the atomization of people into little universes of one that are being algorithmically curated, firstly by the digital platforms.

But then I think there are genuine concerns that this will only be amplified as everyone has their AI companion bot, um, which does their bidding and becomes a, an extension of them.

But everyone will have their own curated experience based on the world they want, and there is no coming together and no centrality.

There is a term in the, um, encyclical that I wasn't familiar with, but maybe some of your listeners will be, subsidiarity.

What is Proudly Human, and why is it necessary in the age of AI?

Well, you're on the same page because what did you read in the encyclical about the importance of art and culture? Because it does get a notable mention.

Yeah, he even gives a shout out to Schindler's List in here.

So the Pope's sort of talking about On one level, the risk, the moral corruption that occurs when we lose track of our humanity, but then also this sense that authentic culture is about a spark of questioning that can't be popped out of a search engine or a chatbot or anything.

One of the interesting analysis of this encyclopedia has been that people are reading into it what they want from lots of different directions, for instance.

one of the founders of Anthropic, one of the big eye companies, was on the panel after the Pope delivered and found it reinforcing of what they're trying to do as well.

So I am clear that like any good piece of reflective work, it's letting people in to build in what they want.

And it's a live debate politically here in Australia too, Andrew, the notion of the provenance of outputs, right? So there's this big battle going on at the moment around creators' rights.

What is the danger for that in politics, in political life?

So how does that then differ, in your opinion, from the OEM environment?

Well, I'm not really here to bash the OEMs.

Never.

I mean, without them, there are no parts.

A shout out and respect to all OEMs.

I think you're very brave doing what you do.

I think our listeners have to appreciate that the OEMs support very large customer bases and have numerous responsibilities right across, as we said earlier, the engineering, production, certification, training, and technical support processes.

So next question then, is exclusivity a major thing for a distributor? What do you think about that?

But does it mean anything when a number of polls all in the same period all have similar results?

Well, the bigger data sets give you a little bit more confidence on the margins.

So, you know, famously through, you know, in the States, Nate Silver did that whole aggregating of all the polls.

And I think, you know, ABC did it during the last election, the poll of the polls.

I think you guys did it as well at one stage.

Yeah, we did.

So, yeah, more data you've got, obviously there is more confidence, but it is still two years out from an election.

So how does that work that they think you need a different person and the country's on the wrong track, but they also don't like the policies that their knight in shining armour of Pauline Hanson actually is going to offer? Yeah.

I had no idea that a single component affects the value of an entire helicopter by that much.

Yeah, I mean, it always depends on the circumstances.

But our experience is such that many DOFAR operators are flying their airframes right up until the MGB is due.

And it's not that there aren't gearboxes out there.

I mean, there are, there's plenty of them.

In fact, we have a couple ourselves.

But they're pretty much... removed units that need some tender love and care for an overall before they become useful and then you've got to ask yourself why spend all that money in overhaul waiting for the best part of a year to get it done and then not knowing exactly the configuration you might need and you also might be committing up to a million euros and and there's to be quite honest there's other things to spend your money on and the math simply just doesn't work unless you've got a fleet that you know and you want to keep flying for many more years.

Would you care to elaborate on that a little bit for us?

Tell, w- walk us through, walk us through the reason you ask this question and what, what this month tells us.

Okay, so the reason we ask this question, which is right track, wrong track, it's the gold standards of political polling.

It provides political context, the way people are looking at everything from who they might vote for to how different policies are resonating.

And you know, the theory basically goes that when people think things are on the right track, they're more amenable to government initiatives.

When they think things are on the wrong track, well, e- they're either, A, looking for a change of government or looking for a drastic change of direction.

But it is very open-ended.

It's not saying what are the drivers, what is it causing.

What, how do they fit together, or do they fit together?

[chuckles]

...

I mean, you're getting bombarded with information.

And then, of course, we're making notes.

We're...

Vincent over in Montreal is doing the flyers.

Kevin's going through the people, um, people he talks to us, as does Lily.

Cool

How does that work sometimes, Peter?

Well, I think populism is an agenda where the wisdom of the common people, um, dictates and breaks down the duopoly or, you know, the power of the elites.

Um, now, if you accept that you've got the common person and the elites, which is a sign of A democracy that isn't really functioning very well.

Um, polling, or I would argue as someone that does social research and polling for political parties, polling is about testing ideas, getting feedback loops going.

It's not about saying, "Oh, we've got 78% support for this, we better go and do it." It is more understanding where polling fits into the social contract for change, and I think Butler would've been totally within his rights to get a, um, a pulse check of the attitudes towards what is a really significant social scheme, um, which is also a really significant line item in the budget, and a growing one.

And again, i- in ours, there, there was support restricting NDIS spending, there was support for it.

Um, the highest support base there again were our friends in One Nation, interestingly.

Can you run us through what people think about the economy and, and, and, and th- where they're, where we're going?