Matt Wong

Emily Coltraine founded Voice for Victoria – a new media channel that grew to approximately 200,000 Victorian subscribers. Initially conceived as a mental health coping project for Emily, it quickly grew in popularity as many turned to ‘Voice’ for news and commentary that couldn’t be found on legacy or new media channels.

Voice for Victoria continues to publish news and educational pieces on Victoria, voting, Australian politics and political culture in general.

We discussed:

• The origins of Voice for Victoria
• Coping mechanisms
• Lying data
• Fear based campaigns
• NSW Premier not scared enough
• Trump not scared enough
• Risks for the immunocompromised
• The Victorian election result
• Greens party are ‘infants’
• Making people care about politics
• Ian Cook and the fight against corruption
• Authenticity and Fiona Patten (Sex Party, Reason Party)
• Liberals can’t even win their religious minority base
• John Howard is frozen in time
• Being recognised in public
• Taking viewer questions: recessions, mental health, work ethic, education reform, surveillance, memes, dating, future of politics.

VOICE FOR VICTORIA
https://www.instagram.com/voiceforvictoria
https://twitter.com/Voice4Victoria
https://www.facebook.com/voiceforvictoria
https://voiceforvictoria.com.au

As New Media takes off around the world, sometimes it actually scoops legacy media…and with only a fraction of the budget, staff, experience and resources of giant media conglomerates. 6 News is one of those New Media players with their news coverage being syndicated by Australia’s national broadcaster (the ABC) as well as commercial networks.

The founder of 6 News, Leonardo Puglisi, makes regular appearances on major shows such as The Drum. Despite being only 15 years old, he now leads a national news organisation staffed by young volunteer reporters across Australia, sometimes being the only news organisation to provide rolling coverage of breaking news, as was the case with the Dec 2022 shooting in Queensland where 2 police officers were killed.

We sat down with Leo to find out how 6 News came to be, how they achieve ‘unbiased’ coverage, and how to reach his generation through media.

LEONARDO PUGLISI
https://twitter.com/Leo_Puglisi6
https://twitter.com/6NewsAU
https://www.patreon.com/6newsau

This is a true tale of theft, drugs and a bakery. Jordan Dittloff made headlines in 2015 for stealing $277,993.58 from 47 clients of his travel agency Ace Travel in Victoria.

As an award winning travel agency and a community leader in regional Victoria, Jordan’s crimes rocked the Colac community. Many, including his 70 year old future mother in law, lost thousands of dollars saved up for their ‘trip of a lifetime’. Trading insolvent, Jordan effectively ran a travel ponzi scheme relying on future holiday bookings to pay for past holiday bookings.

Eventually the scheme collapsed and Jordan disappeared, sparking media attention. After 2 weeks he handed himself into police and was bailed pending a court hearing for his crimes.

At the same time, Jordan ran a second business: drug dealing in Melbourne, profits from which he used to fund his own drug habit. Whilst on bail, Jordan was arrested as part of Victoria Police drug sting operation in a Melbourne alleyway.

In the end the court sentenced Jordan to jail 3 years (20 months non-parole) as well as granting compensation orders for his victims to be repaid.

In prison Jordan completed a business degree and in the five years since release is completing a post-graduate law degree and has repaid ~$35,000 to victims. He has worked at the same bakery since release.

He now credits his time in prison as a catalyst for reform and is building a drug and alcohol free life of discipline and responsibility unlike his behaviour displayed before prison.

Other issues we discussed:

• What prison is really like
• Criminal justice reform
• How the different generations see criminal justice
• How governments respond to community feelings
• Why we must reject the progressive narrative ‘blame the system’ for crime
• Why we must not ban criminal record checks
• Practising radical honesty
• The political system self-selects for dishonesty
• The potential for an honest politician
• What is freedom? Do we understand it?
• Which media represents average people?
• Supporting the right to protest
• Removing enlightenment values from institutions renders democracies as tyrannies
• The future for humanity: Wall-E
• The death throes of the state
• Rising corporate power
• Friendly Jordies and Michael West Media
• Taking the pulse of the community
• Embracing fragmentation
• The AI revolution: ChatGPT

JORDAN DITTLOFF
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-dittloff
jdittloff@deakin.edu.au

For 20 years, Luke Donnellan was the Victorian Labor MP for the outer suburban electorate of Narre Warren. He served as the Minister for Roads and Road Safety and Minister for Ports (2014-2018) and then as the Minister for Child Protection and the Minister for Disability, Ageing and Carers (2018-2021).

Before the Nov 2022 state election, the Labor Party denied Luke preselection for his seat, and was thus pushed out of parliament altogether.

Luke joined Discernable for an open conversation about the lives of everyday Victorians. What do they care about? Why do they keep electing Labor governments?

We also delved into the ethics of protests, social justice, and the corruption tendencies of long term governments. As the Minister for the most vulnerable cohort of Victorians during Covid-19 (the elderly), we also explored his thinking on vaccine mandates, segregation and community safety.

Watch the full interview at:

• We discussed:
• The grass roots instincts of Daniel Andrews
• Door knocking your electorate
• Pandering to minorities in the electorate
• Labor/Liberal comes in cycles
• Where the Liberal Party went wrong
• Door knocking is the key to success
• The future for both political parties: the outer suburbs
• Why the north and west of Melbourne have underdeveloped infrastructure
• Who Victorians voted for – the rise of minor parties
• The baseball bats for Daniel Andrews never came
• Everyday Australians don’t care about corruption
• The dismissal of Casey Council which is still in caretaker mode
• Regulatory capture and systemic ‘grey corruption’ in Victoria
• Stale governments become corrupt governments
• Renewal inside the Labor Party of Victoria
• Factional wars: Labor Socialist Left vs Labor Right
• Liberals are stuck in the Baby Boomer generation
• Australians have moved left
• The Victorian Socialists’ weird success in the election
• Greens taking over country electorate of Polwarth
• Labor Party surprised at the election result
• The internal mood toward Daniel Andrews
• How Luke was pushed out of parliament
• Driven by Social Justice
• Rugby as early intervention against crime
• Pacific Islanders: God and Rugby
• Child Protection: Foster Care, Kinship Care and interventions
• A billion dollars for wire rope barriers on highways
• Irrational objections from the Country Fire Authority
• In politics you write your own rules
• The Victoria crackdown on protests
• Chinese protests vs Melbourne protests
• Relative ethics: what the people want they get
• Are lockdowns morally good or bad?
• Are mandates morally good or bad?
• Daniel Andrews’ victory speech double speak
• The impending economic recession
• Why the left wing won’t do longform media
• Labor Party communications discipline

How do left-wing/progressive/woke people think? Is there a way for the right wing to speak to the left? Why do they misunderstand one another?

Rob McMullan joins us to discuss the psychological differences of those loosely defined as politically left and right wing. Ultimately, Rob’s hope is that the moderates on either side will find a way to communicate and cooperate.

Watch the full interview at:

We discussed:

• What is ‘the collective good’?
• The left have no interest in cooperation
• Claims of ‘hate speech’
• Each side is blind to the other
• Left Wing Caretaking vs Right Wing Capitalising
• Case study: what is marriage?
• Fairy tale thinking on world politics
• How conservatives should talk to the left wing
• Interpersonal empathy does not scale
• A dysfunctional marriage between the left and the right
• Case study: would Dan Bilzerian care about a speech on moralism?
• Gina Rinehart calls out Netball Australia
• Conservatives in power are too comfortable
• How to speak to the left: emotional validation
• The lack of social consensus = pain for the left
• Differentiating the ‘woke left’ from the sensible left wing
• Freedom from the law of scarcity
• ‘Boomerservatives’
• The left has a greater verbal ability than conservatives
• Wokeism is the evolution of religion
• The Star Trek reality
• The life of a Twitter worker: caretaking beyond reason
• How conservatives should speak to the left
• Powerful conservatives have checked out
• The left will double down even when it ‘hits their hip pockets’
• Empathetic Thinking vs Systematic Thinking
• Daniel Andrews’ hypocrisy of excluding some Victorians
• The long arc of social technology created by the empathy brains
• The empathetic herd
• How women speak to one another
• ‘Herds vs packs’ and the differing strategies and moralities
• ‘Individuals vs the collective’ is incorrect
• Purity spirals
• We need a new aristocracy to balance the left
• The left should pay with ‘gratitude’
• Solutions for the future of Australia
• A new strategy: Separate and Co-operate
• Vaccine mandates driven by social and herd consensus

ROB MCMULLAN
https://twitter.com/TheMcMullan