says do this lawyer what do you want to do the matter of this debt that this woman knows? and he said let me consult with my client. he makes a phonecall and comes back and says your honor we are going to drop the case. at this point me in the debtor are like what happened and we are scratching our heads. we walk out of the hallway and there's a guy from legal services who says basically i will tell you what just happened to the bee you said the magic word in the magic words are prove your case. in other words this couple simply by showing up in court impressing back a little bit asking for the barest amount of evidence of legitimacy of this debt and information of this debt was enough to make the person suing back off the whole thing and crumbled. it was this moment where was so funny this excel spreadsheet in the course in georgiana moment

they comes under the faintest bit of scrutiny it just vanishes into nothing. >> host: that's amazing. you mentioned earlier that the whole chasing of paper and the whole zealousness of this debt collection business got to a larger height during the great recession after the financial crisis because people simply have less money to pay and they have more debt that accumulated. you talk about the term shadow economy which i find very interesting. in the term shadow banking usually it's about hedge funds and the cayman islands tax shelter. the shadow economy is something different. it's something you'd discuss with regard to the people on the bottom of this. i want to know if you can talk about whether you think those people how that will evolve going forward from where we are now. >> guest: the way that i stumbled into this when i was in

georgia and looking at the lives of these debtors who were being sued in court over this debt i wanted to get a sense of what their lives were like. one of them told me that she bought her car from a special car dealership that offered cater almost exclusively to people with bad credit. i went out to this dealership and what became clear was they were paying an enormous premium for the bad credit. in the words of this car dealer their money was worth 70 cents on the dollar and a car that should have cost $9000 cost $13,000. in fact another debtor that i followed, he had his bank account cleaned out. there was a judgment against him. they found him and cleaned out every cent he had in a savings account which was causing him to default on his car payment which

compromise his ability to get to work. in his this particular situation he had a gps device on the engine of his car so the moment he went into default on its car loan which he was paying the premium on boom the engine was shut off. this is the world that people inhabit you have really bad credit. i visited this housing complex all people who had very bad credit. they live in this world where they are paying the highest possible rate of interest and there is basically no trust. creditors don't trust that they are going to pay the bills so they get stuck with this. i'm on the one hand you can understand from the creditor's perspective these are risky investments but it's also hard to see people who are so poor having much of their income

devoured and these are the ones that are getting the most gouged by it. >> host: when you talk to the ftc or the consumer protection board have you gotten a sense that this is an issue that they are trying to do something about about, helping other people but also just generally. the fact that there are such heinous interest rates and payday loans and credit cards for continued to get -- the people have the least ability to pay. i think you mentioned one instance where one of the people in the book said if i hadn't been hit with the extra charge i would have been able to pay this. we could have negotiated. if it had not been for the shadowy financial stuff. you see any understanding and getting to the root of this at the washington level? >> guest: i think the consumer

protection bureau which was the brainchild of mt. senator elizabeth warren was a good move and they are starting to make a difference. we will have new rules coming out next year that will affect debt collection. they have been aggressive. if i were in charge there would be more funding. a lot of this will come down to how much resource do they have to go after the bad actors. the consumer financial protection bureau might have a budget of four or $500 million but to put that in perspective if you look at the amount of money jpmorgan chase set aside for litigation reserve in 2013 they put it aside to defend themselves the consumer financial protection bureau budget is 2% of that. so you get the sense that they are doing good work that they are kind of outgunned here. i think that you know hopefully

if anything comes from the book i hope they give them a shot in the arm. another thing come i was on the phone the other day with the justice department. they have this operation chokepoint. the idea behind this is as hard to go after these payday lenders that do the worst stuff so what the justice department starting to do is go after the payment processors. if i am a payday collection agency and doing bad stuff i still have to rely on it payment processor to take your debit card information and take the money. the justice department started to say hey payment processors if you are dealing with unscrupulous payday lenders we are going to go after you. there's a pushback about that because there is a strong payday loan lobbying set that is pushing back against this.

i think we need initiatives like that on a larger scale if we are going to see the change that needs to happen in the industry. >> host: hopefully in reading your book that is eliminated and hopefully can be a catalyst to at least increasing the funding. at the end of your book and i guess towards the end of how many years of research? >> guest: in one fashion or another it's taken four years. >> host: at the end of the time you go back to buffalo into an epilogue of the characters and individuals involved in the debt collection side aaron brendan and jimmy and see where they are in the most recent period of time. what was that like? >> guest: i think the most surprising thing i encountered in writing this wrap-up of this epilogue was that what i found from theresa who is the former marine. she's the one that paid the wrong collector, the collector that somehow had gotten a hold of her debt.

i was curious about how she was doing and just as the book was about ready to go into my own version she called me up and said you are not going to believe this but i just got a call from another collector on that same debt which was puzzling because when aaron siegel who was the rightful owner of it had discovered there have been friday did the right thing. he retired the debt. he didn't sell it. he put it in the hard drive and their rest in peace. and yet someone was collecting on this debt still. so i called the agency. i wrote them a letter actually and contacted theresa and i said i am asking about this call you are sending to this woman and threatening to sue her. what is your claim to ownership of this debt that i thought come i didn't think i would hear from anyone and if i did hear from

someone it would be someone like from a chop shop in buffalo or something. turns out i talked to a guy the owner lived in beverly hills. he did very well for himself on when i asked him about this he kind of said let me look into this. oh yeah this debt belongs to the portfolio of debt that i purchased from a debt dealer in florida that was double soul. a lot of the numbers have been manipulated. his attitude was not shock the kind of like this is par for the course in this business. you are just purchasing data and you never know what you are purchasing. it was this kind of chilling and to the whole thing but of course you are not just purchasing data. you are purchasing the right to collect some people's debts and a profoundly affecting their lives. somehow or another whoever stole

it from aaron must have sold it to someone else as well and to this day theresa's debt is floating around in cyberspace and someone else will buy it and try to collect on it. somehow that more than anything else seemed to speak to the chaos and dysfunctionality of this industry. >> host: you -- you give one message to consumers and regulators to fix fix it what is the take-away? >> guest: as consumers got to be skeptical of who's calling on the phone and you can't assume blindly that they have a legitimate claim to the debt and you have to do your homework and make sure there are legal obligations to pay this debt and the equivalent of driving defensively with your financial reaction to these calls. on a larger level there's a few things that need to happen. one is there needs to be better

enforcement and raid -- resources like the financial protection sparrow and two the banks have to be more careful about what they pass along and make sure the information is correct and three i think there needs to be a change in the way the support system works. i'm 90% no-show no-show rate an obvious default judgments is creating these garnishments. so there's a fair amount that needs to be done. >> host: i want to thank you for coming here today and for writing this book and for bringing this information, the stories of information on what happens to these people on all sides of the debt collection chain and what can be done at the higher levels on a regulatory basis. i congratulate you for writing it. i loved reading it. i read it in a very quick setting and i couldn't stop reading it so thank you for being here and thank you for writing the book in the best of luck with it. >> guest: thanks so much.

>> that was "after words" booktv's signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policymakers and others familiar with their material. "after words" airs every weekend on booktv at 10:00 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9:00 p.m. on sunday and 12:00 a.m. on monday. and you can also watch "after words" on line. go to booktv.org on click on "after words" in the booktv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. julia gilliard is the first e-mail from mr. foster a preachy talk about her life and experiences in office. speaking at the brookings institution in washington d.c.. this is about an hour and 20 minutes. >> good morning everybody. i'm rebecca went through.

i am the director of the center for universal education here at the brookings institution. it's my great pleasure to welcome all of you to this wonderful panel we have. i will be making a personal introduction and shortly turning it over to my colleagues. we have here tom mann who is a senior fellow in governance studies with us and of course needs no introduction to all of you but of course julia gillard australia's first prime minister and e.g. dionne -- first female prime minister. [laughter] >> she really looks great, doesn't she? ..

[laughter] if you have not seen her book, it is wonderful. i highly recommend it and you we will get those recommendations from my colleagues. and you we will be sticking around for a little bit, won't you? anyone who wants to talk,

get talk get a book signed etc. i will not dive into the subject of the book. i will leave that to the panelists, but i do do want to make a personal introduction to pay for, who i first met a year ago. she joined us as a distinguished fellow here at brookings working primarily on global issues. she probably will be very high level, conceptual former heads of states are often very, very big picture. picture. indeed that is true, but how wrong i was in terms of how strong her intellect is. any economist who would like to go toe to toe with julia gillard on different rates of standard deviation is welcome to do so. you may lose. as a former minister of education myself and my

entire team was quickly impressed at how well she knew education how thoughtful and technical she was. she certainly has an amazing asset. excellent strategist. we spend lots of time here at brookings and our work in particular briefing global leaders, sharing information on global education, trends, policy recommendations, and she was one of the quickest studies we ever had. we threw probably three days, like to college courses condensed into three days in terms of getting up to speed. she took a few notes. i thought i wonder if if she is not interested.

on the third day she had an interview and she was on it, every it every single fact, every data., big picture strategy. ever since then we have had incredible high regard, and julia has been strategic and helpful in thinking through our work in terms of constructing research and analysis and impacting global strategy and key initiatives. lastly, on a very personal note, she is incredibly warm and generous as a colleague. of course at the very beginning we said you know, how should we prefer to you? prime minister gillard? and she said, please just call me julia. julia. in short order we were talking about the pool in australia and when we could come to visit. but she has been very warm

and generous with her time with me personally and every member of my team talking to interns, research assistants, senior executive fellows around the world. so it is a pleasure and honor to have her in the brookings family. and with and with that i know that i also wanted to say not only with us at brookings it is pleasure, but also a a great pleasure for our global education community. not too long ago she joined as the chair of the global partnership and we did not -- i did not get notes beforehand, but i am sure she would echo all of these things. the entire the entire global community is happy to have you in the role of the sector. with that over tu. >> you. >> thank you very much.

>> thank you. [applauding] >> a big a big thank you to rebecca and her colleagues here. it is it is nice to have this opportunity to launch my story at brookings. i, to want to acknowledge those here and to special friends as well my policy directors partner for much of the time i was prime minister and these achievements are shared by him in a major way. and also here in the front if you like any of the photos it is because he took them. it is great to have colleagues here as well. i i wanted to start by reading a few words from my book "my story".

i first met barack obama at the g20 in korea and japan respectively. he advised me not to set my expectations too high. what happens to the audacity of hope. [laughter] by the time the nato summit later that year we had established such a report that the banter continued. a photograph looking like i am telling him off as he laughed, another serious occasion catches a serious discussion about our time. president obama said he envied the opportunity to explain agendas to the nation. are you mad i said with

accompanying overacting. that overacting. that has consisted of 20 questions, ten from the opposition. he was inclined to agree his statement was a bit mad. so that is diplomacy in this book. on reflection as i was writing that, that, i could understand what he was reaching for. i think it was the opportunity that unfortunately leaders and politicians do not get much of the opportunity to talk directly to the community not mediated through third parties whether through a tv news director or a journalist. we don't have as many opportunities as we would

like to have a direct conversation. having the opportunity to buy the book is you can have that direct conversation and put it out there. i hope many of you do read the book. what you will encounter is in some ways not at all an american story but a very australian story which starts with me coming from a migrant family. i ended up being prime minister of the nation, a very different system then here we find it saves a hell of a lot of time because you don't have to have debates about whether or not president obama was born in the united states. [laughter] you can just get to political arguments and the like. it is a very australian story. it would have been impossible for me an

unmarried woman, childless woman, childless, an atheist, to have succeeded in american politics in the way i have been australian politics, and i think that says something about the contrast and compare between our two nations. he will encounter debates and issues that are very familiar to people in the us and ones that we face together. the book canvases at some length our engagement in the war in afghanistan, countering terrorism which we did alongside you and so many other nations. i went to more than 20 funerals for soldiers lost in the conflict in afghanistan. as we now see, conflict is spreading throughout the middle east with the so-called islamic state.

ideal extensively with the shared challenge of climate change, with our grand adventure and putting a cap on carbon. a political argument which has seen bipartisanship and our nation lost. both sides of politics speak about elections on the fact that they would enact animations skin. i predicted would become the flashpoint partisan issue. and yet it has become the flashpoint partisan issue of our decade. particularly the radicalized

site. i canvas that in the book. i also talk about the way in which we work with you and other nations to try and kickstart the global economy after the global financial crisis and some of the challenges that are still their to make sure that in our nation and yours though our economy has never had some of the dreadful the clients that you have, but people can realize the true promise of opportunity and social mobility for the future. the the book canvases some of the strategic shifts particularly in our region of the world, explosive economic growth in asia and the rise of china economic rise strategic desire for a larger and more modern military force.

my conclusions are overwhelmingly optimistic, and icon to both optimistic conclusions conclusions informed by my experience as prime minister impossible for our nation, nation, australia, to improve its relationship with us and china at the same time. you could only improve the relationship with one at the cost of the relationship with the other. i set out to prove that that was not right. during my time we took a step forward with an alliance with the us and now trained us marines in our northern territory. pres. president obama said he wanted a harsh environment for them to train. i said boy, boy have i got a harsh environment for you. [laughter]

they train in 100-degree heat and 90 percent humidity i'm probably not on their list of most liked people, like people, but we took a big step forward in the alliance at the same time we took a big step forward with china one of the few nations on earth to be able to strike such a compact. it is is with that in spirit -- experience about engaging with a sense of optimism that i come to the big strategic shifts. i talk about my first passion, education. i came to believe that access to education is the key to transforming life.

simply because of access to good, quality schooling. in some ways it was a matter of choice. but there was an element of luck. i grew up in the days you went to a local government school. he could not canvas for the best school to go to to, and we could not afford a private education. happily happily the local schools were great schools. and so that element of luck you have a sliding door moment. where my life would be if my parents had moved and why we should put any files through

that kind of lottery. why wyatt should dictate what kind of opportunity they get in life. it is continuing to drive me now. i certainly talk about that extensively. and finally -- and i i hope this book does get received on this particular.-- i talk about gender and. i found this the hardest chapter to write. i titled it the curious concept of gender. i was conscious that i was in some ways i was the best person to write it.

i was conscious that because it happened to me in some ways i was in the worst position to write it because it would be hard to be dispassionate. i have tried to express why it is we receive women's model of differently in advanced societies why it calls for sexism and a brand of misogyny which i would have thought no longer existed in my country until i saw it played out in newspapers politics, and demonstrations a kind of corrosive grip from the shock jocks including alan jones who calls for me to be put in a bag and dropped out to sea. some of this is very serious.

i was able to use some of it for comedic effect. [laughter] there were laughs to be had along the way but their are serious reflections on women and, judge on the appearance, obsess about family status the issues with me, i don't have children how can i be in touch with family life the issue has been, she does have children. well hell, who is looking after them? these are issues where we don't let women win. there is a deeper issue. something in the back of the brain whispers to us that we expect to see men acting and

commanding and women appearing and empathizing. when you see a woman acting and commanding it is easy to say she has to be pretty ruthless a bit of a -- and i will let you supply the next word. how many times have we had these conversations ourselves about other women? as long as we allow that to dictate to us images of women then we hold women back. we live in a very privileged places the basic right to go to school at a different stage, but even here their

are things we need to do about images and acceptance of women as leaders to take the next step in society, even society, even as society does everything we can to reach out to those women who are still struggling for the most basic of rights. so that is the book. book. i hope you enjoy it, and i am now going to subject myself to what probably will be the hardest question questions i have faced on the book today. thank you very much. [applauding] >> thank you, julia. great to have you here. here. first, i want to say thank you to rebecca. her center does more good and she and her center do more good than any six of us combined. it was natural that she brought julia here to

brookings, part of an effort to try to merge australia into the united states. we like elections in new south wales or australia as much as kansas or wisconsin or new york. i want to acknowledge my friend ken beasley. we we met 41 years ago this fall and pre- k , and he is one of the most finest friends and principled politicians i have i have ever met. great to have you here. and julia said that hers is a relentless free australian story. i will try to turn it into an american story so that she can sell books in this country. [laughter] i think what is most obviously relevant at this moment given the possible candidacies in the 2016

election is gender. this is an extra ordinary chapter. thank you to my intern who had these passages jump out at him. let me just read you these. i would like like you to elaborate a little bit more. stereotypes whispered to us that a women leader cannot be likable because she must have given up the nurturing and feeling. you write, if you are a woman politician it is impossible to win on the question of family. if you do not have children you are characterized as out of touch with mainstream wives. if you do have children then children, then heavens, who is looking after them? common sense would tell you that if schoolchildren filed into a classroom everyday and instead of saying good morning ms. smith said good

morning, fat, ugly, dumb bitch, that dumb bitch, that would impact on there level of respect for the roman. somehow that common sense fled the scene. and lastly you were with anna bligh in queensland during the floods. just to read this passage. this was portrayed in the media in terms like these, yesterday as the floodwaters threatened her state capital , she went looking like she had been working all night beside her julia gillard stood in a a dark suit nodding. what was that like? >> thank you for that very extensive question. [laughter] on this gender bit, i have cried -- tried to unpack it

and give real-world examples some of the silly things about women and appearance she did a remarkable job. any political leader standing next to her would have come off second base because she put in a miraculous performance. the fact all of that ended up defaulting down to what we were wearing i think says something about how women are judged. i put that in there because a bit like the incident type put in error about my first overseas trip visiting troops in afghanistan and then the secretary general of nato and the report of the meeting in australia, it read julia gillard wearing a

white jacket and black pants greeted by sec. gen. of nato. no need to mention that he was wearing a suit and tie. so in these key moments when important things are happening our nation threatened by national disasters around the country, our troops engaged in a war causing combat fatality the emphasis is on appearance, i think is limiting for women and we have to get through it and over it. if i had one piece of advice a woman who runs for president in 2016. one piece of advice dealing with any gendered criticism or focus on appearance or focus on family and parenting that burden actually is not hers.

i tried to pick that burden up when i was prime minister. but it is not hers. it is actually ours to engage in the debate in a way which calls for the end of gender criticism and i look back on my time now when it got particularly naughty with ditch the witch and the rest of it and think how powerful it would have been if in that moment and australian business person had entered the public space and said i did not vote for julia gillard in 2010, won't vote for her in 2013 but we do not have a national conversation like this. if they would have been someone prepared to do that, it would have been tremendously powerful. if i can give one piece of

advice to any woman who runs for the american presidency it would be, think about those voices actually be on the terrain of combat of politics that can help steer national conversation back to what they should be on which his capacities for not gender of leaders and policy, good, bad or indifferent. >> can i follow up? i went back and looked and interview and 2009. the fourth side of the gender question. we were talking about the anger in the us. there were a lot of anger

and it was working-class anger, and often working often working-class men who had suffered a lot through globalization. what you said was we were confronted with the politics of the ordinary guy versus the elites the latte sipping elites. you said it was driven by real problems, and not simply raw feelings. i am curious if you can talk about how one talks about that line which is particular for centerleft parties who are unstable. working-class voters and certainly the coalition has frayed to some in the united states and australia. >> that coalition has frayed in australia and i think we see issues for centerleft social democratic parties around the world. in my time as prime minister

we worked post the gsc. there was a ripple of fear about what could have been and might still be because it is hard when this wave goes around the world and you try to explain to people what is happening has something to do with the subprime mortgage market in the united states. it is like what and then then try to explain the ongoing ramifications. and in our nation people were not doing it too tough. unemployment did not go up too high. government was engaged in economic stimulus. that did not feel too bad. in the messy recovery for us and around the world, people kept getting these economic shocks the value of there

home probably had not gone down but certainly was not going up at the rate it used to savings had taken a big knock. many australians are invested in shares in big government instrumentalities and got big shocks from those shares going backward. so very working-class people would be receiving this bad economic news. when you come at them with a big issue, yes issue, yes, it is going to discomfort. for social democratic parties there is still the need to fuse very important change agendas with a great deal of reassurance. certainly part of that formula has been workplace regulation and social safety nets.

when we get that working well we can offer sufficient reassurance. on this question of women in, one of the things that i have really noticed in the more benign days since i have left politics and you take yourself out of the combat public views you change quickly, and i and i get a lot of very obviously working blue-collar men come up to me now to due in and in daringly blunt australian way do so. i did not vote for you. thanks, mate. thanks for. thanks for that. but would you mind signing this for my daughter. there was, was, i suspect, something about the days of my immediate that made him feel a bit uncomfortable. the next phase of the gender

revolution a woman leading the country. now it has happened. there is this sense as workingmen look at their daughters it would be great. i think if we can harness some of that all of this discussion about gender and opportunity for daughters we can change a lot of people's minds. >> well well, what a delight to be here with julia and kim and our many friends and colleagues as ej said, their are these three strange students of american politics, himself, norm ornstein, and myself that have become utterly obsessed with australia its

people, its institutions including compulsory attendance at the polls which we approve of. [laughter] its policies and its politics. norm is here as well as ej. we have had opportunities to travel to australia to visit with you and when you are in town. we recently read of an learned of the passing of god wetland. we, too, like many australians immediately turned to refresh ourselves and memories about his years, decade as labor leader and his term ending under the most extraordinary circumstances. but the beginning of the new labor party it is really

about time don't you think that we finally get our appointment as honorary citizens of australia? we are waiting for it. i have read this book with immense pleasure. it is a fascinating read. it is about politics and policy. it is direct lean in its writing, clear frank and julia is quite prepared to be self-critical self-critical, to say when she thinks she made the wrong call and why. but in so many ways it is connected to american politics. so the idea of having a discussion, conversation

about some of the links really sits with me. i remember well julia your first visit here in opposition. you came to a friday lunch that senator ted kennedy was speaking at and you all had a very interesting exchange. the next time you came as minister of education a seminar at brookings with a a group of education reformers which leads to my question we now our past respective past of education reform overlaps a good deal. ours began began in some ways with governor's leading up republican and democratic governors clinton and bush 43 to some extent even 41 deeply involved in this national standards testing

measures transparency, accountability. it was fascinating to see. now if you look at america it has become caught up in the same debates the common core standards which were developed to voluntarily by the states are now being disowned by some of the former champions like the current republican governor of the state of louisiana. my question to you is, did you say similar opposition when you were in acting your education reforms? and will your reforms survive a change of government? >> it is in some ways a different set of issues for us and in some ways the same set of issues. the tools for reform and individual schools, what what we talk about, what you

talk about it is very much the same, but in terms of the government believers the national government and australia has more levers in its hand to force change in schools than the national government here. i have had the opportunity to have that conversation with secretary duncan for example, and i think he would pine for the kind of levers we have. there is a great labor saying, never did between a premier and a a bucket of money, a dangerous place to be. one of the ways we implemented our education reforms is made money which would flow from the national government to schools contingent on adopting the agenda. around around my state colleagues, there were some who were enthusiastic

and some sour faced, but at the end of the day everyone was going to take the money. because in our system we slow money not only to government schools but nongovernment schools, we can impose , negotiate impose, agree, whatever word, whatever word you want to use, change again to. that means when we agree there would be a national curriculum of the various reforms i enacted the transparency is here to stay you can see the results and national testing in the context of the levels of advantages and disadvantages the money supplied for the teaching task and not only compare

the national average in testing but compare with similar schools. here are two schools teaching quite underprivileged children. why is one doing much better than the other? i think that we will stay. the national curriculum has been on a a bit of an adventure where the incoming minister for education appointed some people who were immediately and in my view rightly viewed as quite partisan on the issue of education reform. the fear that that generated actually did not get realized in their final report. an ideological kind of stick

to beat children over the head with. the funding reforms funding flow to match need. children from the most disadvantaged homes can get a great education, but it costs more to achieve that for them. educating those children that locked in overwhelmingly by intergovernmental agreement. the current the current prime minister said he would keep the whole lot. and whilst others are in a better position to talk i would anticipate school funding reform we will be one of the big issues.

and. and i certainly think it is a great debate to be an because it is quintessentially about whether or not the nation is prepared to make available the education every child should have. >> a follow-up. >> it goes to minority government. the morning late morning, afternoon of election day 2010. it took us what it took you 17 days as i recall to put together a minority government. i am still fascinated how you did that. the book helped. i hope you would share that with us.

it was especially difficult because of development of politics within your own party but tell us how minority government differs from us divided government and how you can get things done in the minority government that we can't possibly do these days? >> and did any of the people who supported you get money in swiss bank accounts? [laughter] >> absolutely no swiss bank accounts, i can guarantee you. interestingly no one asked for a swiss bank account. our system is the westminster system. whether or not you govern depends entirely on whether you have a majority in the house of representatives and our system is one of very rigorous block voting

by political parties. parties. whilst here you we will have a lot of debates on for example, waxman markey climate change, a democrat or republican would vote for it, it whilst you would have those kinds of debates and australia, everyone in the labor party will vote for it. whilst our conservative parties maintain a fiction of freedom to cross the aisle, you aisle, you want to in reality block votes all the time. the only limited examples of people just individually voting on some conscious questions that are defined as conscience questions, things like abortion and same-sex marriage or you get people making individual decisions and mosaics of political party members sitting for one proposition or another. my task was to add enough

independents to get the votes. i needed to get for. in the first instance we negotiated with the green political party. that that required me to be satisfied that they could be welded in a way that would keep him on the straight and narrow. they wanted to enjoy power power, and i would never do that, but we were able to negotiate policy issues and carbon pricing was one we could work through. and then i needed to secure other votes. the most likely were to country independents and a man from tasmania

history is written now as if it was inevitable, but going in the independent from tasmania i have never met. anything i knew about him as a person in our intelligence community had objected to the way in which the howard government has used intelligence to justify us engaging in the iraqi war. a familiar story. and then they became very good friends and actually came to the launch of my book and australia. i did not no them well. i dealt with them once over a student income support issue, and that was really at.