Jeremy Cordeaux is in the garage with Pete and Gary for the first day of spring, and there is plenty to cover. He pays a warm tribute to Dolly Parton, larger than life and loved by everyone who met her, then turns to the political earthquake in the west: One Nation's Luke Herdegen taking nearly 40 per cent of the primary vote and 57 per cent two-party-preferred in the Secret Harbour by-election, a seat Labor held for 40 years. He calls it strategic, psychological and a genuine shot across the bows of both major parties, backed by Red Bridge and Newspoll numbers putting One Nation ahead of Labor nationally.

He argues Anthony Albanese is "delusional" for insisting he has to beat One Nation because "we owe it to history," lists the government's record of higher taxes, higher debt, falling house values and electricity up by billions, and questions a Prime Minister whose diary is full of overseas trips, including a Pacific Islands Forum most island leaders are skipping. He rejects using the Nepal avalanche disaster to justify net zero, restating that Australia could switch everything off and change the climate not at all, and returns to Adelaide, where the Malinauskas government plans to cut down another 400 trees, more than 1,000 in total, for a $96 million, three-day MotoGP-style race most locals do not want. Plus this day in history from the outbreak of World War Two and the discovery of the Titanic to Rear Window and Barry Gibb.

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Jeremy Cordeaux is back in the garage with Pete and Gary, and opens with a milestone: Andy Martin reports 10.1 million people checked out the show across all platforms in the last 28 days. He then turns to the record-breaking "Stop the Chop" petition, more than 45,000 signatures carried book by book up the steps of Parliament House, to save trees of significance the government wants to cut down for sport and events, and warns Labor there is always a price to pay in the court of public opinion.

He questions why Treasurer Jim Chalmers says he is worried about the coalition and One Nation influencing the $4.5 trillion superannuation industry, but not the union movement that already sits close to it, and argues Labor has its eye on super to fund a renewables push that has seen electricity costs rise. He defends free speech and Pauline Hanson's right to take her 18C case to the High Court, citing Voltaire; flags the "unintended consequence" of paying $40,000 to $60,000 a day to anchored fuel tankers with nowhere to store the fuel; asks whether an AFL player is really worth $5 million a season; and makes a heartfelt case against putting parents and grandparents into aged care, recalling three generations under one roof. Plus this day in history from Krakatoa and Halley's Comet to Mountbatten, Mary Poppins and Don Bradman.

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Jeremy Cordeaux is back in a cold, wet garage with Pete and Gary, and the headline number is staggering: federal debt has passed $1 trillion, a one with twelve zeros after it. He works through what that means, roughly $29.6 billion a year in interest, about $569 million every single week, and contrasts it with 2006, when Peter Costello declared Australia debt-free, sold Telstra and set up the Future Fund. He argues a government this poor at managing money has little to show for the debt beyond "a masterclass in what not to do."

He also breaks down how David Speers, in his view, sprung a trap on One Nation's newly elected member David Farley on Insiders, turning a reasonable point about skilled visas into a "new member goes rogue" headline, and warns One Nation to stop being naive with a hostile press. Along the way: the 4.5% unemployment rate and 16,000 jobs lost in a month that barely made the news, the tobacco excise that has collapsed from $16.3 billion to $4 billion while illicit smokes supply 80% of the market, why there is no excise on fast food or a sugar tax, agreement (for once) with the Greens that the government runs "a protection racket" for the gambling industry, Ben Carroll's promise of ten free dental clinics in a broke Victoria, the Malinauskas government misreading the felling of Adelaide's parkland trees, 103-year-old Spitfire pilot Harry Young flying again, and a contested reflection on the 60th anniversary of the Wave Hill walk-off. Plus this day in history from Neil Armstrong to Sean Connery and the liberation of Paris.

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Jeremy Cordeaux is back in the garage with Pete and Gary, and the theme is priorities. He returns to Health Minister Mark Butler's line that there is "no money lying around" to keep the over-65s health rebate, then points to a gun buyback that will pay up to $10,000 a gun and cost, by his reckoning, some $2.6 billion, to crush firearms he says could be stored, sold or put in museums. He asks the travel-advisory question nobody wants to touch: if the government warns us not to visit a long list of countries for our own safety, why is there no reciprocal caution about migration from those same places?

He also takes aim at the $2.5 billion bailout of the Tomago aluminium smelter, arguing Labor's own energy policy broke a business that used to be self-supporting, and that the Prime Minister blamed coal and the Liberals for a problem created by net zero. Along the way: a Pakistan National Day ceremony at Burnside Town Hall while we hesitate over Australia Day, Strathfield becoming the first council to require English on shop signs, coordinated school-student protests he calls the product of classroom indoctrination, the Commonwealth Bank's $10.9 billion profit and why the ABC gets banks wrong, Pauline Hanson's right to say she does not like the Mardi Gras, and this day in history from the Battle of Britain to Phyllis Diller and Jerry Lewis.

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Jeremy Cordeaux is back in the chilly garage with Pete and Gary, and he opens on the day itself - 18 August, the anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan and Vietnam Veterans' Day - before turning to the news. He dismisses "melon-gate" as a media smokescreen distracting from things that matter, welcomes the opposition's plan to cut the building code from 2,000 pages to 80 (and dreams of doing the same to 17,000 pages of tax law), and asks why 100 service stations were raided for illicit tobacco when the excise is what drives people to $12 packets in the first place.

The heart of the show is the NDIS. Costed on the back of an envelope at $13 billion a year, it now runs at $50 billion and is heading, Jeremy warns, for $100 billion by 2030 - and still, from Julia Gillard's founding "landmine" to Bill Shorten's warning that it was "in the hands of organised crime," no minister has taken responsibility. He is scathing about Minister Jenny McAllister saying fraud "might be something we look at," and about a plan to shift developmental-delay children into a new "Thriving Kids" bureaucracy. He also argues the Bondi attack was about immigration and hate preachers, not legal firearms - "it's not the gun, it's the person holding it" - and backs sharing immigration cuts fairly across every visa category, starting with the government's own no-go travel-advisory nations. Plus this day in history: Long Tan, the Battle of Britain's "Hardest Day," Robert Redford, Winx and the birth of Adidas.

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Jeremy Cordeaux is in the garage with Pete and Gary, and the anger is close to the surface. He opens on a London insurer threatening to cancel a driver's policy unless he removes a "Jesus loves you" sign from his Nissan — supposedly because it raises the risk of vandalism — and asks what has become of Christian England. Then the story he can scarcely believe: a Zambian immigrant with almost 100 convictions, who sexually abused a three-year-old boy and his disabled nine-year-old niece, spared deportation by a tribunal under a ministerial direction from Tony Burke, partly because he'd lose access to the NDIS. Jeremy wants to know why the Minister will explain it to everyone but him.

He also takes aim at the $400,000 and 47 days Chris Bowen spent circling the globe promoting net zero, the $100 million a year Australia pays to belong to a United Nations he says has kept the peace nowhere, the stamp duty that stops downsizing, the soft-plastics problem we could solve by simply not wrapping everything in plastic, the fight to save the Snowy brumbies from slaughter, and the new warning that more than two cups of milk a day could harm a toddler. Plus this day in history — Alfred Hitchcock, John Logie Baird and the Logies, Annie Oakley, Florence Nightingale and the last "Good night, John Boy".

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Jeremy Cordeaux is in the garage with Pete and Gary, fresh off a call to his insurance company after a ceiling collapse in South Australia's wild winter weather. He opens on the RBA — rates tipped to hold, home-loan applications down 20% — and the poll that has Labor at its worst since Julia Gillard, which he pins on "lies and backflips."

The heart of the show is gambling. After a Senate witness described in tears how gambling destroyed his life, Jeremy demands to know why the Labor government keeps protecting the industry — sitting on the late Senator Peta Murphy's report for years, then taking the advice of the very people it condemned. His answer is simple: ban gambling advertising outright across radio, TV and online, no compromise, no deals with the Greens. From there the panel widens the lens — with Reverend Tim Costello and Professor Ian Plimer on the Friday live stream — to ask whether the stock market, mining, insurance, film, music and even crossing the road are all really just forms of gambling. Plus the moral dilemma of whether an AFL player should be allowed to sign away the right to sue his club over future injuries, Labor's migration split and "back door" student visas, 5,434 hours of ambulance ramping in a single month, and this day in history — from Steve Wozniak and Robin Williams to Japan's surrender and the pen that signed it.

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Jeremy Cordeaux is back in the garage with Pete and Gary, and he's found the government some money. From next April, he explains, 3.2 million Australians over 65 will lose the private health insurance rebate that keeps them out of the public system — a saving of $7.9 billion the government says it simply can't do without. Jeremy begs to differ, and reads Health Minister Mark Butler a list: $23.4 billion for electric-car subsidies, $100 million for a failed Bureau of Meteorology website, $65 million for journalists at billion-dollar media companies, half a billion for a Papua New Guinea rugby league team, $4.2 million for a South Pacific resort stopover for COP delegates. Priorities, Minister.

He also takes on the mass citizenship ceremonies in Tony Burke's south-western Sydney — and the four flags new Australians were presented with — asking what picture of national identity that paints. Plus new Victorian Premier Ben Carroll's claim that "integrity will not be optional" (and why Jeremy says he talked himself into a corner), the belated royal commission into the CFMEU, Australia Post pushing a letter toward two dollars, and a run of gloriously useless inventions — the pet rock, diet water, the DVD rewinder. And this day in history: the World Wide Web, Hiroshima, Big Ben, and the world's oldest tree, accidentally cut down.

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