JAMES SHAW : We are in TROUBLE!!! AI, Climate Change and Leadership.

We are the second most vulnerable country in the world. People struggling, seeing their living standards decline, their life expectancy decline. We actually have a colossal challenge in front of us. I sort of feel like we're kind of tiptoeing around some of those kind of conversations. All you're doing is mopping up the mess after the last cyclone. Kind of greenwashing. End of the spectrum. We're all guilty of it. There is a risk that your property value could drop to nil. No one will be happy with it. Someone's using the word greeny and hippie interchangeably.

Yes.

Not everybody who looks like me talks this way. Teach people that what they're looking at may not actually represent the truth. Straight up. Countries got a war over things like this.

James, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thank you for having me.

Absolute pleasure. Look, it's obviously a few days out at this point from the election, but most people, I imagine, will know your policies. They can find your policies. I want to talk about you, the leader, the human, and what goes on inside here and inside here as well. So I believe everything rises and falls on leadership, whether that's corporate leadership, familial leadership, political leadership. What do you believe this country needs in terms of leadership?

Look, it's a great question and it doesn't get asked a lot during an election campaign, which is exactly the time that you think that you would be looking for that. I mean, I would hope that we would have a level of leadership that was focused less on winning power and more on what you do with it. What is it for? And in particular on the kind of long term challenges that we face. Because my sense is that we are, we're very responsive. You know, we kind of just dealing with today's stuff. And there's always a crisis, which means there's always an opportunity to put something off, like put the big stuff off until later. But the problem is because there's always a crisis, you never get to it because you're always putting it off. And then we end up in some deep stuck. So I do think that people will respect it if you stand up and you say, actually.

You know, this is a bit of a hard call, but for the good of the country, we need to do it. And there have been moments in our history where we've done that, but not very many.

What do you think it is that stops people from having that, say, courage to just do what's right?

You know, I wonder about that. I think part of it is.

In a democratic system.

And I do think that this is particularly with larger parties that are trying to, you know, kind of build a very broad support base. But we're all guilty of it that there's always this kind of sense of not wanting to offend one group too much and so on.

And so I think, you know, that kind of worry about the idea that you might lose some votes if you make a hard call is what stops a lot of people.

Yeah. And I do think in political parties are themselves coalitions.

And some of them are quite finely balanced sometimes. And I think for some leaders, they, you know, they would like to say they'd like to be stronger on something, but they don't necessarily have their whole team behind them on that. And if you don't have your whole team behind you, it's very hard to convince the rest of the country that you need to do something.

Yeah, 100%. And why politics? You know, I look back at your career and it's quite incredible. In fact, you and I, we share a lot of passion around leadership development. That was a big part of your past career. So why did you step in? You stepped in quite young in politics.

Well, I, I.

Came and went and came back again. So I, I, I kind of got, I first got involved, I mean, my last year of high school was 1990, which was also the first year that the Green Party fought a general election. And I ended up volunteering on the Wellington Central campaign then. And I sort of got involved for a few years while I was at university, and then my interests moved on to kind of other things and I went and lived in the UK for a long time and I was doing work over there on leadership and sustainability in large organizations. And we were doing some really good work and some work that, you know, probably erred in more the kind of greenwashing end of the spectrum. But I, I was doing a, I was doing a degree at, at Bath Business School, which was very much focused on sustainability in business. And.

During the course of that, you know, there was a lot of work on climate and so on. And to me it was just, it was scale, you know. So I kind of had this moment where I realized that whilst I was doing good work and, you know, some of the organizations that we were working with were starting to shift their practice that wasn't going to add up to actually fixing the problem. And that's not to say that that work doesn't need to happen, but I just kind of went well, actually. Some, some of the things that have to happen in order for Us to stop climate change can only happen in the political system. And if we can make those changes in the political system, you know, to do with, you know, whether that's to do with kind of taxes and incentives and how we invest and what our regulations and our laws are and all of that kind of stuff, it makes it a lot easier for the business community or for your church groups or your sport groups or your household, or you as an individual, it makes it a lot easier for you to make those changes that you want. Because I could see with some of the large corporates I was working with how they wanted to go further, but their competition wasn't interested, and they were worried. The ones that wanted to go further were kind of worried that they were overexposing themselves. So they held themselves back, which then legitimized the idea that actually we didn't need to do too much. So to me, it's like, you've got to have those system settings.

Organized in a way that people who want to do the right thing find it easier to do that than not to do that.

It's interesting when I think about Greens. You know, I've sat down with lots of people from different backgrounds, but I had a few guests last year at one of my events who were actually chatting about their child. The four or five children said, look, and that one's a Greenie. And I said, what do you mean by a Greenie? Oh, they live in Raglan, and they. They're a barista and they. They worry about the Earth. And I say, okay, but what is it like? I hear that, and I'm like, that's not a very fair reflection of a person who's a Green Party supporter or a member. What is it to support and be a part of the Green Party? Well.

You ask very good questions. I mean, because I think. I think in that. In that example, someone's using the word greedy and hippie interchangeably. Yes. And actually, our support bases.

Largely professional, urban, you know, kind of 18 to 35, you know, people who are starting their careers, a lot of new parents.

And.

You know, I think that. What does it mean to be a Green Party supporter? There are a lot of different issues that people care about. Ultimately, what we stand for is the notion that whatever kind of world you want.

It has kind of some biophysical limits to it. And if we can't work out how to live within those biophysical limits, then actually none of the things that you care about are going to be sustainable. We're not gonna. We're not gonna. Like if healthcare is your thing, like that's your big passion in life. Well, you know, climate change is going to have a way of making the health. Overloading the health care system. You know, if you're worried about poverty and inequality, well, you know, you try living on a planet in which there's a reducing amount of arable land and a growing population. You know, that becomes a very big problem very, very quickly. So my sense is that, you know, people who, people support us because they recognize that we do actually have a sort of a different worldview, fundamentally different worldview from say Labour and National, who I think live within a, you know, a kind of a fairly common economic view. They've obviously got big arguments within that, within that view. But we would say, well, you've got to. Actually, I'll tell this through a joke if you don't mind.

I love a joke.

So I can't remember where I first heard this, but you know, there's this kind of old thing about how national want to grow the pie and labor want to divide the pie.

And New Zealand first want a billion pies. And the Green Party says, well, ultimately the size of the pie is determined by the size of the oven. And while you're making pie, you need to keep your oven clean or you give everyone food poisoning.

So good.

So you can, you can grow the pie, you can divide the pie, but the pie, you know, that, that's kind of what we're saying is, is that you need to take care of the oven as well.

Fair too.

Yeah.

And when I think about that, because for me, we've got to focus on maximizing existential longevity.

Right?

And that's people on planet. We got to prioritize people and planet. No, AI sat down with Mo, got up from Google X to chat about AI and he says, look, we might have a couple of years before things turn to custard with AI. Where does that sit from a leadership standpoint for you? Are you guys using, Embracing, thinking about how AI and climate interchange.

So as climate change minister, it's sort of starting to kind of, you know, I'm starting to detect people who are innovating around the use of AI in some of what they do for, for example, Earth observation data, you know, which is very expensive to collect because you generally do it from space. And if you're not doing it from space, it's even more difficult to collect because you're doing it by hand on the, on the ground. But you're starting to see people pulling in data sources from all these different feeds and then crunching it through AI systems and, and producing phenomenal insights that we kind of weren't easily able to get before or we were only able to get at colossal expense. So it's bringing down cost. I mean, you know, the kind of standard things, right? It's bringing down cost, it's democratizing, it's opening up and so on. And that, that will be, that can be amazing.

I don't think that the government system has got its head around AI at all yet.

And it's going to be interesting to see how that kind of plays out. But, but I am seeing there are some of the kind of environmental innovators out there that are really starting to use it. And you know, you mentioned Google and so on, but there are some great domestic operators who are starting to kind of really think about what are some great applications of this.

The risks of AI, of course are, you know, we're sort of already starting to see that in the democratic system. You know, my Twitter feed is full of.

Comment comments, much of which is bot fed, but it used to be kind of like you used to read it and comment, it's clearly a bot because it's saying something that doesn't relate at all. Now it relates and you kind of click and you check, how long has that account been operating? It's been open for four weeks. Okay, that's interesting. And then so the other 50 accounts have all been open at the same, you know, same time. So that worries me, you know, because it's kind of using AI to essentially undermine the democratic process.

And how can the government get this right? You know, if the government doesn't get.

This right, you know, we're in trouble.

Yeah.

And, yeah, and there is a question there when you say how can the government get this right? Because part of what we're dealing with in the kind of misinformation disinformation space is the idea that the government's trying to control our thoughts. All right? So if we try and do something about misinformation disinformation, that kind of reinforces the conspiracy that actually, you know, like the government's out to kind of manipulate the system. So it becomes really, you know, becomes something of a self fulfilling prophecy that the more you do to try to resolve it, the more, the more it reinforces it. Finland have got, Finland have been dealing with Russian misinformation Since World War II, if not, if not before. So they've developed quite a sophisticated immune system. They teach critical thinking in schools, which Includes looking at social media and saying, where did this image come from? How old is this image? Does this image. Is this image actually from somewhere else? Those kinds of things, to try and teach people that what they're looking at may not actually represent the truth straight up. And they were doing that when people were dropping leaflets out of the sky, as opposed to bombing your social media feed and all that kind of stuff. So they've got quite sophisticated systems where they've had to deal with a very concerted.

Propaganda machine over many decades and still maintain a democratic, pluralistic society. And I think if we can look at examples like that, then, you know, that that's really, I think, where we need to. Where we need to get to 100%.

And I think a lot of people, I feel, are turning a blind eye to AI and we simply can't afford to do that. And we need leaders who are over it, who are aware of it and who have teams that are focused on that.

Yeah. In Parliament, sadly.

There'S not a lot of people who are terribly it literate. And that presented in quite hilarious ways sort of 10 years ago, where, you know, there was a. Quite a famous speech in Parliament from somebody who was sort of talking about the Internet being like a series of tubes that information went down and.

You know, there was sort of that kind of forehead slap moment. Oh, no, this is, you know, this is the level of sophistication we have to deal with. And so we do need, you know, because Parliament is representative. Right. Of the. Of the population. It's not, you know, 99% of MPs are property owners, so it's not that representative. But.

But it's got all types of people in it. And, and really. And that will only ever be the case, so we'll be lucky if it includes a few people who actually really understand AI.

And particularly lucky because the people who really understand AI aren't going into politics. Right. But we do need the public service.

To be across it so that they can be advising the politicians and kind of getting them up to speed. 100%.

Yeah. And just for a second, you went away to the UK for quite a significant time and you came back to Aotearoa. What does it mean to be a Kiwi? What does it mean to you?

I don't think I had a terribly good sense of what it meant to be a Kiwi until I left the country. You know, it's the sense of kind of seeing what I was by what I was not.

As a, you know, a white person who Speaks English then, you know, there's a lot of other countries where there are white people who speak English.

But it became very quickly apparent to me.

That my values are shaped by the country that I'm from. That.

Although I'm not Mori, the relationship that we have with Mori in this country shapes those of us who aren't as well. So even in really minor ways, like the use of certain today words that we kind of just drop into day to day conversation.

As kind of, you know, the fact that you say kia ora or you talk about your puku or you go get some kai or, you know, that kind of stuff is.

You know, just provides a little bit of a sense of like, oh, yeah, that's right. Not everybody who looks like me talks this way and that. The values that we have, I think are very shaped by our natural environment because although the vast majority of live in cities, we are quite connected to, you know, our forests and our wild spaces in a way, in my experience, that people in other countries aren't as much.

I think we're shaped by our location in the Pacific and the fact that we're a long way from anywhere. Yeah. You know, we're as far from Sydney as Madrid is from Moscow.

So that's chaos. When you think of it like that, it's like unbelievable.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you kind of. Yeah, I think it's. I think it's a combination of. Of those sort of above the waterline things that you can see and then the stuff that you can't see I find fascinating. Like when I was in Australia for the first time, I think I probably had more culture shock in Australia than I did in China. Because when you go to China or a country that's, you know, very, very different, you expect everything to be different. When I went to Australia, I sort of expected everything to be largely the same. I was quite young and naive, and at the surface level, it is right again, that bit that you can see, but then there's just something that's not. Doesn't gel right. Not in a bad way, but it's like I'm just not quite getting it. They're not getting me, I'm not getting them, and so on and so forth. And then you realize, well, actually it's a different country and there's a. And there are slightly different value sets at. At play there as well, you know. So I think. I think it's a journey of discovery for kind of for everyone.

Yeah, I love that. I've got a little Kiwi myself, so Finn, my son, is 7 years old. We live over in Banks Peninsula and love it. And in the outdoors a lot.

Beautiful part of the country.

We love it there. It's pretty special.

Yeah.

And hopefully it'll stay special. We'll protect that part of the world. I just want to ask, you know, for his future, he's got a long future ahead of him here in New Zealand. I don't plan to ever leave New Zealand and this is home. What can you do as a leader at Parliament to help protect Finn's future and all the other young Kiwis?

Well, I think. I think.

Finn is going to grow up in a world that is radically different from the one that we have today.

The choice that we've got, I think, is how different and in what ways. So obviously the world that we live in today is very different from when I was 7 years old in 1980.

And, you know, if you project forward another kind of 43 years, it'll be very different again.

The climate will be different.

Which means that weather patterns will be very, very different.

We have a choice about the extent to which we are continuing to make that worse and about how we've adapted to that change. Have we built a country which is sort of taking everyone with us or the people who are able to look after themselves, looking after themselves, whilst very, very large numbers of people are struggling, seeing their living standards decline, their life expectancy decline, their ability to kind of feed and clothe and house themselves go from bad to worse. And to me, that is the job of Parliament is to kind of say, actually the former of those where.

We have reshaped our towns and our cities so that they're more livable, so that our homes are warmer and drier, less flood prone, that we've reshaped our kind of agricultural system and our food system to make sure that everybody has what they need when they need it and so on. That, to me, is the kind that's the big challenge that we're facing. And if we don't, you know, then like I said, all those other things become very, very difficult.

100%.

I'll give you an example. I was talking to Mark Brown, who's now the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands. Prior to that job, he was the climate change minister and finance minister. And one of the things that he said was that 25% of the cook Islands annual budget is spent on climate related costs, mostly cleanup. Right now, we don't spend 25% on anything. We don't spend 25% on health, on Education.

On superannuation, on social welfare. You know, some of those things are getting up there. They're in the kind of 20% or so Mark, but nothing is 25% or above. It's massive. So now imagine taking 25% off superannuation.

Social welfare, education, health, etc. Just 25%.

Unreal.

Every year.

Wow.

Because all you're doing is mopping up the mess after the last cyclone and trying to rebuild everyone's houses in time for the next one. So that, that to me is the kind of the great challenge of our, of our time and it sort of makes the current kind of fiscal difficulties that we're in look like child's play.

Yeah. We're not even close to what it's not even close.

Yeah.

Well, I guess a big worry, a concern for me, not just as a dad, but as a Kiwi, is when that Alpine fault.

Oh yeah.

Rips through the South Island.

Yeah.

We are going to need leadership more than ever and we're going to need people that have heads that are switched on, that are willing to roll their sleeves up and make big decisions. But actually we need that stuff to start happening today because that thing's ready to go off.

Yes.

So in your opinion, what needs to be done from a leadership standpoint to ready ourselves as a country for that moment?

Oh, I think it would help if we had a conversation about it, definitely.

But I mean, let me just say that the, that the Alpine fault is one of about half a dozen major events that sit in our country's risk profile. You know, we are the second most vulnerable country in the world after Bangladesh when it comes to geophysical risk.

Right. That's mind blowing.

Japan's number seven. Right.

When you put it like that.

Yeah. So that's partially like a lot of that is earthquake risk. Yeah. Including the Alpine fault, but a lot of it's climate related and, and, and erosion, you know, sea level rise, drought, flood, fire, storm, all of the above. You know, and then you add on the fact that we've, that we've built our towns and our cities on kind of flood plains, river mouths, places where there's fresh water and good farmland because it's flat and there's water around. Turns out that that combination of things isn't always such a great idea.

Yeah.

On an earthquake fault, you know, we actually have a colossal challenge in front of us to say, well, if we're going to be able to survive any or any combination of these risks, you know, Alpine fault plus, you know, sort of major climate Catastrophes because you know, the climates are constant. So that's always going to, we're always going to have those issues and they will kind of become larger scale. You then drop in something like an alpine fault earthquake in the middle of that and you have, you know, the kind of multiplier effect. So it's not just that one thing that you've got to deal with is that plus the other things.

So you're absolutely right. Getting in advance of that is a function of reshaping our towns and our cities.

Reshaping things like how we think about insurance and.

Planning. And I sort of feel like we're kind of tiptoeing around some of those kind of conversations because we're not quite prepared to say to people, hey, there is a risk that your property value could drop to nils if we were to be completely honest about the actual risk here.

You're absolutely right. I was told by a leader recently who focuses on science and modeling around monsoons and rain. They said, look, your home in Banks Peninsula, I will tell you now, is going to make its way down to the sea. And I started laughing. I said, what do you mean? Like you're on the hill. We are not prepared for monsoon type rains. When they hit, the hill is going to start moving. Yeah, I thought, wow, like that's scary. And you're all of a sudden the first thing you go, well, I need to sell a move, but I love Banks Peninsula. And, and then my next thing is, okay, what can the leaders do to go, we're aware of that, that's a possibility, Anything's a possibility. Here's what we're doing about it.

Well, there's a number of responses that you can have, right. So in pure economic terms, some of it comes down to what are you prepared to do with that asset? Like what is it worth to you? So the kind of facile example that I use is if you've got a barbecue area on a beach, you can kind of afford to write that off, right? So you're not going to build seawalls to defend it. If you've got an airport, you might want to think about where it is because that's a multi billion dollar sort of multi generation asset that you've got there. You want to think very, very carefully about where that is. And I've met people here in Christchurch who particularly out sort of around Brighton beach area which is a sand spit.

Which is greatly at risk, you know, from kind of sea level rise and your combination of things where people who are Kind of retirees, their kids have left home, the kids have gone to university, they've got good jobs, they've got their own asset base and they've sort of said, well, you know, we know that this property will probably degrade to a point that it's unusable at about the time when we will have no use for it anymore. And that's fine. Right. And the kids are all right. So, you know, the fact that they won't be getting an inheritance from our property is not a big deal. Not a big deal. Right next door, 30 year old parents with one year old children. That asset is everything to them. Yes, right. So how do you design for a community to make a decision about its future? How, how are we going to support people to.

Kind of manage those changes? That to me is probably the greatest public policy challenge that faces it at the moment and we're not really engaging with it.

Is that something you'd be willing to say, guys, we need to engage with this?

Well, I kind of feel like I have been right.

And actually a couple of months ago we set up a select committee inquiry to look into exactly this. And I hope that it will lead to legislation and I do hope that the government of the day, whoever that is, takes the recommendations of that select committee because that's a parliamentary process. So it's not one party saying we think this is the way to go and that they implement that. Because we've got, you know, we've got to work out what is the appropriate share of risk and cost between the property owner, their local authority, central government, their insurance company, their bank, you know, and be really clear about that because at the moment, you know, half the reason why it's taken so long to sort out people in Hawke's Bay and Auckland after the anniversary day floods in Cyclone Gabriel is we didn't have a system in place. So you've got to build the system and then make decisions within the system. That takes forever. If we did the system up and running, you know, we could have dealt with those peoples who had like red stickered or yellow stickered houses within two to three months. But it took the first six months to kind of get clear about actually what are we, what are we going to do here?

Which isn't good enough in the world.

It is not good enough. And we have a bespoke solution in Westport. We have bespoke solution for.

Where is it? Edgecam, Another one for Matata, another one for Hawke's Bay. You know, we've just got to have Something that we can turn on when we need it and that it's really clear. And no one will be happy with it, you know, because no one's going to get 100% payout for anything.

You know, but it's going to need to deal with people's hardship because there will be people who, no matter what, just can't. Their life circumstances mean that they just can't do anything. So we need to take care of them.

Yeah, 100%.

And then people who are able to afford to take the haircut are going to have to. And that's part of that honest conversation that I was saying to you before is you're not. We are not going to be able to say to everybody that we're going to be able to cover every economic loss. It's just not possible.

What I like about when I sit down and chat to you is that there's just common sense. Like when I hear you speak, it's common sense. And unfortunately, common sense isn't always common.

Practice and common sense, 100%.

Now, I want to ask, what has shaped your leadership? Who are the key people in your life, going back to your younger years or maybe childhood, that have shaped the man and the leader that you are?

I mean, a lot of people would say this, right? But definitely my folks. And the household that I grew up in was a.

You know, a political household with a strong social justice bent, shall we say?

The moment for me was.

When I was in. I was about 12, and I was sitting in the back of my class talking to my friends, which was kind of what I did because I was a terrible student.

And, you know that, you know when you're talking and you suddenly realize you're the only person in the room talking? I sort of had that moment. And then I tuned into my teacher and the first words that I heard. He'd been talking for a while, but the first words that I heard him say were, countries go to war over things like this that grabbed my attention. And it was the day after the Rainbow Warrior had been bombed in Auckland Harbour, July 1985.

And the kind of that was sort of the first time because I was 12 or 11, whatever I was, that was the first moment where I kind of became aware of the world beyond my immediate preteen concerns. And I was outraged. You know, here's France, who theoretically is on our side.

Bombing a Greenpeace ship. Who are the good guys who are trying to do something good, which is draw attention to nuclear testing in the Pacific, which is bad. And this is all happening in our thing. I was like, it was so outrageous to me. And so that was probably, that was the moment where I think I became kind of politicized but became an environmentalist. You know, I don't think I'd really had a kind of a strong kind of connection to the environment before that, but that moment certainly brought it home to me about what was at risk.

I love that that is like a turning point and that you can remember. That's an emotional moment. It's sitting there deep in your subconscious. And I think, you know, the listeners that are listening right now can probably think back to moments in their lives and it's important that we listen to those moments and we take action based on that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My sense, you know, kind of some of the work that I did with kind of emerging leaders and so on, a lot of people could identify a moment, a lot of people couldn't as well. It was just a sort of a sense that they had always.

You know, or that they were kind of like increments where they became increasingly concerned about these things. For a lot of people it's kids, right? I was in this remarkable conversation, you know, the sort of these kind of roundtable breakfasts that you have, Chatham House Rules, bunch of chief executives, you know, and.

One of, in one of these, and we were talking about climate change and we were really talking it through from a kind of business opportunity, business risk, what are the economics, who pays, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then right at the right, as we're just kind of getting to the moment of closing up, One of these CES said, you know, my 20 year old daughter came home the other night and told me that she wasn't going to have kids because she didn't want to raise a child in a climate catastrophe world. Wow, what do I say to her?

I mean, makes it real, right? Very real. And I mean, I don't have kids, so I'm not the right person to ask for parenting acts. But the interesting thing to me was everybody else around the table, all these other cities, you're all a similar age group, right? People in the kind of 40s and 50s, teenage kids and so on, they all nodded.

And, and then, and then the breakfast went on for another half hour and it just, the conversation just went about ten stories deeper than, than where it was. I was like, okay, now we're getting real, you know, now we're having the real conversation here because the risk, what we had been talking about is logistics.

It's all cognitive, right?

It is. It's entirely cognitive, and it's just.

Business as usual.

Right.

It's like, you know, and so to be able to kind of tap into, well, what's. What's really going on here. That, to me, was really powerful because then you can arrange the logistics around that. Around that principle. Yeah. But as long as we're just kind of having this cognitive, largely abstract conversation, we're not really going to be making much. Much leeway.

Makes sense. Get out of the head and into the heart.

Yeah.

James, I've got two last questions for you. So, one is, I'm sitting here, and it's currently a few days out from election day. I still haven't made a decision which way I'm voting. And in the past, I've known exactly who four months. So for anybody else that has ever gone, who should I vote for? What advice would you give them in terms of making a decision?

The first thing I would say is make sure that you do vote.

I mean, it's funny, right? Because I'm obviously not an undecided voter, of course, and I have already voted.

But I think in this particular election, my experience of people who are undecided are undecided because they're disappointed or underwhelmed with the kind of mainstream offerings.

And.

The implications of the outcome of the election are going to be massive. Of course, they're going to be huge. So I would just say that if you really, honestly are finding yourself stuck about where to go with, just try to imagine the, you know, two realities. Work out which of those you would prefer most or which one is less worse than the other, at the very least. But then within that, you've got, you know, different parties that you can vote for. And you may agree and disagree with every party in roughly equal measure, but it comes down to values. Who consistently prioritizes the things that you care most about or that you identify most with, even if that party kind of drives you a bit batty, then I would say vote with your values, you know, and do that. Because if. I mean, honestly, when I decided in the mid-2000s that I was going to come home and run for Parliament, I did think I had always voted Green. I was like, okay, should I do it with the Greens or another party? And I looked at everyone's policy platforms and I agreed and disagreed with them all in pretty much equal measure. So then it came down to, who do I identify with the most? Even if some of the positions that they hold or some of the things that they say are a Bit daft, but in a world where everyone else is saying daft things, I just think you have to vote for that party that sort of makes the most sense at that level.

That's really helpful. Incredibly helpful. And last question. If we fast forward many, many years into the future and you know that it's your last day here on Earth and a very young person, maybe 10, 11 years old, comes into the room and says, james, how can I go about leading my life on purpose? What advice would you have for them?

I'm going to beg your forbearance for a couple of minutes with this one.

Yeah, of course.

The first thing I would say is take some time to get really clear about what is the difference that you want to make in the world, in your life. And that's. You can argue that that's a process of discovery, but I would also say it's a process of choice, because there is a moment where, especially in our world, we have lots of great options and you can't do everything. You have to commit to one thing and that means choosing. So you get to choose. What is the difference that you want to make with your life? You want to be really, really clear about that.

Young people today, many of them do have many, many options and they're all very juicy and exciting. So know what the destination port is that you're trying to get to.

If you think about it, there is no point in any boat's journey where it is pointed exactly at its destination port until it's literally pulling into the harbour. It's always slightly to port or starboard at any point, and it's working with the currents, it's working with the wind, it's working with the conditions in the moment. But if you've got multiple options in front of you, you know, you need to be. You need to know what your destination port is, because otherwise you're just at sea. You're literally just bobbing around with the currents and the winds. You don't know where you're going. So the single most important thing in life, I would say, is know what that is. And then in any given moment, it becomes so much easier to make choices about what to do with your life. Because although all of these options might be exciting and interesting and pay well and take you off to, you know, exotic locations or whatever, there will only be a few of those that are even broadly pointed in the direction of your destination. And so you can just say thank you to all of those others.

They look great, but they're not going to get you any closer to that. And then you can just keep making your choices in life that way. Life actually becomes quite easy then, because then you're not stuck in this option paralysis that so many of us are stuck in. So that would be the one piece of advice that I would impart that's really powerful.

And I know from my end, personally hearing that it really resonates with get clear on your vision and get after it. And I'm sure there's many listeners and viewers that are watching right now going to thank you. And you need to hear that. So, James, I want to say a massive thanks for making time on election week to connect in. Wishing you all the best for the future.

My absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.

Cheers.

Cheers.