This conference, the theme of this conference, global realities and domestic choices. The sub theme is around much of, is it around much of the developed world. Governments are finding it more difficult to build political and community consensus around good policy. They're having trouble making good policy equal good politics. Here to discuss this over the next 50 minutes or so, we have of course Malcolm Turnbull, who to Australian audience needs little introduction. To many of the international audience needs little introduction, but of course, deserves an introduction. Malcolm Turnbull, former journalist, barrister, internet entrepreneur, investment banker, Republican movement leader, minister for the environment and water policy under the opposition, under the Howard government, opposition leader, and now member, minister for communications in the Abbott government. As Gareth alluded to, someone when we're talking about good policy and good politics has been really at the crucible of politics in Australia over the past decade, being opposition leader in a very difficult time for an opposition leader in the high watermark of the Rudd Labor years, experiencing what it's like to have public opinion polls for an opposition leader, very difficult, lost to Tony Abbott and the leadership stakes by one vote that must be excruciating. And now is in the interesting position of finding himself one of the most scores very highly, perhaps most highly of any political leader in Australia in terms of who would you like to lead the country, where as Gareth pointed out, it's in the unusual, unusual situation that most of that support comes from the Labor Party rather than the Liberal Party, which now Malcolm, if we can start off with that one with the theme of this of this conference and the session, the terrific session we had first thing this morning, that one of the global realities for Australia is that our really unique circumstance that the driving source of our material prosperity is due to is also the new strategic rival to our defence ally and protector. We had this morning what could be called the Kurt Wu and Hushou, where a few whites suggested that the US is in denial over its challenged primacy, and that this denial could be itself a source of conflict. We had Wu Xin Bao suggest that there are limits to Australia's how far Australia can seek to deepen its already deeper strategic alliance with the United States, if it wants to get the full benefits of the economic relationship with China. And then Kurt Campbell forcefully denied that Washington was like some sort of heroin addict hooked on the primacy, primacy of maintaining primacy in the region, and that much of the problem is that getting is getting in China to engage outside Chinese version of a zero sum game, where the parable is always one of American weakness, decline and retreat. This tension seems to be rising amid territorial maritime disputes in the region. How do you judge the risk of serious miscalculation here, which could lead to some sort of serious conflict in our region? Well, I think the first the first thing I'd say is that China's foreign policy in recent years has been singularly counter productive. If China's objective was to persuade the United States to pull back from this side of the Pacific, from the Western Pacific, or to play a less forceful role to manifest its, its latent and and active power less, obviously, then what it would need to do is to create the highest level of trust and confidence among its neighbors. And if you look at the way as a good example of what I'm talking about, if you think about the year, the decades following the declaration of the Monroe Doctrine in, I think 1824, Americans, please correct me if I'm wrong, the, the Americans gently pressured, not always so gently, but gently pressured the United Kingdom to pull out of that Western hemisphere. And the British were happy to do that. Because they saw the United States as being substantially a benign power and the countries in the region, in the, in the Americas saw the United States as essentially a benign power. But, and that's, that's, you know, that's pretty obvious, right? You don't need to be a strategic genius to work that out. What the Chinese policy has been, which I think is curious because it has been so counterproductive, it has been to muscle up to one or other of its neighbors, or all of its neighbors at different times. It has, it has no really no allies in the region, but from North Korea, that sort of ally you need when you run out of enemies, I suppose. And, and the, and the consequences being that these our neighbors, China's neighbors are drawing closer to the United States. And then ever before, well, then, then for a very long time. So I, I think the question is what is the risk of a miscalculation? There's always a risk of a miscalculation. It's not terribly meaningful to express that type of risk as a percentage because the consequences are so gigantic, you know, the, I think it's a lion Hank Polson used the other day when he talked about there being a few potholes, but they are very, very deep. And so, I mean, that's my, that's my overall view. I, I think it's a pity because the, the Chinese policy a decade ago was much more accommodated. I think the, if you look at the way China settled its borders with Russia, for example, in 2004, I think the, as many of you know that there's a big chunk of what is now Siberia was essentially stolen by the Russians during China's weakness in the period of the unequal treaties. There were two in the 1860s, two treaties, one in Peking and one in Aigun, which essentially took the whole Amal Sky, what is now the Amal Sky region. China recognizing that it is getting stronger vis-a-vis Russia every year as Russia's population declines, Siberia depopulates, China gets stronger, could quite easily have just put those issues into the bottom drawer and said, we'll, we'll come back to that in 20 years time consistent with Deng Xiaoping's injunction back in 79. But instead, those borders were settled. They'd been, you know, renegotiated a very small adjustment was made. And I thought that was a, at the time I thought that was a very signal move. But the, the sort of envelope pushing and testing in the South China Sea is, I, well, it, far be it from me to advise Beijing on foreign policy, but I don't think it's calculated to achieve what I assume is the objective, which is to have greater freedom of, to move in their immediate vicinity. But Malcolm, would you accept, which I think probably all the three speakers this morning would have said, except in some way, that the international order and the framework and the institutions needs to work harder to accommodate what is the, the reality and the inevitability of rising a Chinese economic weight and hence strategic, strategic weight in the region and the world. Yeah, but, but it has to be done on a basis that people can live with. I mean, it really is extraordinary to see the Vietnamese being pushed closer and closer to the United States in strategic terms. That is remarkable. That that's quite an achievement. You think of the history. The, you know, you get back to there. There are two great passages and facilities that I often think about. This is his history of the Peloponnesian war. I'm talking about, of course, the relevant to this. You know, one is the one that Hugh White talks about, where he says the, where facilities explaining the causes of the Peloponnesian war says the cause of the war was simply that the trust had broken down. The both sides became anxious about the growing strength of the others. That was the, that so it wasn't so much a single incident. It was a fear of, of the, of the new rival. But there is another bit that I think is, is perhaps more relevant is in book five where the, the Athenians go to the island of Milos, which was a neutral city in the, in the war and demanded that they become allies of Athens. And the, the millions said, no, we just want to be neutral. We just look, you know, we're just doing our own thing here. Give us a break. Fair is fair.  You know, as well as we do, that in the real world, justice is to be found only as between equals and power. As for the rest, the strong do as they will, and the weak suffer as they must. Now, if that's the message that China is sending to its neighbors, they will say, we a better get closer to the one guy that is as strong, if not stronger than China, and B, we better make sure we're strong ourselves. So my contention is that the Chinese, their current foreign policy as to as distinct from what they were doing over a decade ago, I think is genuinely counterproductive in the sense that it's like the United States, you know, policy towards Cuba, it is counterproductive in the sense it frustrates and makes harder to achieve the goal that one assumes you want to achieve. And would this China's aggressiveness, as you might put it, tempered by what's must be their own realization that it would damage any serious conflict would damage their own their own economy, and presumably hence the control of the of the party, if you like, on the on the country. Well, as we're being, you know, in this the year that Centenary of the First World War, we're reminded of a war that broke out, which was obviously going to damage the economies of all of the participants that still broke out.  I'd make this observation, though, as between the United States and China. A United States administration, a president may not survive an unsuccessful war. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, but let's say they don't. But the United States Constitution would. A war, you have to ask yourself, whether the regime itself, I don't mean the actors, I don't mean the the members of the Politburo or any or any of the individuals, but would the system survive the economic collapse or the economic impact of a serious conflict in the region. And I think that's the the in that sense. China has more to lose from conflict. I mean, everyone's got a lot to lose. But what China has to lose is existential, not in the sense that anyone's going to invade China or anyone saying is going to invade invade China. But given that the primacy of the Communist Party has been based on a bargain. And the bargain is you let us run the country. And we will deliver rising living standards. That's the bargain. And if that bargain were to be broken, those rising living standards were, you know, not to rise, there would be serious economic setbacks.  They all know that household consumption has to grow at a faster rate than GDP. That is the only way you can get the share of consumption to grow overall, you have to have, you have to have a significant change. And that means pulling resources, pulling all of that free money away from the privileged, you know, Norman Clutura, not sure what the Chinese name for that Wang Yiping helped me out. But the, you know, the, the, the political leaders and business leaders to pull that free money away, because as we know, it's been supported by, you know, negative real interest rates. So there's been this massive transfer of wealth every year from households to to the banks and then on to business. But he's got a he's he everyone knows that has to be turned back. It's been that's been accepted for years. But the problem is what happens to employment. And so you can see there's a sort of almost a jittering going on in terms of policy at the moment. Now, if that if the if the leadership are anxious about that, what would their level of anxiety be about a conflict? And looking at the US on the other side, the Americans, they're still weighed down economically by the financial and fiscal crisis, still now being drained by these wars in the Middle East. How concerned should Australia be that Washington won't follow through on the pivot to the region? Well, I mean, I'm not sure what you mean by concerned, Michael. I mean, you certainly shouldn't be complacent. We have to look to our own defense. And we, and we, well, we, you know, we, I guess we have to, we have to doubt that the Americans have got to do it with this with the state of the economy. They're still battling that the the wars they're fighting that basically have the resolve and the way with all to to still play that the very strong primacy or primacy minus in the region. Well, what you're, you're sort of posing the question if I can refer to another publication, the economist posed recently was referring to Syria. How can anyone be sure any more that the Americans will turn up? That was the question, you know, question mark. I, I don't have any doubt that if there were a serious a threat to Australia or to any of America's allies in this part of the world that the United States would turn up. And I, I am again getting back to facilities and and the origins of that war. When there's a degree of misunderstanding and and and distrust about the other party's position, then there is a there is greater incentive to test the envelope. Right. And I think that the it may be that the Chinese strategy is to test whether America will react. That again, that is also, I think, a counterproductive strategy. So I'm not do I think Australia is going to be abandoned? No. But having said that, we've got to be able to defend ourselves as as best we can, given our resources. We cannot be complacent about our own security. Now, Hillary Clinton suggested over the weekend that Australia is putting too many of our economic eggs in the China basket, almost like Europe has done with its dependence on Russian gas. Are we overexposed or overweight China? I'm sure that we'd love to export vast quantities of iron ore to the United States. But they've never shown any enthusiasm for buying it. So I look with all due respects to the former Secretary of State, I, I'm not quite sure what she meant. And I suspected that observation wasn't given the deep reflection and consideration that perhaps it should have had. Okay, this is where we segue to everyone may may make the same. I mean, to quote Hillary back at herself, she is the one who referring to how dependent the United States were on China was on Chinese capital to fund the government debt. She said, how can you argue with your own banker? So I think in terms of in terms of dependency, I'm not sure that we're really, you know, we really need to be concerned about that. I again, I suspect that was a an off the cuff line without a lot of reflection. This is where we segue into domestic policy, domestic choices facing that we have to have in response to the global realities. Australia's well into the third decade of unbroken economic growth, as we also heard this morning, we've just been through our biggest investment boom in our history, we're sort of levels of prosperity we've rarely seen, relative to the rest of the world, yet the political system seems incapable of delivering the sort of reforms that we saw in the 80s and 90s. Fundamentally, why do you think that is? Well, I think John, I want to sort of channel John Edwards a little bit on this. And I mean, I see Ross Garneau here and you know, I've I've I've learned a lot from both of them. But I do think that it is a bit, I think you've got to be careful, assuming that the glory days of the reform era, you know, floating the dollar, for example, is something that you can do every 10 years. You know, there are some big changes that were made and it's hard to see what the reforms of that equal would be. I mean, this is Edwards' argument and I think there's some force in that. I do think, however, that there are that you've got to remember, and I just I just make this observation, Michael, you've got to remember that if you want to affect any reform or any change, you know, reform, you know, one person's reform is another's, you know, retrograde backslide, of course, but if you want to affect any change, you've got to persuade people they've got a problem to begin with. And this is why, you know, I think that the path of reform has got to be first explain the problem, and that doesn't just mean put out a report. That means really explain it and expose it and for people in my line of work, repeat yourself again and again and again. And then you've got to outline your solution and why that is the right one. But unless people accept that there is a problem, they won't, you know, they won't act. I mean, and to take a sort of not so controversial one, and I see Jason Clare is here, he's the Shadow Communications Minister, the post office obviously has massive, a massive existential problem, high fixed cost business, letter volumes declining every year at a, you know, just at a rate that will lead to nothing, eventually. So obviously all those profits are going to turn very soon into losses and unless there is change will require very big government subsidies to keep afloat. So the first thing to do when after the election, the first thing I did regarding post was to say to the management and the chairman, you've got to explain your position, be totally transparent about it, spell it all out. We've got some good third party verification so that people knew they weren't just talking their own book and I think we now have, there may be disagreements about precisely what measures should be taken, but at least everybody agrees there is a problem.  So I think that's the, you know, perhaps if reform is getting more difficult, perhaps it's because we're not doing a good enough job at explaining the circumstances that give rise to the need for it. So some of the big policy areas of our times, do you think the Australian people, and this is a, this is a discussed this morning as well, do you think the electorate agrees or understands right now that there is a serious budget problem confronting us now? I think increasingly they do, but it takes time, you know, we just have to keep on getting, you know, that, look, the numbers are very clear. If you, business as usual trajectory leads you to $667 billion of debt within the decade, we are, you know, prior to the budget, prior to our budget, assuming our budget gets passed, prior to our budget we were spending significantly more than we were receiving an income. And my, you know, my point to our friends in the Labor Party and our critics elsewhere is very simple. Do you think this is tenable? Hardly anybody says yes, you know, so okay, so that's not tenable, we've got to do something about it. All right, the only way to fix it is to spend less or, and or raise more taxes and you can do that in any number of ways. There's an almost infinite range of possibilities there. We have set out some changes, spending cuts, revenue increases, if you don't like that, that particular mix, what is your alternative? And I, I mean I, and that was my criticism of Bill Shorten's budget and reply and, you know, I was opposition leader for one budget and reply and at the time in 2009, at the time we were very concerned that nothing we said could be accused of making the budget outcome worse and we did object to the removal of the private health insurance rebate and so we proposed an alternative measure, slugging the poor old smokers again, it's always a good one to have, but Ken Henry knows that's a good one, you can always pull out of the top drawer when you want to raise some more money and so at least we had it, so people could say you don't like that, what are you going to do about it? Well here's an alternative, it'll raise the same amount of money and you get the same bottom line. I think that's what Labor should have done. But getting away from Labor versus Liberal and so forth. Sorry it's hard. You've said that, you know, the real precondition for getting changes to explain to people the reason for change and they understand it and then suggesting that people are now starting to understand the problem, you know, weeks after the budget was brought down, isn't it the fact that at the last election, you know, neither side of politics was really up front with the electorate to say, you know, we didn't really need to go through a my-ifo exercise and all that sort of thing to know that we did have a big budget issue and that they both agreed that in a sense that the Australian public didn't want to hear that message or that neither side could break ranks and say, you know, we're going to have to some takes things away from you and money's been falling from the sky for 10 years and it's been great but now we're going to take some of that back. Well look, we've been hammering debt and deficit for a long, new themes of debt and deficit for a long time and you remember during the GFC we opposed part of the, the second and larger part of the Rudd government stimulus, which was very unpopular. So I think our credentials on that are good. If what you're saying Michael is that people have not not enough people are aware of the scale of the problem, then clearly we have not done a good enough job. I mean, you know, in terms of getting that message across. I think the, when my, you know, my experience is that when, once people accept that we are in a very structural way, spending more than we're receiving, they recognize that something has to be done. Now as to what, look, I, I send out to my, some of, I'm sure many of you are on my email list. So you know how I persecute my constituents and supporters and friends. So I send out about 60,000 emails in my budget e-letter. 3,000 of those recipients responded to me. Most of them at some length, when I say at some length, you know, two or three or more paragraphs. So it wasn't, it was a, it was a huge labor reading them all and replying to them all, which I've now done.  It moved on. But anyway, what was, what was interesting was the number of people that wrote to me and said, I agree with you that we've got to do something about it, but I don't think you should have done this. I think you should have done something about negative gearing. I think you should have done something about superannuation. And you know, there was a, and that's the sort of debate that we should be having. I was having a better quality debate in my email correspondence than we're having in the House of Representatives.   But that was, that's the sort of policy. See, again, I don't, I don't want to make, turn this into partisan rant. So I'll just make this one observation. That is what a responsible opposition would have done. A Labor Party that was responsible would have said, yes, we've got to do something about this, but you know, this deficit, I might have said it wasn't reframed it slightly, but said, we have got a different set of measures and proposed a set of measures that, that from, that they thought would be more defensible, more popular, perhaps that would have been a smarter thing to do. But instead, there was basically no alternative. You just promised you weren't going to go. The member for Fraser, the member for Fraser would have done it when he showed our treasure. But are we in danger now?  Are we in danger? Because we all know, you know, Gareth, you know why we, people think we promote Andrew Lee to make him uncomfortable on the opposition benches. That is not true. It's not true. It's because all of us know that at some point, the political cycle will turn and there'll be a Labor government again, hopefully a very long way off. So we just like there to be someone that's highly numerous and economically responsible, somewhere near the top of the tree, you know, and he's a young man, he can wait till he's in his early 60s until that occurs. Stop it, stop it, stop it. Are we, are we in danger of really now going backwards? You know, we, policy tried to get industrial relations reform up and it not only did it collapse, it went backwards. Tax reform under Labor was, was botched, quite frankly. Carbon pricing is now sort of looks like the great Australian experiment of a carbon price is going to collapse. The budget is having trouble being sold. And for one, one point that strikes me is, you know, Australia's now got a top marginal income tax rate. Just got to have one from, you know, tomorrow, basically 49%. New Zealand is 33%. Wow. Like are we just in some key areas, are we seriously going backwards? Well, I, I, there is no, one of my, one of the great mistakes that was made was when Ken Henry produced his fine tax review, ably assisted by a number of people in this room, including Heather Ridout, who I see over there, it should have been released immediately. This prop, you know, governments might be your commission. You may very well say that, but I couldn't possibly comment. But the, but the, but you see the, you see that there is, there's a lot to be said for getting reports out quickly. I mean, you see with the, again, I'll just speak for myself, for the strategic review and the NBN, which is quite a controversial document, that lingered on my desk for days, literally for days. And then it was out. We got it out as quickly as possible. And we'll do the same thing with the report from the Vertigan panel.  And then if you publish your reports, if, if Ken's report had been published at the time it was given, and every journalist said, rule this in, rule that out. What about this? What about that? The treasurer could have said, look, I've only just got it. It's, you know, it's thick as a phone book. I'll give me a break. I'm going to take it off and read it over the summer. And, and then you could have had a, a much better debate. And I don't think the RSPT would have, I think the flaws in that, you know, Thea was one of those things that works in theory, but not in practice. I don't think that would have seen the light of day had there been a proper debate. So, yes, I think you do need to get that stuff out there and debate it early. But there's always reasons to sit on this kind of, but they should be avoided. Really, the question is, are you yourself sort of feel uncomfortable with having, you know, top marginal tax rate going back up to like 49%, basically 50% while our close competitor, New Zealand has got 33% a third rather than a half. Well, there's no, there is no question that we are, we are far too dependent on personal income tax.  I, I'm not suggesting that the, look, here's, let me, let me make this observation and see, see if in the discussion people agree with me. And I'm looking at this and I'm not a tax expert at all, but looking at it from sort of 60,000 feet, that's looking at Australia's tax raise, I assume you'd say that it is too tough on people earning income, i.e., the entrepreneurs, the people who are growing and driving, younger people in jobs, working hard, making money in their businesses, it's too tough on them, but is incredibly concessional to older people who have made their money. All right. And so that is the, now, you know, all of these areas are very hard to, very hard to deal with because any change invariably when people receive advantages from changes in government policy, they are sometimes grateful, sometimes regarded as insufficient acknowledgement of their worth, a slight change to their detriment and they become very angry. So that's why, you know, reform is very difficult.  Thank you, Malcolm. Before we start to turn to the, to the floor, can I just ask you, I do have to ask you, I wonder what came into your mind when you heard that Clive Palmer was about to hold a press conference with Al Gore. Well, that was, it was not a lot. I mean, you, I think it's, I think it's better I think I think so as, you know, not to be subject to, to any more surprises than you otherwise would be, it's better to keep the mind clear when you hear about Clive being about to make a pronouncement. But it certainly was a, it certainly was a very effective PR start. I don't know, I would have loved to have had a penny, I'd give, I'd give a penny, I'd give more than a penny to know what was going through the Vice President's mind as he was standing there. Listening to Clive. But I, I thought, you know, Kevin Rudd patented that I've got a zip as a rather daggy way of ending a press conference. I thought Palmer's, I have an urgent dinner to attend. It's really trumps that. I mean, I mean, I think we should, I think we should all use that in future. Well, is this a sign that after we had, we've had several years of leadership turmoil in the Labor government, minority government, everything that went with this, that now under the new Senate, controlled by the Palmer Party, that the government is now going to be really hostage to populist whims of Mr. Palmer and his, and his groups and, and his group, and that this is a real challenge for the sort of rational policy making that this conference is really wanting to promote. Well, look, you know, there are not many governments that have enjoyed a majority in the Senate, number one. So having to wheel and deal with cross benches in the Senate is situation normal. The difference between our relationship with, say, Palmer and the other independence and the previous government's relationship with the Greens and the cross benches and the House is that they needed their support in the House to survive as a government. When we, you know, we have a very substantial majority in the House of Representatives. The only question is how much of our agenda can we get through the Senate? But that, that was, you know, that's been a problem for every government. It's a problem for John Howard in all but one term of his government. So I'm, the cross benches are broadly speaking from the center right. So I'm confident that we'll be able to achieve I'm confident we'll get the budget through the Senate. And I'm not, perhaps not every item precisely in the form it's been presented. But I don't see, I don't see it as being, you know, saying the Senate's and the, you know, the Senate's in control of Clive, Palmer or the nations being held hostage by Clive, Palmer or we're all sort of, you know, little dinosaurs in his dinosaur park. I mean it's just, that's getting too carried away. Okay. Okay, well, we'll turn for, if people catch my eye and there is a microphone coming around here and just identify yourself even though you might be very well known to people if you could identify yourself and your affiliation. Wuxin Bo from Fudan University of China. I enjoyed very much the conversation and getting back to the question about China's relations with the neighbors. I agree with you that China should manage carefully its relations with its neighbors when its capabilities are growing and China has been a major beneficiary of peaceful development of the last several decades and it should stick to the pace of peaceful development. However, bearing in mind that China has roughly about 20 neighbors land and maritime and they are issues left by the past between China and some of these neighbors. So I guess sometimes it's difficult for other countries including, you know, countries like Australia who has so few neighbors to appreciate the complexity and the challenges in managing relations with our neighbors. And also, you know, if we look at the maritime disputes, we have disputes now with several of our neighbors but for the relations with most of our neighbors, they are fine. They are normal. So I think we should not exaggerate the tension between China and its neighbors. It's true we do not have many allies but that's our policy. That's our choice. Our policy is not to forge allies with other countries. I think a right policy is to not to forge so much alliance but rather to, you know, have the minimum of enemies. So even though the U.S. has so many allies, it also has so many enemies in the world. That's not a good choice for China. And finally, when, you know, thinking about, you know, China's relations within our states, let's be careful not to put everything in the context of China-U.S. relations. I mean, the disputes between China and the neighbors, they have been there for decades. They are not necessarily a test of the U.S. policy or strategy. When the U.S., you know, pursue its rebellious to Asia strategy, it has its own global strategic thinking, not necessarily because of China. So it's very important for U.S. allies to bear in mind that U.S. has its own interests in pursuing its strategy in this region, not necessarily being, you know, challenged by China. So that's my comment. Thank you. Thank you. Well, in the words of Tony Jones, we should take that as a comment, but that's a good I think it would be fair to say though, I don't want to respond at length, but be fair to say though, notwithstanding your remarks, and I don't disagree with them materially, but there's no, I don't think there's any question that relations with a number of important neighbors have deteriorated in recent years because of these maritime disputes. And they're all readily resolvable. You know, as, and I mean, my question, I guess to you would be to say, why are they, why has China not been able to resolve them in the same manner that was able to resolve what I would have thought was a much bigger deal being the border with Russia?  Grant. Malcolm Graham Samuel. And let me just make a one quick comment about Clive Palmer. I think he's probably a better spinner than Shane Warren, but ably assisted by a fairly gullible media with the exception, exception Michael, of the paper with which you're currently associated and that that you used to be associated with just a couple of years ago. But that brings me to the media and you've been reported as saying that the media deregulation that you've been contemplating it's the subject of an excellent paper put out by the department by your department is subject to getting an agreement from all the major media proprietors. I'm sure that's a misreporting of the position I'm misstating of it. Is there a prospect that the public interest will be placed in ascendancy to that of the strong, powerful, private interests of the existing media? Yeah, definitely. Well, you know, our job is to serve the people as you know, as the government. Way Ren Menfu. And that is, that is our responsibility. We represent the people. Where we are the only point I made about getting some degree of unanimity was that particularly in, in, you know, the reality is this, that we have a big reform agenda on our plate.  And so media, the media ownership regulations are 1990s regulations. There's no question about that. They are pre, they're from a pre-internet era. But it's obviously a lot easier. And my only point was to say to the various entities and stakeholders was that if you, it's a lot easier for us to achieve change if there is a degree of unanimity. You know, if there is a pitch battle, that makes it hard. It was just a simple, practical point, Graham. And you know, you've made your compliment about the financial review and I obviously echo that and I just say that the real, probably the real reason why reform is so difficult is that not enough people read the financial review. We're working on that. Could I just quickly follow that one Graham's point Malcolm, that the media industry is probably the industry where the sector itself and all the incredible dynamism and the technology of the sector has outgrown the regulatory framework more than any other industry. So what are the barriers to basically having a fairly sweeping deregulation of all those rules on who can own what's in the internet world of whether you own a newspaper or radio station and these sort of, these sort of regulations. Well, look, I think there is a very, I mean I think it's pretty clear where my sympathies lie. I think it is very clear, very, it's quite clear that the media is more competitive now than it has been at any time in any of our lifetimes. The internet, okay, the media regulation was based on the concept of having a number of platforms which were limited. Newspapers, anyone could start a newspaper, of course, but the economies of scale made the barriers to competition impossible to climb. Television stations were licensed, radio stations were licensed. Then came along this Uber platform of the internet to which everybody has access and it has revolutionized and in some areas devastated media businesses. And so what you now have is much more competition than you ever had before. It's a completely different world and so the argument is, and this is really the point, Graham, that we're seeking views on and debate on, here is the proposition. Given the fact that this Uber platform, the internet is available to everybody and given the fact that there is more competition and diversity than there has ever been, say in our lifetimes at least, possibly ever, why should there be ownership and control provisions relating to the media that are other than those that are industry specific? In other words, let the ACCC deal. That may do. I mean, when Graham was running the ACCC, they stopped Stokes buying more of Foxtel, I think it was, yes, Foxtel. A lot of people say, oh, Malcolm, if you change the rules, it'll mean News Limited could buy Channel 10, News Limited can buy Channel 10 now under the broadcasting legislation. It's nothing to stop news buying 10. The thing that would stop them would be potentially the ACCC. That's the issue. So do you really need more than the general competition laws? That's the proposition. Then there's the perennial argument about anti-siphoning, which is to arcane to arcane to... No, no, that's where, that is where, can I tell you, I don't want you to think I'm very old, but I first represented a television network to a federal government on media policy in 1977. So I've sort of seen this film before quite a few times. Okay, quickly, Andrew Lee will try to get a few more questions in quickly. Thanks Malcolm, Andrew Lee. Look, I was tempted to mount a spirited defence of all the positive ideas Labor has put forward or to ask you something cheeky about your views on the loss of emissions trading, but exactly, and in view of your generous flattery, I thought I'd go to an issue that you've been thinking and writing about a little bit lately, which is the dearth of entrepreneurship in Australia. There's some good little bright sparks, but in general, fewer triadic patents than the typical developed country. And I wanted to know to what extent you think that's got to do with sort of tax and regulatory structures and the extent to which it's got to do with cultures around business failure and whether there's a role for government in changing that? Yeah, I think there are. I think there are some clear tax changes that have to be made. The changes to the tax law made in 2009 regarding employee share schemes and employee options schemes clearly counterproductive. And just for the visitors here, what these changes meant was that if a company gave its staff shares or options, which obviously startups do, because they've always got plenty of script, they don't necessarily have lots of cash, the employee had to pay tax on them on receipt, even though it was not saleable, it was hard to know what it was worth, etc. It killed that whole type of incentivisation. That that's got to be changed and we'll address that shortly. I think crowdfunding is another area that where we need, and you know there's a lot of work going on with that. There's been a report by KMAC, just an advisory body to government for the visitors on this area and I would hope that we would come close to emulating the President Obama's changes on crowdfunding. More generally, I think there are, it's puzzling, isn't it? I mean, why is a country, highly educated country, with a non-deferential culture, not have a stronger, a larger share of its GDP contributed from its own intellectual property? It really is one of those issues that does keep me and I suspect many of us awake at night and I don't know there's any quick fix with it, but I think a lot of it a lot of it's part of, is the tax issue that I mentioned earlier, but I think also a lot of it's cultural, perhaps something for a longer discussion. Thank you. And could you gamble? Minister, thank you very much. Very provocative, thought-provoking, Ford leaning discussion about the future. I just want to say a word of congratulations to Crawford and A&U. Really a good session, really valuable for us. Tom Pickering and I are here. Our cover is that we're part of this conference. We're actually the leading edge of a giant or iron or mining binge. We each brought extra bags. We're going to be traveling around the region to sustain American hegemony here in Asia as a whole. So thank you for that. I wanted to ask you a question. One of the reasons why Americans like or at least recognize Australian politics is frankly, it's colder here, but it's every bit is bitter in terms of the, in terms of the political dialogue. We ask ourselves a lot of questions in the United States. What has happened to the context of our political discourse? It used to be that we had a saying, a famous saying from the 1940s about certain kind of debates dying at the water's edge in terms we'd unite for common purpose. We see less and less of that in the United States and our politics have gotten more and more bitter. We see some signs of that in Australia. And I'd be curious to hear your views why you think that is and whether this is a temporary phenomenon or whether this is here to stay in Australia. Thank you. Well, I don't know that I don't know that Australian politics has ever been noted for its cheerful bipartisanship. So I'm not sure. I don't know that I could buy into the proposition that it's become worse. You know, perhaps every generation thinks the youth is worse than they were. I think we always think that our politics is deteriorated because we look back at the past through rose-tinted glasses. So I mean, look, what else can we say? I mean, the other thing is that the media environment has changed dramatically. And that is, a lot of people misinterpret this, by the way. They say this has given the media too much power. The media has never had less power. The proprietors have never had less power. You know, the fulminating editor, even a wise one like this, has less impact now than he or she did a generation ago because there are so many more sources of information. You know, in days gone by, I mean, I'll tell a story.  So don't take offense to this. The financial review some time ago published an article by John Roscombe. He used to work with me once and say, you know, he's a good guy, friend of mine, but he was, you know, scathingly critical of something I was doing. And I read that over my breakfast and quickly pounded out a blog, responding to it and being equally charitable towards his reasoning. Tweeted it, Facebooked it, and of course it started to get a lot of hits, and it was being widely read. By 11 o'clock, one of your editors rang up my staff and said, can we put Malcolm's blog on our website? And we said, sure, that's fine. And there it was. It was all by 11 o'clock. A newspaper that anyone who had read had probably read maybe at 9 o'clock or 8 o'clock. There was the response on the website at 11. Now in the pre-internet era, I would have been groveling and begging, you know, trying to make you feel guilty, then threatening you all. I would have played every, every emotional note, and you would have said one paragraph, that's all you're going to get, if you're lucky, you know. And that's the difference, you see. So I think we've got much more, politicians shouldn't complain, politicians have now got their own megaphones in a way they do not need to be intermediated in the way you used to be. And that is a very significant change. Okay, thank you very much, Malcolm. Thank you. I'll just ask everybody to think about how Malcolm's given us his time here. He's covered an incredible range of subjects. He's spoken very openly and freely. And I think it's very much in keeping with the spirit of this forum. So I could ask you just to put your hands together. And thank you very much.


Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name is Adam Payne. I'm the Sheboygan County Administrative Coordinator, the Co-Chairman and County Board Chairman of Sheboygan County. Could not be with us today, but our guest is Dale Pauls, the Director of the Health Care Centers. And today we're going to be talking a little bit about the progress at the health care centers. We recently completed our consolidation and there's been a lot of activity and good news in regards to our health care centers. So again, our guest is Dale Pauls and Dale, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about some of the recent activities that's been associated with the consolidation? Well, two of the probably more important ones that led up to the consolidation, of course, were the dedication and open house and also the closing ceremony at Comprehensive Health Care Center. On the 23rd of June, we had the dedication and open house, which was a beautiful day. We had a lot of attendance and a very nice program that included a tribute to Dr. Shaw, the psychiatrist that passed away recently. And as I said, we probably had four to five hundred people attend and tour and were very impressed with the facilities. To put closure to moving from Comprehensive Health Care Center, we also had a ceremony on July 19th in which we had a program. John Vandermel, a former administrator, really did a nice job in reflecting on the history of the Comprehensive Health Care Center. And then they opened up the cornerstone, looked at some of the items that were put in that back in 1938, which was very interesting. And it was a tribute also to the staff that had worked there many years, a lot of people over 30 years, and they truly enjoyed that. So those were two real important events that occurred just before we consolidated. I had the opportunity, as you know, to participate at both those activities. And you and your staff did a tremendous job planning and organizing, and we had good weather for both days. Kind of warm, I recall. Yes, yes. I got to emcee the open house, and I had a blue suit on that day and just about melted. But everyone else did real well. And it was very positive, a lot of compliments about the layout, and you sort of had tours and refreshments, and you got a lot of positive feedback, didn't you? Yes, we did. It was real exciting to see people observing and making comments about what they saw. The closing ceremony at Comprehensive, that was emotional for a number of staff. You've got a 30-year club with some long-time, real dedicated, conscientious employees, and just a lot of sentimental feelings, I think, in the air that day. Why don't you talk about that a little bit? Well, what really surprised me was that there were a lot of former employees that came great distances, even, to just be able to tour the facility and to reflect, and there was a lot of camaraderie with former and existing staff, sharing moments of joy and the experiences that they had while working there. And I really think it did help the staff, because that was a major change for them moving to a new building and dealing with that. But being able to say goodbye to the building that they had served so well for many years was excellent. And John VanderMail, as you mentioned earlier, he did a real nice job giving some of the history, and he knows the employees by name and referenced some stories, and I thought he said a nice tone, and then opening the cornerstone. What did you find in there? Well, some very interesting newspaper articles from the time period. What was going on? There were some coins there, I believe. Not really knowing exactly why they were there, but some interesting pieces of information for the times. Great. So we've mentioned our open house and the dedication. We've talked about the closing of comprehensive. What day specifically did the consolidation of Rocky Knoll take place? It occurred on two days, on July 16th and 17th. The first day we moved 34 residents from the ICEFMR, and then on the second day we moved the remaining 54 residents from the IMD section. So how many employees were moved, and how was this accomplished? We probably had over 100 employees that moved along with the residents. Well, it goes back to probably a year before where we started planning this, but the coordination of that involved making sure that we had not only our own vehicles, but other vehicles who was going to be driving those, which residents would be coming. We moved like two times during the day. We wanted to make sure that we had staff already assigned on the other at Rocky Knoll who were there to receive the residents when they came. Once they got there, there was the plan as far as entertainment was concerned. While we were continuing to move residents in, the whole process of eating, and a lot of work went into those details to ensure that they had a very easy transition that day or those days. And it happened. And I think I misspoke with my earlier question. I said how many employees were moved? How many residents moved? The employees at Comprehensive, for the most part, if it could be facilitated, went with the residents. Did they not? But how many, again, how many residents were actually moved within those? Excuse me. 84. 84 residents. And in general, what was the reaction of the residents and their family members? You know, I had the opportunity to be right there when the vehicles pulled up. And it was very interesting to see those residents and their reactions. A little bit of bewilderment when they first got there, but once they got in the building, they were just really pleased, smiles, and, well, I love my room and my surroundings. Families I think had toured earlier and, you know, were very pleased with where their relatives were going to be living.  Those first couple of days for, like, where am I? Where do I go for this? So they were feeling their way. But again, very positive about the move. And you touched on that earlier, a lot of planning, a lot of preparation. Talk a little bit more about some of the steps that were taken to familiarize the residents and their families with their new environment. Well, I would say at least two months prior to the consolidation, some of the staff at Comprehensive were scheduling tours of the building, both for families and the residents. And even going back further, as the construction was occurring, they would bring van loads over and they would ride around the building and, you know, say, this is where your new home is going to be. So they were continually familiarizing them with the surroundings. And then followed it up with actually touring the facilities. I sat in on your, I think, one of your first department head meetings when you had all the staff together. And after, again, a couple of years of discussions and planning and implementation, I was very pleased to hear all the positive comments around the table that employees are, you know, getting to know one another and they were welcomed by the employees that were already at Rocky Knoll. And I think one of the staff provided an update that the residents the first evening, some of them may have been a little anxious, but very quickly we're getting comfortable. What have been some of the, any time you have a new move like this, there's going to be some, some loose ends that need to be taken care of. What are you hearing from your staff? What are you working on? Most of those things have to do with the physical plant. Things that may have gotten missed in the construction or once the water is on there, you know, maybe it's not working just like it should be or, you know, doors aren't closing quite properly or the bathing complex isn't, you know, just exactly the way they want it. So it was more that and equipment kinds of concerns that we had to deal with. Any concerns from the residents on regards to the facility, anything that they've raised that you're making some adjustments on? I don't think so Adam, really. Some of the, some of the residents as far as where we would like have them go outside, we had to kind of acclimate them to that and, but what I hear from resident council meetings that we've had just recently, not any real major concerns being expressed. And you mentioned that's a good segue, resident council meetings, that the importance of that communication and you've taken proactive efforts to make sure the community is aware of what's happening. You're here in May providing an update on TV8 and you have a newsletter. What are some of the steps that you've taken in the past and that you're going to continue to do to keep the community and public aware of the steps that are going on out there? As you mentioned the newsletter called the connection, that or at least a form of that will continue to make people in the community aware of what the ongoing things are happening at the healthcare centers. We have in the past visited some of the service clubs and I would plan to continue to do that in any other types of community meetings that we can make them aware. Resident council, family council, I think we want to work on that a little bit where family members are certainly aware of what's happening with the residents. So the consolidation on one hand people may say is done, but on the other hand there's a lot of work ahead of us. Give our viewers a sense of what is ahead of us. Let me back up. How much was the consolidation? How much did the project cost? It was approximately 8.9 million. 8.9 million and where are we at with the budget overall? We came in right around 800,000 under budget. From this point forward what do you see as some of the challenges with acclimating the residents and working with staff? What's ahead of us? I think we have to look at it still having to consolidate rock and roll staff with comprehensive on a number of projects because we've got departments that came over separately like the activities department and like social services. So we'll be working on merging those together so that the staff have a better idea of their assignments as a consolidated staff. Looking at the table of organization, are you seeing areas for adjustments? As you said, folks that move from comprehensive to rock and roll are comprehensive to Sunny Ridge. Are you making any changes in that area? Yes. Obviously there are positions that you don't need two of, you don't need two directors of nurses, you don't need two food service supervisors. A number of those positions which we have consolidated into one and as far as the direct care staff, we're looking at areas there as far as how we can be more efficient and utilize them in the best as we can. And speaking of efficiencies, some of our viewers may be wondering well after it's all said and done, we're consolidated, what kind of savings have we picked up in operations? Dale and I just met this morning to review the budget, the preliminary budget for the health care centers. What are you seeing at this point? Well, it looks like we will be very close to a million dollars in savings and operations as far as the consolidation. And I guess I would say that I feel like that this is still going to be ongoing. During the next year, we will be continuing to evaluate and I think we will see probably more changes forthcoming. And comprehensive, that grand old building. What's happening with comprehensive? Right now, we're in the process of advertising that through remax. Bill Cain, the realtor, has been engaged to do that, to advertise it nationwide. We're also getting rid of furniture equipment within the building either through our own departments or the county departments and hopefully we'll open it up to municipalities and other non-profit organizations to see if there are items that they're interested in. So if any of our viewers are watching this and interested in what happens with the property or possibility of picking up some furniture for a town hall or a non-profit, who would they contact? Bernie Romer, who is a purchasing agent for Schwoing County. Okay, very good. When we were in the midst of discussing the consolidation and prior to the county board making a decision on just how far we can go, we had too many open beds that was a concern and a concern from the community is do we have enough beds? How many licensed beds do we now have between Rocky Knoll and Sunny Ridge? We have 514 total beds. When we started this whole downsizing we had 717. So we've reduced by 203 beds. At Rocky Knoll we'll have 195 total beds and then at Sunny Ridge we have 319. We're not at capacity at either of the buildings right now and I really feel that we're very close to the capacity that we need. There may be situations where Rocky Knoll might not have a bed but Sunny Ridge would and I think we have to realize that that can occur and it may only be for a short time if a person vice versa would like to be in the other facility but as far as the total beds for our operations I think we're very close to the need now and going forward in the future. More and more alternate types of care are being provided out there that help to minimize the concern about the number of people that are going to need nursing home care in the future. So I think it stabilizes and I'm comfortable with the number that we have at the Health Care Centers. So you said 514 licensed beds and in both Rocky Knoll and Sunny Ridge we're not at capacity at present. Yes that's correct. Now of course at Rocky Knoll we've got different types of clients and in some parts we may be at capacity. What was originally in the Rocky Knoll side has 99 beds and we're virtually full there. 99 for skilled care. And since you raised that what are the other areas of Rocky Knoll there's been comments made on a regular basis that it's now one of the state of the art facilities in the nation and you've got to be proud of that fact. What types of care can be provided there? As well as the skilled nursing facility residents as you mentioned the intermediate care facility for the mentally retarded 37 beds to provide services for them and then for the mentally ill another 59 beds and with that those beds I had mentioned that those are all private rooms which we've found already to be advantageous for them. And at Sunny Ridge that's primarily a skilled care facility though you do have one wing for dementia Alzheimer? Yes, yes and I should have mentioned for Rocky Knoll we now have a 16 bed dedicated unit strictly for dementia. So that's a service that we hadn't provided in that way before. At Sunny Ridge we have one floor that isn't at this point being utilized at all isn't the sixth floor there vacant? So when we talk about the future you mentioned that we feel that our capacity right now is very manageable that we have room for growth. What is your sense about the long term care needs for residents in Sheboygan County? Well when we talk long term it all depends so the way things happen in health care today you can't go out probably more than five years in that you call that long term and I guess I'm saying that really with the number of beds we have currently I think we're within the needs as far as meeting the needs. We will look for other alternative uses for that sixth floor. I haven't been able to really delve into that as much as I hope to but we will be in the near future if you look beyond five years maybe there will be a need and they're there and we could who knows the freeze on license beds may be lifted and then we would be able to increase licensure if we needed to. So if we did see a spike that wasn't anticipated we have an entire floor that's open and vacant and we have some flexibility. Let's talk a little bit about the funding health care centers in general across not only the state but the nation have been struggling and people I'm sure our viewers have read from time to time reports about how nursing homes are closing are really struggling. How is the Sheboygan County health care center doing and what are some of the revenue sources? We have a number of revenue sources. The largest revenue source comes from medical assistance which is for those that cannot pay their own way we have probably about seventy five percent of our resident population then we have a Medicare population that's between two and five percent that would be people that are in the hospital that need once they come out of the hospital they need some types of therapies and that's a revolving population because and it's a positive one because we rehabilitate and they're able to go back to the community along with that then we would have a small smattering of hospice veterans administration and I guess I did didn't mention those people that are able to pay for their for their care and that makes up about twenty percent. Now when we talk about the medical assistance patients currently what we receive for their levels of care doesn't meet our costs and so we're participating in a intergovernmental transfer program that allows additional monies to make up the difference between what they're paying and what is costing. Now let me stop you there because some of our viewers are once we get into the financial matters it can be tough to follow this intergovernmental transfer program. Number of our viewers may have read in the paper that the county's been participating in a wire transfer and in fact we're looking at doing our fourth wire transfer and this is a means of getting additional financial dollars from the federal level of government to the state which is passed on to the county and other nursing homes. There hasn't been a lot of comfort level with the mechanism but it certainly has helped Sheboygan County and nursing homes across the state and offset what we'd be otherwise paying in property taxes. Why don't you explain a little bit just how helpful that has been. It has basically covered the losses that we would have incurred and what we're concerned about is what the future of that will be. There are projections that is no longer going to be in existence after so many years and so that's why we have to at this point be looking at what other avenues we have to offset those differences. But in the past it's been able to cover like 100% of what may be the different in our nursing care as far as what's costing us and what we're being reimbursed. We were always receiving some Medicaid dollars but by participating in the intergovernmental transfer program I believe we picked up about 2.7 million additional dollars. We have budgeted about 5.5 for this year and as you said we're hearing from the federal government, the state government that that may start dropping significantly and if that happens once again we're going to really be challenged with how we come up with new revenue sources to cover that reduction of federal or state aid. Have you considered what we might do Dale, what are some of the thoughts that you've had in that regards? Well obviously we have to operate as efficiently as we possibly can as long as the mission is to care for the current population and the two buildings that we have. We have to be as fiscally responsible as we can. We also maybe have to look at what other revenue sources possibly can be out there. I do think that the Medicare segment we hope to be able to increase that activity and in turn increase the number of residents we have and that be a larger revenue source for us. So when we talk about reimbursement and maintaining revenue streams what do you see as the biggest challenge in the future for operating our healthcare centers? Well it definitely is where are we going to receive the dollars to pay for the services but in addition to that staffing is a concern for the future. As we look at healthcare workers and I think the audience would have seen a number of articles about shortages of RNs and LPNs and certified nursing assistants we need to be very concerned about that going forward so that we have adequate staff to care for our people. Do you have any plans in place or strategies that you're considering with your management team to address those issues? We've utilized a number of things in the past. We do have like tuition reimbursement program available to those who may want to move from a CNA to an RN or an LPN program. We have people participating in that and in fact we've had a couple of staff that have completed their program so they've been able to come back and help us with the shortages there. We're currently involved with the LTC's program in regards to CNA, a number of classes going on so that we have available people that may want to work for us. We're a part of a consortium of healthcare providers that are working on recruitment techniques, working on educating and getting people interested in the healthcare field. So there's a number of things in that area that we're working on. Good. Good. Well, Dale, I want to thank you for being our guest today and giving our viewers an update on what's happening at Rocky Knoll and Sunny Ridge and the closing of the Comprehensive Healthcare Center. Certainly appreciate your efforts and those of your staff. It's been a real roller coaster ride the last few years on this issue, not only for those of us working for the county but the public and it's really heartwarming that as things have come together it's been so positive based on, again, reports directly from the residents that we serve and their family members. So I thank you and I thank your staff. Thank you. Next month our guest will be Shannon Hayden. She is the new planning director for our planning and resources department and we're looking forward to hearing from Shannon and about a number of the programs in our planning and resources department that's about a $1.3 million department. There's some new initiatives as many viewers know with stewardship and natural resource protection as well as ongoing initiatives with, through the legislature on code and rule updates on septic systems, what have you. So we're going to have Shannon as our guest and look forward to talking to her about our planning and resources department. So on behalf of County Board Chairman Dan Lemieux, on behalf of the County Board, thank you for joining us today.


Okay, so thanks for the introduction. Jose Marcos. I'm Emilio Othano. I'm the head of Workplace Solutions and I'm going to talk you about Moodle Workplace 4, which we just launched. But I want to start a presentation with this slide. This is the workplace team. So this product is possible thanks to them. They have been doing a great job. It's an amazing team. So if you see them around and you have any questions for them about workplace, just ask because they know everything about workplace. Okay, so Moodle Workplace 4. What is Moodle Workplace? Moodle Workplace is the best LMS in the world because it's based on Moodle LMS, which is the best LMS in the world. So we have some extra features. So that's why I call it the best LMS in the world. So Moodle Workplace is based on Moodle LMS. So it has all the features that Moodle LMS has. And in addition to that, we have some specific features that are very tailored for the four organizations. So not only for the corporate market, but also for all the kinds of organizations. And very briefly, these features are multi-tenancy, which allows you to create different, to have different learning environments within the same installations for different institutions, companies, departments, franchises, everything. Uses are completely isolated, but you can share content among tenants and you can, as an admin, manage all of things. You can delegate management and a lot of great things that you can do with multi-tenancy. With dynamic rules, you can automate almost anything in a workplace installation, just by creating rules using conditions. And once those conditions are met, there are some actions that are executed. So basically, onboarding, allocation to program based on departments and things like that. You can really automate everything in workplace. With organization extractor, you can create teams in workplace. So it's basically creating collectives of users based on organizational hierarchy, positions, all the departments. And then you can use those teams to target them for different things. Reports, custom pages for them, creating teams, and basically assigning permissions to this group in a very easy way. With programs, you can just take some courses and put them into a learning pathway that the users have to follow, following their requirements. So it's a very easy way to create learning pathways. And with certifications, you can make them recurring. So you can set an expiration date and you can make them take the certification year over year. So this is great for compliance. We have also certificates. It's basically a diploma that you can issue to a user upon learning completion or any other things using dynamic rules. So you can be able to use your certificate for anything in workplace. Then we have custom pages that is a new feature that we'll talk about pretty soon. We have appointments booking to enable users, learners to book one-to-one or seminar sessions very easily within a course. And finally, we have a feature to migrate things very easily between workplace sets. And of course, report builder, but report builder now is part of MuralMS. And MuralWalpes is available only through certified service providers. And why we do this? There are several reasons why we do it, but basically we want to improve MuralMS in two ways. One way is by contributing to the whole platform sustainability with more revenues. But the other is by rolling out features into MuralMS from time to time. The last one we have rolled out is report builder that you all can try in MuralMS. Okay. So MuralWalpes 4. This is what we are all for here today. So MuralWalpes 4 has a fresh and intuitive interface navigation because basically it's based on Mural4. So all the improvements in UX and in feature that Mural4 brought amazing are in MuralWalpes 4 that we took them into the next level, as you will see. But before showing them, I'd like to show you to come with me through a journey on the dashboard design that we have followed. This is WordPress 3.11 dashboard. So at that time, when we launched WordPress 3.11, we focused more on the features themselves, on how they were and how programs should be, learning pathway certifications and so on. Because there were no places where we could put these features in MuralMS, we had to invent it. So we decided to put them on the dashboard so it was very easy for the user to access to it. And we focused on the features. But the dashboard was quite busy. So you can see that you have the teams, okay, I cannot use both things at the same time. So you have the navigation on top, the dashboard was responsible and telling you about the completion of the program. The program is part of our certification. This is the completion criteria for the certification.  So it was super busy for the user. With WordPress 4, we wanted to start from scratch. So we started iterating this and testing it with users. So this was the first iteration. Basically, WordPress 3.11 dashboard, but nicer. So cleaner with a more 4.0 design, but it was still the same thing. Taps, a lot of information in the dashboard. And we started to test this. And we found out that for users, for learners, it was quite difficult to understand what a program is. So they didn't understand what's this. So they just, you know, explore it and finally they get to the course, but it was not easy for them. So we started removing things and simplifying it. So the next step was this. This still looks like what WordPress 3.11, but you can see that there are two blocks in the dashboard. So now we don't show the learner everything they can do. We just focus on what they're doing and what they need to do next. And we continue testing this until we get to this. So this is WordPress dashboard by default. And it's responsible of one thing and only one thing, which is telling the user what you're doing and what you need to do next. So as I logged in for the first time in my workplace site, I would say that I'm not doing anything. I don't have anything in place and I can just choose any of the courses at the bottom. And that's it. I will discover what programs are, what are the courses I need to take in the programs. I will discover them later, but at least I know exactly what I need to do. And we could do this. This is the dashboard. Sorry. Before I move on, I just wanted to say that this is the dashboard by default, but mural workplace is based on mural elements. So the timeline, the calendar, and all the blocks in LMS are still available. So if partners or customers, they use different approach on courses more like LMS with fixed dates, in all activities, like more academic, they can still use the mural elements dashboard or they could combine both. And of course, in workplace, the dashboard is fully multi-tenant. So you can have a default dashboard or it's tenant, you can have your own dashboard. So another of the improvements we've done is streamlined the login page. It's very similar to mural LMS, but it includes one key thing, which is the multi-tenant authentication. So in mural LMS, in mural workplace, you have authentication plugins and you can configure them by tenant with different configurations. It's also slightly different, so you know that you're logging into our workplace sites because the design is different. So my courses page. This is a very important improvement in mural LMS for Bono because with the my courses page, we had the opportunity to simplify the dashboard. This was one of the reasons why we started removing things from the dashboard, but we didn't just remove them. We had them here. So now, as a user, you can see your dashboard, which tells you what to do, what you're doing and what to do next. And in my courses, you'll find your personal learning catalog. So unlike in mural LMS, you have my courses page, which shows you the courses, but in workplace, we have all workplace learning entities in here. So you can see that there are programs also, along with courses. And courses, our programs, if they are overdue, they show this path. So the user knows at a glance what is overdue or what is about to expire or expire certifications and things like that. So this is very useful. So users will come here to find their learning, if they, their past learning or to explore the programs they are assigned to. So this is a key part of the new user workflow in workplace. And from here, you can get to the program page. This is another new thing in workplace. In workplace 311, programs didn't have any specific page. So programs were just in the dashboard, and all the information was shown there. In workplace 4.0, following the term with the my courses page, we wanted to create a specific page for the program where we could show all the information. It's like, it's very similar to the program page, but for programs. So it has two parts. The first one is the cover page. So the first time you get to a program, before you actually get into that program, the user will see the program cover page. In this program cover page, the user will see the information about the program, the relevant dates for them, because this is relative to the user, when they are supposed to complete this program, and if this program is part of a certification, they will also see it. Certification within the relevant dates. And then the program extractor. So you can, they can have a look at the program before they actually get into it. And once they get it, they get into the program page. So in the program page, the program page is responsible for the navigation through the programs and through the sets and courses, sorry. So the user can easily navigate through the whole program extractor, see all the sets, what are the things that they need to do to complete that program or that set, and what are the things they need to do to unlock different courses. So they can easily navigate through the program extractor. And they can find the courses that they have recently accessed here. The information they show in the cover page is also, is always available in the information tab. So they can just check there, all the dates and all the relevant information. And we have replicated this extractor also in courses. So courses have also a cover page. So again, the first time you get into a course, you'll see this cover page with information relevant to the course. If the course, whether the course is part of a program or not, course summary, dates, files, custom fields, everything. And they see this before they get into the course. So if the course, if they need to enroll into that course, they'll see as part of the enrollment page or if they have been enrolled or they can just access to the course, they will see it in a mobile form. So they always see this cover page. So they get full contest on when they are. And it's important because when they get to a course, if the course is part of a program, they'll see it there. This course is part of a program for you and they can get to the program from there. So this is part of this work we're doing to explain the users what programs are or at least, you know, help them to understand that gradually. So they don't need to see everything in advance. These pages that I just showed you are the first step towards a learning catalog because we needed to add all these elements so we could then make them part of a learning catalog, make them public, connect them with e-commerce, different enrollment methods, allocations and so on. So this is the first step towards that. And the navigation through these program pages, the course is very quick and intuitive and especially in the program page because everything is down almost instantly. So you don't need to wait, you know, for the page to load. So it's very, it's very, the experience is very nice for the user. Okay, so another feature, new feature in workplace are the custom pages. So custom pages is a way for them to create dashboards for specific audiences. So basically what an admin does is creating a new dashboard, adding blocks there, configuring an audience and make it available to those users. I'll explain you how it works. But this is a custom page that I just created using workplace for with report builder, report block and that's it. There's nothing else. So you can see that in the main navigation, you see the my side element in navigation, this is the custom page that you're seeing and it has a report showing courses within categories with the last course, the online users in the platform and the last courses completion everywhere. So the user who completed the course, which course, which users and when they completed it. And this is all everything created with report builder in workplace. So users can create global or tenant custom pages. If you created custom page globally, it will be available in all tenants or you could make them specific to certain tenants. So it's just creating, it works very similar to all the pages in workplace, you just create the page and you can duplicate it and move them between global and local. And once you have created the page, just get there, turn editing on and add your blocks. So you can add blocks as if you were adding blocks to the dashboard. All blocks that are available in the dashboard will be available here too. And finally, you configure the audience. So in this case, this page is available only to site and tenant admins and also to users who have permissions to manage organization structure. This is just an example. So all these users, when they look in, they'll see this page on the primary navigation and they can just access here. So this has many possibilities, countless possibilities because our partners, they've already developed, can create their own blocks or reports and add them here. And tell them only to specific audiences they can have. Whether it is a dashboard for the sales department, learning department, admins, teachers or whatever. And these are the audience that are available. So you can make it to all users, users with the system roles, specific users based on jobs and so on. Okay, so my team's page is actually a custom page. So in workplace 311, we have my team's tab. So manage when they look in into workplace, they show the team overview block with the information about their teams. We have completely refactored this feature and we have turned it into a custom page. So now by default on install in workplace, a new custom page will be created. It's a global custom page available to managers and department leads that it only contains the team overview block. But the admin can customize this page. They can add more blocks, remove it or even create specific pages for using this block for other audiences. So let's see it in detail. So the custom page, my team's page includes this block. So the team overview block has been completely redesigned. So as a manager, you can have, see at a glance, all of your team. And if there's some overview learning, expert certifications or anything requiring your attention, you'll see this red dot. And then you can drill down, expand and see exactly what are the certifications, programs and courses this user is taking and how you're tracking against them. And you have access to full reports of everything, certifications, programs and courses. So at a glance, you can just have a view of all your, how your team is tracking against their learning goals. And if you're an HR manager, you could see the whole company and filter and using advanced filtering to find exactly what you want. As part of this block, we have also redesigned all the system reports in workplace. So now the certification program and course progress reports are, make more sense and they are more similar or they're more ingenious than they were before. And we reuse these reports all around. So right now reporting in workplace is more consistent within the my team's page. Okay. So the app, obviously we have the workplace for app which is also about to be released. And the workplace for app supports all the features in workplace for and also it can be branded as usual. But there's one thing that makes it special, this fully multi-tenant. So with the app, you can have a single app for all the tenants in your institution, your installation, or you could have specific apps for specific tenants. And this is something that we have introduced recently in the app. And finally about the new features in workplace, I wanted to highlight that reporting that is now in LMS as you will know. This took us a lot of time but we wanted to do this part of our commitment with Mural LMS because we really wanted to improve reporting across the whole Mural LMS product because with report building is a way that you can just make it more consistent. With system reports and overtime, all the reports in Mural LMS will be compared gradually to report builder and that way all reporting will be more consistent. And with report builder developers can create reports for their plugins much more effectively and it will be easier for the user to report on those plugins. So that's something that we thought would be a great improvement for LMS and that's why we did it. In workplace, we have done a tool so workplace takes care of upgrade of reports. So it always automatically upgrades report from previous versions to the newest. And if there are any conflicts, we manage them and we and the users can edit the reports and convert them manually. Okay, so this is workplace four at a glance. If you want to know more, if you want to try it, we are at the products bar and we have a stance over here so you can just reach out to us and we'll love to give you a demo of Mural Workplace. So what is next? So this is what, this is then the shorter term priorities in workplace. In case you don't know, we have a pro advisory group with partners so we decide with them what has to be done next in workplace. What are the priorities for the next six to 18 months? So I didn't want to give you more visibility because we're going to focus on the short term priorities and probably we'll discuss again and assess all the priorities. So we're doing this continuously. But I can tell you the next big feature to come to workplace will be the learning catalog. That's something that will be coming next probably in 2023, for soon 2023, but it will be probably early 2023. And we're going to add charging report builder and they will focus on improving even more our multi-tenancy feature. Priorities might change and they will because we discuss this with our PEG on a timely basis but this is what I can tell you. Learning catalog will be for sure the next big feature to learn in motor workplace. And that's it. Oh, 10 minutes. So if you want to get a demo, we have our service providers all around. So just go talk to them if you want to motor workplace for your institution. They can give you a demo or you can reach out to us in the products bar and we'll be more than happy to show you what we've done. So any questions? Thank you. Thank you very much, Emilio. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we have a few minutes. So if you would like to ask anything, please raise your hand. Could you tell me if certain activities that are standard Moodle work better in this workplace than others? Sorry, can you say that again? I think I didn't get it. What activities work best for your workplace? Okay, what activity modules? Anything. So because workplace can be used in any environment. So basically the same thing that work for you in LMS will work in workplace. We have two activities, one activity model that is exclusive to workplace but the appointments booking module. But apart from that, it really depends on the institution or the organization which is using it. In the organization sector, usually the courses are quite different. So they're mostly quizzes, scorn packages, mostly two things and resources. But I'm mostly focusing on that. Okay, I just have one more question related to that. One of the problems we have is computer literacy. So do you have a fix for that? I wish I had it, but okay. So basically anything that works with LMS works with Windows. So if you have a solution for that in LMS, it will work in workplace. Another one. How about theme modification? Is it possible that there will be show up other themes in the future? Or how much modification is possible per tenant or for the whole platform? That's a good question. So in motor workplace, you can brand the different tenant within the UI. So you can change the primary color and the logos and everything. So you can just have a different branding for the tenants. But also you can obviously create your own themes. We advise our partners to base their themes in ours, but our theme is based on boost. So it can be theme, yeah, of course. But we advise our partners to base their work on ours. And in fact, workplace 4 is more theme-friendly that it was 3.11 because we have less things that rely on the theme itself. So it's obviously really exciting seeing these features make their way back into Moodle Core. Report Builder is fantastic. What's next on the roadmap for that? Good question. So we don't have a roadmap for that. So basically we decide on a one-by-one basis and it depends really on what is coming next. But we always want to keep and need to keep motor workplace value proposition in that for our partners. So that's a balance we need to make. But if you're asking about the next feature to come to Moodle LMS, we don't know yet. We haven't decided yet. We're just exhausted after releasing Report Builder. Maybe I asked the same question which already was asked, but is there a kind of tag inside of Moodle or Pluckin database that I can identify workplace pluckins which are certified or tested with workplace already? Okay, so it's great that we have Marina, our architect there because she has a session after this so you can ask her more questions. But basically, so we have in the plugins database we have a batch for the workplace really pluckins. It doesn't mean that the pluckins that don't have that batch don't work at all at workplace, but those are the pluckins that our partners have tested thoroughly and they know they work without any issues. But most of the cases, the pluckins will work out of the box. We just need to make sure that if there's a plugin, they work well with their features. But something they just work well, but they could work better if they had a deeper integration with workplace. So it's likely that any plugin that you can pick will work in workplace from the community repository. Okay, I think we have time for one more last question. Hi, I have two questions. Sorry, hi Jack. So the first question is if you have thought about integrating the groups in your report builders and dynamic rules, like when you select a rule to have a course, then if you have thought of nesting it to groups, that's my first question. And then I can go to the second one. The second one is about the organization structure. If you have thought of like nesting it even more so that people that are department leads or managers, they're not they don't already receive the notifications for people that are in smaller departments and that there's actually some stopping how far the notifications go. Okay, so the first question about groups, I'll be quick. So dynamic rules is highly customizable. So it's it's it has an API our partners can extend so they can create virtually conditions and actions of their own as part of their plugin development. But we already use groups in some conditions. So as I can remember, as fast as I can remember, you can enroll people directly into course groups. And there are all the things around groups that, you know, are already available in dynamic groups. And about regarding the question about organization structure, right now you can do three things. So you can report, give permission to report on the people to receive notifications and also to manage allocations to programs and certifications. So a manager can just can allocate people from their teams into programs and certifications if they have these permissions. We have some improvements in mind. There are some in our tracker. And one of the things will be like navigating through the organizational structure. So you could see easily what which is in what people is in each position or department. So changing the way you navigate through the organizational structure. But that's just an idea in our roadmap. Okay, thank you very much. Well, as you can see in the screen, if you want to know more about Mother Workplace, please go to our sponsors. They are our partners that are over there, and they can give you a lot of information about Mother Workplace. Thank you very much, Emilio.


Well, welcome to the 2pm update with me, David White, at TFNN, and what do we have going on today? Well, we have pretty much the continuation of last week. We were looking for maybe 4,000 on Friday, well, we got it today, a little of that had to do with fairly high short sale numbers in a handful of stocks, especially the big Nasdaq stocks, and it took them a little bit of time to roll over. We have some other big movers in the market today. Walmart was lower, they guided down, it's up about 1% on the day. Most people not believing, I guess, what Walmart was saying. On the other side, the homeless despot, otherwise known as Home Depot, down about 6% Docu had a big downgrade today, no other news that I saw other than that, down about 8%. So we're kind of homing in on these numbers that we probably should have seen on Friday, but a lot of short sellers kind of slowed the roll down into today. I'm not looking for a whole lot more down. I suspect that we may get down to 3950, 3900 maybe would be an extreme, but I'm thinking you might even just find it 3990 and slowly crawl back up over a handful of days. Now let's say we get back up to 4075, 4080 or something on the S&Ps, and then it starts giving it up. That pattern would complete what I love is one of the biggest patterns that I trade and that's the double repo pattern from Joe DiNappoli. So we haven't done that quite yet, so don't want to get the cart before the horse, but we have a setup that if we go up and find some kind of low here in the next day or so in these levels, then go up on very light volume and then start moving lower. Generally that is when they lower the boom. So keep an eye out this week as we go into March and the Ides of March. Be back in a minute. The reality is that navigating financial markets can