Richard Baker
speaker
1,143 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 7 Jul
Richard Baker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
The Briefing · Aussie accuses IDF of sexual assault + Going inside a $1b cocaine sting · 24 May 2026
podcast
So the Australian Federal Police, and what I did find out
was while this operation was taking place and over several days they were surveilling and arresting people in Perth and all of that sort of stuff was very highly successful, the AFP, some of its most senior officers, were working around the clock trying to pour cold water on this operation and question its validity and legality.
And I thought that's extraordinary to have an Australian policeman to be on the same side.
So why have you got the most senior officers in one force actively trying to sabotage an operation that is stopping or had stopped 2.4 tonnes of cocaine coming to Australia, which is like half of our consumption at that time?
And for me, it talked about egos and I guess power plays at the highest level.
And I'm going, well, as a taxpayer...
Is that what I want my police to be spending their time, money and effort doing?
And also the DEA agents who provided the opportunity for this sting ended up very shortly after getting basically kicked out of Australia.
No, no, not at all.
It was more about certain people getting their nose out of joint or wanting to send a message to the DEA saying, hey, this is our country.
You can't just go around and shop jobs to various police forces.
We're the Federals.
You have to go through us.
And from the other side of the coin was I think they would go, well, yeah, when we do, you're too slow and you don't want to do it and you get tied up being the traditional Australia way where the most over-governed... This is a bit of editorial licence for me, most over-governed country in the world.
And I've actually got a really good interview with an ex-DEA agent in the podcast where he goes, you know, one...
And he's done a lot of work with Australian police over the years and he goes, one thing I noticed, he goes, you've got some great police.
He goes, but man, you've got so much red tape and bureaucracy, it stops police from acting like police.
You've got to tick so many boxes before you can actually just do stuff.
Yeah, just we're a great market because we're one of the world's biggest consumers per capita.
So you've got really strong demand.
Showing 1101–1120 of 1,143 · page 56 of 58
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