Mamamia Out Loud: Kathleen Folbigg, Bruce Lehrmann & Jock's Last Job

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Mamma Mia Out Loud!

Hello and welcome to Mamma Mia Out Loud.

It's what women are actually talking about on Monday the 5th of June.

I'm Holly Wainwright.

I'm Mia Friedman.

And I'm Jesse Stevens.

And we are rewriting this show as we're recording it

because it's 11.30 that we start recording Mamma Mia Out Loud on a Monday

and at 11.30 the Attorney General announced that Kathleen Folbig

who has long been considered Australia's worst serial killer

who's been sitting in prison for 20 years over the death of four of her children

has been pardoned and is going to be imminently released.

And so we are of course going to talk about that.

We are also going to talk about Bruce Lerman.

Last night we heard for the first time him give his side of the story

about what happened on the night that he and Brittany Higgins went back to Parliament House.

So what are we meant to make of all that?

And one Hollywood actress says not having kids ruined her career.

But first, Mia Friedman.

Last night, jocks on Frillo's wife Lauren asked his fans to decide

what to do now with his projects she recorded.

Her first social post and commented for the first time really

since the very sudden and unexpected death of her husband a few weeks ago.

It was heartbreaking to see and to hear

but there was also something quite beautiful in what she was saying.

Here's a little bit of what she had to say.

Jock and I worked really hard on his social media

and so I have to try and make a decision whether we keep it going or not.

He had lots of projects.

He was working on a lot that he finished

and I just don't know what's appropriate or what you guys want to see on here.

So he's got a lot of behind the scenes interviews and photos from MasterChef.

He's got books, a fashion range.

He's got spirits aging in a distillery in Tassie.

He's got a TV show he filmed in Italy last year with the family.

So as I kind of am pondering what's appropriate or not,

if I don't really know what's right I'll put a poll up on here

and you guys can tell me yes or no.

And somehow we will work out whether there's a path forward here

or if we don't do anything at all.

I love this so much because Jock and Lauren worked together

as well as being madly in love and having a young family

and I feel like she needs permission from us

because she can't get permission from him.

My personal view is that I'd love to see all of this stuff.

I think he would love us to see it.

For us to see whole, what do you think?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think one of the things that's very telling about this

and it's one month since Jock's and Frillo died

and this is the first time we've seen Lauren,

who everyone called Laws of course.

And grief is so overwhelming and enormous

that even Laws doesn't know what's appropriate.

It's like she's the closest person to him.

She would have known very much what his wishes are and were

but she's obviously aware that some people might criticize

and might say this isn't appropriate,

which is so interesting, isn't it,

that we just wrestle with grief and loss so much.

The responsibility on a grieving widow

only a month on to make decisions of this gravity.

I can't imagine what that would take

but I also think that there's a difference

between a finished project and an unfinished project.

So what she's talking about are projects

that he intended for the world to see,

that he created for public consumption.

And I think that when she says,

I don't know what to do,

I actually really believe her

because I think that often people say,

oh well, whatever you want to do,

we will support you and she's like, I don't know.

Like I don't know what the right answer is.

It's a big decision when you're still in shock.

Yes, but then I've seen this happen with Avicii,

who was 28 and he died in 2018

and he had some albums or some songs

that he'd sort of half written and one was released.

And I remember feeling really uncomfortable

in light of a documentary that was made about his life

and the vultures that were around him

trying to profit off him at every move

and the way that he toured until it wrecked his body

and it wrecked his mind.

And that made me uncomfortable

because I thought, whose pockets are we lining at this stage?

But this doesn't.

I think Jock knew what he was doing.

He was a public person and it was his wife

and his life partner,

but it was also a business partner

who understood his wishes better than anyone else.

And his passion for the things that he loves will live on.

I mean, I know many people who, myself included actually,

who only started watching Anthony Bourdain,

who's the famous American chef,

his travel documentaries and things after his death.

I don't think there's anything macabre about that.

I think that passionate projects that he poured himself into,

I would trust Los's instincts on that by a million.

First breaking news now after more than 20 years behind bars

for killing her four children,

Kathleen Folbig has been granted unconditional pardon.

Just as we were coming into the studio today

to record Mamma Mia out loud,

the Attorney General of New South Wales, Michael Daly,

was holding a press conference announcing something enormous.

He said that Kathleen Folbig,

a woman who has been in prison for 20 years

for the deaths of her four children,

Sarah, Laura, Patrick and Caleb,

was going to be released.

The babies, aged between just 19 days and 18 months old,

died over a 10-year period between 1989 and 1999.

Here's a little bit of what Michael Daly said today.

For these reasons, I'm firmly of the view

that there is reasonable doubt as to Ms Folbig's guilt.

And so, as you would expect over the weekend,

I sought the appropriate advice

and weighed up the options available to me very carefully.

And so, considering Mr Bathurst's conclusion

that he is firmly of the view

that there is reasonable doubt as to Ms Folbig's guilt,

I consider that his reasons

establish exceptional circumstances of the kind,

that way heavily in favour of the grant of a free pardon.

And that in the interest of justice,

Ms Folbig should be released from custody as soon as possible.

And so, this morning at 9.30, I met with the Governor.

I recommended that the Governor should exercise

the raw prerogative of mercy and grant Ms Folbig

an unconditional pardon.

The Governor agreed.

Ms Folbig has now been pardoned.

So, since her conviction in 2003,

Kathleen Folbig has always said that she is innocent.

And so, her supporters have been agitating

and agitating for inquiries and her release.

And in the past few years,

significant scientific evidence has been uncovered,

to an inquiry and finally today to the news.

In broad strokes, what that inquiry found

is that there was reasonable possibility

that three of the children died of natural causes.

In the case of daughters Sarah and Laura Folbig,

there was a reasonable possibility

that a genetic mutation that caused a heart signalling disorder

was the real reason for their deaths.

And that Patrick may have died

from an underlying neurogenetic disorder,

and that in the light of these findings,

the stated motive for Caleb's death fell away.

It's an overwhelming story.

Folbig is 55 years old now

and she's spent 20 years in prison.

Four babies are gone and lives are in ruins,

but today, Kathleen Folbig will finally walk free.

Tomorrow's episode of The Quickie

will give you more details on this decision,

but Mia, just last November,

you interviewed Jane Hansen, who's a journalist

who's written a book and knows lots and lots about this case.

And it was a conversation that changed you, right?

I didn't know a huge amount about this case,

although I did work for many years

with a woman who was friends with Kathleen.

They'd grown up together in Newcastle

and she used to go and visit Kathleen in prison,

and she was always adamant that she was innocent.

I have to be honest, I rolled my eyes a bit about that,

because I'm like, I know people who have experienced

losing children from SIDS and in other tragic ways,

but how does that happen four times?

It just seems highly unlikely.

Also, there was some very, what seemed to be incriminating,

diary entries that said things like,

I had to let her go and I've been bad.

Like, things that, when taken out of context...

Indicated sort of fault.

Absolutely, and she'd confessed in these diaries.

And in actual fact, when I interviewed Jane

and she spoke about it in more depth

and you heard the context,

she was talking about her guilt.

Her mother's guilt of that, had she not loved them enough?

Like, why was God taking these babies from her?

It's something that I suddenly went, oh my God, I get that.

Like, the guilt, even having had miscarriages,

the guilt that you feel having had miscarriages,

that this is my fault.

And suddenly, it started to make sense.

I actually was brought almost to tears

when we were watching that press conference,

because I just felt so profoundly sad.

This is a woman who lost four babies

and not just at newborn age.

Like, I think one of them was maybe two,

between the years of 1989 and 1999.

She was a grieving mother who lost four babies,

has been in prison for 20 years.

I can't get my head around it.

I think a landmark day in Australian history.

I keep thinking about Lindy Chamberlain.

This is the Lindy Chamberlain of our generation.

I was the same, I looked at this case

and I actually interviewed for true crime conversations

a few years ago, Zanthi Mallett,

who's a forensic anthropologist and criminologist.

And she was talking about these cases

that had started to come out of the UK,

where they were looking at sort of genetic sequencing

and going, hang on, is there a genetic component

to some of these deaths potentially,

where there's a gene that's inherited

that means that you die in a really unusual way as a baby.

She went more into the specifics.

But that kind of opened my mind up.

And then that sort of started to make sense,

which is what was brought into the courtroom.

But to think that this woman has lost 20 years of her life

and lawyers and journalists have worked tirelessly.

And I know that there's a young lawyer that's worked with her

who's just said, in the last 20 years, I've grown up.

I was a teenager and I went to university

and I've had this experience and I traveled here

and I did this and I did that.

And Kathleen Folbig has been sitting in a prison cell

for 20 years.

So 25 years she would have been up for parole.

So she was what nearly done.

And then we turn around and go, actually,

I mean, it's a really sad day,

but at the same time, I feel, you know,

sort of reassured that no one gave up,

that people were still working this far into it.

It's a hard thing to do because nobody has sympathy

for a perceived child killer.

There is nothing worse in our society.

The thing is, it's a lesson in many ways

about our own prejudices and about skimming stories,

all of those things because there are still people

who believe Lindy Chamberlain is guilty, right?

Even though it's been roundly proven

that she absolutely is not.

But the sort of cloud that hangs over women in particular,

when they lose children,

there are people who believe that Madeleine McCann's parents

were somehow complicit in their disappearance

because it's almost like we don't want to believe

that there could be a senseless event

that could strike anybody and the idea

that four babies could die related to each other

but unrelated to Kathleen Fulbig's actions

is terrifying, right?

And I think it says a lot about the way that we view women

and mothers because whenever I read those diary entries

as we have done over the years in various stories,

when I became a parent, I looked at them differently.

Like, I don't want to ask a mother this,

but as you've touched on me,

the guilt you feel about some of the feelings you have

about your babies who are not sleeping

or crying too much or doing the things

that you don't want them to do,

they're unspoken thoughts.

And if you write them down and somebody reads them,

like, it's a really interesting,

and I know it's complicated

and there's going to be so much examination

of this whole case over the next few weeks,

probably, but it changed the way I looked at those diary entries.

Becoming a parent and also this evidence,

reading them and going,

oh, this is like looking at it under a different light.

It's like reading a different language.

And looking at the complexity of women's grief

and how they perform it to an extent

that we find satisfactory

or we think we would behave like this if we lost a child.

What's really disappointing

is that we learnt this lesson 40 years ago

in Australia, in the same state,

and yet, you know, 40 years on,

it's exactly the same thing.

In a week where we're having these televised interviews

and we think that we somehow have the skills

of reading someone's body language and words

and that we're able to determine someone's guilt or innocence,

it's just a reminder that we can't.

Facts change and this is why we need courts.

Yeah, because it was science that has acquitted her

and it was some diary entries

that were widely interpreted as an admission of guilt

that convicted her.

And her lawyers have said

she's a mum who has lost four kids.

She's been locked in a maximum security prison,

largely in confinement for her safety for two decades.

I don't think that there's anyone

who would understand the grief that she has been through.

I'm sure we're going to obviously talk about this

more in coming weeks.

The Quickie is doing an episode on it for the morning.

It will be all over our media, I'm sure,

but I agree with you, Mia.

I feel profoundly sad today.

Happy that justice appears to have been served,

but what loss, like unimaginable loss for children

20 years of your life, just unbelievable.

Mother Mia, out loud!

Even though we've known his name for a few years,

last night many Australians heard Bruce Lariman speaking

for the very first time.

In his first TV interview since Brittany Higgins

alleged that he sexually assaulted her in Parliament House,

the former Liberal staff are again strenuously denied

the sexual assault allegations that were made against him

during this prime time sit-down on 7 News Spotlight.

Here's a little bit of what he said about the night

he was accused of raping Brittany Higgins

at Parliament House in 2019.

Did you rape Brittany Higgins?

No, I didn't. It simply didn't happen.

Did you have consensual sex?

No. She had told me that she also needed

to go back to Parliament House,

and I thought I was being a gentleman in assisting her

to do that in sharing an Uber.

But if you were being a real gentleman,

when she got in the Uber, you would have suggested,

look, why don't you just keep going

and use the Uber and go home?

But she didn't tell me she needed to go home.

She told me she also had to go to Parliament.

You've given three different reasons to various parties

why you went back to retrieve your keys

and to work on the question time folders.

You told her that you'd gone back to drink some whiskey.

Yeah.

And then you told security when you got there

a completely different story.

You told them you'd been requested to pick up some documents.

Coming into Parliament is a bit of a process.

So I needed to ensure that we could get in first

to get my keys at that time because it was a late time.

So in order to do that to gain access,

I had to say that.

Here are the facts as they stand.

Charges against him were dropped earlier this year

when after a mistrial,

a retrial was abandoned over concerns

for Brittany Higgins' well-being.

And that means there is no verdict,

innocent or guilty, has ever been handed down in the matter.

Laman is adamant that he never made any physical contact

with Brittany Higgins,

and he is also suing Channel 10 for defamation

for broadcasting their interview

with Brittany Higgins on the project in February 2021.

Last week, he settled a similar suit with News Ltd.

And if you're confused about all of this,

it's kind of understandable because there is currently

another inquiry underway that's investigating

how the ACT criminal justice system

handled Brittany Higgins' rape allegations.

So back to last night's interview.

We saw for the first time CC TV footage of the pair

returning to Parliament House late at night

after an evening of drinking.

And Bruce Lairman says that they went to separate sections

of then-Defense Minister Linda Reynolds' office

and didn't see each other for the rest of the night.

Both would eventually be interrogated over the late night visit

and Bruce was fired, but Brittany held onto her job.

And in last night's interview,

he said that he believes that was the motive for Brittany Higgins

lying as he claimed that she did to save her job

after seeing him sacked.

Here's what he said.

I think that a white lie to save a job occurred

and ticked that happened.

And then she's come into contact with media elites

that have sort of latched onto this to weaponise it.

I felt profoundly sad and sort of grubby

after watching this interview.

And it's a really hard story to unpack

because when the trial was aborted,

Lairman did not actually clear his name.

But at the same time, he was not found guilty.

Jesse, you watched the interview last night.

What did you come away thinking?

I came away also feeling incredibly grubby.

I thought the optics of having Liam Bartlett

and man interview him,

that was one of the first things that struck me,

is that it seemed very Lisa and Brittany

versus Bruce and Liam.

And I hated the gendered overtones of that,

that it was like, now the men's have their say.

And I don't know if that's entirely fair.

I just thought that from a television perspective,

optics are everything.

And I was like,

I wonder how this would have played out differently

or looked different if it was a female journalist.

Don't you think they would have tried

to get a female journalist to do that?

Yeah, so what I've heard is that they did try.

None of the female journalists that they approached

wanted to do that interview.

Yeah, that sort of doesn't surprise me.

Look, I was watching it and there are so many things

that don't make sense.

It doesn't make sense that he went back to Parliament House

and he offered three different reasons for doing so.

It doesn't make sense that...

Why couldn't he just say,

I need to get my keys?

Like, why did he have to make up all these different stories?

The keys thing, and this isn't about guilt or innocence,

but the keys thing is interesting

because he shared a place with his girlfriend

who was calling him asking where he was.

So why did he need to go and get his keys from Parliament House

if his girlfriend was home?

There were just a few things that I was looking at going,

I thought Bartlett should have followed.

Yeah.

I didn't feel he did.

And then at the same time,

I almost want to put any opinions to the side

because I'm sick of it.

I'm sick of the game of having to decide,

of every Australian having to decide

whether their team Bruce or their team Brittany,

it's not how our justice system is designed as flawed as it is.

I'm not a jury, I'm not a judge,

and the use of out of context sound bites

from an interview done two years ago

where Lisa says something and maybe it sounds light,

but it was a five hour interview.

Trying to make it seem a certain way,

which is just very much.

It's not how a courtroom runs, you do not watch.

You have to sit through hours and hours of footage

and you're briefed and you understand how the law works.

And this is so murky that at this point it's just like,

this isn't how this is designed to be done.

But the problem is when you've got a case like this

which the legal system has failed more than once,

and I've spoken on this show lots of times

about how I think that the legal system

when it comes to sexual assault cases needs reform urgently.

And no satisfactory verdict has been found in this case.

This is literally what we're left with.

He said, she said,

dueling primetime TV interviews, you guys make your minds up.

I found it profoundly depressing and cynical

that Seven gave him that interview.

And I know there's an argument of like,

well Higgins has had her say

and haven't we been listening to Higgins for two years now?

But Bruce Lerman could have submitted himself

for cross-examination in court and he did not.

Can I argue with you about that?

Because I've seen that argument.

He didn't have to, but he could have done.

I've seen that argument.

If I'm in court and my lawyers are advising me not to,

and I know that my statement that I made to police

and my version of events

which I've given to my lawyers is being presented,

I can understand why you might not want to sit there

and be cross-examined in court.

I'm not quite convinced by that argument.

But if we, as we have discussed before,

that it seems in many ways grossly unfair

that Brittany Higgins had to be very aggressively

cross-examined in court about the charges she was bringing

and how many drinks she'd had

and was she wearing underwear

and how she did with that dress?

But she took the crime to court.

Yes, she did, but he was the accused

and he's the one who's saying absolutely did not happen

and he's made his statement and that's as far as it goes.

Unless Liam Bartlett's going to sit down with him

and cross-examine him,

I didn't really have an issue with the way that Liam did it.

I felt like there were times when he looked as circumspect

as some of us may have been feeling

about things like the keys and that kind of stuff.

But I find it really cynical that this is where we've ended up

and that giving, and I know it's such a cliched term,

but giving platform to accused rapists,

he hasn't been found not guilty.

As you said, Mia, he has not been found guilty either.

It's depressing.

And I understand why.

His life has been completely ruined

and he's going to make his hay

in the short window of time while he can.

But what hay is he making?

I'm not saying I disagree with you,

but what hay is he actually making?

Well, he's settling his defamation cases,

which will all come with monetary settlements, right?

I wonder if he's going to be on the next season of SAS Australia.

And I'm not even joking because it's that kind of redemption.

I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised

if he's a Sky News pundit in five minutes.

He's intensely critical of politics and of, you know,

media elites at very specific, well-chosen words.

You know, I think he's very Sky News worthy.

You know, this is one of those cases

because it's fallen apart to this place

where I've seen some culture war issues being described

as they're like that infamous viral dress challenge

on the internet.

One person looks at it and they see black and gold.

Another person looks at it and they see blue and white.

This case has almost become that

because we all feel that we know all these details about it.

If you look at Twitter, it is pretty evenly divided

between the people who look at that and go,

Lisa Wilkinson and Brittany Higgins are evil.

And people who go, Bruce Lerman is evil.

An instrument of the patriarchy, country and everything.

And people are looking at exactly the same information

and seeing it only through their prism.

And I don't think these kind of interviews help.

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Tara Reid was the it girl of the early 2000s.

She was best known for playing Vicki in American Pie.

And for a few years, you might remember

that she was just everywhere.

Then things went downhill very fast.

She made some poor movie choices.

She partied a little too hard.

And then she became a favorite of the tabloids.

You probably remember, as much as you remember

American Pie, that photograph.

Do we all remember the photograph at P Diddy's 35th birthday

where her dress flew open.

And the boob.

The boob.

Do you remember that man?

I don't remember that.

I think it was a wardrobe malfunction.

It was a wardrobe malfunction.

And she was posing for photos and smiling.

And it was a good 30 seconds.

And there's stories now, looking back at it,

I think it was 20 years ago,

where the photographers all admitted they high-fived.

They went, oh my goodness, look at what we just got.

And they loved it because the subtext was

she was so out of it, she didn't even know.

Or because her boobs are fake, she didn't even know.

She has all this kind of discussion.

She has said something very interesting this week,

kind of looking back at that time in her life.

She says there's only really one way

to shake the party girl image.

Think Kim Kardashian, Nicole Ritchie, Paris Hilton.

And that is to have some babies.

Even Lindsay Lohan, she's currently pregnant.

And she says that if you want to move on

from being a party girl, you've got to become a mother.

She said, all of a sudden, if you have a kid

and you get married, it's, oh, she grew up, that's great.

Reed, who is now 47 years old, is not married.

She doesn't have kids.

And she says in no uncertain terms

that those two facts ruined her career.

She was speaking to Mr. Warburton magazine.

And she said that she was branded as the bad girl at the time.

But unlike Hilton and Kardashian,

she wasn't rolling in money.

She had American pie money, but she didn't have heiress money.

So she couldn't defend herself against the press in the same way.

And she said, the difference is I never did sex tapes.

I never did anything wrong.

I'd never even gotten a speeding ticket.

But what I did get punished for, if I wasn't at work

and I wasn't shooting, I went to Europe right away.

I'd be popping bottles and having a great time,

but who doesn't do that?

And basically she said that she was an easy target.

Holly, I'm curious what you think about this

because I'm not entirely convinced

that's why Tara Reed was shunned from Hollywood.

Does she have a point?

I'm not entirely convinced it's why she was shunned from Hollywood.

I think, you know, we're being asked to reexamine all the way

that all the tablets treated the naughty it girls

from Paris to Brittany to Lindsay to Tara.

And I think that if you like quite far down that pecking order,

as Tara was, you'd probably definitely want a piece of that pie,

no pun intended.

Oh, that's good.

Because you're like, hold on,

I was also bullied relentlessly by the tabloids.

Which she was, yes.

I made a laughing stock.

Where's my documentary?

I get it, Tara, I get it.

But I think also, unfortunately for her,

she was not deemed talented enough, famous enough,

or whatever, to be handed the redemption arc.

I do think it's a really interesting point, though,

about the marriage and babies, because it's true.

That is a really neat little bow for everyone to tie you up in

and go, she's changed now.

We also do it with men.

We also do it with like George Clooney or whoever.

Used to be a playboy.

Now he's settled down, had a baby.

Isn't that nice?

Exactly.

For a while.

She's probably right that that's the best and quickest

and most effective way to rewrite your narrative.

And if that doesn't happen,

we're like, oh, we don't know what to do with the narrative

of the woman who hasn't settled down, had babies.

She must still be popping bottles in Europe.

She must still be doing all those things.

And maybe she isn't.

Maybe she isn't.

But certainly, if you can't play the mother card,

what have you got?

It's the easiest rebrand, right?

It's like the demarcation between party girl

and then marriage kind of gets you into it.

But then when you're a mother, it's like,

oh my goodness, your priorities must have changed.

Like Kim Kardashian,

I think motherhood has been a real cornerstone

in her rebrand.

All of those Kardashians and their many children.

Has it though?

But the thing with Kim Kardashian

is that she was never a party girl.

She always kept herself nice.

Like you never have seen pictures of her

stumbling out of a club,

wasted in Hollywood.

Never.

The sex tape, I think, for her was

that she was not a party girl,

but that she was wild.

The girls who were seen as out of control

were more Paris, Brittany and Lindsay Lohan,

like together.

That was that infamous tabloid cover

that said Bimbo Summit

and had the three of them in the back of a car.

It's interesting in terms of Tara Reid,

what comes first, the chicken or the egg?

Because did she not get chances to get more parts

because of her perceived party girl image?

Or did she not get parts because she was partying

and she wasn't a good enough actress

and she wasn't seen as reliable?

Because I have been following

or have seen, you know, Instagram reels

and stuff of her in recent years,

like in the last year,

where she was doing this weird thing on Instagram

where she'd kind of sing lyrics to a song

and sort of dance

and just look to be completely wasted

and fairly unwell physically.

It's kind of like, did she get stuck

or did our idea of her get stuck

and which caused the other one?

Yes, because I looked at a bunch of actresses

who never had kids.

Obviously Jennifer Aniston is the big one.

I would argue she has remained stuck in a narrative

rather because of that.

I mean, she's much more famous

and much more wealthy in all those things.

And she was never a party girl.

She was never a party girl,

but if she had,

have popped out a couple of babies

and kept a ring on it, Jen,

then I think that probably the poor Jen narrative

would have been put away a lot sooner.

You know who did manage a kind of re-brand

without kids was Winona Ryder.

So Winona Ryder obviously had that incident of...

She just went away for 30 years.

She went away for 30 years,

but she came back with Stranger Things.

And this is where I think it's not always perfect,

but art can speak for itself.

If you are really good

and if you are given the right opportunity,

I feel as though Helen Mirren never had kids and...

Nobody cares.

Nobody cares.

But she wasn't a party girl.

No.

Angelina Jolie is a really good example

of someone who is perceived.

I mean, she was stumbling around red carpets

with Billy Bob Thornton,

with vials of each other's blood,

kissing her brother at award ceremonies.

She was very plainly,

and I say party girl,

it's often just a euphemism

for taking too many drugs, let's be honest.

And then she very...

I don't want to say deliberately

because that makes it sound like people do these things

in order to just change their image.

Maybe I'm naive,

but I don't believe that that's really a thing.

I don't think you have six children

just to change your people's image of you.

But she then went so far the other way

in terms of, like, St. Angelina.

But the idea of whether you're a party girl or not,

the only way to change up your narrative

from tragic to being dumped or whatever,

is to have children.

Yeah, I was reading something the other day

to kind of bring it back to women's real lives,

and it was about the cons of never having kids.

And it said,

your friends don't know what to do with you.

If all your friends have kids

and everyone kind of grows up,

it's like they don't really understand

what your value system is

or how you spend your weekends.

So I thought that's something that's really interesting

that I wouldn't have necessarily considered.

Because you're not on that treadmill of

meet someone, move in, get married,

have a baby, have another baby, have another baby.

So we've heard Chelsea Handler talk about it

and kind of make jokes.

Sarah Silverman is in the same boat.

I think that socially, culturally,

we don't quite know what to do with those women.

Kylie Minogue too.

It's like the narrative of her being unlucky in love

and having cancer.

She's done a pretty good job

in not enabling a pity narrative of her.

But until very recently,

I think Kylie must be in her late fifties now,

she was still asked,

you still think you want to have kids?

I know.

It's the more women we have,

public women who don't have kids the better, right?

Because you're right

that people don't know what to do with them.

But it's bullshit.

It's nonsense.

Children are not the only game in town.

There are lots of interesting ways to live your life.

But I think it's very interesting to imagine

if you're looking at your life as a narrative

and yourself as a brand, as famous people do,

and they're like, how do I rebrand?

Oh, a couple of babies would probably do it.

It's probably really spot on.

Just a disclaimer, don't go out and get pregnant

if you want to rebrand.

Probably not a good idea.

Fuck.

I have a recommendation.

I'm going away tomorrow.

It's going to be my last episode for a couple of weeks.

I'm going to Paris and Italy on a romantic trip

with my husband.

A second honeymoon.

Can I come?

No.

So I'm looking for...

Do you know what?

I am a little bit worried about what I'm going to do

without you two to talk about everything with

because Jace does not like talking about

the kind of things we talk about on Outlaw.

I did speak to Jace about it this morning.

You'll be happy to hear that I didn't say,

can I come to Jace?

Which would have been hilarious, but I was like,

I'd really like to.

I would actually love it.

Get ready for the group chat to be revved up

because I'll be like, this has happened and that's happened

and Jace has no opinions about it whatsoever.

I watch the Devil West Prada over the weekend

and may I feel like you're Miranda Priestly

going to Paris for Paris Fashion Week

and maybe Holly could be your Andy, like your assistant.

Oh, yeah.

To just come and tell you what everyone's name is.

It's Ambassador Franklin

and that's the woman that he left his wife for, Rebecca.

So I have been packing and someone suggested,

have you watched Lee's Car Laws packing content?

Lee's Car Law is one half of those two girls

who are two Brisbane-based women

who are podcast hosts and radio hosts.

You had them on No Filter recently, right?

I did.

They did an audio series with Bax Barra

called The Friendship Project Super Talented.

Lee's is going on a five-week holiday to Europe

with her two sons and husband.

Her sons are nine and 13 and a half.

I know so much because I spent the weekend watching

I swear to God, maybe two or three hours of packing content.

What?

The reason it's become so interesting

and she started doing this three weeks ago

and I still haven't packed and I'm leaving tomorrow

is that she's set them the challenge

of only going with carry-on.

No, no, no, no, no.

For five weeks.

No, it's can't be done.

For five weeks.

Sanity.

That is seven kilos each.

It can't be done.

Of luggage.

I can't go on My Buyer and Girls Weekend with carry-on.

No.

I need five pairs of shoes.

100%.

The shoes get you, the laptop gets you.

Lees won't mind me saying she has fully lost her mind.

So she has got a pair of travel scales,

which means you can hold them in your hand and weigh bags.

She's bought all these kind of knickknacks for travel hacks,

like these compression packing cubes

that you can then make smaller

so that you can fit more in your luggage.

She's debating down to should I take the backs of my earrings off

pretty much to say like down to the gram.

It is, I can't tell why it's so riveting.

And it's not just me.

Like her DMs are absolutely full of messages from women saying,

I've not been this invested in the outcome of a test

since my last pregnancy test.

Like it is compelling.

So it's Lees, L-I-S-E, Carlaw, C-A-R-L-A-W.

I think I've posted a couple of lame ass packing videos myself.

I'm the opposite of Lees.

I'm just like, I'm taking a bag bigger than myself.

And I'm just hurling all kinds of coloured shit in there

that goes with nothing.

I don't really understand why she's doing that to herself.

I'll tell you why.

And a few people have said to me, you should do it.

And I'm like, please, have you met me?

The reason is they're like a lot of cobblestones.

They're in and out of metros and planes, trains and automobiles

because they're all backpacks that they've got too.

They don't want to be hoiking big wheelie bags

along cobblestone streets.

They don't want to have to wait at airport terminals.

They don't want to have to risk luggage getting lost.

So it means that you can travel much, much lighter.

And a friend of mine who said she just did it with her kids too.

She said it's also just limits the mental load of what will I wear today

because you've only got three options.

How do you shop?

You know, when Jason and I and the kids, two of our kids,

went to Europe for like three months, 15 years ago,

each pair of us shared a bag.

Jason and I shared a bag.

Luca and Coco shared a bag.

And it was quite liberating.

We won't do it again.

I'm impressed.

That's all we've got time for on Australia's number one

news and pop culture show today.

This episode was produced by Emma Gillespie

with assistant production from Susanna Makin

and audio production from Leah Porges.

Bye.

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Thanks for watching.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.