Transcript of AE 1295 - The Goss: Australia’s Most & Least Ethical Jobs

G'day, you mob! Pete here and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news weather locally Down Under here in Australia, or non-locally, overseas in other parts of the world, okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at Aussie English.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time, okay. So if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it!

All right. Dad, what's going on?

Your cat's about to attack me.

Yeah, I know. Scrappy's been let out of his dungeon after having having lunch separated from our other cat, Peach. Because she steals all the food.

She would eat him.

So, ethical and least ethical.

Most ethical, most and least ethical jobs.

Mhm.

Yeah.

How should we do this one? Should we do, like the ethical ones first, but go from 10 to 1? Have you read that already?

I have, yeah.

Okay, so there's no surprises.

There's no surprises. There aren't any surprises anyway.

Yeah, but I can't shock you. It can't be like. What do you think number one is?

What do you think number one is? Yeah.

Yeah. This is a good, an interesting article, right. Where- what are we. What, do we go to the top here. "The most and least ethical Australian jobs have been named. At least ethical, real estate agents. With many Aussies fed up over rent hikes and failures to fix property issues, it's perhaps unsurprising that real estate agents have been named the least ethical job in Australia. The Governance Institute of Australia's latest ethics index ranked occupations from most to least ethical along with sectors and organisations." So yeah, it was an interesting read. Um.

Yeah. The only issue I have with the article is that it's very short. So you basically read half the article. Um, other than the lists which we will go through.

It's long on my, um, my screen because there's so many fucking ads.

Oh, yes. Online news. Um, yeah. But they don't tell you how they determined.

'We interviewed three people...'.

Yeah. And this ethical index? Well, show- what's the- what are the parameters in the index? But anyway, that aside..

Old mates opinion.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Pub test. That aside, um, none of these is surprising, which is, um, interesting in itself. So we can go through them. But the top ten most ethical occupations are all in the caring industry. Broadly.

That's pretty much so..

It's hardly a surprise, is it?

I found it interesting. So I guess we'll go through them one- or do you want to do it from 10 to 1.

Yeah. Do that. Yeah. Do the countdown.

Yeah. So secondary school teachers.

Yeah. That was me. A long time ago.

Yeah.

I'm ethical, but not as ethical as I could be. Yeah.

Ten. Yeah, nine was dentist.

Dentists.

I was kind of thinking. How do you measure the ethical.

What's an ethical dentist?

Like, most of them don't really say much. They kind of just look at your teeth.

Well, they say a lot, but you can't talk back.

I guess it's what they're considered by the public, right?

Yes.

Um, eight is vets.

Yeah.

Veterinarians. Eh, veterinarians.

Veterinarians.

I say 'veterinarians', but yeah.

Yeah, you can say what you like, but it's veterinarians.

Gotcha. Not veterans.

Veterans.

Yeah. Um, then seven is primary school teachers. It's funny that primary school teachers are so much higher than secondary school.

Aye, so? There are three places ahead! And out of a million jobs that you could have, these are the top ten. So.

I guess though I'd probably feel primary school teachers are probably a little more parent like?

Yeah.

You know, like caring. And..

Yeah.

Whereas high school teachers were, at least from personal experience, when I was there at high school, they always seemed a bit colder and. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Six is child care pre-school.

So we're going to, we're going up that same index of, you know take out vets and dentists. We've gone secondary school, primary school, child care pre-school, kindergarten sort of teachers. So.

Yeah.

Um, it's teachers in increasing ethics when they're dealing with younger children.

Yeah.

Which is probably fair.

Yeah.

Um, and because obviously this is all perception, I don't I as we suggested, we haven't seen what the index is made of, but I suspect it is about perception, not about some objective, uh, ethical behaviour measure.

Mhm.

Um, so people will always assume that if you're looking after my three year old, I expect you to be more ethical than if you're looking after my 17 year old. So. Next one.

Uh, general practitioners...

So, doctors.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

Yeah.

And then nurses above doctors.

Yeah.

I guess they have to be...

...much more hands on. Yeah. Yeah.

It's funny, though. I don't know how, this one got Pharmacists.

Pharmacists.

Is number three.

Pharmacists have always had this. And this is one of these things of. Because if you look through, say, if you wanted a statutory declaration signed other than going to a Justice of the peace..

You can go to a pharmacist?

You can go to a, you go to a police station.

Yeah.

You can go to a judge, justice of the peace or whatever. The next thing on the list is usually pharmacist.

Really? I didn't know that.

And then there's ironically teachers are in there as well. Um, doctors I think can be. But doctors, you're never going to go to the doctor's surgery and say, can you sign this for me? Yeah, it'll be ten minutes, $70.

Yeah, exactly.

Um, so pharmacists have always had this perception of being, you know, ethical humanitarian people and the next two are obvious. So if we pause here, if you're if you're listening to this and clearly you are listening to this, you're not going to hear that and not be listening. Um, pause for a minute and think what you think number two and number one are, while we discuss this. But I think the pharmacist one is that people go to the pharmacy to get advice, not just to buy things. Whereas you don't go to..

..go to Bunnings to get advice.

Sorry?

I go to Bunnings to get advice.

Yeah.

Like I would go and get advice from them and they're not even on the list.

Yeah, but it's not life threatening stuff.

Yeah.

This is how seriously you take your woodworking. Yeah, well. Or how badly you are with power tools, but all right. Number two!

You do it.

Ambulance service.

Ambos.

Ambos. And then number one is the most obvious one.

I don't know. I don't know. It's one of those ones..

I might have switched one and two?

Yeah.

But, fire services.

Yeah. Firies.

Yeah. People who like..

Most of them volunteer.

Ironically, police is not on there. I would have thought police would have been in there.

No.

Um, but I think there are so many people in the community who've had bad experiences, or perceived to have bad experiences. But nobody has a bad experience with an ambo or a fiery.

Mhm.

Um, and yeah, ambos are risking their lives in a sense that they're dealing with lunatics some of the time. Um, but fire people risk their lives just by turning up at work.

Yeah.

Every day.

Yeah.

And if you do that job, you've got to look at it and go, hmm. These people are serious people, you know?

Yeah.

And look, in our area where more than 50% of the firies are volunteers.

Yeah.

That's somebody who's just going to risk their life because of community service. Yeah.

I remember seeing Tony Abbott. As much as I didn't really like him as a prime minister and just..

Yeah, he was a CFA volunteer.

Yeah. And you were kind of like, that bumped up respect a bit. Especially when I think it was Black Saturday and everything was taking place and he was just volunteering and..

He used the media..

Maybe they found him and got photos of him..

And he just walked away.

Just let me do my work. Yeah, I'm trying to do my thing.

Yeah. Tony Abbott was a prime minister. Not at the time, but he was a past prime minister of the country, and I had no time for him as a politician. Ironically, he's one of these guys, apart from his religious beliefs, and I'm not religious, so we probably would have had some differences in opinion around that.

Just slightly.

Just slightly. But pub test. If he's sitting next to you at the bar stool or the pub, you'd probably have a pretty good conversation going. He's an okay guy.

Yeah.

Yeah. But as a politician.

Yeah. Well.

No.

I think politician brings out the worst and most.

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh.

So least ethical?

Least ethical. So we can do. We've already named the number one because it was in the headline. But.

Yeah.

If we do it, start at the bottom. This one might surprise people. That a...

I guess it depends also what was below this was 11, 12.

I know, but the fact that it's in the top ten is probably not a surprise. But the fact that it comes up as number ten.

Yeah.

Mind you. Yeah. Lawyers. Um.

And I guess it's probably going to depend on what kind of lawyer. Because there are a lot of lawyers you would imagine that aren't you know, if you're just doing conveyancing or, or, you know, tax..

..these lawyers, you.

Just sort of like there's no kind of ethical. I mean, I'm sure you can be.

The trouble with, yeah. The trouble with lawyers is that, um, I think, as you say, other than the service lawyers, you know, that every time you engage in engaging with a lawyer, you are probably engaged against a lawyer.

And both lawyers are making a lot of money.

And so they're both making a lot of money. But also doesn't matter if you win?

You lost.

You lost.

Your bank lost!

And if you lost, the other guy was an unethical bastard.

Yeah.

So yeah it's one of those sort of. Yeah, it doesn't matter what the ethics of a lawyer is in a confrontational situation, 50% of people are not going to be happy.

Who do you think the most unethical type of lawyer would be? Do you reckon it would be marriage lawyers, like..

You mean, family..

You know, when marriages..

Divorce lawyers..

Divorce lawyers.

Divorce lawyers. Yeah. Go for everything...

Do you reckon they would be the most?

I don't know..

Or barristers? Like, for the, um. For the criminals. You know, those who are working for, like, the mafia or whatever.

Who knows? Yeah.

It's always so funny. I remember watching those docos on, um, uh, you know, mafia bosses or whatever, and it's always like the kids end up becoming lawyers or accountants and you're like, no shit, Sherlock.

I've got, I won't name the family. But there was..

Yeah, you encountered that?

There was a family, uh, in the Australian mafia that you went to school with the kids. I went to school with the two youngest brothers, and they both became lawyers. I wonder who they were working for.

Yeah, exactly.

Ceos and managing directors.

Managing directors. I think that's, that one stands up along with the next one, number eight directors of Australian companies. And then number seven, chairs. That's sort of throw the whole lot in together. The senior management of corporate Australia.

Yeah.

When they're often on extremely- well directors aren't, but chairs and CEOs and managing directors on, off and on, very high salaries of large companies. They can do an awful job in a sense. You don't. You never know what job a CEO actually does in a large organisation.

Besides what determined direction, yeah.

Um, into, you know, from the outside. But you look at them and go, is that worth. They got sacked because the company was terrible and they had written into their contract that if they get sacked, they take away a $30 million payout. Yeah. You got sacked because you are hopeless and yet you take a lot of money. So I think people just get jack of that. I think people also look at it and go, nobody is worth a hundred times more than the average worker in the company.

It's hard, though, because I can understand the argument from the point that like if you, if like, if I joined a company as a CEO, was hired as a CEO and turned the company around and the company made billions in profits and someone said, Well, you can have 60,000 as your annual wage. I would be like, Go fuck yourself. I just earnt you, you know, exponentially more than that. I want a proportion of the amount that I just earnt you, especially if it's something that I uniquely could do for you. If you could, if you couldn't hire anyone else to do this, to get the company turned around to make this kind of money. You can make this money, but I want a proportion of it that's significant. Um, so I can imagine that argument is devil's advocate. But yeah, at some point you've got to say, you know, is it you're getting more money than God now, you know.

Exactly.

Is it justified? And how much effort have you put in to actually reward the other people at the, the business who are doing all of the shitkicker jobs or all the other stuff from day to day, even if they didn't have the, the the goals in mind or the the the vision that you had and the you know, yes, it's pretty mind blowing. But yeah, I understand why people like Alan Joyce get huge income, you know, wages and payouts for Qantas or whatever, when for better or worse, they've been able to, you know, objectively make more money for the company throughout tough periods. And you can, you can think, you know, take ethics off the table. Um, if we can hire you and you can make more money for the company, we'll pay you more in order to do that..

Yeah, no question. But the I, I think the whole severance pay.

Yeah.

Regardless of the reason for severance.

I guess it's just that.

Like, if you say..

If you want to hire me, these are the conditions..

I know well and..

.. end up hiring..

And the trouble is that everybody does it, so there's no differentiation.

Yeah.

Um, you know who's going to walk in there and go pay me my $10 million a year? And at the end, I walk out with nothing.

Yeah. Well.

Nobody's going to do that. They're all going to go, You fire me, I want two years pay.

I know. It's pretty..

Because it's going to take me two years to get another job.

Yeah. No.

Yeah. And look you know, one of these of..

Life is..

I'll use an example and I'll name the person. I don't even have to name them because it's the immediate past CEO of the AFL. I have AFL, the AFL. Yeah.

This is a good story.

He he he hung on and he hung on, and he hung on in the job after he after he decided he was going to leave about two years ago. And he gave them 12 months to replace him. And then there was this drama with one of the clubs, um, that we can talk about in another time, but, um, and he decided that he was the only person who could oversee this, so he stayed on. Nothing happened for six months in this thing. It's just gone on and on and on and on and on. And then he decided he was finally going to leave. Five months after he leaves, he's now the CEO of Tabcorp, one of the major gambling companies that is a sponsor of the AFL. And, I go, Really? It's no wonder that..

.. people of interest?

People have been whining for years about gambling companies are so tied into sport because that's what people gamble on, which is fine. I have no problem with gambling companies. I have no problem with gambling. What I have a problem with is when they are major sponsors of sporting organisations. It's a huge conflict of interest. And the AFL, a lot of the clubs, I mean, my club, for instance, um, doesn't- they refuse to have gambling on any..

Jerseys.

Jerseys. They won't take sponsors. They don't have poker machines in their club rooms. They don't have, you know, on their social club, none of that stuff. Um, a lot of the clubs are the same, but the AFL as an organisation will take it. And then it's TV companies as well, who are, you know, they're paying billions of dollars for five year broadcasting rights. Um, because they're selling advertising. Who do they sell their advertising to? Gambling companies. And then they don't treat it like advertising. They treat it like advertorials. We'll go in the middle of a sporting thing, go, okay, now we'll go to blah, blah, blah from a particular gambling company. We talk about who to talk about. No, who. What are the odds on this game? You go, I'm sorry, that's an ad and it doesn't get included in your ad time because it's part of your broadcast. Anyway. So that's why I think people are, um, object to that sort of senior leadership when that unethical behaviour is, it's you could say it's not unethical to take you can take a job wherever you like, but we but..

It's like becoming the CEO of a cigarette company or, you know, any of these sorts of companies where it's like we're selling misery.

Yeah.

Effectively.

Exactly.

And we know we're selling, you know, and you can say, look, I'm just the head of the company, and I have to do, you know, but at the same time, you know what you're doing, you know, that you're in an industry that is causing, you know, a lot more harm than it is benefits. Yes. Oh, but we we sponsor the Little League teams at the local. So yeah, but their dads are all in debt.

I know. So.

Six.

Hang on. We go. Six, four and three are all escalations of the same thing. Number five, senior executives. It just ties into the other sort of company leadership.

There's pretty much just two big chunks here. And it's..

Yeah.

It's people who work in big companies.

Leaders and politicians.

And politicians. The next..

Local politicians, six. Four is state politicians, three is federal politicians. Interestingly, I would have thought..

The more senior you get..

The more senior you get, the less ethical people think you are, which is sort of bizarre. I'm not sure what the differentiation is, particularly between federal and state politicians. They're effectively the same. They're just obviously at different levels of parliament. Local politicians is a bit more different. You'd expect that because there's less kickback possible in a local politician.

But there was lots of weird shit happening, right, in Labour, in Victoria recently. Wasn't there this whole investigation came out where it was branch stacking or whatever it was.

Yeah, but that was at state and federal level.

Was it? Yeah.

Its local branches, but not so local politicians. Yeah. Your average person in the Geelong City Council or whatever you think is.

Yeah.

People are not doing that for career development or whatever. Yeah. Your average 22 year old might be, because they're looking I'm going to be the Prime minister one day. Where do I start? I'm going to go run for local council. But um, yeah. Anyway, I'm not sure about that.

But I can imagine. I can see why politicians. Because you are, you know, they talk out of both sides of their mouths.

Oh, constantly. And that's the thing is, I don't think..

.. Everyone nuts.

And there are a few examples. And usually they get found out and they get sacked or forced to resign.

Paid out, and then they leave and get it.

They leave and get their huge superannuation payout.

Barilaro was a sort of good example, and I probably don't want to get defamed, or defame him or anything, but look into the story of what happened with him and how he ended..

That new South Wales politician.

Yeah. Leaving, um, leaving politics because of the friendlyjordies coverage and everything and you're just like, especially all the stuff they brought to light. Again, assuming that it is true. Um and friendlyjordies definitely had a lot of evidence that he was showing. You, just like just horrified at the amount of, you know, the kind of stuff like we saw that with, um, Gladys Berejiklian, right, where she was on the phone to her boyfriend who was gloating about getting some deal for real estate, selling his property or whatever to make a, you know, millions of dollars. And she was just like, Yeah, I don't need to know that bit.

Yeah.

And you're just like. And then she was like, Oh, I didn't know what he was up to. And you're like, then how did you know you didn't want to know that bit?

I know, I know.

Like, you guys are so foolish.

I think, I think there are some there's corruption in politics. And you can say corruption is the ultimate in unethical. But I think the perception about ethics in politics is particularly state and federal politicians, is that they don't necessarily lie, but they never tell the truth.

Yes. Well, they tell whatever they need to in order to make..

The answer is always going to be the ten second grab that makes the news. They'll never answer a question.

Honestly.

And that's where I think. Well, they never answer a question. Full stop.

Or they do with like..

What's your, what's your favourite colour? Well have you heard what we're doing with, you know, it doesn't matter what the question is. They're going to give you their message. And I think people just get jack of that.

But that's the system. I guess that's how it's set up. Anyway. Number two, directors of foreign companies operating in Australia. It's like, yeah, I wonder why that's high up there.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's the all of the directors of Australian companies was down at number eight and roll all the other senior. Then you look at the people who have no, um, financial interest in Australia other than making money.

But I'm sure it's the same for Australians who are leading companies overseas. And then, yes, number one..

.. Which was already taken away. Real estate.

You know what shocks me? That isn't on this list? Um, marketers or salespeople.

Oh, yeah.

How are they not in the top ten? Because I would imagine they'd be above lawyers, some of these like directors of companies or whatever, like because I imagine they have the insane, perverse incentives of just sell as much shit to as many people as we can for as much as we can. And I get a percentage.

That's advertising. Advertising. Advertising is what's what is advertising?

Well, it's trying to get you to buy this stuff.

Trying to sell you something you don't need.

Yeah.

That's, that's not unethical. What is?

Yeah.

Look, I think regardless of advertising and marketing, I can see salespeople I think is probably different in a sense of and again, we don't know what the index included, but I think most people would not see salespeople as unethical because most people have a good experience with salespeople. They're being bullshitted the entire time, but they have a good experience. You know, I went to a shop or I went online and I tried to buy something and I got what I wanted. Uh, all things were happy. Tick.

Another one that's not on here. Car salesman.

Yeah.

How is that not on there?

Well, used car sales. Used car sales are sort of lumped in with real estate.

But just in general cars, cars, car sales people. Because they try and sell you so much crap that you don't need, even if it's a new car.

But yeah, the upselling is.

Yeah.

Would you like fries with that?

Let's have this one. And there was I was reading something on Reddit recently where there was someone who I think it was probably linked to this article on Reddit, and then the people underneath were commenting on it, and one of the guys was like, I used to work at a used car sales or not a used car new car sales place. If they ever try and get you to buy those premium annual packages or whatever it is. Care packages for the car, it's complete bullshit.

Of course it is.

And they were like, all they do is like, maybe for two minutes, vacuum the car out. They might use a squeegee on the front of the car. You know, all this stuff that you could do yourself, and it's 500 bucks a year or whatever. He's like, so much of that stuff is just padding and garbage for them to make more money.

Yeah, of course it is.

Yeah, there was loads of those sorts of comments that were like, I do this job and it's this and you know. Yeah.

Yeah. Real estate agents doesn't surprise me. I mean, the reasons that they give in the article are Ah, I think that that's just, um, I think it's soft journalism in a sense that they're, they're picking the pain points that are obvious. Um, you're basically saying people are ticked off with, you know, the, the, the price of rent and that, you know, their problems with their rental properties are not getting fixed.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, yeah, that doesn't make people unethical. It just makes them bad at their job. Um, I think the underlying thing and apologies to all those real estate agents who are listening to us, I think the underlying problem that I have, and I think many people have with real estate agents, is that they, by definition, serve to have a contract. A contract, conflict of interest. They're serving two masters. They are the buyer and the seller.

Yeah.

And they're the agent for both.

Yeah.

And so you can't do that. It's impossible to do it ethically..

At least, yeah, ethically.

And I think everybody sees that. And knows that.

But I remember..

An individual's possibly very ethical, but the very nature of their job is unethical. Regardless of the ethics of the particular people.

I called out the guy that was selling us this house because he was like, you know, oh, you can trust me. It's a really good deal, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, who do you serve?

Yeah.

Who are you working for? And he was like, oh, the seller.

I'm like, why would I believe anything you tell me? Like what? I'm just going to trust you? Like.

I know.

Like, you know, that's a really good price in this market. That's like, Based on what? Like you're just saying that. Yeah.

Yes.

And how do you, how would you do? You reckon there's a way of being an ethical real estate agent, or do you think inherently the job is just..

I think the job is just it's it's by very definition it's unethical.

Yeah.

Because you said you're serving two masters. It's it's it's a salesperson. Like, if you're a pharmaceutical salesperson, you're not selling directly to the patients.

Well, this this though, let me stop you, there was the issue they had in America and the opioid crisis, right. If there's a movie or a doco I think I watched on this, it may have been a movie. I can't remember the name of it, but it was that on the, the, um, is it what was it called? It starts with C, I think the drug that they were having all these issues with the pain medication.

Oh, yeah.

And the company hired all these beautiful women, these models, to go around selling it to doctors.

Yeah.

And the incentive was the doctors got to kick back on every pill they sold.

Yeah.

And you were just like, Oh, my God. I remember watching that and just being like, yeah, great. Like. Like. No shit. So they're going to now prescribe this for everything.

Exactly.

Because they get a dollar a pill back to them directly.

Well, see. That's that's not just unethical. I think that's illegal. It should be illegal. It's certainly immoral.

Yeah.

Um, it's probably not illegal, but, you know, that's happened in the in a lot of industries, you know, medical industries in particular of not just pharmaceuticals, but, you know. Oh, I sell products to surgeons. Surgical equipment. I'm just going to invite all of my customers to go skiing in Colorado this year, and my company will pay squillions of dollars to have all these surgeons who are already earning millions of dollars to go on this junket to Colorado on my, and I'll go with them just to buy them drinks. And so they'll keep buying my stuff.

Yeah, well, that's another one.

What is the next job do? Oh, Disneyland's no good. You know, use something better.

How are plastic surgeons not on here?

Yeah.

I would have thought they'd be up high on the list, depending on the type. But like the American, um, you know, facial plastic surgery type person, you see them on..

Nips and tucks and lips, yeah.

And TikTok going viral. And there was a huge issue with..

Botox and boobs.

There was some, some of them in Australia that got done because they were doing some really unethical practices in order to maximise their, their income and everything, and they got found out and had to like hand in their licenses or whatever. And you're just like, Good God.

Yeah.

Anyway, so yeah, it was an interesting read.

I don't know how accurate it is.

Yeah. Let us know what you think the most ethical and unethical jobs are.

Yeah, I don't know. Can you think of any that weren't on there that that should be, whether ethical or unethical. Like, zookeepers you would think would be up there. You know, like. People..

Unethical zookeepers.

Yeah. These people who work with animals.

Never met a zookeeper I didn't like. And I worked at a zoo for three years.

Yeah.

Anyway, thanks for joining us, guys.

Thanks, guys. Bye.