Labor's high speed rail bet; Barrenjoey and Magellan merger.

Amid intense geopolitical instability - a war in Iran, oil prices surging and markets destabalised - the Australian government is pulling together its May budget which is expected to tie together its ambitious plans with a fresh nation building agenda.

This week we saw a glimpse of what that might look like. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote an Ideas piece for Capital Brief on why Labor is backing the high speed rail project.

In other news this week, fund manager Magellan and investment bank Barrenjoey announced a merger and Capital Brief investigated a very secretive venture capital fund.

We discuss:

• The Prime Minister's pitch for high speed rail.
• Why Australia has been discussing the high speed rail project for decades.
• Political voices skeptical of the project.
• The merger story of Magellan and Barrenjoey.
• The merged entity's possible future as the next Macquarie.
• Our investigation on VC fund Marbruck.

On The Call is a weekly live conversation with the Capital Brief newsroom on the stories driving the agenda in Australia's centres of power.

Host Harshdeep Kaur sits down with Capital Brief's journalists to dissect what we're watching and why it matters, and answer questions from our subscribers live.

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