‘Broncos Will Win the NRL Grand Final’: I Asked Australia’s Top Psychic About The Country's Future and My Own

I got in touch with Dr. Jason Betts through Mensa Australia – the global “high IQ society” open to anyone who scores in the 98th percentile or above on a standardised test. Originally, I’d contacted Mensa because I wanted to ask self-professed geniuses fun, philosophical questions about the world: “What’s the meaning of life?” “What do you think is the most important job in a functioning society?” “What would utopia mean for mankind?”. But that idea got derailed when, on a Friday afternoon, Mensa-member Dr Betts rang me from his home in Tasmania.

On the phone he sounded incredibly sure of himself, whip-smart, but also compassionate. He seemed like someone who simultaneously took life very seriously but not seriously at all. At first, I was content with just doing a profile. He told me he was one of the smartest men around, with an IQ akin to Einsteins (a standing that is “one in a million”). He’d worked as a “genius consultant” on the reality show “Child Genius” and created multiple intelligence tests that could accurately measure various aspects of intellect, including in art and body. But perhaps one of the most interesting things he revealed was that he was also a psychic (named “Australia’s best” in 2008) and over the years had predicted a plethora of personal – and public – futures correctly. 

With access to a genius/psychic/doctor (which doesn’t happen often) I thought I’d ask Dr Betts to predict some of Australia’s impending events. Being the inquisitive person I am, I also asked him to predict some of my own.

(A side note: none of Betts’ views are associated with Mensa – they are of his own accord.)

Dr Jason Betts: Right. So I'm just going to read out the questions that you've written here. I've only looked at them about an hour ago before this interview. So here we go. 

1. Who will be Australia's next prime minister? 

I think our friend Anthony Albanese will actually get a second term. But to answer the question directly, I actually thought it would have been Penny Wong. But when I go through the names of ministers, one name did jump out at me: Jason Clare. So I don't know if he is in the running or anything. And I would have expected it to be Penny Wong, actually, as I say this now, I think she will get promoted to a very high position, but not Prime Minister, and then something will happen in 2024…This is the way it works, It just jumps into mind…2024 something will happen. She'll get promoted. But the next prime minister I think will be Jason Clare 27/28. 

VICE: Wow, Jason Clare 27/28?

Yep. Okay number two:

1. Who will win the NRL grand final?

I looked at that sheet of the top 13 and the first one came to me was the Raiders. And I looked and it's not possible. The stats say that they've already left the competition. So that didn't work. So then I chose one which was still available, and then I got the second one, Broncos, they flashed brightly in highlighter. 

Next question:

1. Will Australia enter a recession? 

Yes, but it won't be till 2025. And I said, okay, why? And then I thought, Australia is going to have two new inventions. And what I've got here was uranium mining. There's going to be a new uranium mine. And I'm not really up with geopolitics in Australia, but that makes me think that they're going to find somewhere and then just mine it. And there's not many places you can do that, most of us will think that it's in a national park. So we'll have to see where that happens. But that's next year, in 2024. 

The other thing I saw was Australia being a leader in the generation and creation of hydrogen fuel cells, or a way of storing hydrogen, which can be patentable and then used globally. So I think there's a real industry for Australia to use solar power to make hydrogen and then storage of hydrogen. And it's a storage technology. I think that we're going to do very well with it. 

And then the question about major natural disasters [4) Will there be any major natural disaster for Australia in the foreseeable future?] 

Oh, yes, well, that's a bit lower in the questions. In 2025, I saw a drought. And I saw it for three years. Ending in 2025. So, this summer, for Australia 2023/ 24/ 25, I think we're going to have three years of drought. Now, that's not for all of Australia. It will be in the harshest places. This is common, predictable science. But I see Tasmania separating and climate modelling. 

So even though we've got a drought there, and here, we might see in the middle of 2023 and 2024 intense rain and flooding, because we connect to the Antarctic weather system. A lot of cyclones across the top, from Broome to Townsville, Northern Territory and dry in the middle. So apart from these other storms, this will still be a drought in the middle for three years in a row. That's going to be hard.

Julie, I think your question was:

1. What does my future look like? 

So there's no point making guesses. I can't just say South America, because that's a bit open. So in the psychic world, the way we measure accuracy is to get two or three bits of information to kind of lock it down. So I see you in South America, in 2024, maybe at the end of 2023. But certainly the beginning of 2024. While you're there, I see you're not only writing a book, but I see, and this is your claim to fame, that you will create a way of safely interviewing…

[I’ve redacted this section because what he says actually seems like a good idea and I’m keeping it…but he basically explains that I’ll create a technology along the lines of Wikileaks – big claim, I know.] 

But then also, is this you giving me the idea now? 

No, it's what I get when I think of you. And that brings me to another question. And it came to me as a question. And sometimes the way we test philosophy is to work out how we know this is true? How can we test it? Can we come up with a better code of ethics? Can we come up with a better answer? Can we come up with any exceptions? Or can we find any falsity in it or things that make it not true? Can we come up with a better version of the meaning of life? Everyone has their own. So yours is this question: How to make people and governments accountable publicly without any corruptive process? I think if you can answer that you’ll have your claim to fame. 

Wow.

So it's taking the idea that I've already discussed with you and then building on it. So along the lines of WikiLeaks, but live and informative. Maybe a combination of…. [I’ve redacted this because, again, what he says actually seems like a good idea and I’m keeping it].

Next question. The question you had was:

1. Who and when will I date next? 

I get the name Kevin. 

Kevin. Oh God.

And this is the first time I've met you. I think you already know them. And I was given a clue of four and a half years. And this is between the meeting date and the marriage date. So I do think this person is the one and I think it's four and a half years between when you meet them and when you're going to get married. 

I actually don't think I know a Kevin.

You don't know? It could be a middle name. Or they could be around you now or maybe you know their brother. The only way to test is to wait for it to happen…or not, and see if I'm wrong. But I think you already do or you're aware of the link.

For example, Kevin might have a brother that you work with. And you've known this person for a year, which means three and a half years time is when you get married. That's the clue. Beyond that, if I go beyond I'm more likely to be wrong, because it's going to be a guess. So if I just stick to what comes spontaneously, and intuitively, I trust it very highly.

I also say that there's a problem with your mother, I get abdominal pain, and also feel that there's going to be a lack of mobility. 

Oh, how many years away would that be? 

Either this year to next. 

Interesting. 

Can you relate to that? 

She doesn't have any health issues that I know of at the moment. 

Well, maybe ask her. Abdominal pain. If it wasn't already existing in some way, I wouldn't get it. So it might be something she's not aware of. Which makes her not able to walk. So talk to your mom, maybe take her to that doctor. I recommend medical advice. 

Something did happen to my auntie last year where she broke her hip and both her legs. 

No, I did ask for you. And what came was Mother. 

Interesting. Well…that's sad, I hope that isn't true.

Time will tell. I have saved many people's lives by letting them know. One example was when I moved to Bernie in 2009. I didn't know any of the people there. One of the hairdressers, my wife's hairdresser, came to see me as a client. And one of the things I picked up was a pain behind the eye in her mother. And so I just said, it's not you, but it's your mother. And I can't see clearly out of the left eye but I'm getting the pain behind the right eye. And she said yes, mom's been complaining of headaches. And I said go to the doctor, get checked. So she goes to the doctor – the mother – and there's a tumour. Oh my God. And the doctor was just thinking it was headaches or menopausal oestrogen withdrawal or something. But they found a tumour. So Roberta treated that radiation and she has survived.

[Update: I obviously rang my mum after this interview because I was spooked. In that phone call, she told me she’d been to the doctor twice the week before because she was having pain in her stomach area – which she thought was coming from her kidneys (I knew nothing of this). 

I made a second call today, while writing this article, to follow-up on another appointment she had after that first call. Her doctor had diagnosed her with something that I won’t repeat for her own privacy and had given her medication for the next couple of years. She also said she was having trouble with her joints, especially one of her knees. I revealed to her the out-of-nowhere claim made by Dr. Betts but she didn’t seem fazed, even though I was. She said calmly, confident in her devout Islander religious faith, “Life is in God’s hands”. 

This was an insane moment. I’d never really subscribed to psychics or a higher spirituality – having grown up in a very practical, atheistic and mainstream-scientific oriented household – and mutterings of ‘What the fuck?’ had come up in the conversations with friends I’d rehashed the experience with. And still, I thought, it could all be coincidence. Right? Either that, or Dr. Betts had some kind of insane access to people’s medical files, which I highly doubt. 

You just really can’t make this shit up, can you.

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