00:00
Conrad, Benjamin, welcome straight to it, mate. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's good to be here. Doing great things. Fantastic. You're killing it. Thank you. I'm trying.
00:08
Seriously, you are. I mean, obviously, you come on our radar all the time.
00:12
What most people don't realize is your origins. You were a teacher.
00:16
Yes. You look too young to be a teacher by the start. You look like you're about 18. It's my skincare routine, you know? Use that sunscreen and moisturize.
00:23
You're not going to drop in a sponsor, are you? I'm open. I'm looking. I'm looking.
00:28
Here he is. Now tell me about your teaching. Like where were you teaching?
00:31
What were you teaching? So I've taught sort of all over the place. I've taught in Victoria for a couple of years, taught here in New South Wales, in Newcastle for a couple of years, taught for a year in China. Wow. Teaching like Chinese kids, Canadian curriculum. So obviously like international education is big and Chinese kids want to get into the Canadian market, the Australian market. And so this was a Canadian school set up. And so I taught economics there for a year. So like year 11, 12 students. So I've sort of done a lot of teaching all over the place.
01:00
But most of it, like I started teaching PE, but then moved into economics and sort of enjoyed that a hell of a lot more.
01:06
What do you learn? I mean, what did those teaching years inform you relative to what you do today in relation to your own podcast here at Punish Politics? What does it inform you about kids?
01:18
I think it teaches you a few things. How to communicate complex stuff as simple as possible whilst trying to hold attention. Because you can see it drift. You've got to hold the attention of 30 prepubescent or pubescent year 10 students who don't give it. Can I swear? Yeah. Who don't give a shit about what you're talking about. And so you've got this dry content that they don't care about. And your job, at least my job, what I was just trying to do is go, okay, what's the most important thing that they need to get from this? Because there's so much in the curriculum.
01:49
You're like, boring, boring, boring. It doesn't really matter. There's obviously principles and stuff that they need to understand how the world works and... different things like that. So you're going, what's the most important things? What's the most relevant things? And how can I connect that into, how can I make it relevant for them? Because a teenager's world is so small, I suppose. They only care about their social life and what's going on like immediately to them. So you've kind of got to like open their world and expand their world piece by piece.
02:12
Did you think to yourself at any stage, these young guys and girls might one day be my audience? Yeah.
02:18
No, I never thought that. I never thought I'd be doing what I'm doing now.
02:23
I thought I was just destined. My dad was a principal and a teacher. Oh, really? Yes. And I swore I'd never go into it. But the holidays are too good. I got used to, you know, eight weeks off, 10 weeks off a year, Christmas time. And, you know, and I ended up enjoying... When you're teaching the right subject, like teaching can be a grind. Like let's face it, sometimes teaching kids, they can be little assholes. Especially teenagers can, they will psychologically break you day in, day out. And the only way you can kind of bring them on side is to care about them and kind of care about their world and really like build that relationship.
02:56
Because relationships are the only way, like every teaching pedagogy will tell you it's building rapport. They have to... They have to care about you.
03:25
teachers would never get away with that.
03:26
No.
03:27
So you're sort of learning how to be a bit of a psychologist. What you're telling me is you're rooting the room too. You have to.
03:32
Like you, I don't know. I don't know what it was like back in the day when I had the cane and. Well, that's what it was. It was a cane. Do what I said and you get like the hard discipline. Whereas now it's, it's sort of like, I think teaching practice has gone a lot better. You know, like if kids are acting out, there's a reason for it. And so I think there's a lot to learn. Like I learned a lot of empathy through teaching kids. Cause I think adults are no different to kids. Like if people are better, acting out, being assholes or whatever it is. When you're teaching teenagers, and the younger the kids go, because they taught primary kids as well, like teachers aren't going to sit there and go, oh, you know, little Sally's been like acting out today.
04:06
What an idiot. Just put her in the corner. No, they go, well, something's going on. Like what's going on at home? What's going on at school? Really? Yeah. Yeah. Are they struggling to... Because often what you'll find is the kids playing up, you know, it might be too easy for them or they're, you know, undiagnosed with something or they're just in the wrong space or there's something like physiological going on that they have to sort of work out. There's always...
04:27
Nine times out of 10, there's always like an explainable reason that teachers can, this is why teaching jobs pretty bloody hard. Cause you're like, I've got five kids that need to be up the front of the class and that kid can't concentrate if they're over there. So I've got to place them over there. So you're always adjusting everything and good teachers kind of can manage that and then get some learning to happen as well.
04:46
And when you're taught economics, was it year 11 or 12, older kids? Yeah.
04:52
Did anything sort of jump out at you in relation to economics that is relevant to today, the way you look at economics or the way you look at an economy?
05:00
I think it's just the simplicity and the macro nature of it. When I started getting into economics, it really- As a teacher or just generally- Generally, like I started to, you know, just listen to like Freakonomics and pseudo economics podcasts where I just discovered economics is often just explaining stuff and looking at solutions that other countries have tried.
05:22
And I realized that politics is really just a conversation about economic theory. Do we think it's going to trickle down? Do we think this solution of a, I don't know, universal healthcare system, do we think it works? Well, economists go, well, look at this country. They tried it. here's the pros and cons. This country tried it, here's the pros and cons. Do we think a universal basic income will work? We can argue about it politically, but economics, at least on the level I engage with it on, is just reading the findings and the research where they just go, well, we tried a UBI.
05:54
They tried one in Canada and one in Europe somewhere.
05:57
And we saw what happened. Did people all quit their jobs and just stop working? Well, no. So I just find it an interesting take on People are trying solutions all the time and we can learn from other countries and we have good research. Obviously, you can't necessarily port one country's solutions over to another, but I think it can inform our political debate immensely.
06:18
It's interesting the way...
06:21
governments, I probably should say politicians, fiscal policy, the policy of taxes and things that governments are responsible for, and also the way Reserve Bank, for example, uses monetary policy, that's interest rates, how they basically, and I have this conversation with lots of people, it's basically just trying to change your behavior. in a way that they want the economy to behave. So they say, well, I want Conrad to stop spending money because the more he spends, the more likely the people he buys things from are likely to put prices up, which means the more likely his spending habits are going to create inflation.
06:57
Therefore, what I'm going to do is I'm going to change his behavior by charging him a great amount of interest. Or I'll maybe put the taxes up or something like that. But...
07:06
Most people look at economics like it's sort of like black and white, like it's very one or the other, binary. But in actual fact, it's really a psychological game. It's all about psychology. How do I change your behavior in order to make the economy look the way I want it to look if I'm a politician?
07:23
Were you ever able to explain that to students? I mean, do you think students ever got that stuff?
07:27
I think, yeah, I think that's the base level of it. Like what I was teaching was just basic macroeconomics. You know, you start with the supply demand.
07:35
Where they meet and you get price.
07:36
Yeah, exactly. But those basic principles are exactly as you said, it's incentives. And I think what we've been taught politically, because it benefits certain groups of people, is that the economy and economics is this one formula. And there's this group of people that are smarter than everyone that are telling us, no, no. We can't tax this group of people because that'd be bad for the economy. But what you realize is that we set the rules. We set the shape. We being...
08:06
A democratic country, governments making rules. Consumers. Well, consumers do through behavior, but even they're pushed by incentives and prices, like you said, and taxes.
08:15
And, you know, this sport, the free market, so to call it, is operating on a playing field. And in different countries, the rules are different. And I think what you sort of teach in, because I remember just distinctly teaching the concept of externalities. Yeah. right? Like business operates, but then there are things that happen outside of the business operations that impact everybody else. And is the business that makes a profit paying for those externalities, like the pollution in the river or the, you know, the high prices for certain things, or is the community paying those?
08:50
And I remember teaching a subject on that and I was like, holy hell, like this is basic year 10 economics right here that our government on some level just struggles to understand and internalize. Like if we've got, you know, mining corporations doing X amount of damage in these ways, making this much money, and we're just saying, oi, pay for your bloody damage because our community is paying for it. I think, which... Rural town. Like, I mean, I'm from Newcastle. 80% of the soil is contaminated by lead.
09:21
Who's paying that externality? Well, I bloody am, right? And I think, was it Mount Isa or somewhere where it's like 50% of children are contaminated with lead poisoning or something? So it's like, these are serious externalities. And, you know, we need to shape the incentives so that we're not the ones always paying the price while some foreign corporation gets to make all the money.
09:43
And gets paid dividends to all the shareholders.
09:45
Yeah. Who often live overseas. Yeah. Or often, you know, Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund or something like that.
09:51
Yeah. So did any of those things or those findings or those realizations encourage you to sort of set up Punnish Politics? Yeah.
09:59
I think it was this realization that politics is more simple than we realize it is. That the solutions are more simple than we're told they are. Should be. I think they are. Yeah. But for some reason, they're not. And, you know, I was teaching a class, year 10 economics class, and we were just doing an assignment on... I'd opened the textbook, I'd just finished externalities, and we're looking at... the different rankings of where Australia sits on different goals, you know, women in the workforce, free press, pollution in the environment, clean air, clean water.
10:31
And I was like, all right, kids, this textbook's 2017. Why don't we rank Australia's progress? Are we getting better or worse according to these rankings that some external independent person is ranked?
10:45
And the kids' assignments come back.
10:47
And this has been like, what, eight years into the Morrison, Turnbull, whatever.
10:53
government date we've had.
10:55
And I kid you not on every single assignment that came in, we went backwards on everything. Kids were like doing the report cards for the government being like, it's a D, it's an F, we've gone backwards.
11:05
And that moment, I just, it was sort of, I just realized the student put their hand up and they were like, sir, I'm Does the government know this? Like, do they know we're going backwards? And it's that simplicity. Like, the data's there. We know we're getting worse on all these metrics that matter to us, that matter to our well-being and their future.
11:26
And the government, you want to look at it and go, are we getting better? Are we going forward? Do I have a future to look forward to?
11:31
And I just went home and I had to write a letter to my MP, the first one I ever wrote. And I was like, what are you? I showed him the findings, my students' assignments. I was like, what do you want me to say?
11:39
To the kids. Yeah, to the kids. I even put a post on Facebook. I found it the other day. I just put it on Facebook. I was like, did Scott Morrison? What do you want me to tell them?
11:48
Like, here's the data showing we're going backwards.
11:51
Do you know this is happening? And what do you want me to say to them? Because if you want me to answer their question, I'm going to tell them that there are a certain group of people that donate to you that love this system, that love externalizing the costs of their business onto me, onto them, onto their future. And we're bloody paying for it while they make record profits.
12:11
Is that what you want me to tell them, that you're actually on the foreign corporate side and not my students' side? Please give me something to reply to.
12:20
And?
12:21
Just your generic copy paste. You know how they send that email? It's like, we are improving on something. They don't really answer it. The classic political maneuver of just waffling on an email.
12:34
And Conor, do you think that's, from a government's point of view, whether it's from the Treasurer or Prime Minister at the time, I don't know. But do you think it's, one, they don't care.
12:48
Two, they're oblivious or two, they're oblivious or three, they know about it and they're sponsoring it.
12:58
I think different levels, different politicians, it's a combination of all of them.
13:01
Like you can't tell me that they don't know.
13:05
You know, we're looking at corporate profits in certain sectors always up and up. CEO pay is up. Billionaire wealth is up. Like house prices up until recently just kept on ticking up. Greatest run ever.
13:21
It's almost as if the system is perfectly designed for the people when I line up the best like bank profits through the roof. Even now, like posting $10 billion, whatever.
13:32
So this system actually, for certain sectors of our economy, these oligopolies that kind of operate in Australia, they're doing very well. This economy is working very, very well.
13:43
For certain parts. For certain parts. And they would know that. They would know that it's performing very well.
13:52
And then they would also like, but they're too good at paying lip service of like, oh, we know the cost of living. We know housing affordability. Like they know how to signal to our problems. But then when I'm just looking at hard data, teaching kids, I'm like, are we getting better on any of this stuff? Are we improving? And the answer just keeps on being no. Yeah. So I think it's a combination of all of it. But if you, if, if you ask me, I think you were pointing out, you know, how economics, you know, is a set of incentives. I think there's a set of incentives for politicians and those incentives are very well controlled by the people who donate to our politicians, the industries that they go and work for afterwards, uh, And, you know, the outcomes for those sectors, the biggest donors to our politicians, well, they're great.
14:41
Woodside's profits, not profits, Woodside's revenue is up 30% because of a war overseas, but apparently they can't pay us for their gas, right? Like this is, you know, politicians, like they know that.
14:53
But for some reason, it's always too hard to change.
14:56
But what would be the solution in terms of changing a politician's response? Do we need to find more ideological politicians? Because there's a whole layer of, by the way, bureaucrats underneath them who we never get to vote for. And by the way, they're there through this politician, the next politician, the next politician. And to some extent, it's a bit like that TV show, Yes Minister. To some extent, I think I always feel as though the politician just looks and says, this is too hard because I can't get everybody below me.
15:31
They'll say, yes, Mr. So-and-so.
15:34
But maybe you need to consider, we've done a study on this before and it didn't work. I mean, and therefore we should just stay the way we're going, keep the system the way it is.
15:47
Do you think, is the solution getting better quality politicians? How do we pick the right person? And how do we deal with the other bit, the bureaucratic bit in the middle? Because I think, you know, if people are being got at by...
16:03
big influence groups.
16:06
I reckon it's just as much at the bureaucratic level as it is, is at the political level.
16:11
How much it filters down, because I know a lot of these bureaucrats are selected by the politician. Like the politician will appoint a head of whatever sector, right? And they'll get a million dollars a year. What a great salary, right? More than the politician. Yeah. Way more than the politician. And I mean, from my limited experience going to Canberra, probably like less than 10 times, right? I never want to be there ever. Uh, I've run into some of these bureaucrats, and what's crazy is they have the answers. Like, whatever you're talking about, they're like, oh, yeah, yeah.
16:42
Like, I've been in those hearings with, like, Ken Henry, the bloke who was the head of the treasury.
16:46
Former head of the treasury. Former secretary of the treasury.
16:48
Yeah, big dog. And he's up there telling the politicians, yeah, bloody tax, gas. Like, we've been over this. He's been doing this. You can play a reel from him from 10 years ago saying the same thing, but it doesn't sort of change. So, at least... From my understanding, I start at the politician level. You think the blockage is there? This is where I'm starting because this is where we have power. And I start at the blockage of the politician, but then it's like, oh, how do we find the right politician? I'm kind of less concerned about that. And I'm more, how do we make the incentives of whoever is in there not be pulled towards foreign corporate vested interest and towards us?
17:25
And the biggest thing I see...
17:28
Is there's limited corruption accountability. The national anti-corruption commission has proven to be like some mad joke. Like it either after two years running found no corruption. And so, wow. Like we either believe that there was completely no corruption in the last 20 years or it's not working. Um, It's funny in New South Wales, though, that's not the case. ICAC seems to be very effective. Victoria, hopelessly effective. Totally agree. I'm loving watching just what's coming out in New South Wales, and I'm heartened by seeing that process play out in public.
17:59
Then I hear Victoria's ICAC is like, their standard of corruption is criminal. But as you know, running a business, there's many reasons you'd fire someone for corrupt conduct that wouldn't be criminal. Obviously, politicians make the rules for themselves.
18:15
So they're not going to make a rule that holds themselves to a too high standard. They're going to keep it low. But the biggest thing I always keep coming back to is we forget the life cycle of our current politicians that we've got now. We've got these career politicians that start as staffers if they're lucky.
18:30
When they're 20.
18:31
When they're 20. And we've got the best example playing out right now in the by-election in Secret Harbour.
18:39
over on the West Coast of One Nation v Labor. We've got, Labor have put up a new candidate and we've got this ex-former staffer for Madeleine King, our resource minister, maybe a future gas lobbyist. And then she went from being a staffer for Madeleine King to a Woodside lobbyist And now Labor, in their infinite wisdom, have decided, go, you know what? That's our candidate. So Georgia Tree, ex-Woodside lobbyist, is now running in Secret Harbour against One Nation.
19:11
And just remind us where Secret Harbour is relative to Woodside.
19:14
Secret Harbour's the electorate. Yep.
19:17
Have they got a gas? Don't even know.
19:20
Don't know. Another politician in the Labor cabinet. Obviously, Roger Cook bloody loves the gas industry.
19:28
Well, I guess more GST because of it.
19:30
He's in their pocket, right? But imagine if we could get it if they paid us for the gas. Like, wow, that'd be amazing, right? Because all the stuff offshore is, you know, most of it's just given away for free. So we've witnessed this. So this is the incentive that I think is toxic. I think politicians think it's okay.
19:47
Seven out of ten punters call it corrupt. To have politicians, like almost every resource minister has gone to work in the mining and oil and gas or resources sector, They make the rules for this sector as politicians. Like, I think Martin Ferguson and Ian McFarlane, like, one of them is still, like, the head of the AEP or one of the gas, the big gas lobbies, right? And he made the rules. So, when punters asked me, like, hey, why are we getting stiffed on our resources, which Aussies deeply understand, they And then I go, well, I mean, coincidence or corruption.
20:23
I don't know what goes on, but he made the rules. Now he's a gas lobbyist. Now we're seeing that same virtuous cycle play out again. Staffer.
20:31
Lobbyist. Politician. Potential future MP for the Labor Party.
20:38
That's what I see as like it's an incentives thing.
20:40
You're not saying it's the talent of the individual because I often want about the talent of the individuals who are in our political system. Right. I mean, I look at our treasurer. He has no experience as a treasurer or in economics. It's not his territory. But, you know, he's obviously a senior person within the Labor Party and, of course. Have you had him on? Yeah.
20:58
Yeah.
20:59
And he's a senior person in the Labor Party. And, of course, the way the system works is that, you know, the most senior person gets the second top job, which is treasurer. Yeah. You know, I guess it's all about sort of semi-grooming him to one day to become the prime minister. And we've seen many treasurers become either premiers or many treasurers end up becoming prime ministers. And it's a thing. It's a system. I often wonder if the drama we have here is it the quality dash talent of the individual or But what you're saying is, a lot deeper than that, what you're saying is that actually it's a system that's been built to protect interests.
21:37
Do you think it's conscious or not?
21:40
Like the system's been deliberately built that way? I think by the foreign corporate interests, you would know, you're a business bloke.
21:50
You got one job. Make money. Make as much money for those shareholders as possible. That's your job.
21:55
That's your job. You don't do it, you're gone. Well, under the corpse law, if you don't do it, you'll get in trouble. You got to act in the best interest of shareholders.
22:01
You got to do. That's the incentive.
22:04
So if you're looking at the best kind of investment that you can make, the best allocation of resources – You could invent something new. You could start a new business. You could invent a new product. You could employ more people. You could invest in technology. It's hard but expensive, right? You might not succeed. You might waste money on it. You know what's a guaranteed bet?
22:22
Invest in the rules. It's no coincidence. I don't think it's any coincidence that the industries that extract the most amount of profits out of our country, talking banks, mining, property companies, They are wholly reliant on the rules set up for them by the government, right? For property, if the government just like waves its magic wand and re-zones, they've minted millionaires. Mining sector, we own the resources. That's our shit in the ground.
22:50
Mm-hmm.
22:51
And the resource minister is supposed to be negotiating for me because that's mine. I want them to go in and, you know, slap them on the back and get in, get me a good deal, right? We're on the separate sides of a Facebook marketplace negotiation. Foreign corporate wants our stuff, right? We have the stuff. Let's get a good deal so we get rich and you get rich, right? And so...
23:12
You know, Gina Reinhart's wealth is directly proportional to how little she can pay us for the iron ore she takes. That's just business 101. Cost of the asset. Cost of the asset, right? And so when it comes out that the cost of our gas asset turns out to be like half of it's being given away for free, what the hell went wrong here? So if you're these corporates trying to make money, you go, well, listen, if we just put all this money into...
23:37
donating to politicians and schmoozing them at dinners and really connecting with them and putting staffers in there and then taking their staffers and then taking, you know, I mean, you've had a few politicians on the pod.
23:51
Like, if you're employing a future person to, like, liaise with the government, are you, like, looking for the most talented person? I'm connected.
24:00
I'm looking for the most connected.
24:01
There you go. I mean, it's no coincidence. If you're MinRes, of course you're going to look at Mark McGowan. Is he, I don't know, is he really talented? I don't know.
24:10
Oh, is Mark McGowan working for MinRes now, is he?
24:12
One of three or four. He's one of the lobbyists. He's consulting for a few different, I couldn't even keep up with the amount of jobs he took after. Yeah. Um, so I would call that selling access to our politicians and a business goes, what a great investment.
24:27
So what would you do that kind of, would you say, if you're a politician, you are not allowed to do this post post your termination or post your term.
24:36
Yeah, I would. I'd say if you made the rules for an industry or a sector, you cannot go and work in that sector. Uh, you, you can't work in any government liaising facing role. I'd even be very cautious about, you know, like Josh Frydenberg, where'd he go? Goldman Sachs, right? Like the list is endless. Like I could, you know, uh, Julie Bishop also did some stuff with Minrez, like, uh, They just, all these big monopolies just look at our politicians and go, and so we have to ask, you can answer this question better than I can.
25:09
Are they the most talented people for the job? They're probably the most connected. And I think if that's the answer, to me, that reeks of corruption. To me, that reeks of buying access.
25:19
So you would say lobbyists is a term that gets used to sort of smooth over what they're actually doing.
25:28
Yeah. It's, well, it's worse than that because there's lobbyists which are registered and like Christopher Pyne, where's he getting a lot of his clientele from? Weapons. What deal did ScoMo make? Orcus, you know, uh, who, who's, who's ScoMo working for now? Some weapons affiliated something that gets some stuff from Orcus, like the connections are there. So it's, it's one of those things where, yeah, um, I would ban it outright. And, oh, sorry, they've got lobbyists, which are registered, and then they've got in-house.
26:01
So if you're Woodside and you employ Georgia Tree, she's not technically a lobbyist. She's like a government liaison. She won't be on the register. She'll be walking around Parliament House with all her Labour colleagues that she used to work in Madeleine King's office. You're telling me that Woodside, after taking Madeleine King's staffer as a lobbyist, that Georgia tree can't wander back in. Oh, hey, Madeline, how are you? Good to see you. Oh, just over at Woodside here. They'd really love that. That's access I don't have. So I'm just pointing the question, is that fair that Woodside can just poach these people?
26:33
Do you think not only should politicians not be allowed to take those jobs post their term, but do you think also just no lobbying?
26:42
Why do you have to lobby government?
26:44
What's the point? I mean, if you're running a good business, Lobbying is basically influencing outcomes at government, policy outcomes.
26:53
I don't know if there's any other countries where there's proxies for this, but who could be a proxy for this, but By definition, we allow lobbying all the time. Do you think perhaps lobbying should be just banned altogether?
27:25
I would say that it would be the bike. It's what allows us to get where we want. It's on Shopify that we manage our business.
27:36
I mean, it's pretty hard. Like, I don't want to defend lobbying here, but I understand what people will hide behind. Like, when I'm talking lobbying, I'm talking, like, purchasing unfair access. Because I made a YouTube video where I quite literally got nine or ten politicians from across the political spectrum, put them into a room. For real. For real. Yeah. And had a fancy dinner and sold. I made money, Mark. I made money.
28:07
from selling access to politicians. And I said, you want to sit next to David Pocock or Bridget McKenzie, buy a ticket for $50 or $100, and you can do that.
28:17
This is exactly how political parties make money. So you run an experiment on it? Yeah. And it's totally legal. It's totally fine. And I think that's a problem. That's what I'm saying. Do you think the laws around it should be amended? 100%. Changed? 100%. Like, I don't think that should ever be allowed. And I think most Aussie punters think it shouldn't be allowed. I think when you broaden the conversation into should lobbying be allowed, that's when you give them legitimate cover because they'll hide behind. What they look for is a legitimate straw man to hide behind. Yeah. I'm lobbying the government right now. I've got my audience.
28:49
I've spoken to a few politicians and I'm saying, hey, you should tax gas. That's lobbying, right? Any small not-for-profit, like, you know, you're in the business sector, you're going, hey, these laws would impact me in this way.
29:00
And there is a... But I'm not asking them to change laws. So, I mean, I'm just trying to unpick this as we go along, but I wonder whether or not the lobby could be allowed where it's part of a forum where...
29:13
I get Conrad in the room and I get 10 others and I'm the politician. I say, okay, let's just understand the problems. And what do you think? And what do you think? Maybe the process should be in a group and you should be able to argue against that person, argue against that person. Maybe you shouldn't be able to come into my office in the mothership in Canberra and sit in front of me and try and convince me that something should happen or something should not happen. Maybe it should be done on a forum basis. Because I've been asked down to Canberra a couple of times and, uh, in relation to, you know, my industry, the mortgage industry I'm talking about and property industry.
29:49
And, uh, But I've always been there in a forum where there's a whole lot of people got a point of view.
29:54
Unfortunately, though, what tended to happen during that period, this is quite a few years ago, the government only invited those people down there who were like-minded to them. Nobody was invited from the other side of the argument, which we saw last year when the current federal government held the event, whatever it was, in July, August last year to talk about inflation and productivity and all that sort of stuff.
30:19
I know who they invited and I know who they didn't invite. So maybe, I mean, I don't want you and I have to try and solve this problem now because I really want to hear about pundits politics and why you got involved in the business. But I find it fascinating. Maybe governments should be forced to have, there should be some ombudsman type person who says, listen, that event, that forum you held was not properly represented by all sides.
30:42
Lobbyists don't get banned. But if you want to go down there and see, you know, the treasurer or the prime minister or whoever happens to minister for mineral resources, you have to be prepared that you're going to be taken on by somebody else over the corner. So, you know, Conrad might be there.
30:57
And, you know, BHP, whoever it is, you're sitting there talking about gas.
31:03
Yeah.
31:03
Your lobby is going to be there, but you're going to have Conrad on the other side. Yeah. Are you prepared to do it? Yeah. What about that?
31:08
I think there are easier low-hanging fruit to go for.
31:12
What would you go for? And that's what I go for. I go for, let's start with the fact that if you pay $100,000 to the Federal Labor Business Forum, you get special access to buy tickets to dinner with Anthony Albanese.
31:25
Yeah.
31:26
This is off the books conversations at a dinner table. And someone's home. Yeah. So they have those forums. In Point Piper. Yes. Recently. Someone's home whose father was apparently a tax bludger.
31:36
Yeah.
31:38
Weird, right? This, to me, is the biggest problem. The one with Dan Andrews and someone else. I don't know.
31:43
Yeah, yeah. It was Anthony Pratt. Big dog. Money. Like, once again...
31:49
If you're using your money, I don't have that kind of money. So instantly it's not fair because I don't have a mansion in Point Piper that I can invite the Prime Minister to, to chat with, schmooze, build relationships. Because corruption isn't as easy as, here's a paper bag, do what I say. Yeah, that is corruption, but that's at one end of the spectrum. You're saying this is more subtle. It's more subtle. It's manipulation. It's who I'm exposed to. It's who I'm talking to the most. And if the people with the more money get more access, which is definitely happening, that's the easiest thing to wipe out. Because the stuff you're talking about in some ways does happen, and it can be improved, the process by which the government consults.
32:24
But the government does consult. The thing, I've been to these consultancy things. Yeah, I think they're rubbish. Bloody, the most annoying thing is you're in the room and what you'll find is like everyone in the room can really, like I was at this gas thing, the one I was talking about with Ken Henry and all the politicians are asking questions and all the people who were sort of asked, even the gas lobby was there. He didn't really want to talk to me, but he was there. They all gave their representations and all the experts, all the nerds, all the boffins, all the people, they kind of came to the conclusion we're getting stiffed on our gas. Like a hundred percent, we've been getting scammed for 10, 20 years.
32:55
But for some reason, that beautiful consultancy package just never makes it into the room where people make the rules. And if you ask me what the problem is, is that there are meetings happening that are off books. We don't get to see ministers' diaries, right? Every time a FOI thing is requested, they'll do anything they can. Like Rex Patrick is always going to court himself to pull files out that we are entitled to as citizens. Yeah. And they will do everything. Like I think Albo is more secretive than Scott Morrison. He had bloody seven secret ministries.
33:27
So this is a problem. So these are the things I would fix. I would fix transparency. But the number one I'll keep banging on about is if you make the rules, you can't go work for the sector that is getting rich off those rules that you made. Blanket. Let's start there. What about journalists? Yeah.
33:48
who, and to some extent, you and I are journalists. I mean, we're not a typical journalist, but to some extent in our shows, we are.
33:54
I talk about things. I don't use the term journalist. Well, but to some extent, I wouldn't describe myself as a journalist, that's for sure.
34:00
But we sort of are. We're talking to an audience and we're sort of, you know, curating what we wanted to say, et cetera.
34:08
But what about journalists? So there is a, do you think that journalists should never be allowed to go and work for the PR side of the government?
34:16
Oh, good question.
34:18
I think I'm okay with PR. Weirdly. I have to think about that question a bit more. Like...
34:23
I mean, yeah, there could be that closeness, right? That's a fair point.
34:27
Like if I'm a journalist and I'm writing for a paper. Yeah. And then I know that all my mates have gone to work for the, I don't know, the prime minister for argument's sake.
34:37
Yeah.
34:38
And therefore I'm going to be nice to him or her on a topic. It could be taxing gas, additional taxes on gas. Then I'm going to go soft on that because I know that the prime minister has a view and therefore I want to make sure I'm always in the consideration set.
34:52
Yeah. Yeah.
34:53
They sort of are lobbies because they're lobbyists before they leave the job.
34:57
There's connections behind the scenes.
34:58
They're lobbying. Yeah.
35:00
They're sort of lobbying themselves into a job.
35:04
I think you've hit on a really important element. That's another part that I need to think more about is...
35:11
If media is the thing that keeps our democracy functioning, right? Or should be. Or should be.
35:16
Yeah.
35:17
They're the ones that are supposed to expose all the dodgy stuff so that we can hold government to account. This is what we believe in democracy. We believe that in our democracy, that power can't be trusted. That's why we separate it. That's why we have transparency. That's why I want to see your diaries to see who you're meeting with over other people. And journalists are the ones that we want doing the digging for that. So I think it's a good... thing to be questioning where my mind goes with the journalist relationship is how can The same corporations that fund our politicians, that they often go work in those sectors, often own most of our media ecosystem.
35:55
Rupert Bloody Murdoch, who hasn't paid tax in this bloody country for over 10 years, News Corp, go figure, doesn't pay tax. He lives overseas, has more influence on our politics. My mind goes to that, where we need this institution to be strong and not biased and holding power to account.
36:16
But if that system is propped up by corporate money, corporate donations, and offshore billionaires, are they really going to hammer the stuff? Like, I think this is... Well, naturally, they're not.
36:28
You would think the incentives don't line up, do they? No, but why would they? And this is the indictment on why punters politics exist. This shouldn't exist. It's not a success story that some surfer bloke from Newcastle can make Instagram reels explaining stuff like I would year 10 economics sort of concepts can get millions of views each month. This is, this has, it's kind of the symptom of to how this corporate media system has left alone the real issues people care about, the real things impacting our daily lives, the real reasons why our economy is stacked against us and rigged in favor of a handful of corporate monopolies that run this country.
37:09
I'm sitting in the gap that corporate media have left.
37:11
That's where my mind goes to... Do you think there's any coincidence that most of the major industries in this country are controlled by two or three?
37:20
Yeah.
37:21
Like, you know, banking, insurance, telcos, airlines. Do you think there's any, you know, is that a coincidence? Because, you know, if we just go back to economics, is it because...
37:37
if you're small and you're trying to take on the big guys, you won't have enough, you won't be able to compete on price because you don't have enough economies of scale.
37:46
But you still have, in a regulatory sense, so many costs to run this business. You're going to have to have the same regulatory costs as your opposition, the person you're trying to take market share from. Therefore, and the big guys, they wait there and to see if you get big enough, they just say, we won't do anything about us losing market share. When that entity gets big enough, we'll just go and buy them.
38:05
Yes, we'll kill them in the grave. If we can't do that, we'll buy them.
38:08
Yeah, 100%. But that's sort of typical economics. I mean, that's just how it works. Or do you think that there's not a conspiracy, but there's, I don't know, a cabal of people sitting around trying to make sure that that remains the way it is, including mining?
38:29
Well, I mean, think of the incentives. Yeah. You're the CEO. You want to make as much money as possible. Guess what sucks for you making money? Competition. You'd have to compete. You'd have to run ads. You'd have to improve your product. You'd have to do all of these things. So the incentive, once again, is if you're allowed to do it, you will kill it in the grave. You will lobby for onerous regulation for them because you can afford it.
38:52
I've seen it happen.
38:54
There you go. You will purchase. You'll just buy it up if you can. And yes, we have the ACCC. So there's no loss. There's no downside for them. No.
39:02
So if I've already got a big market share, I don't care if someone new comes through the process. Unless they come with some sort of weird technology to completely change the way things are. For example, Uber killed off taxis, for example. Unless it's something like that. But if it's just normal day-to-day transactional stuff, which is, you know, we know where all the big dogs are sitting now. At the end of the day, you can't lose.
39:24
The best definition of the free market that I was given – was it's not whether there's no government regulation, right? Like the free market is a full body contact sport. But if you don't have a referee, that game of soccer turns into a blood sport. And it turns out with the dude who can afford the biggest weapons owning the field.
39:47
And it's not a good sport to watch. No one benefits from it. You know, if you watch Premier League, right? If you just uncap everything, have one team, buy all the good players.
39:54
It's not rugby league, salary caps. That's the whole idea behind salary caps.
39:58
I liken it to sport. We put in all these things because competition is what we care about.
40:03
Yeah. I don't want to watch. As consumers.
40:05
As much as I'm pissed that Queensland lost, I'm stoked New South Wales. I'm stoked New South Wales. They're looking good.
40:11
Yeah. You know, that's great. Because you don't want New South Wales to lose every time because you're going to lose interest.
40:15
I mean, seven years in a row or whatever it was. It felt good, but I got bored. I felt bad for my brother because he goes to New South Wales. And so I think the free market isn't no regulation like some libertarians might want you to think. It's are the barriers to entering the market to compete, are they low enough so that anyone can do it? Can we truly have this free market? And when I look at Australia's economy, I don't see a free market kind of like you pointed out. I see a handful of... of foreign owned corporate monopolies, ensuring that they dominate everything.
40:47
And I think we're at the end, I think we're at the place in Australia where we are now feeling the consequences of that. So like when Amazon come in and, You know, these insurance telcos kind of buy up all the competition.
41:01
They just drop the prices and kill competition. They're like, oh, we can compete. Great. We'll burn cash. And this is what big tech does. It just burns a bunch of cash, smothered the competition, you know.
41:10
And then once it's all gone and they've salted the ground, you know, Coles and Woolies famously buying up places where other competitors could go in the community. So I was talking to a friend. He's like, no, there's a free market. You start a grocery store. And I'm like...
41:25
Where are you going to put it? Like, no, you can shop at Aldi. I'm like, many, where I was, you know, 30 minutes from an Aldi.
41:34
Yeah, I could go to Aldi, but let's face it, I'm not. So it's like, is there a free market there? I'm really like, there's a Coles there and a Woolies there. And that's my choices. I was just recently in America. Bloody hell, the food selection in their supermarket. It's crazy. Oh my gosh. And there's so many different versions of it. Whereas I go to Coles and Woolies, they're literally stocking the same stuff. And it's the same layout. It's the same everything. And then there's that ACCC came out where they literally alternate their price for sale. This is collusion. Yes, obviously it's legal and they're not talking to each other on the phone saying, you do it Tuesday or do it Wednesday.
42:07
But they just look over the fence. All right, we'll just do this. Oh, we didn't collude, right? So, you know, I think this is where we're ending is they've salted the earth. Our economy is stale. It's a desert. It's really hard for the upstart punt to really get something going. And if they do, they'll just get killed. Not literally, but the business. And now we're at the stage where they go, well, now we want profits. It's profits time. Guess what? We need to buy food. We need to buy certain fundamental goods. Just ratchet that up. And now we're feeling the price.
42:38
Why is food like, why does this stuff keep getting, prices get higher and higher and higher? There's no competition.
42:44
The more the prices go up, particularly on food, the greater effect it has on inflation. And all of a sudden, the banks then put up interest rates because the government puts up interest rates, the Reserve Bank puts up interest rates, and then the lenders put up interest rates. And as a result, the lenders put up interest rates, push a whole lot of people out of the marketplace that can't afford to buy a property. We keep hearing about the last budget as being something to cure intergenerational inequity. In other words, younger people not being able to buy a property compared to how their parents would have been, for example.
43:16
And that the first home buyers are going to start buying more because the property market is going down.
43:22
But it hasn't helped the first-time buyers. It's been crazy. Because I know in my business, our first-time buyers have actually dropped off relative to – and the investors have dropped off as well. But first-time buyers have just dropped off because the interest rates are too high.
43:38
I've resigned myself. I'm just a renter.
43:41
I believe we are the lost generation. Yeah. Like if housing is fixed, at the end of the day, from where I sit, house prices couldn't continue doing what they were doing. Just they couldn't keep ticking up like amazing returns. And yes, I have seen investors piling out of the market at a slightly higher rate than first-time buyers. Sure. If this keeps up for 20 more years, maybe. Wages, if all goes to plan, wages got to keep rising and let's not have a crash, but let's like really level it up so we can bring the regular punt in line with the aspiration of owning a house.
44:14
I'm 70.
44:16
I'm like, I'm done. It's not me. It's too late. And this is sadly the reality I've come to.
44:23
If housing is to be fixed...
44:26
It's for my kids or their kids. It's not for me. I'm screwed. If you're a first-time buyer, yeah, you got shunted into the market with a 5% home deposit scheme, right?
44:36
And those prices all went up, and now they're all going down.
44:40
Yeah, so if I got in at 5%, And then it goes in. I'm holding negative equity, right? I got screwed. I got absolutely screwed because governments didn't have the balls for over 15 years to start. And they still haven't done the one thing. I don't know. It's your sector. But the one thing that everyone sort of said, the real problem in the property market is at the bottom end.
45:01
And we have never since World War, since the coming back of World War II, we've never just built bloody houses.
45:07
We've got to build more houses. And really, I mean, I don't know, but one of the only ways to do this is somehow you've got to get the developers because the governments don't build houses. Developers build houses. Well, we used to build houses. Governments used to. We used to build houses. Our governments won't build a house now.
45:19
Yeah. They'll tell you they are. But they're using private property developers. Of course they are. And what does Singapore do? They're outsourcing it. Singapore builds houses.
45:27
Yeah.
45:27
Right? And I liken it to, and maybe it's a crude, oversimplified analogy, But I'm a public healthcare kid. I don't have private healthcare because I look at what they're charging and I look at what I get. And for me, I've done the maths. Apart from the facts, it's very confusing. Apart from that, I look at it and go, you know what? If I get sick and I have to go to hospital, I've been a few times, it's good enough.
45:52
And there's a flaw in the market and the government is providing that basic human needs service. There's a flaw in the market. So if private healthcare want me to buy their product, other than trying to force the government to make me buy the product, which is what they do, they government taxes me more because I won't buy their stupid product.
46:09
Um, Good for some people, not for me.
46:13
I look at housing the same way. We need a floor in the market for housing where the government can provide good enough housing to provide competition for the other sector of the market.
46:23
You would have government start building houses.
46:26
When I just look at countries around the world that don't have our problem, they have a strong government sector that provides basic houses. If you want to, you know, have fancy – and it's not just for poor people.
46:37
We're not talking about social housing. We're talking about – we're not talking about, like, when I grew up, houses around – like, you know, we're not talking about –
46:42
Like I'm talking social housing, but not just for houses.
46:46
So if you want to buy one, you can buy one. Yeah.
46:48
If I want to buy, if anyone wants to buy one, you can buy one.
46:50
And government should be trying to get a profit margin out of it.
46:52
Exactly. They're just building houses and they're, you know, like helping bring in skilled labor to kind of have the floor in the market. Because right now there's no floor. So people are paying stupid amounts for mold infested things. You know, you've seen the videos.
47:06
Because the best they can get. Yeah, yeah. Because there's nothing else.
47:09
Exactly, exactly.
47:10
That sort of makes sense. Like maybe take, the government can take, like if, especially for the lower segment, you know, the cheaper segment. For those people who want to get their first property, it makes sense if the government could say, because they can go out and they can say, we're going to buy all that, Greenfields, wherever it is, out there past Penrith somewhere or wherever they've got to go.
47:31
We'll influence the local council and everybody else. We'll tell them this is what you've got to do and we'll do the development. We'll actually have a team that goes out there with the bulldozer, the whole thing, and we'll sell it for the right price.
47:42
We own the land. I saw this story out and it just broke the...
47:47
I'm just looking at incentives. I think it was like 10 years ago or something. There's this news story somewhere in Sydney. There was apartments being sold on quite a good deal to some developer. And the minister at the time, don't remember who it was, was like, we're going to get like 400 affordable houses in here. It's going to be great.
48:04
News story literally out this year.
48:07
This apartment's been restored. I don't know the numbers. You have to fact check the numbers, but it went from like 5 million to 20 million. Great return on investment for those guys. And it turned into like 20 luxury apartments. Because if you're a developer, you could work your ass off, build all affordable houses, have poor people in there who are struggling with the cost of living, or you can build for the most biggest profit margin, and you can build 20 luxury apartments, sell it to the richest puns you can find, and you clean up. Like, that's the incentive. I'm just pointing out incentives. And the government was the one that had the asset, undersold it, when the government could have just gone, yes, because I think there's that tension in housing, just like healthcare.
48:47
That is...
48:49
I don't want healthcare to be like America for the only people who can afford it. Yeah. Like you shouldn't die because you're poor because you can't get cancer treatment. And that's the thing I love that Aussies understand. This isn't communism. This isn't socialism. This is just the best way a healthcare system can work because their system's absolutely effed.
49:07
Yeah.
49:07
And I look at housing the same way. I look at education the same. Education's the same. There are some things that a profit motive actually produces worse outcomes. And the US, just look at it. Look at that country.
49:20
They've got some problems that we don't have, thankfully. But in housing, if you're poor, and I'm not talking like bludger, I'm talking working two jobs, but just not high paying, high skilled, whatever, went to university jobs, you're struggling to afford rent and you're never going to buy a house. I think that should exist.
49:36
And by the way, that's both. So you will struggle to afford rent as well as not being able to buy a joint.
49:40
Yeah. And I just fundamentally think as an Australian in my society, just like our healthcare, I'm proud of our healthcare.
49:49
I can't believe that our housing system looks more like America. And we have the solution. We've tried it. We know what it looks like for a strong government sector to provide essential competition to the private sector because the private sector will improve when they have competition. Yeah.
50:05
And if the government starts building houses, like you just said, the private sector, if they want to sell the same houses, they're going to have to meet the market. So if the government says, well, we'll sell them a cost, and I know I can go buy one of those for $250,000, but the private sector is selling them up the road for $350,000, I'm going to go buy the $250,000. So the private sector's got no choice but to drop it to $350,000 or be more efficient. Yes. Right now, they've got no competition.
50:27
And you don't have to be more efficient. Right. If you've got no competition, like if you're building shitboxes, there's no place colder in the world than a bloody house in Sydney in winter.
50:38
Yeah.
50:38
Right? I live in one. It boggles the mind. And yeah...
50:44
In some ways, I do believe the private sector can innovate really things, but only when there's full contact competition. And if the government comes in and you truly think the private sector can outcompete in that market segment, we'll go for it. But until there's any competition, why would they?
50:59
They're not going to try.
51:00
They'll build it cheaper, jack up the price. Oh, great. As much as the private sector, they think it's more efficient, it's only more efficient with competition. Otherwise, there's no incentive for them to make it. They just want profit. And if they're getting profit, oh, they don't have to do anything. We're making lots of money. That's amazing. But if there's strong competition in a sector, that's when we get businesses go bust, the best ones come through, best innovations kind of come out of nowhere. But in Australia, I feel like our economy is so built on these lazy, fat, like corporate monopolies suckling on the government teat.
51:35
Just like we're funding them, we're bailing them out when they, you know, Qantas, when they stuff up. It's our money they come for, right? This is socialism for them, right? Government doesn't bail me out. He'll bail out Qantas and then Qantas will break the law and they'll pay a measly fine. Like that's the stuff.
51:51
Does that sort of get you when you see, say, you know, there are always various segments in the Australian market, I mean, the dominant ones, they get found out doing something wrong. And they get asked to pay a $100 million fine or a billion dollar fine in some cases where we've had various inquiries. Do you think in those situations, the fines should be bigger, but the point is the fines are pointless too because the CEO is not his money. It's no one who works his money. A lot of these companies make enough money to pay the fines anyway.
52:24
Yeah. And the next year, they're just going to recover it. They're going to pick it up next year or the year after. Yeah. And they just take their punishment and they get on with it. Because we've seen that over and over and over again. I mean, I was hearing this morning, I think it was this morning, somebody just got to hit up with a $10 million fine. But I thought to myself, it's not going to make any difference. They couldn't give a shit. Well, think about it.
52:42
You're in the business.
52:43
Yeah.
52:44
If I'm going to make... Let's just be Qantas for a second. Okay, if we illegally fire all these workers after taking mad sweet government cash, I don't know if we're allowed to do that. What's the biggest fine in history for something like this? Oh, how much are we set to make?
52:59
Heaps. We'll just do it. We probably won't get caught. And if we do, guess what? We're still up. It's just basic maths. So if our judges, because I was talking to someone about this recently, the ACCC does what it can, puts together the case, says, oh, you broke the bloody law. Check that out. They go to the judge. The judge hands down the sentence.
53:17
and this goes above my pay grade, but if the judge can't do the maths properly to go, if this punishment doesn't look like a great investment, like if Qantas come away from this and secretly in the board meetings, and if their share price goes up, You've failed. Because they've looked at the maths and said, these laws mean nothing to us. And this is the scale of our monopolies now, these corporate oligopolies that run Australia. They're so large, we can't keep them in check. They do whatever they want. They exploit whoever they want.
53:49
And the punishments don't fit the crime. Like, I don't know, controversial take. But if you lock up one CEO, you know, for breaking the law, they either didn't know, so they're negligent, or they did know, and then they're really in trouble, right? And obviously, you got to prove this in a court and all those sorts of things. But if there was a risk, if you're getting $10 million a year to be a CEO, sounds like danger pay to me. And if your company is proven to egregiously, I'm talking like some of the egregious stuff out there, Lock up a CEO for a couple of years.
54:22
And I'm willing to bet we never see corporate misbehavior ever again. Because all of a sudden that corporate CEO, he's not looking at the balance sheet going, because he's just going, how do I get as much profit as possible?
54:34
And there are no consequences if you stuff up, right?
54:36
He might lose his job, but I don't know. Alan Joyce got a sweet golden parachute, didn't he? Like when he left Qantas. So I'm like, it seems like no matter how poorly CEOs perform, and this is your world, not mine.
54:47
They keep getting bonuses, right? They keep getting like some sweet golden parachute out the other end.
54:51
Well, they might lose their bonus, but they get an increase in their base salary.
54:55
Oh, okay. Okay.
54:57
which is sort of very similar. And by the way, the increase of base salary is better because you keep getting that for the rest of your term, whereas the bonus is once only. So you suffer the bonus. What do you think is the solution? I mean, apart from locking a CEO up. Just one. Let's just pick one.
55:12
And apart from the lobbyists, I mean, it sounds like a mess. I'm a believer in, I think we have the bones of one of the best democracies in the world. So I sound real cynical. I sound like Australia doom and gloom, but we have preferential voting. We have a good, strong parliamentary system. We have separation of powers. New South Wales ICACs. I'm a big fan. Let's just copy that across the country. That's a good question.
55:38
I don't know.
55:39
Maybe.
55:40
I'm not sure. Okay. We'll look that up. The Victorian one's sort of lame and the federal one's lame too.
55:46
Exactly. So we know the solutions. We have them built in. We have the ACCC. We have ASIC. We have a bunch of regulators. But everything I'm hearing, I'm just working this out. Everything I'm hearing is that they're a bit weak. They're a bit understaffed.
56:03
I think ASIC's become very effective.
56:05
Okay.
56:06
So in the last period, let's say the last 12 months, because government's given a lot more money. Okay, there you go. And they've employed a whole lot more people. So ASIC, I think, in the last 12 months has become much more effective, particularly in banking and those sort of sectors.
56:21
The other regulator for banking is APRA. APRA is very effective. ACCC, I agree. But I think ACCC needs more powers.
56:28
Yes, I agree.
56:29
It needs more powers. But I also think, though...
56:35
for me anyway, I still want to solve this issue around the talent of people in politics.
56:44
I just think that's an existential problem for me.
56:47
I'm an incentives person and I think the talent will rise to the top when you have the right incentives. But what do you mean? Pay them more?
56:54
I think politicians should get paid more. You could. I'm open to that argument. Yeah, no, I really do. I think they should be getting... It's just a tough argument to make. When I'm a teacher earning top end, 120, 130, right? Top end. And in Sydney, that's okay. It's not the best. Yeah. And, you know, a base minister politician, 230, 240. So even though I kind of agree and I see the business argument for like, if we want talented people, we want to incentivize the best people to come there. This is why I actually don't complain about how much corporate bureaucrats are paid because we're trying to compete with the corporate sector to get them on our team.
57:29
You want to keep me in the government.
57:30
Yeah. We like come work for us and we don't want it too much.
57:32
But I say something about politicians. But like, if I'm trying to attract... Like if the prime minister is getting paid 600 grand a year, but the CEO of Telstra is getting paid 6.5 million a year, that doesn't sort of make sense to me because running the country should be more difficult than Telstra, I would have thought.
57:47
You would have thought, but then half of the job of a politician is just to represent me. Just represent me. And you know what? The people you would least expect to be some of the best representatives...
58:00
You wouldn't have thought would have made that. I think David Pocock's a perfect example. Bloody rugby player, right? Gun rugby player. He's pretty smart though. And he's quite smart. Yeah. But you wouldn't have on a piece of paper, oh, like this is this typical politician. And I think you can agree with some of his stuff. You can disagree. But I think... what I've seen is he's representing Canberra. That's his job. I disagree with a lot of politicians in different electorates, some of these independents in Sydney. They're in the richest suburbs of Australia. Of course I'm going to disagree with Allegra Spender.
58:33
I'm a buddy from Newcastle. We're very different.
58:36
But I just want to say that that politician is representing us.
58:41
And I think you want the incentives that brings people, yes, with integrity.
58:48
But...
58:49
has people coming in it for the right things. Like I'm here, like people go, oh, why don't you go into politics? I don't think I'd be good at representing other people. I have opinions. I have my opinions. I have my own thoughts. Like you want people who are going to listen to the community and then go and fight for you. What about this thing? Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking as you're talking.
59:07
So I wonder if democracy works like this. On a certain day, every three years, we all sit down and look at all the policies, hopefully, and we make a decision we're going to vote for. And then that annuers for the benefit of the country and the politicians for the next three years, close to that, and then we do it all over again. That's not really democracy. What about if Punta's Politics sets up a website?
59:35
Well, maybe not a pun of politics, but someone mysterious sets up a website. A bit like Bitcoin. And on this website, it divides Australia up into all the various electorates.
59:47
And let's say you're in Newcastle electorate, and that's whatever the number is.
59:55
And this all gets publicized, and it says that Conrad can come and register.
60:01
Willingly, voluntarily. And then on every single issue that comes up, and then all of us around Australia get the same invitation. Someone mysteriously comes out on our email or comes out on a mobile phone text or something to us, a bit like what the government did to us the other day. And we get urged to register. And then every time there's an important issue coming, like gas tax, this tax, things are getting debated. We all get a chance to vote on it.
60:26
Like more direct democracy like Switzerland style. Daily.
60:31
I think that in some respect, it's a good idea, but I've also been learning recently how the counter argument to that would be, I just want to surf.
60:42
I just want to work, surf, chill out.
60:46
I don't want to have to be doing my politician's job for me. So the counter-argument is... Yeah, but some might say it's a callback. They'll say, come on, Corrine.
60:55
You're strong on this topic. Yes. Have a crack. Yes. But don't be a politician. Yes.
61:00
But tell us what you think. But the most efficient thing...
61:03
Is for me to put in someone that I think represents me. That's not going to happen. That I can trust represents me.
61:08
You won't find that person, mate.
61:09
I think there are certain politicians in government right now. Actually, most politicians I've met, very lovely people.
61:15
No, they're good people. But they believe they're doing the right thing. But they have an ideology.
61:19
And that overrides what Conrad wants.
61:22
I think there's a party machine pulling the string. Yeah, yeah, totally.
61:26
That's the ideology that's what I meant.
61:27
Yeah. But some of these people getting pulled by the party machine don't necessarily believe that.
61:33
Yeah, yeah.
61:33
And I think I'm still...
61:35
They're too scared to break the machine, mate, because if you're in the Labor Party, you do not cross the system. Otherwise, you're out.
61:42
And the only upside we have is we can send a message to these politicians. I think the biggest problem with politicians at the moment is that they simply don't fear us enough. Yeah. They fear the, like you listen to Labor Party. Oh, we can't do the, can't tax gas because it's too hard. Oh, we'll just lose. We tried it once before and we lost and they're going to run millions of dollars. Like I think at the Senate hearings that I was in, it came out that like Shell and Exxon and all those big dogs dropped in a million dollars each to the gas lobby to run ads against me personally.
62:12
Wow. My budget is a damn short shy of $5 million or whatever. Right. Oily rag sort of stuff. And I've got them afraid. But the problem is politicians still fear that. And until we make them afraid of us, until someone like Albanese loses his seat because he chose the gambling lobby over us. He chose.
62:35
And you can tell.
62:37
They will use talking points from the lobby group that they're defending. Listen to Albo on gambling. We got the balance right. What balance, mate? We just want to ban gambling ads, but he's pretending like we're trying to take ban gambling altogether, like taking a punt, like ban that. No one's talking about that. But the gambling lobby talking point is, oh, we're just getting the balance, right?
62:59
He's choosing a gambling lobby over us. He used gas lobby talking points. He's choosing gas lobby over us. And I think we, the punters, need to make him personally pay a price for that in his own electorate.
63:12
Do you think he knows that? Do you think he knows that we know what he's doing?
63:16
No.
63:18
I think he thinks that we will do what we've always done.
63:25
And I think he's going to stand up next election and say, look how bad One Nation is. I'm better than them. And I'm going to keep the status quo. And I'm going to say, how did that work out for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden? Not so well.
63:37
So I think.
63:39
Do you think we're wood ducks, do you reckon? Hey. Do you think he thinks we're wood ducks?
63:45
Yeah, I think the system has worked this way for so long. He's entrenched in that system. And what I'm seeing is I'm seeing things change a little bit. I'm seeing the pressures build and build and build for regular punters where we don't have a choice but to be involved in politics. I don't have a choice, but I've realized my dreams of easily affording a house are gone.
64:09
I'm reckoning with that reality right now. And at the moment...
64:14
when I look at the current political establishment, they're choosing to say, it's all fine. It's all good. And eventually given our electoral system, preferential voting and mandatory voting, it, it leads to, and there's this graph on my ABC article.
64:32
There's this triangle that has like how entrenched people are as voters. And like 40 years ago, everyone was really tribal. Now in this, everyone's shifted to the middle of the triangle. Yeah. Example there. Meaning, we will vote for anyone. There are no safe seats. Interesting. The two-party duopoly is over.
64:52
Has One Nation sort of created that, do you think? No, it sort of took well ahead.
64:57
One Nation are riding... This has been happening for a while. One Nation, I think, are riding the wave of the failure of the Liberal Party, who when Angus stood up and said...
65:05
We're going to change or die. I choose change. No, you may. You chose death. You chose to keep doing exactly what you've been doing for the last 10 years.
65:13
No matter what his words are.
65:15
No matter what his words are. So the Liberal Party has died. And I think the Labor Party is now facing that reckoning. You can continue to choose lobbyists over us. You can continue to choose that a few pennies and improvements are going to satiate us as things we feel are getting worse. Yeah. And we'll see what happens. And I think the Labor Party are now precarious and on the edge because we're sick of an establishment that tell us everything's fine and things continue to get worse. And I think we'll see what happens.
65:45
Well, Conrad Benjamin from Punters Politics, you just gave us the promo, mate. That was beautiful. Really good to meet you.
65:52
Really good to meet you. Thanks for having me. It's been great.
