00:00
Gerard Rennick, welcome to Straight Talk. Thanks for having me. It's been awesome to see you here. You're the founder and leader of the People First Party. That's correct. And we'll talk a little bit about that in a moment. Today, and this is where I'm going to get to, we do not have enough in this country, enough real world experience in politics. That's my view. And that's what I want to talk about today and what it's doing to our country. Yeah. So let's just underline yours first. Yeah. Thanks, Mark.
00:25
And can I just hone in on that a little bit more? We don't have enough real world experience in capital markets.
00:30
No.
00:30
That people don't understand. And I've actually had to unlearn everything I've learned over the last 30 years just to put that out there at the start. But so born in 1970 in a small town in Chinchilla, about 280 kilometers west of Brisbane. So I grew up on a farm, mixed farming. Mum was a nurse. Dad was a farmer. Used to be a butcher and then, you know, was an aerial surveyor and navigated lots of parts of Australia.
00:53
So then- Your dad did? Yeah. Yeah. He worked for a company called Adadastra, which is Latin for Reach for the Stars. Yeah. So he actually was in the Navy and was a navigator in the Gannets, but he failed because he's deaf and he's genuinely deaf. So he ended up surveying Western New South Wales, parts of Western New South Wales. He was a surveyor on the, when the Westgate Bridge was, he surveyed that and parts of the Trough. And actually one weekend he was out riding bulls in Western New South Wales, got kicked off and sent to hospital, got kicked in the head and sent to hospital.
01:25
And that's where he met mum. Wow. Yeah, he was a nurse. Yeah, she's a Kempsey girl.
01:29
Did you say he was a bull rider?
01:30
Well, partly, yeah, on weekends. That wasn't his career or anything. No, no, no, it doesn't matter. Yeah, but yeah, he was a drover for nine months. He actually drove cattle from Rome down to Dubbo, I think. I'm a bit sketchy on that, but I know he was a drover, you know, as well. So, you know, just that typical knockabout sort of upbringing. He's still alive. He's 91. He's out in my brother's property out in Western Queensland.
01:50
Wow.
01:50
Yeah. So anyway, farming background, but long story short, went and completed a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Queensland. Then that was in, and I graduated in Paul Keating's recession.
02:01
So I couldn't get work with it. I had interviews with all the big five, big six at the time, didn't get a job there. And actually, so ended up going back to Dolby, which is near my hometown of Chinchilla and working there in public practice for three years. And I have to say, at the time, I thought it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. But looking back, it was actually one of the best things that ever happened to me because I was with a small firm. I had face-to-face interaction with clients. We did all different sorts of business services, tax, auditing, all those jobs. And I was at the coalface of small business. which of course, as you know, is the engine room of Australia's economy.
02:33
So the second and third year I started meeting clients and they actually offered me a partnership when I turned 25. I left when I was 23, but I still think that was really good experience because what that gave you is the ability to drill down into detail.
02:45
Yeah, totally.
02:45
And, you know, I see so many, I used to see it at Westfield, you know, the auditors had come in and they couldn't actually drill down into detail. It's all high level stuff. Yeah, it's all high-level stuff. And it's right across not just the political spectrum but the corporate sector as well. And in the professional world today, there's too many professional managers that haven't worked their way up from the shop floor. And I think that's where we're really suffering. J.D. Vance did a really good speech on it last year where we spoke about when we outsourced manufacturing, we were naive to think that we weren't going to lose the skills that come with being on the shop floor, those little rule of thumbs that you only learn naturally.
03:22
when you're actually, you know, on the tools, so to speak.
03:26
So, yeah, and that's why I said to you earlier on, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me because it knocked, you know, a bit of sense into me. And, you know, it just gave me that grounding of knowing how to drill down into data.
03:37
Yeah, and what happened after that? Where'd you go after that?
03:39
Well, so then I went overseas for what I thought was going to be two years, but ended up staying for seven years. So I backpacked my way through Africa for almost six months. Part of that was on an overland truck trip. It was Exodus, so anyone Gen X from the travels through Africa in the 90s will know what I'm talking about. That was a great experience. Yet again, one part of the trip... So I climbed Kilimanjaro because I was really keen to get into mountain climbing at that time. But we also climbed Mount Karasimbe, which was the mountain where the gorillas and the mist were.
04:12
And this was in the early 90s, just after the movie came out. But interestingly enough, that night when we came off the mountain... uh as you do yeah so this was in Rwanda you know as you do when you're backpacking in your early 20s you go out drinking um so anyway we had Rwandan troops come and say to us look there's a curfew on uh you're not supposed to be out drinking but we'll let you drink if you buy us a few beers so we bought them a few beers and had a bit of a conversation anyway they gave us an escort home with guns over their shoulders uh we thought it was all pretty jovial at the time uh and that was a Sunday night and the war broke out on a Wednesday so we left on the Tuesday wow yeah and and The interesting thing about it at the time, and obviously we're an outsider's looking in, and that was a French-speaking country, not an English-speaking country, but I had no idea that, you know, that genocide was about to take place.
04:59
And, you know, that's a real big lesson I got, you know, from traveling is how quickly things can go from peace to wartime.
05:06
So, yeah. And how naive we can be too. Yeah, exactly.
05:09
Yeah, yeah.
05:10
So, got to London, worked for, let me just think about this now, British BBC and British Rail. Interestingly enough, with British Rail, this was at the time they were privatising British Rail, so they offered people redundancies. So, of course, all the people that were quite the good workers and who backed themselves to get another job went and took the redundancy themselves. And then they realized that they'd lost a lot of their good workers so that the new contracting company had to come back in and offer these people, it took a redundancy, actually offer them a new contract to come back on the following Monday and keep working.
05:45
So that was a really interesting, I mean, I was just a contractor, you know, as an Aussie expat, just observing all this.
05:53
But it was yet another one of these sort of chink in the armour about what I'd been taught about the benefits of privatisation in my university degree to see that, well, really...
06:04
This privatisation is everything it was cut up to be because there's a lot of tension there between the people with contractors who used to be full-time employees because they got a big payout versus those that didn't take the payout and were still getting their wages.
06:18
So that was an interesting experience as well. But anyway... So I worked for them, worked with BBC. So I did David Attenborough's timesheets and things like that. I was out of the only studios as a management accountant out there.
06:31
Oasis filmed Champagne Supernova the day I was out there. I didn't see them, but they were in a couple of rooms next door sort of filming that. So that was all pretty cool. But then I got a phone call one day saying, how would you like a job traveling the world? and we'll pay for it. And I was like, yeah, I'd love to. That's random? Yeah, very random. Yeah, it was very random. But anyway, yeah, I'd love to. So I got flown over to Amsterdam for an interview and it was probably the shortest accounting interview I ever had. The bloke just said, if you're an accountant, you should know what to do.
07:02
And then he was more interested in my travels to that date. And it turns out he was from Brisbane as well. Glenn Reid, if you're still listening.
07:09
And anyway, I got a job where basically I was based out of Amsterdam for the next three years. I was in and out of Amsterdam about 15, 16 times, but I had a long story short about eight months in Amsterdam, eight months in Brazil, eight months in Norway, eight months in the States, and six months in between Finland, Chile and Argentina, where I just basically was, well, my technical role was group financial international controller. And as my boss would say, people either do two things when I hear that title, they either fall forward on their knees and start groveling or fall over backwards laughing at such a long-winded name.
07:43
But anyway, look, it was just a general dog's body in the finance world. So I bought companies, installed software, completed financial statements, things like that. But it was a great experience because I turned 25 by the time I got the job. And I was basically paid to live in five-star hotels. and go to work every day in different countries. And on the weekends, the weekends were mine. Like when I was in the States, I was given the use of a Mustang to drive around. Well, a hire car, so I got a Mustang as you do. And that was in Sarasota. We did a shared service implementation for all the back offices across the States.
08:15
So that was a good role. In Brazil, I had to train up a financial controller. We bought a company there. You know, same again in Norway. Yeah, so...
08:23
So what do you... Just on that, Gerry, like when you work in those environments for long periods of time, for such long periods, fairly long periods of time anyway.
08:31
Yeah.
08:32
What did you learn about places like Norway versus Brazil versus US? Like in terms of how countries are run by the administration, by the governments, do you see any... really stark differences between say what's happening here and was there something you would take from there that you would love to see happen here?
08:49
Well, Brazil was dealing with inflation, the end of it. So I didn't have really bad inflation when I was there, but we had to pay bills before we got the invoice. That was just because obviously what it was, you know, if you've got really rampant inflation. And what is rampant inflation though? What levels? Well, double digit, right? Because just the time. Annually double digits. Yeah, so if you're looking at anything over 12% a year, you're losing 1% over 30 days. So basically, they're very short or upfront payment terms. You basically have to pay on the day because if you've got rampant inflation, which is you can define it anything over 15%, but Brazil had come off even a higher figure.
09:26
that money just depreciates away. Even in just the day-to-day businesses of dealing with transactions, inflation's a problem. It's not just the cost of living issue. It's actually trying to get paid on time.
09:38
So there was that issue. I found the Americans extremely optimistic. They were always very optimistic. I remember, actually, we bought a company in Washington, D.C., before I went down to Sarasota. And I was staying in a hotel and opposite the hotel, they were building a new building. And they were literally building a level every day. Whoa. And I can remember being shocked at how fast. I remember thinking, we don't build that fast here in Australia. So they were very efficient. And it's not surprising. I mean, houses...
10:07
House prices in Australia, sorry, in the States are much lower than they are here. Because they can build a house there in three months.
10:12
Yeah.
10:13
Here's like 18 months. Yeah, yeah.
10:16
Norway, I mean, obviously very dark, cold. You know, they ate lunch at 11.30, lots of fish, you know, but hard not to love the country. I mean, it was just a beautiful country. You know, I had the benefit of sort of being there from arriving in the end of the winter, right through the summer period. So I saw the change of seasons as well.
10:35
But what in terms of administration? Are we talking about social leaning?
10:41
Well, look, I was young in my 20s and wasn't necessarily focusing on the political aspects of the country. It's just the people. But look, the people are the same wherever you go. We're all the same. It's one race, the human race. This is what we really want to push forward first.
10:57
You know, look, you know, judge the individual, not the identity. I was just saying before to some others, you know, there's just too much identity politics in this country. And that's the one thing traveling really, you know, imbued inside me is that we're just one race, the human race. We all just want a better life for our children. And there's so much gratitude towards our forefathers.
11:17
And then, of course, there's the Dutch. I should add, I love the Dutch. The Dutch people are just fantastic. I loved the Netherlands.
11:24
I love the straightforwardness. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the early stages, you'd misinterpret it as them being rude a little bit. Yeah. But I worked out for a long time too. And in the end, I loved it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Dutch.
11:37
Because you know where you stand. Absolutely. Yeah, just straight up. Like, you know, if you could ever do a deal, I'd do some sort of backpacker deal with every Aussie should go and spend six months living in the Netherlands as far as I'm concerned. How we've got a similar deal with the UK, I'd love to do the same with the Netherlands. It's just such a great country and great people as well.
11:56
Do you think all these things, all these experiences you've had in terms of travelling and work, work travel, do you think they have somewhat influenced you when it comes to people first?
12:06
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, it's the common denominator of that. We were just the one race, the human race. I mean, I spent, I ended up going backpacking after that role for another two years where I basically traveled globe. And I spent a lot of time throughout the years sitting in bus stations and meeting different people, working with different people. And, you know, everyone hates their government, doesn't matter what nationality you are. They hate their government, hate paying taxes, all of that stuff. But they have a common, they love their sport. Everyone loves their sport. That's why it's such a great, you know, way to unify people.
12:37
You know, they love their children, you know, and it's just, I mean, and here's the thing, the poorer the country I went to, the more generous the people were.
12:48
And what did you say, happier? Yeah.
12:50
I don't know if they were happy, though. Certainly much more hospitable to myself. Yeah, welcoming. Yeah, welcoming.
12:58
You know, I remember one night when I was in Africa, I went down to Masvingo Ruins in Zimbabwe there, and I ended up sort of sleeping on this mud hut and just thinking how friendly these people were.
13:07
You know, yet again in Iran, you know, I traveled through Iran on the way home. I went from Moscow down through all the stars into Iran, Pakistan, India, and then in Nepal. How friendly the Iranians were, because even back in the 90s, you know, Big, bad Iran. But, of course, the people themselves were incredibly friendly and hospitable. And yet again, so, you know, I was probably a little imperialist growing up, you know, in the back of World War II there. But, you know, I just hate conflicts. I talk about it in my maiden speech, you know, strength of diplomacy is what, you know, strength of position and sound diplomacy is what we really need.
13:39
And there's a lack of sound diplomacy.
13:40
What does that mean, sound diplomacy?
13:42
Well, you know, understanding the other point of view, you know, we use a lot of- Yeah, exactly. You know, we use a lot of belligerent rhetoric now, governments and politicians. Yeah, so in the same way we use belligerent rhetoric against each other on a domestic level, right, you know, Labor bashes, Liberal, Liberal bashes, Labor, you know, Punch and Judy show, we've made the trap of doing that on international affairs as well. And we shouldn't be doing that, right, because if things get out of hand there, like... Or misinterpreted. Misinterpreted, things can go wrong. I mean, what we did in Iraq, Iraq was another real come-to-Jesus moment for me because...
14:15
In the 90s, you're talking about the early 90s.
14:17
Early 2000s, not the 91, 89 one, because that was in and out relatively quickly. But what we did in 2002, 2003, was it where we started bombing Iraq because they had chemical weapons of mass destruction? So-called. Yeah, so-called. I don't know how many people got killed in that. Certainly millions were displaced, injured, had their lives turned upside down for what was ultimately a lie. And we've now done the same with Syria. We've got the head of Al-Qaeda, ex-head of Al-Qaeda bloke who had a $10 million bounty on his head running Syria. I went through Syria.
14:48
This was another beautiful country. There's people living there that don't have any political inclinations. They're not out to... All they want to do is a roof over their head, food on the table and a better life for their children. And we go in and we destroy their lives because of some ideology or some preconceived good guy, bad guy thing. And it's like, we've got to think about these decisions. So this is one of the things that really concerns me a lot as we head further into the 21st century is this lack of sound diplomacy, I guess. And there's too much belligerent rhetoric.
15:20
So yeah, it definitely has impacted me a lot.
15:22
Well, what I wanted to establish is that you had real-life experience. We've established, and I think where I'd like to talk to you about is that point of ideology. Ideology seems to be splitting us up.
15:32
Absolutely, yeah.
15:32
Division seems to me to be a part of political play.
15:37
Yeah.
15:39
Is that correct? Yeah, it is. And what's making it worse? It's part of the game. That's right. Now, it's always been there, but because social media has got the news at our fingertips 24 hours a day, and we all are guilty of doom scrolling, and you have a five-minute break, you're on the phone. I mean, when we grew up, you would have got the news maybe, either the
16:01
6 p.m. at night? 6 p.m. at night.
16:02
Or first in the morning? Yeah, yeah. Or at the quarter to eight ABC Bulletin in the morning. I mean, you didn't even used to have the Today Show, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I always talk about the cartoons. I can remember watching cartoons on school holidays thinking that was a treat. Yeah. Now there's an entire channel devoted to cartoons that... And even now, the kids don't even go and watch ABC24, the cartoon channel. They just go straight to their YouTube. And they find them on the one. Yeah, and their devices, right? So I think the fact that news is in our face all the time is actually polarizing us even more.
16:32
And people just tend to get caught up in that ideology. And that was one of my problems I had with the Liberal Party. It was always that we had to, Labor's bad, we have to bash them over the head. Even when we did things wrong or they did the right thing, it was always, you know, if I didn't toe the line because I thought, you know, Labor was doing the right thing or we were doing the wrong thing, you know, I'd be told, you know, shut up and get back in the box.
16:53
Oh, really? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
16:55
So it's one and all in.
16:57
Well, you got a party line. One and all in or step back.
17:00
Yeah, and don't get me wrong, I get that, you know, in a party, you do have to totalize it to a point. But when we stopped upholding our own values, so, you know, Angus Taylor, I mean, I'd left the Liberals by this stage, voted against the tax cut when one of my last bills, when Jim Chalmers lowered the... tax rate from 16 cents to 14 cents for low-income earners. Angus voted against it. You know, well, Peter was the leader, but Angus was shadow treasurer. And I just, I mean, I said to my ex-Liberal colleagues at the time, I said, what are you doing, guys? Like, the Liberal Party believes in lower taxes and you're voting against lower taxes.
17:34
You know, like when are you going to, this is your problem. But back to your question about the idealism. Yeah, it's just the constant news feed now and it's much more political. And I think, and that's, and with that, having entertainment so it's also um in-house what i call in-house entertainment right so you don't have to leave home anymore back in the old days when we grew up you know as i said we had one or two channels and the radio so you'd get bored you'd have to go out and actually join groups of people you know it didn't necessarily have to be political groups it could be um sporting organizations volunteer groups you know community groups whatever people don't need to do that anymore because they're at home you don't have to need to leave home you can order uber you can order ice cream to your house.
18:18
You can order coals to your house. So you can technically stay there forever.
18:22
But people then become more and more narrow focused, right? And of course, when you're on social media, and I'm guilty of this as well, you're not as polite to an avatar or someone hiding behind an avatar.
18:34
than what you are to, you know, if you're speaking face-to-face, you know, your mannerisms drop. So, yeah, it's definitely polarizing the world.
18:42
And also the algorithm is feeding you what you like. Absolutely. So you're never actually getting another point of view. Yeah. Because I've often wondered about this when it comes to politics, particularly the politicians of today, And let's look at the Labor Party for a moment, Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister.
19:00
Do you think that politicians are driving the division or is social media driving the division but the politicians are using social media to their advantage and therefore playing into it? Like social media has become part of the politician's playbook in terms of getting re-elected. It seems to me it's always about getting re-elected today, over and above everything else.
19:25
That's correct. Absolutely. I mean, when I took a stand on the vaccines, for example, that was what I was told, Jared, you know, don't worry about the injured. We've got to get, win the next election. And I was like, I've got people, yeah, I've got people here that are, you know, having heart attacks, you know, coughing up blood, you know, having myocarditis, et cetera.
19:40
We need to give these people help. I know someone got paralyzed from the waist down.
19:43
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I had three years of this, like just unstoppable injuries, you know, and I mean, I never signed up for this. Right. But at the same time, that's something I couldn't walk past. I mean, it's one thing sometimes you let it go through to keep it. You know, you might vote for the party, you know, you don't agree with it because you realize, you know, you can't, you know, rock the boat all the time. Right. But this was something I couldn't walk past. Right. But no, you're right. But look, in answer to the initial question, I think they feed each other. You know, so social media reinforces politicians' views. Politicians then reinforce the views that they think are going to get them elected.
20:15
I mean, I'm in this quandary now that, you know, if I criticise Pauline Hanson, I just get smashed.
20:20
And even I have things like not turning up to estimates, which to me is a valid criticism, but her followers will just smash me. A lot of them follow myself as well. But this is where I step off the train again, like I did with the Liberal Party. I'm going to put what's right in front of what's In the best interest of the party, that's why I actually called the party people first as opposed to party instead of party first. That's where I got the name from because I used to say to my staff, you know, can we just put the people first and do the right thing by the people and they'll look after us rather than try and lie to them all the time?
20:50
Do you find that – is that a little – not naive, but in terms of being voted in, that is – Because you've got to get voted in in order to do the things that you want to do for the people that you think the people want you to do for them.
21:02
Yeah.
21:03
But in order to get voted in, what comes first?
21:06
Do the people always come first or do sometimes you know better? I mean, you know, because like the current federal government, they think they know better on everything. Yeah. Yeah. They just say, hand us everything and we'll sort it out for you.
21:18
Well, so yet again, this comes down to the ability of being able to explain your position. So if you can explain your position and try and demonstrate why your position is going to help the people, then I think they will come with you. But you're right. It is a bit of, yet again, if you go too puritanical, you'll never get elected at all, I guess. Even though, yet again, one of our policies is lift the tax-free threshold of $45,000 so that all workers can pay $4,000 less tax.
21:48
There's 14 million workers in this country, 3 million retirees and 3 million small business, right? And that's a good policy. And the reason why we're backing it is Treasury don't model secondary impacts. So you understand the velocity of money, right? They assume if you give someone a $1,000 tax cut, that that money's not coming back to Treasury in the next 12 months. So that to me is erroneous. I would argue that if you give a tax cut to someone a low income, most of that money is going to go back to Treasury in the first month and it's going to have a higher velocity of at the lower income levels and at the higher income levels.
22:19
So yeah, if you're on a million bucks and you get a $5,000 tax cut, you might just go on a longer overseas holiday. But if you're on 40 grand and you get a $2,000 tax cut, you're going to spend that economy, especially when cost of living is running at 5%, inflation is running at 5%.
22:33
So yet again, I think if you can demonstrate why your policies are in the best interest of the people, you will get elected. Obviously, you need the media exposure.
22:42
I would say initially in Howard's early years, he wasn't necessarily trying to, he was initially a politician of conviction. And it took him a long time to get there. He had the 80s and the battles with Peacock in the 80s. But When he came back in 95, 96, he was seen as sort of a stabilising influence after Keating's last few years. So I think he can get there. But yet again, it is hard in this day and age to put out a rational set of policies when there's all of the red meat out there on social media in the short days.
23:16
you know, what you call the 24-hour news cycle and just that, you know, Barnaby and his dog barking, for example. Oh, my God. Yeah, okay. It's a news story, but really, you know, it's, can we move on to something more important?
23:27
Well, what was important about that was Sarah, the way she dealt with him. Right. The ABC dealt with him. I mean, I thought to myself that was the most important thing of the whole episode of the dog barking, et cetera. Yeah.
23:41
I can't remember when he yelled out, shut up or sit down or something like that. But the way Sarah said to him, well, don't worry about it, just answer the question. Yeah. And I thought his response, for me, I keep thinking about what would Trump have said if someone said that to him?
23:57
Yeah, he would have given it back.
23:58
Yeah, but I thought actually Barnaby didn't give it back. I thought Barnaby was actually very polite to her. He gave her an opportunity, and yet it seemed to make front page of everything.
24:09
What do you think about those, you know, the ABC?
24:12
Because, I mean, I... Well... Yeah, look, they've got a left-wing bias. There's no doubt about it.
24:17
Yeah, but it's more than a bias, though, I think, Gerard. Like, it's...
24:22
It's like they go after them.
24:24
Oh, yeah. But yet again, we had an opportunity when I was in the Morrison government just after January of the 26th, first week back. It was 21 or 22. I can't remember what year. It must have been 20 or 21, actually.
24:36
And, you know, the ABC was pushing, calling it Invasion Day, like blatantly calling Australia Day Invasion Day. I went back, said, right, here's our opportunity. We can remove the independence of the ABC. So the issue with the ABC is that it's completely independent. Like too many bureaucracies now, they've become independent under the guise that, oh, well, you can't have politicians interfering with them, et cetera, et cetera. The problem with that is, of course, once they become independent, there's no accountability and transparency. They've become a force unto themselves.
25:06
I tried to get that moved in the party room. I said, let's say, look, we're not going to have our national broadcaster calling Australia Day or Invasion Day. And we could have wedged the crossbench team in the Senate. There were five at the time, the two One Nation Senators, Jackie Lambie, Rex Patrick and Sterling Griff.
25:25
We would have only had to get one of the three non-One Nation Senators up. And we didn't do anything about it. So yet again, the ABC has run rampant because when we were in power, we didn't do anything about stopping them. And this is the problem with the coalition is that they have empowered the left over the last 30 or 40 years. They've supported superannuation. They've supported all the institutional child care facilities rather than giving parents greater choice over the type of child care they want. It was John Howard who signed the renewable energy target initially at 5%.
25:59
He brought in a national curriculum. He got rid of nuclear power.
26:03
So yeah, everyone's frustrated with the ABC. I get it. But at the end of the day, you've got to work within the machinery government if you want to change it. And yeah, going back to John Howard, if you read his biography, he learned when he, I think it was the 73 Balmain campaign when he first ran the He said his Labor opponent killed him with kindness. And if there's something I think that we need to do if the conservatives or the coalition want to become a better form of opposition and better politicians is actually learn how to bring people along through the art of persuasion rather than constantly harping on about problems they are just so painful to listen to these days.
26:40
I was just saying it to your staff outside before. I'm sick of myself whinging on social media. And that's the thing. We want to actually, certainly people first and I were just a little party, but we want to actually present a vision and start to give people some hope again because there is way too much pessimism in this country and we are such a great country and we have so much opportunity. I mean, we've got 7 million square kilometers of land in a perfect part of the paradise in the South Pacific. We're 28 million people. Biggest city in the world, Jakarta, has got 42 million people in it and we're complaining about overpopulation here.
27:14
Granted, you know, that is true to a degree, but there's also other places in Australia where there's a lot of opportunity, you know. And so, yeah, back to your initial question, yes, the ABC is wrong. Yeah, it certainly has a bias to it. But let's fix it. So yet again, I don't want to do what we did to manufacturing where we walk away from the problem. Let's go back and fix it. Because I grew up watching Four Corners. I grew up watching Foreign Correspondent. So my father, you know, he's described as further right than Tiller the Hun. He listens to Country Hour every day religiously. I love it still. Yeah, yeah.
27:44
So there's still some magnificent programs on the ABC. It is a part of our culture. Rather than just bash it over the head and complain... you know, let's try and get in there and try and actually, you know, improve it so it represents all of Australians. I mean, Australia all over, Ian McNamara, another legend. Yeah, you know, one of the great... Every Sunday morning? Absolutely.
28:03
6 a.m. Yeah, yeah.
28:04
I mean, my dad, when I lived in Sydney, he was down here one time, Macca had him on here and he's had him on a couple of other times, you know. So yet again, this is something that we should cherish and instead of just wanting to, you know, pour fuel on it and blow it up, let's try and actually make it the great institution that we know it can be.
28:22
I guess you made some interesting points because I remember sitting down with Mark Habib once and asking, Senator Mark Habib, former Senator Mark Habib, who you know, and asking him, you know, if you're going to form a new political party, not if he was, if just anybody, it was just a conversation, what do you need to do? And he said to me, You probably need to sit down and work out five or six policies. Yep.
28:48
You know, it could be about tax, could be about immigration, whatever. Yeah, but five or six. And you need to know how to express it, et cetera, et cetera. But you must need those five or six policies. Let's have a look at People First, your party. Yeah. You're not expecting to win an election. You're expecting to be part of an opposition, perhaps, or alternatively part of a coalition, let's call it. Well, hopefully you can get some senators up and influence decision-making that way. Yeah. And that's because of our system. The Senate actually has the ultimate say at the end of the day.
29:20
Yeah. And it's based on proportional voting. And that was deliberately set up by our founding fathers to give minor parties and get the minor parties to hold the majors to account.
29:27
So, am I correct in what Mark, retelling the story about what Mark Bibb told me? And if so, what are people's first five, six things? Okay.
29:39
I'm glad you asked that because we've got a slogan, the solutions for today and the vision for tomorrow. Right. And that is based on five key policies. That is five, is it? Yeah. So, the first one is lift the tax rate threshold to $45,000. So, everyone pays $4,000 less in tax. Yep.
29:53
The second, and we'll pay for that by means testing the defined benefits scheme for retired bureaucrats in Canberra, getting rid of subsidies for renewables, and a couple of other sections of the Tax Act.
30:02
Okay, so it's funded. Yeah, it's fully funded. So the way you funded it is by taking money spent in other places. Yeah. So these two things neutralize themselves. But why, if someone's earning $44,999, why, Why do you think they should not pay any tax? What's the thinking about it? Because we don't think people should pay tax below the cost of living.
30:25
Listen, if you're getting out of bed and putting your nose to the grindstone, and the words of our anthem is wealth for toil, why would someone earn $45,000 today, four grand tax, almost six in super? their take-home pays back to $35,000. We don't want these people falling beneath the cracks. And, you know, we both grew up, you know, back in the time when we had more tradies than professional workers. Let me tell you, you could probably sack 75% of professional workers in this country and you wouldn't miss them. But if you got rid of our guys on those low incomes... The wheels of this country had stopped turning over very fast, and I'm very determined.
30:57
So my grandparents were all blue-collar labor, like we sort of came over the DLP in the late 50s. But I grew up with tradies, mechanics, my best mates. They're still my best mates, and I know the important work they do. And I want to make sure that everyone that gets out of bed, puts their nose to grindstone, is properly rewarded. And I think it's completely immoral. And businesses get a tax deduction for the cost of business, right? I think workers should get a tax deduction for the cost of living. If you've got a job, it does cost you more. You've got to fill your car up every week or buy a ticket on the train. You might have to get work clothes.
31:28
You might have to get a suit. You know, the girls, you know, my wife, when she has to get a haircut, you know, for a female to get a haircut today, it's a couple hundred bucks, you know.
31:35
It's outrageous. So what you're saying, Gerard, though, is for the, if you're under $45,000, because that's less than $1,000 a week, it's going to cost you at least that in cost of living, just to live, just to exist. Right. It's not a holiday. It's not sending kids to private schools or kids off to ballet or whatever. That's just living and just a very basic food and stuff like that. You're saying effectively they shouldn't have to pay tax because otherwise they're going to be negative.
32:06
That's right, exactly. But don't forget, they pay tax through GST, fuel excise, buy beer, beer excise.
32:12
They pay consumption tax?
32:13
Yeah, yeah, they do pay consumption tax.
32:15
You see, right, they're about paying tax. They're just paying tax on their income because if they did, they wouldn't have enough money to live.
32:20
Yeah, and then the next step, and I mean, I won't make any guarantees about this because I think you need to get into the budget to find where you can make savings, but we would then like to lower the 30 cents on incomes above $45,000 to $100,000.
32:34
lower it by two cents every year for the next 15 years to get the tax-free threshold up to 100 grand.
32:38
Yeah, so you're going to, over time, bring the tax-free threshold up to 100 grand? Yeah. Over time? Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. And what about super? You mentioned super before.
32:48
Okay, so that's one of our key policies as well. We want to make super voluntary, so you get to keep your superannuation as part of your wage if you want to do that. So you can make 12% more?
32:56
Exactly. You'll get 12% more in the hand.
32:59
For everybody or people under a certain... No, for everyone.
33:01
No rules as to how much you can put in and take out. The first $25,000 in your superannuation will be tax-free. Right. And then after that, it goes back to your normal marginal tax rates. I don't think superannuation is doing what it was intended to do. So in 1992, approximately 50% of retirees are on a full pension, about 25% of retirees are on a part pension. If you Google ASFA superannuation statistics, Australian Superannuation Financial Association statistics, you will see the median balance for women aged 60 to 64 is $162,000.
33:33
So that means half the women aged 60 to 64 have less than $162,000 in the bank.
33:42
For men, it's $220,000. To go off the full pension on a part pension, you need about $320,000 in assets. And to go off the full pension entirely, you need about $800,000 to $900,000 in assets, right? So admittedly, a super is not fully matured yet. It's only 34 years old. But it's statistically impossible for low-income earners if you're going to take 12% of their salary for them to put enough in a super to actually be able to retire. on that amount.
34:13
Now, bear in mind that since 1992, 10% of people retired with a mortgage, today it's 40%.
34:19
And bear in mind the median salary in this country, it's $82,000. I'm just going to use $80,000. If you're on $80,000, you need $50,000 to live on, $20,000 tax. You're left with $10,000 to save. 12% of $80,000 is $9,600. So for anyone on a median salary, you're literally taking their last 100% of their savings and you're going to put it and give it to some bloke in an ivory palace somewhere in a capital city and there's no guarantee you're going to get that money back when you're 67%.
34:48
Now, if you're starting off working, first five years of your life, say you're on a median salary, you could earn $50,000, right? Yeah, the people that support super will go, oh, yeah, Gerard, you know, but you can earn 6% or 7% in super, that's great. But if you can't use that as a deposit for your house and the median house price is a million bucks and it's rising by 5% a year, your opportunity cost is $50,000 because house prices are rising faster than you can save. Yeah. So it's a false economy that way. And don't forget, if your mortgage is 6%, that's half the tax income that you've got to pay with that.
35:20
So let's say you earn $100,000 and earn $10,000 in your own name in investment income, then you've got to get a 10% return, pay $0.30 on that to get a 7% return plus 1% management fee just to actually make your mortgage meet. So yet again, you need to generate 10% on your investment income outside of super and to make up for the lost, you know, like to get that 6% after-tax return that you do in super. So yet again, your mortgage, you know, it's harder to pay your mortgage off because of superannuation as well. And not only that, we've now got $4 trillion in superannuation.
35:53
You know, these people have industry and retail funds. They don't get to vote for the boards. So there's no corporate accountability there. So you've now got $3 trillion outside of self-managed super funds that are controlled by unelected board members.
36:06
And if you control $3 trillion worth of capital, what do you control? The economy. Yeah, totally. Which, by the way, was the original design. Yeah. That was Keating's design. Yeah. And so now you've got a corporate sector driven by ideology and not productivity, right? And they're pushing all these agendas that had nothing to do with productivity. I actually, I can't believe I'm saying this because I got burnt in the stock market in the late 80s. My mum first bought shares in September of 87. Can you believe it? Wow. Yeah, and of course, next month, they crashed. So, mum had to work another 10 years. She ended up retiring as a nurse when she was 70, but she got me into share trading, and I didn't know.
36:40
I only found this out after she passed away. She used to be a share trader, you know, trade shares. Before she got married to dad, way back in the 60s, she had BHP shares. But...
36:49
you know, we need a bit of that entrepreneurial spirit back. And the problem is today. No one's got any money. Well, it's the corporate fund managers.
36:56
Yeah.
36:57
And yet again, one of these things.
36:58
But as again, what I was saying before, Joe, the government's saying we'll do it for you.
37:02
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
37:03
Yeah. We'll take your money now. Yeah. And we're going to invest it for you. Yeah, exactly. Because you're dumb. You don't know how to do it, which sort of, in some cases, probably is true. People would, you know, people will gamble it. Yeah. But this is another example, ideology. Yeah. telling you what you can do with your money. Exactly. That's exactly right. We're better at it than you.
37:21
Exactly. And what you get now, these corporate fund managers, they all basically just follow the indexes. There's very little entrepreneurship going on. And I'll stand to be corrected on this. This might have been about a year old when I read this article. The number of listings on the AXX is declining. They're really struggling to get new listings.
37:39
Yeah. That is 100% correct.
37:41
Yeah.
37:41
Because it's a punish. Yeah.
37:43
Yeah, exactly.
37:44
It's hard work. Yeah.
37:46
But the other thing, as someone who's a small investor, I hate the 15% accelerated retail listing offerings. You'll see that all the time. Just as the company's about to kick off, they'll raise more, take off. When I say kick off, I mean take off in terms of making money. They'll issue 15% of new shares every year to their mates at a diluted price. And you're like, oh, here we go again. They should go back to the old pro rata way of like, if you own 5% of the company, you get 5% of the new issues. So your equity is not diluted. But yet again, that's just a big boys club between the corporate fund managers.
38:20
As you know, the industry funds use one proxy advisor combined voting powers around 20%.
38:27
So yet again, you control 20% of the shares on the AXX, you know, an AXX listed company, you get to push the left-wing ideology.
38:33
No, you push, you change the board. Well, the board is so scared of being demoted or taken off the board that they'll do everything you want.
38:42
That's exactly right.
38:43
Even if it means, you know, not doing something on Australia Day or flying three flags or whatever the case may be. Yep. It sounds crazy.
38:53
Yep.
38:54
And so people first said we're talking about lower tax rate. You want to bring the tax-free threshold to 45 and overtime to 100. Yep.
39:05
You mentioned super, superannuation. You're saying, is it voluntary for everybody?
39:09
You get to keep it.
39:10
Everyone. Yeah, you get to keep it.
39:11
And people are saying not everyone can save their own retirement. You're right. You know what? That's what the pension's for. But yet again, you know, the tax breaks for superannuation, the last budget was $60 billion. Yeah.
39:21
The Productivity Commission back in 2019-20 estimated the cost of running super was 1% of funds under management. So 1% of $4 trillion is about $40 billion. Again, massive cost in financial engineering and paper shuffling doesn't produce a cent. We need more real engineers in this country, not paper financial engineers. So that's our second policy. Our third policy is to pay childcare directly to the parents subject to welfare testing. So what does that mean?
39:47
So let's say in relation to my kids, they send the kids to childcare before preschool.
39:54
You pay them? Yeah, you pay them.
39:57
And if they want to pay childcare, they can use childcare. But you've got millions of shift workers in this country that can't access childcare at all. So you've got nurses who work shift work, police who work shift work, fireys, hospitality workers. I've got a mate who plays in a band with his wife on weekends. If he can't get his parents on a weekend to look after the kids, the cost of the childcare wipes out the money they make from the gig. You know, we've got fly-in, fly-out workers that might pay for, you know, be home for seven days, 10 days on, seven days off.
40:28
Why pay for childcare then? You know, if you want to just get a nanny for half the time, do that. You've got people in regional Australia that can't even access childcare centres. So they all miss out, right? So my view is – and then you've got – so if we do that, we give shift workers greater choice over the hours they can work. So there's greater work choices there, greater flexibility. But it's also giving people greater choice in how they parent their children. So I stayed home before I became a senator for a couple of years later. Uh, and I'd go to mother's group on a Tuesday morning and a number of mothers would go, had to go back to work because of financial constraints, but they weren't ready to go back.
41:02
You know, they'll have to go back when they're a bit older, but while the kids were still two or three, you know, they'd prefer to stay at home for a few more years. So if that bit of money and we'll top up, what we'll do is we'll top up family part eight benefits, um, can help parents stay at home. If you want to be a parent and stay home a That also gives you the option of doing that, you know, help you get out of the line, at least your kids get to school or something like that. And that can help pay off the mortgage or make ends meet. So you can spend more time with your family because spending time with your children at that age is so important. You know, and when you look back, you're not going to go, oh, geez, I'm so glad I left my kids...
41:36
you know, childcare centre when I was two years old and went back to work an extra three years earlier. So, you know. Well, they should have a choice. They should have a choice, just like super. Yeah. In other words, it shouldn't be, again, the government saying, look, hand it over to us.
41:47
We'll take control of all this for you. Yeah. And the other thing is, I think, to be honest with you, like every time childcare centres get more money, all they do is put the price up. Exactly. Yeah. It doesn't go back to money, but there's no real beneficiary other than the people running the joints.
42:00
Yeah, exactly. That's right. And the union. So the fastest growing union in Australia is United Voice. So Albanese, in the 22 election, had to pay childcare workers $3.5 billion directly of taxpayers' money because the childcare centres couldn't afford... Yeah.
42:34
So, you know, when Labor tells you that, you know, they really want early childhood education, no, no, it's all about getting more money into the union coffers.
42:42
And then the unions then support the government in terms of the next election? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, let's keep the childcare industry going, you know. Would you call it a rort?
42:53
Well, look, there's definite childcare needs. We need to get on to why two parents need to work, and hopefully we take a lot of time today to do that. So it's not a rort in the sense two parents have to work, and I can understand why. So maybe I'll jump on to that. Yeah, do it. So they're our three solutions for the day. Our vision for tomorrow, the next two policies, and the first one is monetary policy, and I'm really excited that you invited me down today because being a banker yourself, you'll appreciate this. Our monetary policy is the most misunderstood and least discussed policy of all.
43:29
And it is the most important policy that we have to fix in this country before anything else.
43:33
It drives everything.
43:34
Yeah, it drives everything. You know this yourself, Mark. Capital management is king. If there's something we've learned in our years in finance, you've got to know how to manage capital. And we've been brainwashed on the difference between debt and equity. And I'll touch on that in a minute. But if we go back to why two parents are having to work today, it goes back to 1985 when Paul Keating lifted capital controls. The private banks in 1985 had $8 billion in foreign debt. By 2008, they had $800 billion in foreign debt. Hmm.
44:01
That money was lent against housing. It wasn't, so as you know, in finance, the net present, the value of an asset's a net present value of future income streams, right? We went from valuing assets based on the earnings of an asset to how much money we could borrow from offshore, right? So we were brainwashed at university, can't print money out of thin air. Right. Okay. Well, what we did, we've done something even worse. We've started borrowing money that was printed out of thin air by foreign countries. In particular, in the late 80s, it was Japan. So what's happened is house prices with that extra credit in the system have gone from four to five times earnings to 10 to 12 times earnings.
44:35
So, of course, you've had to send two parents back to work to pay for the mortgage. Hence the creation of the childcare industry in the late 90s, remember Eddie Groves and co. And then what we saw- Yeah, ABC Learning, and that ended up being a stock market collapse, a bubble and a crash. And then in 2008, we had the real GFC crash based on irresponsible credit practices in the Northern Hemisphere. We nearly had the same thing happen here, but the mining boom kept us going. But, you know, you remember Storm Financial. But one of the ways that we kept house prices strong here throughout that was Kevin Rudd allowed temporary visa holders, i.e.
45:11
foreign students, to start buying houses in Australia. So that meant that basically, and then they created the foreign student sector as well, right? Another sector that, you know, pumps some money in the economy, but distracts us from other parts of the economy we need to focus on. So that irresponsible credit practice has basically, from what Keating did in 1985, of letting unrestricted capital inflows into this country for consumption. I mean, housing's important, don't get me wrong, but it's ultimately a consumption tool, has saw house prices rise to the roof.
45:41
And then the money that we pay on that $800 billion, the interest, that's not even taxed. Right, so, you know, we put interest in the bank, we pay tax on it. The foreign banks don't have to pay tax on that. I'm not sure if you're familiar with 128F or the 36 Act, the public offer test. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so... As long as it has proper spread.
46:00
What they call spread. Yeah, it's got to be initial offering in the public market. Yeah, that's right, in a proper spread. That's correct. Yeah, so there's a few factors there. But long story short, it costs the budget about $3 billion. There's no withholding tax, basically.
46:11
Yeah, yeah. On the interest paid to the foreign entities.
46:14
That's exactly right.
46:15
Yeah. As long as the initial offering...
46:18
as long as the initial offering, I should say, as opposed to the secondary market, has enough spread. In other words, enough participants. If you just have one person, like it's just PIMCO, putting $800 million or $1 billion or $10 billion, that's not enough spread. But what's interesting about that, though, it's interesting, Gerry, you should talk about this, because it was Keating who sort of deregulated this process. And...
46:46
And it's an interesting thesis because I never thought about it like this, but in terms of a couple of markets, but I never thought about this, but the extra money coming into Australia, because banks probably raise, probably fund housing, maybe 50% is funded through deposits taken here in Australia, like money you might put in a deposit or I'd put in a deposit, whatever, which is the only way they used to do it before. Now, the other 50% is coming from somewhere overseas, US, Europe, Japan, UK, wherever.
47:16
Southeast Asia these days.
47:19
But that's here to stay. I mean, because there was so much money available, The banks accessed it and it was cheap and they could sort of – what they could do is build around it so they could hedge their currency risk, their prepayment risk. They could hedge all these risks associated with it. And they could still get it cheaper than they would have had to pay if they took it from a depositor here in Australia. So the banks were making really good margins and therefore will take and were desperate. They were desperate to lend it.
47:45
Yeah.
47:46
So – It's not here to stay if I can help it.
47:48
And the money's – you get the – but all of a sudden if the money's available to you as a borrower – because this has been my thesis all along. If I can save, just let's use a million dollar purchase price. If I can save $200,000 deposit, And the bank says to me, I'll lend you $800,000. Just forget about stampages and stuff like that. And if for some reason the property goes up to $1.1 million and the bank says, don't worry, Mark, I'll lend you $900,000.
48:13
The borrower will say, okay, I'll take it. Borrowers don't look at it as I owe $900,000. They don't look at it that way. I know this from my research.
48:23
They're just thinking, what's that extra $100,000 going to cost me per month? And it might be $200,000, $300,000. But all that does is push that house price up because everybody who's buying that house, when the vendor wants 1.1, everybody is all borrowing $900,000. It's like the bank will lend it to every bidder. Yeah. Every single person in the room. They don't say, oh, wow, we're borrowing $900,000 for 30 years or in those days it was 20 years, 25 years, but 30 years these days. They're not going to say that. They're going to say, it's just going to cost us an extra couple of hundred bucks a month to live in this beautiful house.
48:55
Yeah. So we'll pay 1.1 and that's how house prices get out of control. Yeah, exactly. That's right.
49:01
And the problem is if that extra funding, but here's the thing. We need, so prior to Keating, so let's use the million dollars example. So interesting enough, the CPA is about 87% funded actually internally.
49:12
Yeah, but they've got the biggest deposit.
49:13
Yeah, exactly. That's right.
49:14
We don't have enough depositors, by the way, to do that. So can I come back to this? This is what I exactly want to touch on.
49:18
So when I was at the Bank of Queensland for every million we lent, you're right. Like 40% was deposits, domestic deposits. 60% was international wholesale funding. Now... Before Keating had lifted capital controls, the most the Bank of Queensland could have lent was $400,000, not a million dollars, right? So that automatically means now, as you say, if you're going to borrow more, 60% of that money is now going to be paid offshore as interest, right? In the old days when all they could lend was $400,000, that was actually a virtuous cycle because what that money was coming from was the term deposits of the older generation.
49:51
They'd lend through the bank to the younger generation and the younger generation back through the bank would pay back to the older generation and that would keep house prices linked to the savings and the earnings of the prior generation. When Keating lifted those capital controls and debt went from $8 billion to $800 billion, foreign debt, we basically decoupled the price of houses from earnings. And so the first generation loved it for the first 20 years because they were all living off the boom of the house prices and we saw that here in Sydney.
50:20
But now the next generation's coming through and they're paying the price for it because they're struggling even to get into the housing market. Well, the earnings have never kept up.
50:28
That's exactly right. And so complementing heating and lifting capital controls with John Button getting rid of the tariffs on manufacturing whereby we let manufacturing go offshore. Now, there's no doubt that we did struggle to compete with Asian labour at the time. But the problem was we did lose earnings capacity and when we did that by letting our manufacturing go offshore. And there's a fantastic opportunity right now that no politician other than, you know, an ex-politician sitting here, like most factories today are automated. You know, the argument that we can no longer compete with offshore labour is... Because of the costs, yeah.
51:01
Yeah, because of costs, right? So, you know, when we export iron ore and coking coal, we should be parking that at Darwin in a steel factory there, turning it into brisket steel, and instead of exporting coal at $100 a tonne, exported at $500 at a time for brisket steel. Now, we mightn't bring a lot of jobs back on shore, but we can capture more upside and tax that to start paying for all those extra services we're going to need as the population ages. Because everything's robotically controlled these days. Yeah, not just in steel factories, a lot of stuff. If we can get nuclear here and get more baseload energy and drive down the cost of energy, bring back stamp duty on share trading to abolish payroll tax, another big mistake when the GST was brought in, we got rid of...
51:42
stamp duty on share trading. So 50% to 60% of the stock market now is traded by foreign bots who just scalped the market. So we should be starting hitting them with stamp duty.
51:52
Oh, really?
51:53
Yeah, absolutely. And then getting rid of payroll tax. Get rid of the tax on productivity and replace it with a tax on... Do you see payroll tax as a tax on productivity? Oh, absolutely. It's a shocking tax.
52:05
Man, John Howard, if you remember when John introduced it in the GST, he said the design here is to get rid of stamp duty and payroll tax. That's correct.
52:14
Yeah.
52:14
But I don't think they ever raised enough. They just didn't raise enough. So do you think there's an argument then, for example, in relation to your party to increase the GST? Yeah.
52:25
No, no interest in raising GST. If anything, I'd abolish it and just bring in 1% transaction tax on financial transactions.
52:32
Because it used to be $0.06 every $100 or something?
52:35
Yeah, it was something like that.
52:37
Stamp duty. I'm talking about share trading.
52:38
Yeah, yeah. Because when I started buying shares in the late 80s, we used to pay stamp duty.
52:42
Yeah, I remember doing the same. And everywhere except Northern Territory.
52:46
Yeah, right, okay. I didn't know that.
52:47
Yeah, because I remember a lot of share transfers used to get executed in the Northern Territory. Yeah, okay. The firm I was that anyway. Yeah, yeah, cool. Yeah, yeah, because the Northern Territory didn't have it. But yeah, but that's interesting. So you would abolish payroll tax at the States.
53:02
and give the states the power to... No, we'd tax it nationally and give it back to them.
53:07
And distribute it, give it back to them. Yeah. Yeah, okay. And likewise, we want to bring back a national government insurance office like the old insurance offices. If you run a national corporation today, you have to take out workers' compensation in six different states. That's crazy. That's crazy.
53:21
Well, I do that in my business now.
53:22
Yeah, right. So let's just have a one-stop shop for national government insurance. 50% of insurance now is reinsurance paid offshore. We should just reinsure ourselves. Federal government can do it for QBE and Suncorp and all that as well. And we can lower the cost of insurance as well. So let's get rid of payroll tax. Let's standardize workers' compensation. Let's lower the cost of insurance as well. So that's one of our policies that comes under the monetary policy banner. But going back to... Yeah, let's get back to the monetary policy as a vision, money vision policies. Yeah. So what would you do with the RBA?
53:54
So we want it to be accountable to Parliament, even though it does play an important role. And we also want to use its payment systems to underwrite a new CBA as well.
54:03
Now, what we want is our big kicker of the monetary policy is we want an infrastructure bank. So we want to fund our own infrastructure through quantitative easing in a productive manner. We were told at university that it's irresponsible for governments to print money out of thin air. Now, that is 50% correct. If you print and spend, that is bad. Inflation is a relative number between demand and supply. If you print and spend and increase demand, absolutely that's wrong. Here's the thing, if you print and build, and increase the supply of power stations, increase the supply of dams, you're actually going to deal with the structural imbalances of this country.
54:37
Because one of the problems we've got ever since the Tasmania dam decisions in 1983 is that state governments can't build regional infrastructure because the inner city greenies stop it from being built and they come in over the top through the federal government to stop it. But what we want to do, in the same way, if I said to you that I was going to bring in a private bill, I was still a senator, I'm going to bring in a private bill to stop BHP from issuing new shares on the stock market to build a coal mine that was going to generate a 15% return on equity, you'd think I was stupid, wouldn't you? You'd go, there's nothing wrong with BHP issuing new shares out of thin air, provided they're building an asset that's going to generate a return.
55:12
Governments can do the same thing, provided they match it with, you understand, secured loans versus unsecured loans. They build infrastructure, profit center infrastructure, dams, power stations, toll roads, ports, airports, telecommunications. Okay, all of those assets make money. And what you do is, toll roads is a classic example. Sydney today, what, 5 million people paying 10 bucks a toll? In 100 years' time, it'll be 10 million people paying 100 bucks a toll, right? It's just a money-making machine. Why on earth would you privatize your toll roads, right?
55:44
They're natural monopolies anyway. So what we want to do is we will issue one new share and call an UNTAP 12, set up an infrastructure bank in Canberra. That money will then lend bonds or issue infrastructure bonds to state governments to build those profit-centre infrastructure assets, okay, and they have 50 years to repay the debt. Now, in the case of, say, you build a dam for a billion dollars, you won't just issue the state government a billion dollars. It might take four years to build. So you'll issue the state government $5 million for 200 weeks to build the dam. But here's the thing, 30% of that's going to come straight back to Canberra in taxes in the first week.
56:18
And the other 70% of the money is going to spin through the economy, paying people to build things, right? And we can do that because where does the ingredients for the dam come from? It comes from the water out of the sky. We don't pay the clouds for it to rain. We don't pay the sun to give us that sunshine. If I drop a bull in the paddock with 20 cows and come back a year later, I've got 20 calves. You know what I mean? That's coming from Mother Nature. Mother Nature gives us this recurring wealth, and that's why we can justify it. But the key thing is you've got to match your credit as you expand your... Because what we do today is we expand our credit on this side of the balance sheet, instead of the balance sheet.
56:55
We do it through foreign debt. We should do it through domestic equity, And then the reason being that when you make profits here from these assets, it comes back as dividends to our children, not as interest offshore. And that's the fundamental brainwashing exercise that happened to us in our generation is that we weren't taught the difference between debt and equity and we've Growing up relying on foreign debt instead of generating our domestic equity. All equity is, is title. Our forefathers built this country. They gave us this title.
57:25
They fought for it. They built it. Right, we have title over all the rain that comes out of the sky free, all the sunlight, the minerals in the soil. We have that title. Why do we give it away? So if we build a dam for a billion dollars, for example, and most governments will go out and borrow a That means the first billion dollars in wealth we make, we just let it go offshore. To buy them back.
57:46
Yeah.
57:47
And another 25 years interest at 4%, that's another billion dollars in interest paid offshore. So we've just given up $2 billion of our untapped wealth to foreign banks instead of here, keeping it here for our children to inherit. And we have to do that. Because another stupid thing of what happened when Keating lifted capital controls was He allowed savings banks to go out and do whatever they liked. So, of course, Victorian Savings Bank, State Bank, went out and bought Tri-Continental. You'd remember this. I do remember it. Sent the bank broke. Nearly sent Victorian state government broke, Joan Kerner.
58:18
So then Jeff Kennett came in and started privatizing all our assets, state assets. And, of course, this is, you know, we talk about the federal government trillion dollar debt. State governments are even in a bigger problem.
58:27
There's another trillion we'd add them all up. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's another trillion.
58:31
In Australia, national and state government debt added together is $2 trillion.
58:37
That's correct. Yeah, and don't forget the $460 billion sitting in franking credits that haven't been paid out yet either. Yeah, wow. Yeah, so no one ever talks about that either. So that's another policy I'd like to talk about later.
58:48
So this is the thing. We've got to secure a title over... our unsapped wealth. Because that's the only way out of this mess is to go back to building infrastructure that's going to generate recurring wealth. Because when we privatized all that infrastructure, we started letting even more assets go offshore. But even more importantly, we started to let go of the skills that our children need. It's not enough to just build them infrastructure and leave them infrastructure. We've got to teach them the right skills. So complementing our infrastructure bank is... Is this coming to the RBA head?
59:18
Well, under monetary policy.
59:20
Under monetary policy. Monetary policy. So monetary policy, you manage monetary policy through three levers. Qualitative easing, which is what we do now, which yet again, if you got washed up in a desert island, would you go and pull some leaves off a tree and start bartering leaves and changing the price of the leaves? No, you'd actually start building, you know, a fire, you'd build a house, you'd look for a water supply, you'd actually start building real assets. Yeah, not manipulating the price of paper assets, but building real infrastructure. So we rely too heavily on qualitative easing.
59:51
I used to go, you know, ask the OBA this in estimates, right? And of course their hands are tied because they can only deal with qualitative easing. What we need to do is deal with quantitative easing, i.e. build real assets and expand the volume of credit. which by the way, in the 1937 Banking Royal Commission, the recommendation of that Royal Commission was the central bank should always control the volume of credit in the system, not foreign banks, our central bank. So we've got to use quantitative easing. And then the other way, of course, is through macro potential controls, you know, You can't have a 5% deposit.
60:23
You've got to have a 20% deposit for a house. Savings banks can't go buying investment banks, things like that.
60:31
So this all comes under monetary policy under the lever of quantitative easing, but in a productive manner. So we're going to bring back our bank over here to keep branches open in the regions, because as you know, a lot of bank branches are closing in regional Australia. That's no good for businesses in small towns that can't access a bank and get banking services, plus our state government insurance office, infrastructure bank over here that will also make money. We're going to put the profits from those two banks into a middle bank called the infrastructure bank, sorry, a development bank.
61:03
And that development bank will also lend back to state governments for schools, cost centre infrastructure, schools, hospitals, for councils, for things like sewage works.
61:15
The source stuff that stops council building houses.
61:17
Yeah, yeah. But what we want to do is by having that three bank policy, we want to remove the cost of finance on our own currency for governments because we're really at the moment paying tax twice. Once through using the utility, the infrastructure, And again, on the interest that we have to borrow to build that infrastructure.
61:36
Yeah, most people don't realize we're borrowing the interest to pay the principal.
61:40
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we don't need to do that. We should issue it as equity, not as debt, but on the condition that it's secured against an asset that makes money, just like you do in a bank.
61:49
Yeah, yeah.
61:49
Right? Like if someone came to you, you know, Wizard and said, oh, I want to borrow a million bucks and didn't have any collateral. You wouldn't lend them to them. I'm not going to lend them to them. So they've got to have – it's got to be a hardcore asset. And we've got 7 million square kilometers, 28 million people. We have so much potential in this country. We need to invest in our own future for our own children. And complementing this is bringing back a military apprenticeship scheme that will actually – start to train our younger people and get a lot more people back on the tools. So I was born 1970.
62:20
My sister was born 64. So when she went to high school in 77, there were four classes in grade eight. By the time she left in year 12, there was half a class left. It's been 40 years since the button plan. That generation is now retiring that was the last generation whereby more people were on the tools than in paper shuffling in offices right so we're going to have this this is why we have to have such a high immigration rate for skilled labor because so many people that were trained on the tools and doing apprenticeships they're all retiring and our younger generation ended up going off to university thanks to the Dawkins plan 19 late 80s 1990 and We all sent them off to university to get broke and brainwashed, right?
63:01
So we've got to get them back on the tools, and that's what this military apprenticeship will do, and we want to expand. You mean join the military? Yeah, yeah. The reason why is that you don't get paid a lot as an apprentice, so if we can give them free accommodation...
63:14
food and food it'll help them you know save money you know what they earn they get to keep and then we want to use that as a pathway into a military engineering core civil engineering core and a mechanical electrical engineering core to actually start building roads and power stations because we Yeah, Snowy Hydro 2, $2 billion budget, blowing out the $40 billion. That's unbelievable. But not finished. Yeah, not even finished. I mean, you can't pick up a phone, not that I want to get involved with the war, but you can't pick up a phone to a foreign building contractor in the middle of the war and ask them to rebuild the road if it gets bombed.
63:48
You know, we've got to have the ability here to build for ourselves. And we don't really have much manufacturing left. So if we can do it, and it's not compulsory, it's not anything like that. It's just an alternative that if you want to leave school at 16, We'll pay for you, and we're going to fund that by increasing student visa fees from, well, it's just gone to $5,000, it was $2,000, to $20,000. So if you're a foreign student, they come here, they can pay up to $100,000 for a university degree.
64:16
The government's only been clipping $2,000 for a student visa. Why are we doing that? If you're here for four years, 200 weeks, that's $10 a week rent for our infrastructure. We should charge $100 a week for our infrastructure, get 20 grand.
64:29
And then for 300,000 foreign students, we want to bring it down for a million, get 6 billion in foreign student fees, visa fees. That can help fund our military apprentices.
64:39
Who do you sit down with working all this stuff out?
64:41
Oh, I just do it myself. I don't know. I've been thinking about this stuff for 20 years, so this is the only reason. I mean, I've lost my position as a senator, as you know, but it's just this drive to get these ideas out there because it just kills me. I'm so grateful to the sacrifices of my own parents and my forefathers. uh, that I want to make sure our children get the same opportunities our forefathers gave to us. What was your fifth, fifth, your second vision? So the second, I just want to have a little story there before I get to the fifth one. So as you know, the first guy to issue in currency in Australia was Lachlan Macquarie.
65:12
First 17 years of the colony, they relied on foreign currency. There was a drought in 1805. They, The foreign currency got repatriated, so they started bartering in rum. That literally went tits up thanks to the rum rebellion. So Lachlan Macquarie was the first governor to come to Australia and say, look at us as a country, not a colony. So to run a country, you need obviously a military to provide law and order, a taxation system, and a monetary system. He issued the Holy Dollar, as you know, which is used to build the Sydney Hospital. Sydney Barracks would still stand on Macquarie Street today.
65:40
But what was interesting was he used that Spanish peso, which was the reserve currency of its day, as our currency but what he did he punched a hole in it and he punched a hole in it to make sure it didn't get exported offshore again so this is our last policy we want to increase the rate of tax on profits sent offshore to be higher than the rate of tax here in this country So because ultimately you take Pfizer in 2022, they made $1.4 billion in sales here. They shifted a billion dollars offshore in royalties to Ireland. Ireland's got a company tax rate of 12.5 cents.
66:12
As long as you're in the middle of Dublin. Yeah, in the middle of Dublin. In the tax-free area. Yeah, tax-free area. And there's withholding tax here of 10 cents. So 10 plus 12. So one of the things, yet again, we were taught, you can't have double taxation. That's not right. I learned this at Westfield. It's the cumulative rate of tax that you have that matters, right? So 10 plus 12 and a half is 22 and a half. That's still seven and a half cents, less than 30 cents. So we let that billion dollars go offshore. We lost $300 million in company tax, of which we did recoup 100 in withholding taxes, but we were $200 million worse off.
66:47
Ireland's $125 million better off than just having head office over there.
66:50
Yeah, that's all they have, by the way. Yeah, yeah, that's right. There's a four-kilometre circle. Yeah. And if you've got an office there, you pay the low tax rate.
67:00
Yeah, yeah. To do nothing. Absolutely. But we let all this wealth... You go and get a plumber here in Sydney tonight, you Google it, and the plumber's based in Sydney, the customer's based in Sydney, that money goes to Ireland. Did Ireland... Or did Meta or Google or Pfizer build the cables that connected us to Ireland? No, of course not, right? So we've got to start taxing profits that go offshore. This was the whole reason why. So back to my story, when I came home, I worked at the Bank of Queensland, management accountant, treasury accountant, securitization, banking ops, then worked at Westfield for six years in predominantly treasury.
67:34
But I did a massive job.
67:37
I did know David Liddy. That's right. Yeah. Yep. Yep. He was a big, hairy, awesome gold guy.
67:41
Yeah.
67:42
Yeah. So, yeah. So, I used to catch the ferry from Kangaroo Point across the river with David a few times as well. So, he brought in a whole new mainframe. So, he outsourced the mainframe services. So, I worked on that and coding all the overnight internet bank settlements and everything like that. Now, I moved on to managing a team of around 15 in banking ops. including treasury securitization. Good experience, yet again, small bank, but really worthwhile. Anyway, so I did a master's of finance when I was there in the treasury stream. And then when I came to Sydney, I worked at Westfield.
68:15
Westfield, unlike the bank of Queensland, which had about five subsidiaries, Westville had about 600. And I was like, what's this all about? I realized it was all to do with tax, moving tax around the world and things like that. So obviously they had shopping centers in the US and the UK. But I did a master's of tax law up in Sydney University. And I was shocked at the number of sections in that tax act that gave tax breaks to foreign investment in front of domestic investment and this is killing us so we can't have an onshore tax rate of 30 cents and an offshore tax rate depending on tax treaty between zero and 15 because everyone is bending bending over backwards to shift profits offshore we have to stop the leakage of profits offshore so between building more infrastructure to generate more income increasing taxes on foreigners and cutting some government waste that's easier said than done That's how we want to bring the budget back into balance as well as cut taxes for hardworking Australians.
69:12
Yeah. They're your policies. Yeah. Not called policies. I don't know what you call them. They're headliners. Yeah. Five key policies. Yeah. Well, let's say people first go to the next election, 28, 28, we're talking about 28? Yeah.
69:25
Can you get other people to represent your seats, various seats?
69:29
We won't have any problem getting Senate candidates. We will struggle to fill 150 seats. This is our first time around. Well, there was myself last year, but we only had a standing start of about four months. So what we're working on is building our membership. So we're merging with the Citizens Party. We're going to get close to 7,000 members. Wow. I'm talking to a couple of other minor parties. Hopefully, if we can bring on them board, we'll get to 10,000 members. The Labor Party as a benchmark has about 50,000 members nationally. Wow. And all we can do is through opportunities like you've gratefully given me today and I appreciate it, is get our word out there, talk about our policies through grassroots involvement.
70:05
So social media, going to the markets and talking to people in the community about our policies. And we just want to really focus on the vision for tomorrow as well as, you know, obviously we want the solution today, but we just really want to stress the importance that we do live in a great country.
70:20
we owe it to our children to give them the opportunities our forefathers gave to us and to be more optimistic. So we do want to have a point of difference there in the sense that, yeah, we, you know, well, I mean, inevitably I sometimes get dragged into the toxic toxicity, you know, sewer pit of social media. But, you know, we do have solutions and there is a way out of the mess that we're in. We've just got to go back to basics and that is, you know, hard work, you know, believing in family, you know, You know, and believing in your community in this great country called Australia.
70:50
You know, it's funny. I was only thinking the other day, when I was a kid growing up, it's interesting you should say that, because when I was a kid growing up, it sort of went like this. It was in different order for different people, but these three elements are always included in everyone's conversation. God, family, country, or family, country, God, or whatever the...
71:10
It didn't matter what the priority list was, but it was sort of those three things. You wanted everybody. That's all our values. We all stood for our country.
71:18
Yeah.
71:18
We all stood for our God, whichever God that was.
71:21
Yeah.
71:21
And for our family.
71:22
Yeah.
71:22
They're our three main values.
71:24
Yeah.
71:25
We sort of lost sight of that a little bit, haven't we?
71:27
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I still think the high point of our national identity was Bob Hawke in 1988 at the Opera House, you know, and that bicentennial celebrations on the Sydney Harbour. They were just magnificent. Straight after the America's Cup challenge. Yep. 87. Yeah, that's right. And Bob Hawke, and I don't normally agree with Bob Hawke on a lot of things, but he said something that I think we should reflect on a lot. He said there should be no hierarchy of origin in this country. And he's bang on about that.
71:57
It doesn't matter when you got here. If you put Australia first and love your country and want a better life for your children. That's it. That's it. And our founding fathers, Section 116, they said there is freedom of religion. They did that because they did not want religion in politics. And that's really, really important. Our founding fathers, the Constitution could do with a few tweaks, but they did a very good job in doing that. And I don't think people realize that the reason why they put that in there is that they believe that religion and politics needed to be separate.
72:28
So is People First Party, are you sort of saying to us, let's get back to basics?
72:34
Absolutely.
72:35
But I don't mean like be simple, but just what is fundamentally important. Exactly. For us to exist.
72:41
Yeah. Which is your family. Yeah. You know, it's like it's just.
72:44
But also our country. Look at our country. Look what we've got.
72:47
Yeah. Yeah. And your country. Yeah. And we, and look, having, you know, spent all that time traveling, we are so lucky as a country.
72:53
Yeah. Yeah.
72:54
And I just sometimes think we forget about it and we should not be so pessimistic about what we have here and the opportunities we have. Sure, we've had a probably rough decade where we've been going in the wrong direction. No one denies that. And both major parties, you know, are to blame for that.
73:08
But, you know, it doesn't mean to say we can't turn it around. I mean, 200 years ago, pioneering forefathers were coming out here, you know, you know, beating a path through the scrub, putting up with snakes. And if you got bitten by a snake, you couldn't just go to the hospital. I mean, my mum's one of five children, her three brothers all died within one year. So my grandparents, my grandmother lost three babies within one year, not sorry, within the first year of birth. So I mean, it wasn't that long ago that women would lose many children in childbirth.
73:41
So we've come a long way and our forefathers had made so many sacrifices to make this country the great country it is.
73:48
We've just got to constantly remind ourselves that we are so lucky and then use that to empower us and motivate us to get up and do the right things and not waste time on social media. If you waste time on social media, not this social media course, but spending 10 hours a week on social media, cut it back to eight hours and put that two hours into doing something constructive. Get involved with the political party because, yet again, the combined membership of political parties in this country is around 200,000 people. Not many. Not many.
74:18
It's less than 1% of the population. You can't complain. The world's run by those who turn up. And if you're not going to turn up and get involved, well, of course the world's going to go in a direction that you don't want it to go because you're not doing anything about it to control your own destiny.
74:32
Do you think that's an Australian thing, though? Do you think we've been so spoiled?
74:36
Not at the moment, but we have been so spoiled over such a long period of time. Yeah, absolutely.
74:41
And we don't feel the need to do these things? I think that that has been the case.
74:45
I think that is changing. I definitely think it's changing now. Yeah, but it has been. Oh, for sure. Yeah, and especially with that asset boom in the 80s and the 90s because we were losing product. We were held up by the mining boom for sure, but the mining boom has masked a lack of productivity through our manufacturing sector. It's allowed the public bureaucracy to blow out And bureaucracy, not public servants. So our teachers and our nurses and our policemen, there's not enough of them. There's too many bureaucrats. So we need to reorganize that.
75:15
Maybe you could just explain that because I think that's a really important point. And I think we might finish off this, but this is a really important point, if you don't mind, Joe. People take the view that we have, a lot of people talk about too many public servants, but they don't talk about bureaucracy. And bureaucracy, and I'm someone who lived in India for a long time, and I know how bureaucracy works because Gandhi made sure he created this bureaucracy because he needed to give everybody a job. Yeah, right. Yeah. It didn't matter how much you got paid, but everyone had a job. Yeah. And it was sort of bordering on communism, which is sort of where Gandhi was at.
75:46
Yeah. Yeah, right. A country like India was poor. You had to, you know, people had to have a job. Yeah. So maybe you just can explain to people the difference between public service, being in the service of the public and being in the bureaucracy.
75:59
Yeah, exactly. The difference between the two. Two different things. The public service, our nurses, our teachers. I mean, my mum was a nurse, you know, my grandmother was a teacher, you know, Our military, they serve the people. And that word public service is thrown around too much. Sky News does this. Oh, we've got too many public servants. There's too many. It's like, no, no, no. Hang on a minute. Don't go around bashing the front end workers. They work really hard, right? But do we have too many bureaucrats? Absolutely. And it's the bureaucrats in the back office that create the regulation. Which not only is a tax, it strangles productivity.
76:31
And one of our policies, I call for this in my main speech, we've got to have a federation convention that looks at removing the duplications of roles and responsibilities between federal and state governments and the vertical fiscal ambiguities between state and federal governments. And the next level down, 33 councils in Sydney. Do we need that many? Ridiculous. It's ridiculous, right? Brisbane City's got four councils. The biggest one, Brisbane City itself, has got 1.4 million people. Works amazingly. Yeah, exactly. Same as Gold Coast. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah, that's right. Because, I mean, I'm sure there's still inefficiencies in their bureaucracies, but, you know, at least there's only... Because we've often had this thing on our side of politics where if you have the states competing, you'll get greater competition.
77:08
But I've realised when it comes to bureaucrats, you're actually fighting an eight-headed hydra, not one. Like, you're better off having, like, one...
77:16
One level of bureaucracy. Seeable. Yeah, very simple. And, of course, ironically enough, the Tasmanian dams decision has led to this because it basically allowed Bob Hawke to go to the High Court and say, we want to stop the Tasmanian government from building a dam. I'm not talking Franklin Dam is a beautiful dam. Maybe it shouldn't have been a dam. No argument there. But what that means now is every time the state government tries to do something, the federal government steps in according to some foreign treaty and stops the state government from doing anything. So we've got this real dysfunctional federation at the moment, and we've got to sort that out.
77:49
The bureaucrats create a thing called what I call the bureaucracy, which is by definition designed to be inefficient.
77:58
And as a result of that, the inefficiencies create jobs within the bureaucracy for bureaucrats. Exactly. And it just keeps feeding on itself. Yeah. And it becomes, it's no one individual's fault. It's not the fault of the individual bureaucrat that's in the bureaucracy. I mean, sometimes it is, but generally speaking, it's not. It's the fault of the politicians who create the bureaucracy.
78:19
Yeah.
78:19
And to some extent, currently in our current regime, the bureaucracy protects the certain politicians. And it'll protect itself.
78:28
You're right.
78:29
It's a hammer looking for a nail. They talk about AI one day taking over the world. Well, for me, we already have it. It's called a bureaucracy. And it's happening in a lot of countries. Like the UK is a great example. France is another great example. But Australia, the bureaucracy is a major problem for a country who's so small. Absolutely. In terms of people. We're way, way too big. Yeah. And I agree. Public servants, people in the service of public, they should get a medal.
78:55
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And please don't confuse a public servant with a bureaucrat. Yeah, that's exactly right. And a public servant gets paid nowhere near what a bureaucrat gets paid either. There's a major disparity between the reward for effort. Yeah, yeah. And that's what we've got to look at is the bureaucrats. Yeah, absolutely. I've had some exposure to it because I've shared quite a few...
79:18
task force for various governments. Yeah. And I have to tell you, the bureaucracy at the end of the day kills off pretty much every innovative idea that I've ever come up with.
79:27
Yeah.
79:27
Yeah.
79:28
Oh, they're risk adverse. Yeah. I caught up with some guys in the defense industry who are private contractors and they just said, you know, they're so frustrated with the Australian military because they're so risk adverse. And by the time they've actually... you know, they want the proof of, you know, concept before they adopt it. Like prototyping proof of concept. Yeah, prototyping all this stuff. And as they were saying, by that stage… He's got no money left. We've got no money left and other countries come up with an even more advanced idea.
79:57
Which is why, and I don't think about it, I want to really approve this. They're not thinking about that. The bureaucracy thinks about what are the reasons why I should not approve it. And it doesn't matter whether it's defense or dams or whatever the infrastructure is. Yeah. It's about what are the reasons that there's a problem? Well, because if they did it too efficiently, they'd do themselves out of a job. Yeah, correct.
80:18
Yeah.
80:18
So it feeds on itself. Yeah, exactly. Well, Gerard Rennick, I really want to thank you very much for your introduction to me, at least, of the...
80:30
People First Party. I think it's amazing.
80:32
Well, I'll have a name change soon too, by the way. It's going to be People's Party. I had Heritage Bank. You know Heritage. They changed their bank name to People First. So they've sued me. Copyright. Yeah. And as I said to the judge, I said, I don't have a license from APRA, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. This is a question of fact. Yeah. But she let it go to trial and it was going to go for three days. And I was like, well, I don't like the look of this.
80:51
I was just calling it People's Party.
80:53
Yeah. Actually, I don't mind that. People's Party. Yeah. Australian People's Party. It's probably slightly easier.
80:58
Yeah.
80:58
Yeah. Well, we'll just call ourselves People's Party. You know, it'll be abbreviated to that.
81:03
But yeah, but thanks for having me on, Mark. I really appreciate the opportunity.
81:07
I look forward to it making some inroads into the 28 election, mate. Cheers. Thanks, Mark. Appreciate it.
