154 Former Treasurer Joe Hockey On Trump Vs Harris China Australias Political Future

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I'm Mark Boris, and this is Straight Talk.

Everyone that's going to vote for Harris is going to tell you.

I reckon five out of a hundred that are voting for Trump won't tell you.

And that's been proven in the past.

Jail hockey.

Mark Boris.

Mate, how are you going?

What do you think is the net effect if Trump wins?

The amount of announcements he's made, if he were to deliver them on tax cuts, tariffs, and everything else, would be diabolical.

What about if she wins, though?

I don't know.

Economically.

That's much better.

Because she's talking about price controls.

And everyone's going, how's that going to work?

Harris has not defined herself, so she still remains a big policy mystery.

And if I was to ask you now, Joe, what do you think will happen in the election next year in Australia?

Oh, well, it's obviously going to be close.

Firstly...

And do you see the current ambassador?

Do you have much to do with Kevin?

I do, I do, I do, I do.

And, you know, Kevin...

Jail hockey.

Mark Boris.

Mate, how are you going?

Okay.

It's been a long time we've known each other.

Very long time.

And, well, actually, I remember, I was only thinking about today, I remember meeting you, like, when Michael Yabsley was raising money for the Liberal Party.

God, yeah, that's right.

Made it in the 1990s.

Early 90s.

Totally.

And Yabsley got me in a restaurant with a bloke who was a friend of mine at the time.

I haven't seen him in a long time.

And we agreed to put some moderate amount of money into your campaign, which is not much those days.

We thought it was a lot, but for a lot for me at the time.

But...

Well, you can make up for it now.

I know I can.

Just to embarrass you, like, because I really need to do this to you, because Kerry would

never forgive me, Kerry Paget, if I don't tell the audience about this story.

And I'm...

It's the only part I'm going to talk about.

The rest of it, I'm just going to ask questions, I'm going to ask, and it's going to all be

about you.

But this story is all about you.

Just to give the audience a taste of the bloke that's sitting in front of me.

Now, this is what I call a proper treasurer.

That's my view, right?

And, you know, he's a businessman today.

He's a former ambassador of the United States of America for Australia, in the United States

of America for Australia, and a former treasurer.

But I'm going to go right back to 2000.

I think it was two, maybe 2002.

I had the Wizard Business partnership with Packer.

And it was the beginning, it was February 2002, I think.

Interest rates hadn't come off for a long time.

And you were the Minister for Finance.

Yeah.

And Peter Casso.

I was a treasurer at the time.

So you were much younger.

Yeah, 99.

Much younger bloke.

So, I get a phone call.

The first Reserve Bank meeting was about to happen on the Tuesday of February, first Tuesday

of February.

And everyone knew they were going to drop interest rates.

And they did.

They dropped interest rates.

So I get a phone call from Minister Joe Hockey.

And he says to me, hey, mate, he said, treasurer wants to know, because in those days, the

treasurer and the prime minister used to talk in Parliament all the time about the competition

against the banks.

And I was around, Ozzie was around.

But Ozzie had been around for a bit longer than me.

So he had a bigger profile.

But Minister Hockey says to me on the telephone, Mark, we notice you're dropping your interest

rates.

And I said, yes, we announced we're going to drop our interest rates.

And he said, how much buy?

And I said, 25 base points, which was just ahead of the Reserve Bank.

And Minister Hockey said, and when we be passing that interest rate reduction on?

I said, well, funny you should say that.

I said, because we're thinking about passing it on much more quickly.

Because in those days, you pass an interest rate increase on straight away, an interest

rate reduction six weeks later.

Correct.

So we'd hold the money for a bit, you know.

We also make money.

And he said, when do you think you're going to do that?

Because there was a big bone of contention with consumers that this rort was happening.

I said, well, I don't know.

I was thinking 13, 12, 13 days.

He said, oh, that's very interesting.

I'll tell the treasurer.

But I said, I've got to check.

I said, I've got to go check to Kerry Packer.

I've got to say, Kerry, like, Minister Hockey's on the phone.

He, the treasurer's going to talk about this in Parliament.

I said, I said, I will pass the rate reduction on 12 days.

And Kerry nearly had apoplexy.

Like, he said, what the, what are you doing that for?

That's when we make our money and during these periods of change.

I said, yeah, but, you know, the minister is thinking it would be good for Australians.

We need to change the landscape.

It's unfair that we put it up straight away and put it down.

So I think we should do it.

He said, okay, son.

He said, I trust you.

You do it.

So I thought, good.

So I ring Minister Hockey.

I'm going to say, Joe, 12 days.

He said, ah, it's interesting, Mark.

He said, he said, I was talking to Westpac and Westpac are thinking of doing it in nine days.

I went, oh, fuck.

He said, would you go eight?

And I thought, oh, my God.

And I thought, I can't ring Kerry up.

I can't, I cannot ring Kerry.

If I ring Kerry, he'll kill me.

And I thought, Westpac, nine.

Can we go eight?

Because I can't let Westpac own this now.

Now I've always started.

I've got to own it.

I went eight days.

And I've never known to this very day whether or not you were telling me the truth or not.

I always tell the truth.

Because I have this, I had this straight after, this sneaking suspicion that I'd just been

jammed and set up so bad.

Well, that's fantastic.

You'd be jammed between Kerry Packer and Joe Hockey.

It's pretty impressive.

Oh, jammed pretty hard.

And I thought, but the good thing about it was, and we don't see this in politics today.

The good thing about it is that.

But treasurers and, and then you later on became the treasurer later on, but treasurers

and ministers for finance, as you were, financial services, I think it was called at the time.

And this, it was 2001 actually, Joe, not 2002.

Took risks and were active in the marketplace, like our marketplace and put pressure on people.

I've never heard a word from, I did hear from Scott at one stage and Josh, but I know I've

never heard a word from Jim.

And you know, what do you think about this?

Yeah.

It's representative of a big part of the marketplace.

Yeah.

It's, I mean, the environment changes, but I, you know, I grew up in a small business

family and, you know, it was just what it was bred into me.

Well, you know, problem wouldn't pressure me at all.

Zero.

Like it was like second nature.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I remember ringing Roger Corbett when he was putting up prices with the GST

and, and he, he was putting it up ahead of the introduction to GST.

And I said to him,

I said, Mr. Corbett, if we need to have a body swing from a light pole in Martin Place

and it's yours, then so be it, but you're not putting up prices until we get rid of

all the other taxes.

As you know, he was running, he was running Woolies at the time.

Yeah, that's right.

And he had to get people into all the Woolies overnight, charge 13 million tags, had to

remove 13 million price tags.

It would have cost him.

And Alan Fells, yeah, cost him fortune.

But, you know, that's the way it should be.

It's, it's not intimidation or bullying.

It's about what's best for the Australian consumer.

A hundred percent.

So where, where has that changed, Joe?

Like it's different today and there might be a whole lot of good reasons for it, but

where has that changed in Australia?

Why has it changed?

I don't know.

I just, I've always been that, that sort of person.

It's just, you know, maybe because I'm more familiar with business.

I grew up engaging with business at a very young age.

I was never really intimidated.

And by business, I remember meetings with Kerry Packer when he wanted to buy the Sydney

Morning Herald.

That's right, I remember that.

Oh my God.

In fact, I was sharing that to some of the stories with-

He doesn't hold back.

No, well, it's funny.

You know, I had caught up with Kerry Stokes and we were reflecting on all those days when

all that media ownership law was changing and how the Kerrys went to war with each other.

And it was, you know, it was a different environment.

And see, I think now-

Business is more removed from politics, you know, and-

I think that's right, yeah.

And part of it is shareholders say, you know, don't engage with politicians, don't donate

to politicians.

So the danger is you become removed from the people that are generating the economy.

And so I think bigger business is friendless.

And partly it's the fault, well, overwhelmingly it's the fault of big business because they

stopped donating to the parties.

And therefore, you know, they're being called out.

They're being called out for behavior and they've got no friends.

You saw that with the banking reforms under Malcolm Turnbull.

We see the way the mining companies are treated today, you know, and it's very hard in politics

to go into bat for business if it's not in the best interest of small business and consumers.

You were, I think you, I'm not sure, but did you have a small business under your portfolio?

I had small, yeah, I had small business, not under that one.

I was small business and tourism after that.

Yeah, okay.

I do remember you having small business.

And I loved it.

I mean, in fact, I've started a small business now.

And it was actually not so small, but yes.

Yeah, but I mean, I started it, you know, filling out a bank application form in the

U.S.

Opening up a bank account.

Well, and it's called Bondo Partners.

It is, yeah.

And you're effectively putting parties to parties.

So you're-

Yeah, it's the interaction between politics and business.

And we've got a consultancy arm.

We've got a capital arm.

We've got an investment fund, investing in companies.

And national security in Australia and the U.S. and U.K.

And we've got an M&A advisory arm.

We've got an advocacy arm.

And we're in Australia, the U.S., U.K., and Japan.

We just opened.

It looks very much, in some respects, it looks very much like a very early stage Macquarie

Bank without being a bank.

In that Macquarie group, I mean, not the bank part of it, but the Macquarie group part of

it.

You've got funds.

You've got investments.

You've got advice, a lot of advisory stuff.

But you're sort of making markets between people.

Yeah.

And regions.

Well, it's hard going to another country.

And it's really expensive, particularly for SMEs.

Going to the United States.

I mean, people think, for example, going to the United States is just like going to Queensland.

Well, it's not.

I mean, it's very different.

And so it's the same with the U.K.

They don't really understand.

The U.K. has always looked at the EU rather than at the U.S.

And Americans coming here have a little bit of a tinge of arrogance that they know how

to deal with it, just like going to California.

And as I say to Americans, I say, what are Australians like?

I say, well, we're just like Californians, except we like America.

That's the difference.

They're like, oh, yeah, OK, we get it now.

And how much of that, Joe, do you get a leg up from being the ambassador?

Because the ambassadorship, which you took on 15, 16, 17, was that 30 years?

Yeah, 16, yeah.

16, 17.

Four years.

How much do you get out of that?

Yeah, for sure.

But, I mean, it's, look, if I was still,

a lawyer, as I was way back, you know, maybe I'd be a partner at Cause and, you know,

would have been accounting for every six minutes of my life.

And you'd be charging me, well, actually, I used Mallison's recently, and they charged

me $1,500 an hour.

Well, that's OK.

That's a good fee.

Yeah, that was a bit of a mid-range.

I would have charged a lot more.

I charge more now.

No, no, no.

It's actually quite inexpensive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Certainly not that.

But it's, you know, I just always felt the need to try and do it.

I always felt the need to try and do something better.

I felt the need to give.

And, look, I just enjoyed the US.

And after I finished as ambassador, I'm going, well, what do I do now?

You know, I've had 24 years of public life.

I don't want to be a lobbyist or anything like that.

I wanted to do something more substantive.

And we ended up doing, you know, fantastic transactions in Australia's interest.

Like, you know, the biggest telco in the Pacific was thinking of being, of selling itself to

the Chinese.

And, you know, I stepped in and worked with the Australian government.

And the American government and made sure Telstra now owns it, right?

So things like that.

And then in national security, we're investing in the sort of companies that are going to

keep our kids safe.

So that's my, you know, there's got to be that element to it to get me really fired

up.

And, yes, of course, all the knowledge I've gained as ambassador or as treasurer or any

of them, I'm not going to deny that.

That'd be ridiculous.

I am what I am.

Yeah, but there's no point in not.

There's no point in leveraging what you've done as treasurer.

Well, what else have you got?

I mean, it's, you know, you leverage all your experience.

100%.

If you've been the world's best plumber, you're going to leverage that.

And this is, you know, people often say to me, what's so-and-so like?

Well, Trump.

What's Trump like?

Well, Trump is taking his experience as a New York property developer, and he's taking

it to the White House.

He's transactional.

He does deals.

You know, he's polite to people, even the people that he competes against.

But, you know, he's.

He's a hard, transactional person.

And it's no different with Harris, who's a prosecutor, and Kamala Harris has, you know,

been a prosecutor and a lawyer.

And we all have, you know, Barack Obama comes across as a university lecturer, and that's

what he was.

You know, he's a very good university lecturer.

Can we talk about Trump?

Oh, yep.

I mean, I'm sure you're sick of it, but like, you're here, so I've got to ask you.

No, no, no.

The audience wants to talk about Trump.

They want to hear about someone who knows the guy for a start.

Yeah.

And in your ambassador role, you get to.

You get to meet Trump, because he was a president during that period.

Well, no, most ambassadors wouldn't have met him.

I mean, you meet the president.

When you become ambassador, you go and present your credentials.

So you have a five-minute meeting with the president.

That time it was Barack Obama.

Right.

I met Trump because he was running for office, and my view was he could win, and no one else

had that view.

And so I was, you know, lonely out there saying, I want to engage with the Trumps.

I wanted to engage with the Trump campaign, when no one else would, and he was considered,

you know, an idiot, and everyone said, Clinton's going to win.

And that's when the relationship started.

Why did you think he was going to win?

What was it that you saw in him?

Oh, you know, Mark, like, in our politics here, we talk about Betty Bankstown.

Yeah.

And we try and identify the swing voter, the marginal seat voter, and who really matters.

How are we going to win her over?

And I took that political experience in Australia and campaigns and said,

what, who's the swing voter in America?

And we came up with Mary Milwaukee, Wisconsin, right?

And I just, when I started to define in my own head and to the embassy, Mary Milwaukee,

they started to understand that there was something more than Clinton, something more

than what was being offered.

It was much more complicated.

So Mary Milwaukee, and, you know, this is sort of typical in one sense.

45 years of age, probably earning $15 an hour for the last 10 years at Walmart, in the

checkout.

You know, she has two kids, a boy that's probably done one or two tours of duty of Afghanistan,

probably has PTSD.

She has a young daughter she hopes one day would go to college, but she can't afford

it.

Her husband is one of one and a half million truck drivers in America that hasn't got a

college degree.

And she goes to church Wednesdays and Sundays, which is 10 a.m.

And she goes to church on Wednesdays and Sundays, which is 10 a.m.

It's typical in the Midwest.

You know, she pays the bills.

She holds the family together.

She worries about security, the threat of fentanyl.

And every night on TV, the Colberts and the Jimmy Kimmels and others laugh at her for

going to church, for having traditional values, believing a marriage is between a man and

a woman.

But, you know, and they laugh at her because she's yesterday, because they see her as yesterday.

And they're really about.

you know more a different type of america and you know mary's there and she's going

hang on along comes donald trump and he's a very successful person but he's rude i don't like that

rudeness but you know what he not only listens to me he's fighting for me he says you know mary

you there's nothing wrong with going to church or there's nothing wrong with you know uh having

a history of guns handed through the generation there's nothing wrong with uh you know having a

an f-150 pickup truck there's nothing wrong with not going to university what's wrong with that

yeah in fact i'm going to fight for you mary and she said for the first time someone's come along

and fought for me and you know what mary more white women voted for donald trump than hillary

clinton in 2016 and more white women voted for

donald trump than joe biden in 2020 because he's suddenly saying i hear you and i'm fighting for

you is but is was that just a clever strategy from his point of view is it for real like is he

actually want to fight for those people did he see them as someone who's going to give him yeah no i

think he's authentic uh and you know authenticity is the most valuable commodity in the 21st century

whether it be in business or in politics or anything else if you're authentic you can't be

fake you can't lie

people see right through you um and so you know trump of course he he lies about facts and figures

and sort of stuff but when he says you know i want to get out of the war of in afghanistan

you know he really wanted to get out of the war when he said i wanted to build the wall he really

wanted to build the wall and and you know whether you agree with him or not he actually delivered on

his authenticity you know when he's not off

i mean when he gets up at rallies and says look my people say i've got to try and win back the

female voters he's right like it's so transparent he's got the speaking points and he goes yeah here

are the speaking points my people are giving what do you think of that that's why 10 15 20 000 30

000 people bowl up to his rallies all over america and one day he could speak to 80 90 000 people

you know just by going rally to rally and they keep coming out and they keep hearing the same

amazing i i once heard someone say that um i think it was uh i i think it was franklin they said

might have been no roosevelt i'm sure sorry franklin d roosevelt was the first president

that got there through radio jfk was the first president was the tv president because he looked

a certain way and acted a certain way and trump was the first social media president yeah because

you know he's good at working social media like and i'm talking about at the time would have been

twitter and those other things yeah yeah sure he's working with and i was thinking to myself

kamala harris right now seems to be the best at tiktok like as a new version of social media like

trump doesn't sort of resonate with that audience she seems to be really good at that and everywhere

i see and i i don't even know what she stands for i actually can't pinpoint a policy at this stage

i haven't actually heard her talk about it much much policy but she's bloody good in front of

the audience in relation to that particular form of social media which sure everybody under 30

said well she has successfully married an issue that's emotional and important uh like abortion

and the demographic that she really needs to get out to vote being women under the age of 40 right

and she's used tiktok and instagram and everything else to get to to basically prepare

that demographic for the battle of the election and to come out and vote for her and

to hear for her and then the endorsement of taylor swift and others coming behind it

so do you think um she's had to pick a fight or pick an issue because i've been hearing people

say this about albanese lately yeah you've got to pick a pick a fight you've got to define yourself

the thing is harris hadn't has not defined herself so you know bear this in mind the last election

that we didn't have a biden a bush uh or a clinton was 1976

nearly 50 years ago and there's been one of those three names in every presidential ballot since

that time wow so name recognition and that doesn't even include obama so name recognition is hugely

important especially when you have voluntary voting so along comes harris waltz and it's

really i'm going a few weeks to define itself she's the first candidate since i think 1968 or

something um who hasn't gone through a primary

so the american primary system basically introduces them to the american people and

particularly the democrats or the republicans and millions of people go out and they spend

multi-millions hundreds of millions of dollars on their campaigns harris hasn't gone through that

for this election biden went through it yeah biden went through it that's right and harris

hasn't so she's an unknown to more people than you think now the question in my mind is is she

going how does she differentiate herself from biden

she differentiates herself from trump i mean she's obviously looking different trump

but how does she differentiate herself from biden and that's a very tricky issue so she's not

she's not making major policy announcements she's done fewer press conferences than any

other candidate ever for president of the united states since you had your media and

you know everyone else has defined her defined her as the candidate she's done

rather than kamala harris defining herself everyone else has defined her clinton's defined her

uh you know biden's defined her obama's defined her that's massive firepower oprah's defined her

taylor swift's defined her everyone else has defined her whereas you know really she still

remains a bit of a big policy mystery do you think that's partly do you think that's the

thought out strategy oh totally yeah yeah and you know so they basically bunkered down

biden's policy and they're not going to do that they're not going to do that they're not going to

in the 2020 election because of covid and that sort of worked and minimum press conferences

whereas trump is all out there i mean you know everywhere just spews it out like he's accessible

you know even cnn journalists tell me that you know he'll ring them at odd hours and cnn is like

the mortal enemy yeah but he still rings those journos at odd hours to say you ought to know

this or you ought to know that or well done and he's very very open and engaged

it's kind of interesting he's you know privately he is a curious mind uh he's curious you're curious

himself uh no curious he asks a lot of questions right he says you know and they could be oh gosh

the conversations i've had they've drifted from the koala's gonna survive the bushfires

through to uh you know uh um you know uh is malcolm turnbull really that rich i mean yeah

like it's really it's really it's really it's really it's really it's really it's really it's

like bizarre it's like random it's random and they'll come out you you jump from topic to

topic and then he'll get on to golf and you know or something like that it's like really he's got

a very curious mind and he listens carefully and if he finds a bit of information he likes he'll

grab onto it what's it take to be a u.s president do you think i mean looking as an observer i mean

like because i'll be honest it doesn't seem like either one of them are great candidates to me

like sure like do i would i if i was a

american would i want either one of them running my country i'm not sure sure um but what what do

you think it takes to be a great president of the united states because i could say what i think it

takes to be a great prime minister of australia from what i've observed but i don't know about

the united states what what is it what are we looking for it's the same thing it's conviction

conviction conviction you have to believe that you know you you call it and you call it right

and there'll be times when you don't and the hard part is knowing when you've made a wrong call and

direction but a lot of the calls these days are critical calls israel lebanon syria iran gaza yeah

i mean they're big china yeah oh it's the hardest job in the world president of the united states

you know what's one of the things that struck me mark when i was ambassador

was how the whole world expects america to fix their problems yeah deep dark africa

someone's got a problem south america there's a battle between brazil and colombia or brazil and

peru or

philly or whatever the u.s has got to fix it in the caribbean in canada up in the northern border

or europe you know two countries have a fight or in the pacific you know everyone expects america

to solve their problems and by the way the u.s president has to be a president for the united

states as well has to worry about health care education domestic violence you know etc etc

immigration i think it's just an impossible job i think it's an impossible job

and what you have to do is set a tone and then have conviction behind it so the great

conviction presidents like teddy roosevelt or uh or franklin delano roosevelt or uh or you know um

i'd put in there um you know lbj you know conviction joneson yeah i'd put him in there i

think he's one of the great u.s presidents you know for what he the his conviction on breaking

down the racial barriers in the u.s i think he's one of the great u.s presidents you know for what

was was phenomenal really was phenomenal and then ronald reagan of course you know

his conviction his sense of purpose he's he you got to clearly know what's right and wrong

and he did that with the soviet union when it was pretty tense uh and so conviction politicians are

the people i most admire and i find are the best to work john howard was a conviction totally you

know and and bob hawk was a conviction he knew where he wanted to go i think

the australia's been best served by conviction leaders so i was only saying the other day

irrespective hawk or how is they're different in politics in terms of which side they're one

one's blue one's red but they were two of our best yeah of course i mean you know i was privileged to

be in john howard's cabinet he promoted me very early around a very young age and you know i

wasn't of the more conservative persuasion level party so he saw me a little like a black sheep

i think uh but he was

he was magnanimous and um he always listened he was very good at listening to the australian

people as was hawkey hawkey was a mate of mine a golf buddy and i'm not convinced but i'm close

to being convinced he actually might have voted for me on one or two occasions oh really well

there were some labor leaders he really didn't like um but uh i don't know but uh he um he he uh

you know they're just they're just really wise and they're good listeners

i find the best leaders in business or in politics in any discipline are good good listeners

yeah that's very interesting you should say because i was only talking i was only

sort of um complaining or moaning or whatever it is the the lack of policy of our current

government and i think it's and i'm not having a crack at them here i think it's because of the

way politics works down who who is voting for you who you are representing and they represent

the labor party today in federal politics represent such a broad array of different

people that's so broad it's a massive church for them um whereas the liberals are more just

conservatives a little bit broader but than they were in the past but nowhere near like labor and

it must be virtually impossible for labor to be able to satisfy everybody therefore don't make

any well and that's why the primary vote is 31 i mean labor you know mate i'm gonna tell you when

we're in politics when i was in politics not that long ago um we formed the view that we had to have

a primary vote of 44

uh to win government labor needed a primary vote of 41 42

labor's currently polling 31 yeah now you know you're having your your meal eaten away by all

these the greens the teals where the liberal party had it with the teals but still we're

getting close to 40 still got a way to go to get up to 44 but you see it's just you know social

media has changed it uh the you know what social media is like it's it's it's it's it's it's it's

done is it's made the voice of the critic much louder than the voice of the advocate yeah and and

what you know i sort of thump the table when i read in a paper or something uh or online someone

say oh well we need the government to lay down this reform actually you know if you come out and

you have the biggest tax policy change you can say today it'll be yesterday's news by tomorrow

everyone overnight would be smashing it on social media and you just go okay so my

view today is the best government is the one that uh interferes the least in your life

but you mean a regulatory sense or regulatory sense and taxation sense on it you know that

like don't get the government to solve your problem you get the opportunity to solve your

problem get the government out of the way i mean and you know look we're talking about housing

industry i was going to say what about housing housing is a great example mate i don't know if

you've done a renovation lately i've done a renovation i did when i would budget by four

times mate i i i'm railing it's this i want to put up a carport single carport in my backyard

it costs four thousand dollars and i've been told i have to go to council it's going to cost me

seven thousand dollars to go to council just for the council for the council yeah i have to put in

a da for it right because it's a heritage area i'm going i'm just putting up a temporary carport

and you're going why do i bother right like so you're not going to get more construction of

if you're spending a vast amount of money on red tape and green tape and i know where this comes

from everyone's trying to mitigate risk well we've got to be prepared to take risk you know

we're the consumer we're the consumer you have to have some risk yeah but how can we say to the

government department you don't need to take the risk we'll take it yeah well that's the point it

comes back to personal responsibility and the fact that you do take a risk i'm not saying you don't

have da's of course you do and you're going to have communities and so on but there's just it's

ridiculous the amount of paperwork yeah and and and then you know it adds to the cost of everything

and you know plumbers and electricians we haven't got enough of them they're getting tired they're

fantastic the trade is you know and the quality of work they do is often very good in australia

but they're tired i mean they're hitting 60 and you're crawling under a house to do the plumbing

or the electricals right and you can't get people to do it so i think there's just you know somehow

we've got to let the market

have a solution to some of these issues and and you know that means freeing up land having you

know potential for more high rise etc etc but you know it's highly contentious you you during your

treasurer period did have something to say about um native gearing sorry you did have something to

say about negative gearing during your i did yeah of course yeah and and i have to and i will be

with uh the ifr some years before that and i said i actually said negative gearing is actually not

good policy but it's not good economic policy right but i said it'd be silly to get rid of it

because it's too um indentured into our system today so here's the solution negative gearing

yeah gratuitous advice no no one here 40 000 feet 13 000 miles in washington right um

negative gearing is is a

tool used to encourage investment in income producing assets right and treasurers of both

persuasions they were liberal have skewed the taxation system towards favoring investment

in equities over investment in real estate why because as an economist will tell you

a dollar that goes into an old home right is a dollar that is sort of lost forever

until you sell the home whereas you put a dollar into bhp they'll take that dollar they'll buy new

equipment build a new mine and they'll give you a return so the question is how do we get real estate

to become productive now of course the productive real estate is when you're building new homes

that's employing people that money is at work until it's done and then it's not at work right

so that's why on real estate we still have land tax

we still have stamp duty and and on shares you've got franking credits uh you've got no stamp duty

you've got no land tax so it's the taxation system is skewed still negative gearing the same

economic tool applied to real estate applied to shares but the shares are far more attractive

yeah than the real estate right so because real estate if you take away negative gearing on

investment real estate you're not going to get real estate you're not going to get real estate

rents are going to go up it's as simple as that right and in other countries they have rent control

or rent subsidies well we can't do that that's ridiculous the market is at play but if you really

want to get more housing double double or perhaps increase by 50 the negative gearing entitlement

on new real estate so there's an incentive to go and buy new real estate put new money into the

system exactly

it gets jobs going it gets the the housing construction going and plus it you know it

helps to subsidize the new housing for people that really need it and what about the capital

gains tax on the other end because i wouldn't i wouldn't change the capital gains tax range

just leave the discount as it is yeah well it's not even a discount i mean it's competitive with

with other countries and you know in the united states for example they have increased tax so high

that everyone keeps rolling their money in until a capital gains tax opportunity arrives

but it's a bit the same in your own business in australia you'll keep rolling the money in because

if you take it as as income you pay 50 if you sell your business you only pay 25 on the money which

and it's just cheaper that way so so do you but do you think that this government i mean i've noticed

that paul keating's been getting stuck into his own party and bill kelty more recently he's even

way too knows how that goes the whole prime minister yes that's true but it's but that's

unusual for labor it's they're usually

Pretty staunch, like Keating's had a lot of cracks

at a lot of things that have been going on.

I've actually tried to get him on the show,

but particularly in relation to our relationship with China

and also in relation to August.

Yeah.

He's been quite-

He's all gone on that.

He's wrong.

What do you think about that, August?

Oh, mate.

And what do you think about his commentary?

Oh, look, I think Paul Keating was a pioneer in a number of areas,

but he's just dead wrong on China.

Economically, 100%.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The superannuation guarantee, good, thumbs up.

You know, like the deregulation of the banking system, great.

Yeah, yeah.

Floating the dollar.

Floating the dollar, yeah, all those things, yeah.

But this-

Dead wrong, dead wrong.

And the wrong motivations.

I mean, China is, you know, first and foremost about Beijing's-

We don't share values with China.

I mean, I've got many Chinese friends.

I had a great relationship with the Chinese government over many years.

But understand this, you know, their first priority in China

is the welfare of the Communist Party.

They're not our friend when it comes to values.

You know, the UK and the US are our friend.

They're our allies.

They've shed blood for us.

We've shed blood for them.

That's where it goes.

And then the only country in the world that is successfully marrying capital

with innovation on a grand scale is the US.

So from an economic perspective,

the US is as much opportunity as China, if not more,

as is, you know, with the emergence of India and all the others.

But the bottom line is we, the US, is our closest friend.

Our integration in their security system and their integration in ours

means that, you know, of the last 13 attempted terrorist attacks in Australia,

probably eight or nine would have been thwarted with the help of US,

US intelligence agencies, you know.

Really?

Wow.

That's amazing.

We share a lot of intelligence.

They've got 16 intelligence agencies, and I would say we're embedded in most of them.

And then when it comes to the military, at various times,

we've had military personnel in up to 32 US states.

And people don't know about it.

And then they're embedded with us.

And I tell you what, I'd rather have them with us than any other country in the world.

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It's funny, I interviewed Trump.

When was that?

I interviewed him in 2016.

He gave me a half-hour interview.

And he railed against China.

And I got quite nervous because 2016 was a period we knew around.

And China was our biggest trading partner, was emerging as the biggest trading partner.

They might have just got ahead of Japan and Korea.

They were, but that's for sure.

And I was sort of trying to think, well, this is not going so good here.

Look, I'm getting a bit nervous.

But he didn't hold back.

And he said sort of the same type of thing as you, not suggesting you're the same, but

he talked about values, the Chinese values relative to our values, relative to the American

values.

Yeah, and fair enough.

That's what they are.

But I mean, if you look at, just look at the history, right, and it's really important.

You know, China, Russia, and the U.S.

all were born out of revolutionary wars.

All three countries, really, had big revolutionary wars.

And then they followed up with big civil wars.

And what happens in a civil war is no one trusts their neighbor anymore.

It's something you can go years and years and generations.

But at the end of the day, you don't really trust the person next door or the person on

the other side of the country.

So in China and Russia, head office.

The U.S., Moscow, and Beijing rule with an iron fist.

That's how they keep control and so on.

In the U.S., they fear Washington ruling with an iron fist.

So that's the Constitution.

That's why Americans proudly are still state-based.

They rail against Washington.

That's why Trump has that, right, has that capacity.

He's railing against Washington.

He's not of the establishment.

And Americans feel that sense of comfort.

Australia is a bit the same.

They rail against Canberra.

We're sort of more agreeable to Canberra, but we're sort of railing.

We don't want to lose our power to Canberra.

And that's why states' rights are still very powerful here.

And on China, Trump is very consistent.

He has been very consistent.

Of course, he says, I'll deal with the president and do a deal, a great deal.

But the bottom line is, you know, they're different values.

And that's really important.

Yeah.

And it's okay to accept that, by the way.

Yeah, correct.

Yeah, the Chinese understand that.

That's why they still buy our iron ore and our coal and everything else.

And, you know, that's why they want to get on with us.

They're pragmatic.

And by the way, they've got a lot of domestic problems in China as well.

So I don't think that it's all, you know.

Particularly economically.

Economically, absolutely.

I mean, when I was treasurer, you know, I had a great relationship with Lo Jiwei,

the finance minister of China.

He rang me up one day.

And said, look, you know, Joe, I've got to put a tariff on your coal.

And I said, but we're about to sign a trade agreement where you abolish the tariffs.

He said, I've got a few domestic issues.

It's only going to be for six months.

I said, okay.

You know.

And did it only last six months?

Yeah.

Well, what do you think then?

What's your insight around, what does Scott say that really got them upset?

Because, you know, whilst we're talking about the values of China and Australia,

and they accept it, they're practical, they understand it.

What was it that really got up their nose about Scott?

It was.

Questionably calling for a global inquiry into the source of COVID.

COVID.

So blaming them effectively.

Oh, yeah.

And China was very embarrassed about COVID, as they should be.

I mean, you think about it.

No event in the history of humanity has affected every single household

on the face of the earth.

Except COVID.

Isn't that amazing?

I mean, we've had wars and we've had, you know, famines and, you know,

environmental events, but the only event that went to every single house,

every single home, every single person on the face of the earth was COVID.

And China was responsible.

Do you think for sure?

Oh, of course.

Yeah.

I mean, it's absolutely, there's no doubt about it.

But, you know, I think Scott Morrison calling for confirmation of that.

Yeah.

Was just, you know, China's all about face.

Right.

Very much about face.

And that was seen as, as confrontational.

Yeah.

But he was right to do it.

It was the right thing to do.

He said, you know.

I was going to say, do you think that was the right thing to do?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Of course.

Yeah.

But the punishment, did it befit the crime though?

Oh, how did they punish it?

They didn't buy some wine.

They didn't buy any.

Lobsters.

Sorry?

Some lobsters.

They didn't buy lobsters.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We had cheap lobbies for a long time in Australia.

But, because, and do you think that Trump then plays it right then when in terms of

how he talks about China?

No, I mean.

In terms of adding tariffs to everything that's going to come into it.

I mean, that's, he's, he's playing a race card to some degree.

Is that a, is that a good, is that a good narrative to win an election?

Well, I'd hope not, but, you know, it is what it is.

I mean, it's, it's long been that sort of situation.

What do you think is the net effect if Trump wins economically?

I'm, well, his policies are, I don't know if they're policies or they're thoughts, but

the amount of announcements.

He's made, if he were to deliver them on tax cuts, tariffs, and everything else would

be diabolical.

In what regard?

Economically, I'm talking about.

Economically, I mean, the US is just running a massive deficit.

Yeah.

It's borrowing from the rest of the world.

Congress keeps approving these big deficit budgets to the extent that, you know, that

if the US dollar is not the reserve currency of the world, they're screwed.

So.

And there's nothing else at the moment, but, you know, they're screwed.

So the US, you know, can't sustain that.

Trump's making it worse.

He said he's, he's going to reduce company tax to 15%.

He said, go even further.

He said he's going to carry on the tax cuts at sunset next year, but he could go further.

He has come out and said, credit card interest rates are too high.

We're going to cap it at 10%.

Sounds great, but how does that work?

Right?

I love it.

He's come out and he said he won't have a 10% tariff on China.

He's going to have a 60% tariff on China.

So that's inflationary.

Oh, man.

Inflation goes through the roof.

Yeah.

Because America has, I think it's about a $500 billion trade deficit with China.

Whoa.

That means they're bringing it in, right?

They're not manufacturing it.

And even if in the US they were going to manufacture it, they couldn't build that manufacturing

overnight.

So they're going to suddenly have a 60% increase in the price of $500 billion worth of goods

flows through the economy.

And it ends up here too.

Because we import that inflation.

Oh, of course we do.

We import it.

But what it would mean, it would crash out the US dollar.

And you're starting to see that with interest rates coming down in the US, you're seeing

it's a great trade at the moment, buying the Aussies, selling the US.

But it would go, gee, it would head towards parity.

What about if she wins, though?

Well, I mean, I don't know that it's much better.

Because she's talking about price controls.

And even Derri, yeah, she said she's going to price control groceries.

And everyone's going, well, how's that going to work?

And that was the last economic policy she announced.

And it sort of faded off a bit.

So no one quite knows what her economic policies are.

Can I just switch direction a little bit now and just talk about Australia?

Because we've got an election coming up.

And we've got the RBA.

We've always got an election coming up.

We seem to.

By the way, that seems to be a problem to me.

They're too regular.

But we do have stability.

I mean, I'm really impressed with both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party having leadership

stability.

Thank God.

You're talking in terms of Dutton and Albanese.

Yeah.

And they're respectful of each other.

Do you think Albanese does have stability?

Do you think Jim's there?

No.

I mean, that article, that storyline narrative that was written this week that Jim sort of

lobbed that Treasury paper out on negative gearing just when he happened to be going

overseas.

Yeah.

Treasurers cop that all the time.

Do they?

Well, you know how it works.

So how did it work?

How does that work?

So if the Treasury, the Department of Treasury is doing some research on a topic, are they

likely to be doing it on their own or would the Treasury have asked them to do it?

Yeah.

Well, it's a bit of both.

It's a grey area.

Well, because you're in business today, you've got to be careful.

No, no, no, no.

It's a grey area.

I asked Treasury when I was there, I said, do me a tax options paper, but let me tell

you what I'm not going to do.

One, two, three, four, five.

And they came up with an options paper.

I released it and, you know, nothing was implemented.

So, you know, it varies.

Of course, from a budget perspective, you'll have options.

So when it comes to spending money, you bring in all your colleagues and you have an expenditure

review committee and the finance minister is cracking the gavel and so on and so forth.

But when it comes to revenue raising, it's just the Treasurer.

Oh, yeah.

I think, hmm, that's not a bad idea.

There's money there.

Maybe you'll let the Prime Minister in.

In fact, when I was writing my first budget speech, Tony Abbott said, mate, mate, are

you going to send it to me?

I'd like to have some input into the speech.

I said, no.

Really?

I said, no, no, no, no.

I consulted previous Treasurers and they all said, no, you don't shout to the Prime

Minister.

It's your speech.

And what was Abbott like to work with?

He was great.

Yeah.

He's a very, very decent guy.

And he's quite intelligent, they tell me.

Oh, yeah.

He's quite a very smart guy.

He's very smart.

He's sharp.

He's a very decent guy.

I wish, you know, I wish the public had seen the Tony Abbott that I know.

You know, he comes across as a sort of policy warrior and, you know, traditionalist and

all that sort of stuff.

But there's another Tony Abbott that people don't know and he is a very selfless person.

He's a very decent human being.

And as far as I'm aware, definitely not a misogynist.

No.

I was in the chamber for that speech.

And, you know, it's been embellished and, you know, become sort of iconic for a certain

cohort in the community.

But he's not.

He's not.

I mean, but he suffered the same fate as Trump.

He should have had more diversity in the cabinet.

And Trump should have probably run with, he would be doing better if he had a female vice

presidential candidate.

And when you look at politics today, I mean the bear pit part of politics,

do you think it's descended into a worse territory than it was

when you were around or has it been?

No, no, no, no.

I miss question time.

Do you?

Oh, I loved question time.

And, you know, it's so good.

It's so accountable.

Other parliaments, you know, I've got friends in the British Parliament

and all the parliaments around the world,

and they just can't believe the Australian Parliament.

And you know what?

The accountability is extraordinary.

What do you mean they can't believe?

What's the difference between us and them?

Oh, well, because you walk in, you don't know what the questions are.

And it's brutal.

I mean, I remember, you know, I remember when the GST was being introduced,

I was responsible for that.

And I got 10 questions in a row in question time.

And I'd, like, exhausted.

Like, it's like, you know, seriously, flagellation on a grand scale.

And everyone would be going, God, 10 questions.

How did you do that?

And then I'd go in the next day.

I'd get 10 more questions.

I remember John Howard slapping me on the back and saying,

oh, you're losing a bit of bark, but you'll be okay.

You know, and I'm like, God, I was like, how do I do it?

And you get the adrenaline before question time.

You've got to be on top of your brief.

Because not only do the opposition find out,

your own colleagues work out, and then the gallery

and everyone else knows you're not on top of your brief.

So you need to know everything about your portfolio.

And when you're the Treasurer and the Prime Minister,

you need to know particularly.

So, you know.

When I delivered the 14 budget that everyone still talks about,

well, they say it was a great budget.

And the 14 budget, you know, I went on Q&A by myself.

Q&A on the ABC?

Yeah, on the ABC.

Q&A by myself.

And everyone thought I was going to fail.

And it was Penrith Panthers, 600 people.

Apparently it was one of the highest ever rating Q&As.

Not a friendly environment, a Q&A?

No, no, it wasn't a friendly environment.

But I had to show that I was on top of my brief.

And I have never in my life ever got such a big response

as I did after that from people saying, wow, that was, you know,

really important, really great you did it and great performance

and all that sort of stuff.

Because you had the opportunity to shine in adverse circumstances.

And in Parliament, you can shine and get a message across

when it's most hostile.

It's not you can't create that environment.

I've got a sense that you're missing a bit.

I miss question time.

I don't mind the, you know, I don't mind the tough questions and so on.

Like, I want to be on top of my game.

And, you know, but America would be so much better if it had its cabinet

subject to that cross-examination on the floor of Congress.

They do it a bit in the Senate hearings and so on.

But, you know, that's just one hour every four months, six months,

you know, whereas question time's every day Parliament sitting in.

And the British Parliament,

they, again, they don't do it every day.

They have Prime Minister's questions once every two weeks

or one week, something like that.

So I think Australia has a great democracy and great accountability.

That's one of the reasons why we've got so little corruption.

That's why we do have a really good political system.

And if I was to ask you now, Joe,

only based on what you know so far,

what do you think will happen in the election next year, Australia?

Oh, well, it's obviously going to be,

it's going to be pretty close.

Firstly, do not believe that a government cannot lose in the first term.

It can.

And Anthony Albanese wasn't elected with the majorities that Howard had in 96,

that Rudd had in 2007, or that Abbott had in 2013.

We had 20, 30 seats.

He's got, I think, five or six, right?

So you can lose very quickly.

The second thing is you've got to have an agenda.

And I think,

Peter Dutton's done a great job in rolling out an agenda.

Controversial at times, but everyone,

it really does know what Peter Dutton stands for.

And I think, and Anthony Albanese, he's a very decent guy.

I mean, he's a mate of mine, to be honest.

And, you know, he's a very decent guy.

He needs to have something that he's going to fight for.

And the hardest election I ever fought, Martin, you remember it?

GST election, 1998.

Oh, my God.

And it was just absolute conviction.

I just, like, couldn't stand.

I was campaigning.

And when the butcher at Camaray told me, you know,

he grilled me on the GST for, like, an hour and a half.

And I had one vote, and I'm working overtime on it.

He speaks to people that come in.

And then he said, I hate the bloody thing.

I'm not going to support it.

And then as I'm walking out, he said, oh, all right, I'll vote for you.

And I thought, I was just exhausted, right?

And I thought, oh, my God, if we've had the courage to go to the electorate,

with something that is unpopular, but it's absolutely the right thing

for Australia.

And when we won, I was so elated, more than any other time,

because it restored my faith in the Australian population.

So what do you think?

What controversial topic or controversial conviction that either one

of the parties should be going to the election with?

I mean, it's nuclear as one, but what other thing?

Is there something that you reckon would be a winner?

Well, I think you've got...

You've got to show Australians how you're going to make their lives better.

Yeah, what's in it for me?

Well, yeah, that's right.

And that's fair enough.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the world we've grown up in and live in.

But the thing is, it's not always going to be ice cream and lollies.

Sometimes you've got to have your veggies.

And it's the courage to say to people, actually, we're going to have

to do some hard yards here.

Now, I admit, 2014, my budget, you know, I tried to do that.

And what people said, you know, maybe it was my failure,

maybe it was our failure, whatever the case,

maybe I didn't prepare the ground.

But in that budget, you know, think of it.

I was murdered for a $5 co-payment to go and see a doctor.

This is the austerity period.

Yeah, yeah.

And I said, if we don't fix the roof while the sun's shining,

then we're going to end up in worse shape.

And, like, you know what happened?

With now, how much does it cost to go and see a doctor?

Oh.

Right?

$40, $50 people are telling me.

Plus.

Yeah, that's right.

If we had have got that through, it would have had some semblance

of co-payment.

And by the way, 6 million people were excluded from any payment, right?

So that was lost.

And then, you know, more of a work for the doll

and a few things that we had.

And a lot of them actually went through from the 14 budget.

It just took a few years.

But there were other things.

You look at Western Sydney Airport.

That was that budget.

No government had the balls to do it for 50, 60 years.

And the Abbott Hockey Government did.

And now, I mean, I was so proud.

I saw an Albert Easy yesterday.

A plane took off there yesterday.

Yes.

I'm so proud of that.

Right?

I'm so proud of it.

WestConnect Stage 2.

Some of these things around Sydney.

Every city in Australia got some infrastructure.

The medical research future.

I nearly died trying to get that up.

And it got up.

Now, when I hear a mate of mine who's a professor in eye surgery,

he's now, he got $40 million from that fund to build an eye.

And he's close to it.

He's really, that's exactly what we're doing.

We're investing in our health.

So there are things you do in politics.

And I'd love my children to go into politics.

I'd love anyone's children, anyone to go into politics.

Is you can make a difference.

You really can.

And you know what?

They're not going to build monuments to you, but you just got to look around and you see

a better quality of life and that's all worth it for everyone.

And quick prediction on the US.

Mate, too close to call.

I mean-

Oh, it's that close.

It is really that close.

So because of the electoral system, Harris needs to win the national vote by about 3%,

two to 3%.

She's polling two.

One and a half to two.

She's polling two.

One and a half to two.

She's polling two.

One and a half to two.

If enthusiasm were the poll, she'd be through the roof.

Trump, I think if everyone that's going to vote for Harris is going to tell you, I reckon

five out of a hundred that are voting for Trump won't tell you.

And that's been proven in the past.

So therefore the polls aren't correct necessarily.

No, no.

His polls are not correct.

I think hers are probably correct where she's at, but I think they're underestimated.

I think they're underestimating him by varying from place to place, one to three percent.

Because people are sort of not ashamed, but maybe embarrassed to say the other vote.

Of course.

They don't want to tell it because they fear they're going to be-

Ostracized.

Ostracized and smashed.

I mean, in 2020, I remember speaking to people in the richest area of Houston and they said,

come down.

And that was one of the rare places you could go during that period.

And they're all, you know, Biden signs.

I said, oh my God.

I said, if Biden's, you know, he's going to rob at home of this demographic.

And they said, oh God, we'd never put a Trump sign up.

We'd be, our house would be egged and everything else.

That area voted 70% Trump.

Wow.

So, you know, like it's, it's, it's a very hard to read.

I mean, Wisconsin last election, they underestimated Trump's vote by 5%.

In 2016, it was about 7%.

You know, they underestimated.

So, and Wisconsin is a key state.

Um, so I think it's incredibly close and the, the house and the Senate are incredibly close

as well.

So, you know, I, I met with a delegation this morning, the two Republicans told me

they thought it's probable that Harris might win.

And the two Democrats told me they thought Trump would win.

So like, there you go.

And Joe, just fine mate.

Are you enjoying your life?

Oh man, I am.

Yeah.

But, um, you know, I've been blessed mate.

I'm, I'm the son of a Palestinian refugee, came to Australia, never thought he'd ever

get a chance to live a life, met a PICS model from Bondi, got to name my firm Bondi Partners.

PICS, PICS model being the magazine PICS.

Magazine PICS.

Yes, that's right.

Yeah.

You used to, they were always in the barbershop and in the dentist and the doctor.

Well, it was respectable in those days.

It was like, you know, fashion and so on in the 1930s and 1940s from, um, 1940s and 50s.

And, um, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was,

you know, fashion and so on in the 1930s and 1940s from, um, 1940s and 50s.

And, um, I wouldn't, you know, I pinched myself how lucky I am and, you know, when I go to

Washington, I've got great mates in the White House and outside the White House and, you

know, I still have conversations with people where I go, I can't believe I'm listening

to this.

And do you see, uh, the current ambassador?

Do you have much to do with Cameron?

I do.

And, you know, Kevin, of course I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was, I was,

I was.

Yeah.

Of course.

I was on Sunrise with him for 10 years, right?

Yeah.

Morning TV and, and we're ying and yang.

Um, you know, and, uh, I love taking the Mickey out of it.

But did, did, did politics drop away then when he takes over the ambassadorship and

you sort of shoo him into it?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's Team Australia.

Always.

Yeah, yeah.

You know.

No matter what.

Kim Beazley was great to me, uh, all of us, chip in the...

Arthur was after you, I think.

Arthur was after me.

Everyone, Arthur's great and...

No, it, it's Australia first, always.

as it should be, right, and so I, you know,

kept telling major Republicans and Trump people that Kevin's a good man

and he's doing the right thing by Australia

and he's got Australian support and that's what you do.

Hasn't helped by what he said in the past, but.

No, no, and, you know, but Trump's got a long list

before he gets to Kevin Rudd, right, so a long list.

But I'll tell you a funny story.

He's like, you know, I for my sins did Q&A, you know,

just before he was announced and Stan Grant asked me, he said, you know,

who should be the ambassador to replace Arthur Sindhu?

I said, oh, I don't want to get into it, you know, and he said, come on,

you know, and I said, well, maybe Julia Gillard or something.

He says, what about Kevin Rudd?

And I said, well, I thought we liked the Americans.

Kevin was rovable.

Was he?

Oh, God, so.

I mean.

I'm sorry.

I'm sitting on my couch in Washington, D.C., and I joke, Kevin,

I'm coming over.

And I said, oh, he comes over, second bottle of wine started,

and he said, why do you hate me?

I said, mate, I don't hate you.

He said, why did you say that?

You know, like, I said, mate, you're going to have a sense of humor

after all these years.

Let's have a sense of humor here.

And I'm not another model.

I'm not another model.

So, you know, and he's doing a great job.

He really is.

He's, you know, it adds enormous gravitas to have a,

former prime minister.

Yeah.

As ambassador.

Yeah.

As I say, he finally got the promotion.

And then, and then the second thing is, you know,

he has worked really hard at it.

And I've defended him publicly, and that's awkward for some of my team

back in Australia in politics, but it's the right thing to do.

He is.

He's been doing a good assiduous job.

Well, mate, you're doing a great job.

You're one, I've always been a fan of Joe Hockey, as you know,

but you've done a great job for us both in politics in Australia,

but also representing.

In America.

And what you're doing with your business these days,

I'm hearing all the stories.

I mean, I hear lots of people talk to me.

Lots of people tell me about what Bondo Partners are doing outside of,

you know, outside of our usual group of friends.

I hear your name raised a lot.

So, mate, congratulations and well done.

And thanks.

Mate, I'm taking a leaf out of you.

If I could be one tenth as successful as Mark Burris,

I'll tell you what, I'll be happy.

I'll tell you where you are successful.

You're still married and you've got a lovely family, mate.

You're a hundred times more successful than me.

They might not love me quite the same.

Ah, they do.

Good to see you, mate.

Thank you so much, Mark.

Good to see you.

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