184 Senator Andrew Bragg On Fixing The Housing Crisis Reforming Super Life Inside Parliament

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

Andrew Bragg, welcome to Straight Talk, mate.

Mark, how are you?

So you're the Shadow Assistant Minister for Home Ownership in this country

at a federal level, and you are the Liberal Senator

representing New South Wales in the Federal Senate.

That's right.

That's a mouthful, but I'm glad I got through that part.

Sorry about that.

No, that's all right. And you live in Sydney?

Yep.

But I noticed on my brief that you come out of Shepparton, Victoria.

Originally, yeah.

What's the deal there?

What's it like living in Sydney?

Being able to watch your AFL?

You have to watch it on television, I guess.

Well, I still go for Geelong because you never trust a politician

that changes footy teams.

You're right.

Do we know any who've done that?

Plenty.

Plenty.

Albo never has, though.

He's always been a South supporter.

One good thing about him.

No, that's not a good thing, unfortunately, for Albo.

He's been a South supporter.

I would say unfortunately.

But you love your footy, do you, still?

I love Geelong.

Yeah.

Do you have a Sydney team?

You could be a rooster, mate.

You could be with me and Nick and all the other guys.

It probably would be the roosters.

Because you live in Paddington.

I live in East Sydney, yeah.

Well, then you are adopted straight away.

Immediately you're eligible for adoption.

Yeah, thank you.

I'm on the board, so you need to just say, look,

I'd like to apply for adoption and I can actually grant that sitting here

right now.

Well, I'm still going to show the greatest fidelity to Geelong

because it's ultimately my greatest love.

Yep.

Don't change your AFL.

I'm not asking you to come and go for Collingwood.

I can't do that.

No, you can't do that.

So how did you get into politics, by the way?

Just take me through it.

Well, so the connection back to Shepparton was that Dad was in Fruit

Growing and basically in the early 90s, the big cannery in Shepparton,

the SPC, Shepparton Preserving Company, was closed down by the unions.

Dad was involved in that.

I could see how big vested interests could damage a whole town

or a whole society.

And so I was very wary of collectivism.

And so that's one of the reasons why I joined the Liberal Party.

Philosophically.

Yeah, philosophically.

And I thought, you know, I really love Australia.

Dad was a migrant as well, so I was always aware of that whole, you know,

trajectory he had.

And I really wanted to make sure that I could make a contribution.

Then what origin is the name Bragg then?

Well, it's just English.

It's English.

He's a pom.

A classic 10-pound pom.

Wow.

Right?

And that show on Stan at the moment, 10-pound poms, that is my family.

Is it?

For sure.

Is that family still alive?

Your family's still alive?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He came out when he was five.

He came out when he was five or six in, you know, the late 40s.

Yeah, I remember that period.

I remember my friends of mine who came out in that period,

his older friends of mine who have now passed away.

And actually, I was just thinking about Shepparton.

In Shepparton, there's a lot of fruit down there.

I remember I went to some, I seem to recall going to some olive plantations,

but I definitely went to, I definitely remember seeing lots of oranges.

Pears.

Pears.

I pick pears.

That is hard work.

When you climb up the ladder and you fill your bag full of pears,

take it down the ladder, open up the bag, and the pears go into the pallet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's one small step for that person, but a lot more steps still to go

until you fill that pallet and you get your 40 bucks.

Now, the prime minister who sat here not that long ago,

he talked about his socially underprivileged sort of upbringing,

which is fair enough.

But you seem to have come from a sort of more like a business-y sort of background.

It seems like you saw hard work.

I mean, people live in Shepparton, particularly back when, you know,

you're a younger man, they're tough periods

when you're working, like you just said, picking pears, picking fruit.

That's a pretty tough gig.

It was, but I mean, mum was a nurse, dad was involved in fruit.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do.

I spent a year working at Big W as a night department manager.

Yeah, good running.

I love retail.

I really wanted to do that.

But then ultimately, dad said, look, you'd better go to university.

I think you could do something else.

So I went to Canberra and went to uni.

You went to Canberra?

Yeah, I went to ANU.

You went to ANU, okay.

Yeah.

So, you know, Canberra is, to some extent, the mothership.

There is a bit of a university, but for different types of learnings.

And what did you do at uni?

Well, I did accounting.

Yep.

And I did international relations.

So like a commerce degree or an economics degree or something along those batches.

Yeah, and I started my career at Ernst & Young.

So I was an internal auditor there, so I understood how risks could be managed

or not managed by different companies.

Or numbers manipulated.

That's right.

I think one of the ones I worked on was Babcock & Brown,

so that was a bit of an eye-opener, yeah.

Yeah, I remember those Babcock & Brown guys.

Back in, we were talking about that period was,

was early 2000s.

That's right.

Yeah, and there was another one called Orco as well.

Babcock & Brown and Orco.

And I know the, I knew the, I still know them.

One of them has passed away now, but I knew the principles behind both of those.

And they were like, they were the new Macquarie Banks.

They were going to just be the biggest businesses in the country.

And of course, they both got in a bit of trouble and ended up being,

ended up winding down.

So when did you get into politics and why did you get into politics?

So I was elected in 2019.

Yep.

And prior to that, I worked in mainly financial.

And I thought this is a great opportunity for me to make a contribution.

I ran, lost pre-selection a few times, took a few hits,

but ultimately I was very keen to, to get there.

And so now I'm at the end of my first term and I'm running for re-election in 2025.

And, and, and I know that you actually went with my area for one,

at one stage, weren't you?

Yeah, I live in Wentworth, yeah.

But did you ever apply, try to get pre-selected into the Wentworth area?

I did think about that, but then I thought best of it

and I ended up running for re-election.

Yeah.

I ended up running for the Senate in 2019.

2019.

I think that was a good, good decision because ultimately the Senate committees

are where you can do great policy work on super, fintech, mortgage lending.

A lot of the detailed work, the grunt work gets done in the Senate.

If you know how to use the committees, you can do really great public policy work.

So maybe you could explain that to me a little bit, a little bit deeper

because we all are quite familiar with our local rep who might be in the lower house,

the House of Representatives where bills or legislation

starts.

Yeah.

But not many of us really have had much exposure to senators,

what they call the upper house, where what gets past the lower house

has to go through.

You have to get through the upper house as well,

if I'm assuming you're using the right terms.

But the upper house is not really controlled by the Liberal Labor.

That's right.

There are a lot of independents there like Pocock, for example,

and First Nation, One Nation, I should say.

Jackie Lambie.

Jackie Lambie.

Jackie Lambie.

Jackie Lambie and independents and Pauline, et cetera, they're in the Senate.

It's a fun place to be sometimes.

And it's a hard place to control.

When I say control, there's no one has control over it.

That's right.

And anything can happen.

Deals get done.

It looks like to me deals get done, the left, right and center.

So we will vote with you or your party on this bill on the basis that you help us along on this thing.

We're trying to get through.

Is that, is that, would that be about right?

Sort of bargaining?

It's very transactional, very transactional.

And a lot of the work I've done in this parliament, investigating the crimes of the super funds,

looking at ASIC, the corporate cop, why it's been so hopeless, mortgage lending rules.

This was only possible because I had an ability to talk to the Greens and the Greens wouldn't

necessarily agree with my findings, but they would agree that it was worthy of having a process.

Whereas the government, the Labor Party would never support it.

They would never support anything I was wanting to inquire into because they were worried I might

damage one of their favorite things, like the super funds or the unions.

So how, okay, so how does that start, Andrew?

Like, so let's say you decide, or you think a good thing to be looked at via a Senate inquiry.

Is that what it's called?

That's right, Senate inquiry.

Let's, let's talk about unions for argument's sake, or super, you know, let's have a look, a good hard look at super.

What do you do?

You walk along to the Green.

How does it all work?

You go along to your, to the leader of your party.

How does it work?

Okay, it's a great question.

So right now there's a fund called CBUS, which is chaired by Wayne Twan, who is also the president of the Labor Party.

And the ex-treasurer of the country.

That's right.

And the ASIC, the corporate cop has said that they haven't paid 10,000 death claims for their members who died.

10,000.

It's a lot of families, right?

Wow.

So you should just explain that, Andrew, though, because super funds have a default.

Insurance.

I've got my money with.

If I'm working for, I don't know, CBUS said that's construction.

Yep.

Let's say I'm working on a, you know, on a building site and I'm a, whatever, I'm a rigger.

Yep.

And I get paid my wages by my, the company I work for.

My, my super goes direct to CBUS.

That's right.

Manages my super.

One of the things that normally happens in these circumstances is that the super fund that I've got my money invested in through my employer, generally speaking, has a default disability and death or death.

That's right.

Like a trauma insurance in there.

Which my, my contributions will pay for me over time.

And then if I, something unfortunately happens to me on, on the site, in this example, then I will make the claim against my insurance with, which CBUS is sort of like semi-managing for me.

That's right.

Is that right?

That's right.

So 10,000 times, the ASIC, the corporate cop has said they haven't paid those death claims.

And so they've done some horrible things to some of these families, including asking them to have two death certificates, right?

As if one wasn't enough.

How can you get two death certificates?

Well, it's crazy.

You only die once.

It's crazy.

These people are so mean.

And I think they're so privileged because they're so used to the money just falling in, right?

They open the door, the money falls in.

That's how the super funds feel.

Yep.

And so they're very privileged.

They don't care about people.

And so this is an example where I would say to the Greens, look, this is really bad.

Okay.

A lot of people are hurting.

I think we should have an inquiry into this, get to the bottom of it, make some recommendations.

So you go along to, who do you go along to?

Shoebridge, Bandt?

Who do you go along to?

Nick McKim.

Nick McKim, yeah.

Yeah, he's a senator.

He's a senator of Tasmania.

Yep.

Talk to him.

And usually he's able to get agreement on process.

If I went to Labor and said, look, 10,000 people have been wronged by CBUS, they'd say,

we don't care.

We're not going to have an inquiry into that.

That doesn't make sense, Andrew, because the workers are their people.

Yeah, but the problem is that all their retired politicians like Wayne Swan and co are on

the board of these funds.

And in the case of Mr. Swan, he's also the president of their party.

Of the Labour Party.

They're very conflicted.

So they're not going to have an inquiry into that, are they?

Yeah, that makes sense.

I guess they're not going to throw their own blowgun at the bus.

That's right.

So you go along to McKim and you say to him, look, this is what evidence I've got.

Let's set up an inquiry.

Then we put a motion into the Senate chamber saying we're going to have an inquiry into

the non-payment of death claims, the governance of the funds, conflict of interest, blah,

blah, blah.

And then the Senate will say yes or no.

And if the Liberals and the Greens agree.

Then it's done.

And then you've got your inquiry.

Then you can have call for submissions.

You get usually hundreds of submissions from consumer groups, real people, the regulators.

And then you have public hearings.

You get people in and you ask them the tough questions.

So one thing we did last year was we actually called Wayne Swan to come into the hearing.

Interesting.

And what happened?

Well, firstly, he said, no, we're not going to come.

Are they obliged?

Well, we got advice from the clerk of the Senate.

This is very dorky.

And the clerk of the Senate said, well, he must attend.

So we summonsed him legally.

And then he turned up and we asked him questions for a couple of hours.

And what's your role in this inquiry?

I'm a chair.

You're the chair.

And who else is made up?

Is it like 10 people on the committee?

It sounds like one of those things you see in these American movies where they're doing

an inquiry into a mafia.

And you've got the mafia boss sitting there and they've got all these politicians standing

up there and saying, could you tell us about this?

And like the JFK sort of, JFK, those sort of inquiries.

Exactly.

That's exactly what it is, Mark.

That committee system that we have, we stole from America.

Right.

It's another example where Australia takes the best the world has to offer and makes

it our own in our own Australian way.

The world's best practice.

Yeah, it's good.

Yeah.

And so in that inquiry, just for example, about these 10,000 claims that weren't-

Paid.

Processed and or paid.

Yep.

And what did you find?

We found that-

Is it published too?

Yeah.

We did a report.

We recommended reforms.

And in talking to some of these people, some people were about to die.

Some people had died and their families weren't paid.

Some people were strung out for years and years.

So we found that there was a negligence and that the law needed to be tighter on these

funds so they couldn't just string these people along.

So we've made those recommendations.

We also recommended that the super fund boards have more competent people on them because

as you know, Mark, the fish watched in the head.

So, you know,

if you have a board full of old mates from the unions who've got no experience or no

knowledge of risk management, governance, how to treat people, then you're going to

have problems.

And that's what we've got right now in super.

Is there, in terms of these industry funds, because you're talking about industry funds

now.

Yeah.

Is that prevalent?

In other words, is it the majority of times that the super funds have got this so-called

old mates system going on?

In other words, they've got labor guys and union guys sort of sitting within the fund

somehow being a gatekeeper or whatever you want to call it.

Yeah.

In relation to what that fund does and or doesn't do.

It is systemic, right?

You've got, it's not just Wayne Swann, it's Nicola Roxon, it's James Molina, who was a

deputy premier of Victoria.

They're all on these boards.

And I think this is causing a major problem where the funds aren't acting in the interest

of the workers.

They're often acting in the interest of the unions and the labor party.

Do they get paid for these jobs?

They get paid and often the money goes through to the union.

So in the case of the CBUS fund, it's giving millions of dollars every year.

To the CFMEU and today as it stands, CFMEU, which is in administration, owns 21% of CBUS.

What?

So a union in administration is allowed to own a major financial corporation, which is

compulsory, compulsory.

I mean, you have to have super.

I just think this is a sector which needs the best governance, not the worst governance.

Wow.

That's, and does any of that money find its way back into the labor party?

Of course.

Of course it does.

They get millions of dollars through that channel, through the director's fees and other

sponsorship payments.

And in fact, there was a review recently which found that a lot of the payments for services

were services that were never actually given.

It's just a way to transfer cash through in a very corrupt way.

So of course it helps labor.

That's why labor's defended this system forever and ever.

But we will point out the deficiencies because we think that the people deserve better than

this.

So, and this was originally set up by Paul Keating, of course, in the, he didn't set

the industry funds.

But he originally set up the compulsory superannuation back in the early 90s.

And actually, I think it was one of the better pieces of legislation.

I actually think it's a good thing from Australia, from an economics point of view, that it's

not on the government's purse when people retire, you're going to have to pay, you know,

support people.

It's like they have to do another place in the world.

But as these things get bigger and more delicious and more, get deeper, deeper, deeper in terms

of the amount of money that they got into them, you know, in Australia, our super funds,

I think now have outpaced the banks in terms.

In terms of investable assets, they've gone, they're bigger than our banking system.

Do you see, is there, are we facing a sort of a risk in Australia?

Like a, a multi-pronged risk through the super funds?

I'm not taking it away from the need for superannuation.

I think it's a great thing.

Yeah.

I really do.

Compulsory superannuation is something I really believe in.

But at the same time, who's, who's sort of sitting on top of this money and who's managing

this money?

And how this money is managed, it's got to get its finest way back to the person and

put the money in the first place, especially in terms of death or injury.

That's right.

But also just, it's got to be run properly.

It's got to be managed properly.

It should be subject to all the normal things that corporations are subject to.

Is there a, is there an organization that oversees them and says, well, just like ASIC

oversees companies, we're going to oversee you.

And we don't like the fact that you've got these sort of directors there.

We want you to change the, you know, the independence of these directors.

Is anyone overseeing this stuff?

Well, there's a couple of points.

Firstly, the idea, whilst might be laudable, hasn't been very successful.

Most Australians are still on the pension and will be by the middle of the century.

So super makes very little difference to pension reliance over the longterm.

Wow.

There are more part pensioners compared to full pensioners, but overall it hasn't been

very successful in getting people off the pension.

Secondly, in terms of the governance, it's got the same governance model it had when

Paul Keating established it.

That's for political reasons.

Uh, the Senate.

The Senate has on multiple occasions defeated legislation, which would have made sure that

the funds had independent directors, had better conflict of interest policies.

So they stopped that from happening.

Dastyari stopped it.

Sam Dastyari stopped it.

I remember Sam Dastyari.

He was a former Senator.

He stopped it.

Uh, he had other issues, which you know about, but ultimately Labour have not been prepared

to support improvements to the governance of this scheme.

So I think it has problems.

For people who love super, I say to them, why don't you make the governance better?

That way.

It's more sustainable for you.

Okay.

Well, let's say you're, I'm a skeptic, right?

You're up for reelection and then your party's up for reelection and you're, you're fearless

leader, Peter Dutton, who sat in that very chair.

Yep.

What are you guys going to, what's coming out in terms of policy relation to super?

What are you thinking about?

Like, uh, what changes are you guys going to put on your platform?

We're not going to have a $3 million tax on super.

So what do you mean is you're not going to have tax on assets over $3 million?

That's right.

So that's an important point.

Can we just.

Talk about.

Talk about that for a second, see if maybe you can explain what that is.

Yeah.

By the way, most people don't even get it.

I know you guys think everybody understands what you're talking about, but the, the average

Australian doesn't have $3 million worth of assets in the super.

And they never think that one day they will have $3 million worth of assets in the super.

So this just goes over the top of their head.

So maybe, and I, I'll be honest, Andrew, I got friends of mine who don't even know that

the tax on superannuation in your super fund is less than the normal tax.

People just don't understand how the super thing works.

I mean, and most, all the young guys.

Every, these guys over here who I pay their super, they probably don't even think like

it.

They don't even think of it as an asset because it's, they can't touch it.

Right.

They don't, they just assume it's being well looked after.

I've never had a question from them.

I don't even know where, I couldn't even tell, I mean, I own the business, but I couldn't

tell you where this money gets put and maybe they've elected to put it somewhere else.

Maybe you can explain this $3 million asset level after which you start to pay much more

tax on your super.

Yeah.

So the government, the Labor government have a proposal to.

To charge you a higher tax rate if you have more than $3 million in assets in your fund.

That hasn't gone through the.

Hasn't gone through.

No, right.

And it's based on unrealized gains.

So whether you sell the asset or not, you still pay the tax.

So it's a tax on a balance.

So you've already got a super fund, you cleverly go and buy in your super fund something worth

a million bucks and then miraculously there's a rezoning in Victoria and it now becomes

worth 5 million.

But you haven't realized you still own this bit of land, for example, or this farm or

whatever it is.

It could be a liquid, yeah.

It could be anything.

Let's say it is a liquid.

Well, let's say you just want to hold it.

You don't want to sell it.

You've got to pay tax on it.

It's now worth 5 million.

You've got to pay a tax on that.

Even though you haven't got the cash, you've got to find a way to pay the tax.

Which means you've got to sell it.

Correct.

So that's an ugly scheme.

We don't like that idea.

And then more broadly, we think that the system should be better governed.

We have in the past proposed there'd be independent directors on the boards and there'd be more

competition in the system overall.

So we think that if you're going to have super, let's make sure that it's fair income and

working for the people.

Our main policy, though, is that people can use their own super to get a first house deposit.

Okay.

Explain that.

So if you have some money in super, you can take up to 50,000 bucks to buy your first

house.

To go towards your deposit.

Yeah.

Yep.

So I'll give you an example.

So the average 38-year-old has 90 grand in the super, right?

So a lot of people buy their first house when they partnered with a husband or a wife or

a partner.

So two people coming together in their late 30s could get 100 grand to support their first

home deposit.

Out of their super.

Out of their super.

Cash out of their super.

Now, even in Sydney, where the market is ridiculous, that would make a material difference to your

deposit.

Totally.

And if you've already saved some money as well, let's say you've already saved between

your 100 grand, you've got 200 grand, that's 20% of a million dollar property.

That's right.

And the reason that we are so high conviction on this policy is because we believe that

the key test of your retirement success is your housing status.

It is not your superannuation balance.

It's your housing status.

That drives your success in retirement.

That's very interesting because one thing that's really important is when someone retires,

they want to retire with security, not just security of income, but security of real estate,

like where you've got a roof over your head.

You don't have to retire.

It's psychological.

Yeah, totally.

It's very important.

So if they sell the house, which inevitably everyone in Australia does every four or five

years, let's say they sell the house and they bought the house, in the example we just talked

about, and it's a million bucks, and they sell it for $3 million, and it's tax-free because

that's their principal place of residence, do you have to put the 50 grand back?

They've got to put it back, and they've got to put a portion of the return back in.

A proportion of the profit they made.

Yeah.

Yeah, which makes sense because they've just made $2 million on that example.

They've got to put the 50 back.

Both of them have got to put 50 back each, and they've got to put a percentage of the

profit back as well into the super fund.

Correct.

But the principle is that if you don't own a house, this policy is about making sure

you can own one house.

It's not a one house for your whole life.

If you don't own a house today, you can use your super.

To get into the market.

That's right.

But if you do sell it, can you go back and get another 50 out of your super?

You can just continually do it to help top you up.

Why not?

Yeah, no, no, totally.

So I like that.

That's a good policy.

No one's talking about it.

How come?

We are talking about it.

No, you are, but I mean, I haven't seen the media talk about it.

Well, I think it's going to be one of the most contested parts of the election because

the Labor government don't like the idea.

They want all the money to be locked up in super, and in fact, they want the super funds

to invest in Australian residential property, but ban people from doing the same thing.

So I think it's crazy.

They want the big super funds.

They love that.

To go and buy Australian residential property.

They love the idea of BlackRock.

And rent it out to us.

Yeah, BlackRock, Vanguard, CBUS, whatever.

They like the idea of those big funds, institutional funds, owning Australian properties and then

renting them out to Australians.

Now, we think that's sort of a sick Australian dream.

Our Australian dream is for individuals because we've been a property-owning democracy since

the Second World War, right, in the main, where most Australians have owned a house

on an average income.

And now that's slipping away as the house becomes further and further multiple of your

salary.

And so this is one of the best ways to get the Australian dream back on track.

If you haven't got access to the bank of mum and dad.

Yeah.

And well, one of the things I want to talk to you about on the bank of mum and dad, because

I mean, I asked this question, I've done quite a few podcasts this morning.

I'd had the great Chris Joy on today.

Oh, good.

And Chris and I were talking about a whole series of topics and yeah, largely about the

economy, et cetera.

But we didn't get political.

But one of the things I did say to him is I said to him, and it's a pet hate of mine,

is that, as you know, I'm in the lending game.

We all broke for the banks, but we also lend our own product.

And like everybody, we have to adhere to the rules as to how you assess a borrower.

And right now, as it has been since around 2020, early 2020, when the pandemic first

hit, the threshold that we had to apply to borrowers was 3%.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

In other words, if the current interest rate is, let's call it 7%, let's call it 6% for

a home loan for many of the banks or us, if I'm trying to work out how much you can afford

to borrow, both on your repayments, which will then inform me how much I can lend you

as well, I have to not assess you at 6%, I have to assess you at 9%.

That's right.

I have to add 3%.

If I don't do that, I don't have to do that.

But if I don't do that, then I get punished on the other side when I go to get the money

from the capital markets that I need to lend to you, because we don't have a deposit-taking

license like the banks do.

I have to pay more because the various investment people are going to say, well, that loan doesn't

follow the current rules, therefore it's a bit more risky.

What I don't like about that rule in this environment,

I get it when interest rates are 0.1% I get it, because interest rates are only going

to go one way, it's upward, and in fact, it would be negligent not to add 3% at that point

because they're going to go up.

But when interest rates are at an all-time high, it sounds elitist to me to apply that

rule against someone who's just trying to buy their first home, for argument's sake,

and all it means is I'm going to assess them out of the market, lenders are going to assess

them out of the market.

In other words, they can never afford to borrow as much as someone who's more wealthy, and

what that means is the more wealthy person will outbid them every time because they can

afford to pay more.

That's right.

And all we're doing is creating a chasm between the haves and have-nots.

It's not really a liberal policy, it's more traditionally more a labor policy, the haves

and have-nots type thing.

What do you guys got?

Have you got a view on this?

So the buffer, the 3% buffer you talk about, Mark, is ridiculous for first-time buyers.

So if we win the election, we'll change the rules so that first-time buyers can have a

lower buffer, maybe 2% rather than 3%, so they can borrow more.

But also we want to change the way that lenders' mortgage and insurance is priced into a mortgage

because-

Because generally speaking, that borrower is borrowing more than 80%.

That's right.

And they have to pay LMI.

Correct.

So we also want to make sure that that gets a lower price when it's considered by the

regulator and by the bank, so that first-time buyers ... So we want to make sure that first-time

buyers can have their scales tilted in their favor against investors.

So by changing the buffer and by changing the LMI capital treatment, we think this is

a good way.

So for example, someone with a half a million dollar loan could borrow an extra $40,000

and they would also save about 20 basis points on their loan, which would be about a thousand

bucks a year.

That's a genuine benefit to a first-home owner perspective.

Yep.

Yeah.

That's a genuine investor.

So when I did this inquiry last year-

Oh, so you did another inquiry on this?

I did another inquiry.

Right.

Yeah.

We looked into the detail of this and I went and met with all these fantastic dorks and

academics who look at the ins and outs of housing policy, terrific like brains.

And one thing that I really liked was that we're one of the only countries in OECD that

doesn't use lending policy to help first-home buyers.

We're one of the only countries that doesn't do this.

If you look at almost every other OECD country to have some sort of bias in their lending

laws to help first-home buyers.

It's sort of proper policy.

Yeah.

It's economic policy.

You like to help our people who aren't as well-off.

So why wouldn't we have that?

And of course, Australia's also one of the few countries in the world has a disproportionate

percentage of investors relative to unoccupied increases over the next year.

Yeah, so that's-

Yeah.

Well-

occupiers too. We have a huge number of investors in all the pools of mortgages. And the reason

I know that is because I often go on roadshows to raise money, you know, for bond issues

against mortgage pools. And we're always getting asked by the overseas people as to the percentage

of investor loans in the portfolio relative to the owner occupiers. It's not the same

in another place like the US, for example. You don't get that sort of level of investor

and maybe it has something to do with the fact that in these other environments and

these other areas that there is a bias towards an owner occupier. And by the way, there should

be a bias towards an owner occupier.

Should be.

I mean, it makes sense. Like, why should I be preferred as an investor against one of

the boys in the room here who are trying to buy a property and if we're trying to buy

it in Smithfield in Sydney, if I can borrow more money than them and my interest rate

is less because I don't have any mortgage insurance to pay, it's...

All in my favour. I can afford to pay more.

Correct.

Which means I'll outbid them every time.

Correct. So it makes sense for us to do this because we want to be a property-owning democracy.

And now if you look at the trajectory that millennials and Gen Zs are on, most of them

are on a trajectory never to own a house. So that's why the lending staff, the super

staff is really important. But we also wanted to find a way that wasn't going to result

in distortions because even though you say there's lots of investors, we want investors

in the market to be providing supply and stock.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, the...

The Greens say, well, we can solve the nation's housing crisis by fiddling around with CGT

and negative gearing. I mean, I wish it was that simple. I mean, if only it was that simple.

So the changes to lending and to super don't damage anyone else. They only help the individual

prospective first-home buyer.

So, Andrew, tell me, maybe you can explain this to me then. As we know, Chris Bowen helped

Bill Shorten lose that election.

Yeah.

In favor of Scott Morrison by promoting the deletion or the exclusion of negative gearing

and the capital gains benefits of owning an investment property and only have to pay the

discounted rate of tax if you made a profit.

That's right.

And apart from that, he also tried to introduce franking, getting rid of franking credits

too, which is extraordinarily unpopular.

Yeah.

When...

Yeah.

So Labor's not likely to make that mistake again. I mean, politically, they're pretty...

They know what's going on. They're pretty good. Politically, as politicians, they read

the market and they do their polling and they know what's popular and what's not popular.

What do you think would happen if the Greens came along to you in the Senate and say, hey,

listen, Andrew, mate, we've helped you out on this inquiry, that inquiry. We need you

to help us out on, you know, negative gearing. What do you do? What do you say? No, that's

my no-go.

That's non-negotiable. How does that work?

We had an inquiry into it and it found that if you change negative gearing in CGT, it

would have a minuscule change on price in terms of making affordability easier. But

what it will do is shock the supply side of the market. So you have fewer houses built.

So we're not afraid of having the debate about that. We've had the debate for a long time.

We're in favor of lower taxes and more houses, not higher taxes and fewer houses.

So it will never be part of our platform in the way that Chris Bowen wanted it to be

part of Labor's policy some almost 10 years ago now.

And do you think that policy is secretly bubbling below the surface in the Labor Party still?

Oh, look, I couldn't say for certain. But as you know, the only way to solve the housing

crisis is to build more houses, really. I mean, it's mainly a supply side factor. And

I think the bigger risk for politicians is that they side with the government. And I think

the bigger risk for politicians is that they side with the NIMBYs. And I understand that

internally, inside the Liberal Party, there's probably a lot of people that would like to see

fewer houses built because they want to-

Zone house.

Potentially, right? But we've got to be governing for millennials, Gen Zs, younger people,

because every apartment building that gets knocked over today by a NIMBY makes it harder and harder

for a younger person to get that entry level flat. And as you know, it's a highly urbanized

population, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, that's where a lot of people will get their first house.

So-

Yeah.

I think that's the biggest risk, that you play footy with the NIMBYs.

So why don't we just talk about NIMBYs? That's not in my backyard, people. They're people who say,

I support everything you want to do, but just as long as it's not next door to me and it's next

door to someone. Everything's next door to someone at the end of the day. That's the truth. And

NIMBYs have some influence in relation to local councils and they get the-

A lot of influence.

And then, because they tend to get the local ward councillor, whoever the council is for the local

ward, they build up action groups. And they get the-

Action groups and that sort of stuff. And so let me just ask you then about the supply side

for housing. So you're right. The only way you really solve housing issue in Australia

for the population that we have, in other words, having enough supply of housing for it to be more

affordable for everybody, apart from looking at the lending policies and LMI and all that sort of

stuff with the great initiatives, you have to build more houses.

Yeah.

And in Albania, he did announce, his government announced 1.2 million, I think it was,

new houses over a five-year period, but they're way behind. I noticed that they don't talk about

it much anymore. I remember I was at the AFR Property Summit. I was one of the people they

asked to come along and speak about it. And I spoke about it with Shane. Shane Oliver and I

did it together. And then I noticed there were a number of developers there. And the only ones

who, at the end of the day, who supply housing is not the government. It's not the government.

It's not the AFR. It's not me, a lender. It's the developers. You've got to get them to feel

encouraged to release the land that they've got to either put houses or apartments on there.

Because government doesn't build houses. I mean, they can, but they're not doing it.

Not many.

Nah. And so it's developers. And the developers build housing on the basis of

lenders giving them the money to do the development and also being able to control the costs.

In other words, it's a viable project.

Developers can't get enough money or can't get the money from the lenders, which is usually the

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Pre-sales that are going to count so that the lender doesn't feel exposed. In other words,

generally speaking, they'd like to have a dog that's going to have a dog that's going to have a dog.

They'd like enough pre-sales to cover the total borrowing costs so that they know that

if push comes to shove and if you can build it for that price, the amount of money we're going

to lend you, we're always going to get paid back because we can see on a piece of paper

and a spreadsheet that you've sold 100 apartments out of the 200 properties that you house or units

in our building. So they're sort of de-risking themselves. But those pre-sales don't count

borrowers, buyers, I should say, feel confident that they can borrow the dough.

So it goes back to the lenders. So it actually goes back to the consumer right at the end of

the day. Can I feel like I can borrow this amount of money and can I afford it? Especially in this

high interest rate environment. What would you say? Let's assume for a moment you guys just don't

crack it. And Charms is back there at the helm and he's now the treasurer again.

What question would you be asking Jim Chalmers? What policy, what question around policy are you

going to be saying to Jim Chalmers he's going to do to help these people and help these developers

sell these buildings and help the lenders lend the money to the developers so they can construct

the building and help the buyers buy these apartments enough to satisfy the lenders?

Well, there's two questions. Firstly, I'd ask him for an attitude readjustment

and that does he understand that the government on its own can never actually

solve the problem. And I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think

the housing problem, that the people you need to build the houses are tradespeople, builders and

developers. That's the first question. I think the answer to that is uncertain from his point of view.

Secondly, I would ask him, is he going to ask the Australian banks who are protected with a

four pillars policy plus a deposit guarantee, is he going to ask the Australian banks to support

Australian housing and the Australian dream? Is he going to ask the banks to provide a

finance to developers? Because as you know, most developers now are relying on non-bank

financing, which is costing more. It's ridiculously expensive.

And it's all going into the input cost of the housing development. And if I've got a third

question, I would say to him, what will the government do to help cut the cost of building

and help make it a more viable product? Because when I walk around a building site,

the developer is paying for the streetlights, the nature strip, the footpath, the sewerage,

the roads.

And then that's all being subsumed into the cost of the product and being passed on.

And also contributing to parklands and a whole lot of other stuff.

But no wonder the minimum viable product for an apartment is unviable and uneconomic

in so many cases. So those are the three questions I'd ask the good Dr. Chalmers.

And why do you think they don't address these things? Because look-

Why?

I don't know. I just can't believe, Andrew, that they don't know this stuff.

I know. I think the answer to that is very clear. They take all their advice from the

union and they love the idea of a sort of public service approach to this, which is why they put

all their faith in this Housing Australia Future Fund. And they have the view that the government

itself can build a lot of houses, which is kind of crazy, Soviet Union's socialist style policy

thinking. But I don't think there's any thought in their minds as to how they can help builders

and developers cut the cost of building and therefore the viability of the enterprise.

Yeah. But equally, even if the government builds these properties, they're going to have the same

issues that developers got anyway. And the government's going to have to try and control

the costs.

Of course they will.

And governments cannot control costs. I mean, developers got a better chance of controlling

the cost per unit being built than a government has. And the government's going to have to pick

up the same cost. It sounds like to me a way of going broke.

Well, if you have the government property developer, the first person you're going to

be to have on the building site is the CFMEU. At least when Triggerboff builds, he's found

a way to keep these people at bay.

But that's a really good point. So if the government's building it, the next thing you know, we're

going to have the trade unions on the side. It's going to become a trade union side. And

the trade unions are going to say, well, they're my pals. We'll just change the pricing and

all the trades are going to cost more.

20%.

And you'll be paying, instead of working five days a week, you can work three days, whatever.

I mean, I'm just suspecting this is what's going to happen.

How is that a good idea that the government starts to build these things? I mean, why

do we try to put this into the government coffers and not leave it at the private level?

Well, it's not a good idea, which is why if we win the election, we'll abolish the Housing

Australia Future Fund. And we'll be supporting private developers and builders through our

supply fund, which will pay for last mile infrastructure. So it will pay for those roads,

sewage connections, streetlights, whatever. We think that's a better way of getting the

cost down.

And also, we're going to...

We're going to freeze the construction code for 10 years, because...

Which means what?

Well, there's a national construction code, and every time it's changed by Canberra, it

costs more and more money to build.

But what does the code tell them to do?

Well, it creates the minimum standards for building a house in Australia, and it's more

and more complex every year. And so we're saying 10 years, no more changes to that,

because every time they change it, it costs more money. So we've got to get the cost of

building down.

That's very important. I know it's not a very sexy political argument, but that's where

we're at up to now in Australia. We've got to get the cost of building down. Obviously,

we had more builders coming into the country. It would have been helpful, but the government...

More trades.

The government's had more yoga teachers, and they've had builders come in. Now, I love

a good yoga teacher, because if you ever saw back, it's very helpful, but no aspersions

being cast there. But right now, you know, we need more tradespeople.

Yeah.

A hundred percent. And particularly in places like, I'm just thinking of myself, but up

in northern New South Wales and those sorts of areas, which are still suffering from the

floods in terms of getting back on soil. Like, I've been trying to do a bit of building up

there. Oh, my God. Like, what a tradesman was costing, say, four years ago.

On a tweed?

Yeah. Four years ago, like, let's say, an electrician was 80 bucks an hour. There's

like 160 bucks an hour, if you can get one. And all of a sudden, it makes most things

not viable.

Mm-hmm.

And that's across all trades. And I'm not blaming the tradespeople, because they can

do that, because they're in demand. And if I'm a tradesman, and anything I'm doing, if

I'm in demand, I take the opportunity to charge more if I can.

Sure.

I'll charge what the market will bear.

Yeah.

For as long as it'll bear it. And I don't blame these guys and girls from getting more

money. That's not the point. But the point is, in a system sense, we have to make it

affordable generally, so people can survive. And that means we need more competition. We

need just more people here prepared to do the work.

That's right.

Is there an issue about getting those people there? Are those people not available from

overseas?

Well, I mean, the Labor government didn't want any of these workers to come in the country,

because they wouldn't join the CFMEU.

Right.

And so the CFMEU have had a lot of power over this government. One of the first things this

government did was they abolished the Building Construction Commission, which was like the

cop on the beat for the building sector. So we think, basically, having a big supply fund,

stopping the cost out of control stuff with the construction code,

bringing in new builders and construction workers, and then the stuff on lending and

super, we think that's going to move the needle on housing straight away.

So, you know, we saw, and I'm not suggesting you guys are going to be Trump-like, but...

No, we won't.

But Trump said, look, in the first hundred days, I'm going to do this, and the next hundred

days. I mean, are you guys prepared to commit to those sort of things? Like, you know, the

first term, the first six months of our first...

The first elected term.

We'll have to, because if we don't make...

Because you just talk otherwise.

Oh, if you don't make material ground on supply, then the problem becomes our problem. So Labor

said they'd build 1.2 million houses. They're only on track to build about 700,000 houses.

We need to be building about 250,000 houses a year in Australia, right? So just to put it into

sort of context, under the last coalition government, we got 195,000 houses a year on

average. Under this government, it's down to 100,000.

170,000. Got to get up to 250,000. So if within 12 months, we haven't moved the needle

on that, then we are in a lot of trouble. So I don't like a lot of the Trump policies.

I don't like a lot of the methods, but I do like the fact that he was organized and ready

to go. So, because you haven't got a minute to wait.

Because I was going to say, well, what does that mean, organized and ready to go? It's

like, obviously, he had Musk there and all these sort of people ready to jump on everything.

How do you guys sort of...

Otherwise, everything's just a good idea. It's all about the execution, as you know.

It's not about the idea. A good idea is important, but you've got to be able to execute on the

good idea. You've got some good ideas you talk about today. How do I get convinced...

I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example. So I would say to councils and developers

that I meet with, please do not wait to do the feasibility report for what you need funded,

whether it's a new sewerage system or a new road to support this development. Please do

the work now. And if we win the election, you can send it in on the first day or the

second day.

You've got to get work done now so that if you win, you're ready to go. You're ready

to legislate your new policy, right? You're ready to assess the funding grants, those

sorts of things.

So let's say, because I mean, I've been listening to the radio here in the mornings of the last

period. We've been talking about the Electrical Trades Union here holding things up and the

people in the water, you know, the water board.

The water board's a disaster.

You know, not approving this or not doing that. And they're public.

They're public servants. I mean, someone inside is deciding at what speed they go.

They're state. You're federal.

Sure.

Can you go in there and sort of tell them, hey, guys, let's get this thing sorted?

Well, if you prepare to use your pulpit, yes. I mean, but politics is about advocacy. Now,

Chris Minns, who has said a lot of good things about housing, and I think he's done a lot

of, frankly, quite-

I think he's tried pretty hard.

He's done a lot of good things, actually.

Yeah, yeah.

Chris Minns wants to be the housing premier, but his agencies like the water board are

destroying it.

So, if we were the government and we were going to fund a piece of water infrastructure,

then we would use our pulpit to point that out to him and hopefully embarrass him into

doing what needs to be done. So, you've got to be able to advocate and use your position.

What's that mean? Pulpit or pulpit?

Pulpit. You know, you're like-

Oh, you're pulpit as in church.

A minister, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. As in the church.

You've got to stand up and you've got to advocate. That's the job.

Yeah. And is that your, if you stay in this role?

Would be.

That's your role. So, I mean, would you be-

I'm just trying to work out how it would work, but let's say there's a development

going on sometime in New South Wales and we need the water board to approve this and we

need someone else to do something rather than to connect up some power or pipes or something.

And the Minns government is not sort of responding, even though lots of jawboning happens. Would

Andrew Bray get up there and sort of call the press conference and just say, this is

not happening quick enough. We've got the money ready to spend.

We've got the money ready to spend on these infrastructure things that need to be spent

on. We're not going to ask the developer to do it. We want this to happen. We need it

to happen in order to meet our guidelines for the 1.2 million or whatever it is, 250,000

a year houses. Chris Minns, I'm calling you out. Can you get the water board to do that?

That is exactly what we would do.

That's pretty ballsy. That's good.

And we would call the press conference at the front of the site.

Wow. That's ballsy. That's never, I don't think it's ever happened here before.

Well, that's what you need to do.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

We've got to get radical here.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, that is sort of radical.

It takes some risks. It's not risk-free for a politician to do that, but it's got to happen.

Yeah, no, totally. There is risk associated with that. And I mean, I see, you know,

Musk is not an elected politician, but at the same time, he's sort of doing a lot of

bidding for over there in America. And he uses X and things like that to call things

out all the time. I mean, will you be aggressively pushing for these things to happen, like using

whatever mediums that you can get access to?

You have to.

In a responsible way.

You have to. Otherwise, the deep state eats you. I mean,

you just don't get it.

You just don't get things done. I mean, for example, if you discover a corporate crime

in Australia, I would say reporting it to the media is more effective than reporting

it to ASIC. They'll move faster. Like, sometimes getting people to do something they don't

want to do is only going to happen if they feel a bit of risk or they feel a bit exposed.

For them.

Right? For them. Now, Minns is a good guy. Everyone likes him, whatever. But if he wants

to be the housing premier, he's got to get his agencies to do the right thing. And so-

His agency, meaning water boards and all those examples.

Water boards, everyone else.

Just gave you, yeah.

The power people, whatever. So if a federal government comes along and says, you're not

doing this, we're putting it in our share, then he would feel very exposed. And that's

what we've got to do to get traction on housing supply. I'm very high conviction on this.

I've thought about it very carefully.

Yeah, because I was going to say, you know, Andrew, I mean, it's a big call. I mean, you're

going to have to do it in every state.

Of course.

It's not just Sydney. I shouldn't be just picking on Chris Minns, but this is Australia-wide

this issue.

If you go to Southwest Sydney, where a lot of the action is on housing, right? You know

that. Liverpool, Camden, Campbelltown, LGAs, go and talk to the developers there. They'll

say, well, we wanted to build 200 flats, but we couldn't because Sydney water wouldn't

turn the water on.

You know, I've heard them say it.

It's true.

I've actually heard them at the AFR summit with Jennifer Hewitt. I mean, I heard them

say this stuff. You know, they're saying, you might have this goal of 1.2 million houses,

but we don't because it's just not viable for us to do this.

Sure. But that's not how democracy works, Mark. The Premier of the state has said, this

is his number one priority. He cannot be undermined by some random agency. Like, that's not right.

Yeah, that is-

I hate that.

Me too. So your leader, Peter Dutton, and the rest of your party, is everybody in support

of this? Do you have to convince everybody of this stuff?

No, it's done. We've already announced it. Peter's announced it. It's done. $5 billion

we'll have on the table for this.

No, but I'm talking about you getting in front of it.

At the side of Brindgelly, wherever it is you're talking about, and actually standing

there saying, calling him out.

I think Peter has shown he understands, unless you get the houses built, then young people

will pay. And he's prepared to support that, for sure.

And what sort of traction are you getting, you guys, now? I mean, the election's coming

up. It's going to be May, obviously. You guys had a bit of a magic run there for a while.

You sort of slipped back on the polls. How are you feeling with all this now? I mean-

Look, it's going to be-

It's going to be a close election, I think.

It's all or nothing for you guys now.

Yeah. And look, I think it's going to be pretty close. We've got a better offering. Our challenge

is, how can we talk to as many people as possible about these issues? As you know, it's complex

in many cases. And Labor is good at spin, good at politics. But overall, I'd rather

be us than them.

Yeah, of course. Otherwise, you'll just switch parties. But do you feel as though you're

being effective? I mean, I see Anthony is the Prime Minister, with the greatest respect.

He's been on all sorts of shows. I mean, ranging from all sorts of characters who have podcasts.

His very first podcast, I'm proud to say, was us.

That's good.

But nonetheless, he's been all over the shop. He's sort of talking to everybody. Are you

guys prepared to do that? Because you've got to talk to everybody.

So I think Dutton is one of those classic politicians that the more people he meets,

the more votes he gets. Because as you know, he's a fundamentally decent, honest-

He's a decent guy.

He's a decent guy. What you see is what you get.

And pretty smart, too.

And I think, even if you don't agree with Dutton, the thing is-

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The thing that you have to like about him is, you know where he stands. You're not

thinking, oh, this guy's a bit unprincipled, or you're not sure where he's going to go.

You know where he's going to go.

Yeah.

And I think that's really an important quality in leadership. So I think, because there's

a lot of politicians, I won't name any of them, that the more people they meet, the

fewer votes they get.

Yeah.

With Dutton, I think the more people he meets, the more votes he gets.

Well, to some extent, I mean, I've seen this in the political agendas through the various

election cycles, particularly the last one and this one.

There are a few politicians who the party says, we don't want you out in front of everybody.

Yeah.

Just stay behind the scenes. The more you speak, the less votes we get.

Depends on the issue, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. Depends on the issue. And what do you think are the big issues for this election?

I mean, cost of living is a big one, but how would you guys go about sort of aiding us

in the cost of living issue?

Well, energy is huge, right? Making sure we have cheap energy. That's key for small businesses,

key for households. The housing issue is massive. The fact that,

so many young people feel disaffected, that the Australian dream is dead for them. Those

would be two of the biggest issues for us at this campaign. And we've got quite different

policies from Labor on housing and now on energy.

Yeah. I saw the energy one in the budget reply.

The gas, yeah.

For the gas reservation.

Yeah.

And I think that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. I think what most people don't,

and I don't want to put people down, but most people, one, didn't even know there was a budget.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

They don't know about the budget reply on Thursday. They don't understand the word

gas reservation. The AFR does, and City Morning Herald do, and Telegraph and all those, but

you and I do, but generally speaking, most people don't understand the significance of

what gas reservation means. They don't understand LMI, which you were talking about.

Yeah.

How do we sort of explain to people these, you said you've got to get in front of more

people, and Dutton's got to get in front of more people. I get that.

Yeah.

I get that part. But how do you break down these things into simple terms? Because they're

complex thoughts. There's complexity around it.

Yeah, but people aren't, Australians are not stupid.

Yeah.

Right? And I think generally people will understand these concepts. And you start with the outcome,

your energy prices are too high because X, Y, Z, right? And in this case, hasn't been enough gas.

They've relied on renewables only. For example, they haven't looked at nuclear in the long term.

Those are sort of some of the answers. On housing, we've talked about it, right? The reason is

not enough houses built and not enough creativity to help first home buyers. As we said before,

the only country that we compare ourselves to without any lending policy to help first home

buyers. So that's some of the reasons why.

It's quite interesting because you're the first politician who I've actually had the conversation

with.

And that's ever talked about lending policy relative to first home buyers. I mean, I saw

Dutton announce something about it early this week. I think it was early this week. It may have

been late last week. But you're the first long form politician, long form conversation that I've

seen. Sure, it appears in the Fin Review and appears in the Sydney Morning Herald and it might

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And I don't want to go back to the American style, but American style, nearly rally style.

You really need to be standing in front of 50 people the next day, another 50 people the next

day, another 100 people, and explaining to them this sort of stuff. I mean, being on a show like

this is good because it's long form and it's an opportunity for me to ask questions and sort of

to try and work it all out alongside you, with you. And my audience is a pretty big audience,

but they might see this, but they might not watch the whole thing. They might only listen to part of

it. They might not really get it. They might not get it. They might not get it. They might not get it.

Or they might go on to the next show we show and forget about the conversation between here and

the election day. I just wonder, is there another way that someone like you, Andrew, like a boy from

Shepparton, have you ever thought to yourself, what would be better? Is there a better way that

you could talk about this sort of stuff and not rely on the normal mediums, particularly like

digital mediums that we have now? The old form mediums were actually, which is what Trump was

great at, actually old form mediums. I mean, he did all the new ones, but he did the old form.

He was, looked like to me, because I mean, I get glued to the television when there's an election,

particularly American election. It was nearly like 24 hours a day. A guy's nearly 80 years of age. I

was marveling at him. And by the way, you know, to some extent Kamala was sort of doing the same

thing, but I was marveling at the energy of these individuals and the amount of time they put into

it. It is a big deal. It's a presidential election. It's different to what we do, but we nearly need

someone in every department, like your department, to prosecute. Labor's guilty of the same stuff,

by the way. In fact, I've heard less, I don't think I've heard anything from your equivalent.

In fact, and I have to say to the audience, this guy drove me mad to get on the show. Like,

I'm not doing him a favor. He wanted to come on the show and somehow found my email and everything.

Like, Andrew Baggs on the phone, he wants to know when he's going to the show. So that's pretty

important.

I've heard nothing from Labor, nothing. The only person that's trying to get on the show

is Jim Chalmers. Obviously Albanese, but Chalmers has asked to come on. But other than that, nobody.

It's like Australian politicians don't get it. We want you to talk to us. We want you to talk

to us more and more and more and more and more. Do you ever in your moments dream about how you

might be able to do this more often and better, or is there no better way?

Well, I think YouTube is now a magnificent platform for politics.

And this will go up on YouTube.

Right? We think that's really good. Secondly, podcasters like you that have a big audience

is a fantastic medium for us because no one is watching the news like they used to,

or very few people watch the national nine news.

Well, they've already heard it before it gets on television.

Right? So we think it's very important. And then more broadly, you rely on word of mouth. So in

relation to a lending change, I would be hoping that the mortgage broking associations and bodies

would now be telling all their members about our changes. And then when a person walks into a

mortgage broking shop, maybe in the South coast of New South Wales or something to buy a first house,

mortgage broker would say to them, well, maybe not in these exact terms, but if the coalition

wins the election, your loan buffer will be 2%, not 3%, for example.

Well, that, okay. What about if I said to you, what about I introduce you to when he came from

the advisor, which is talks to them.

So that's our industry magazine.

Yeah. I know. Yeah.

And, and, and I should declare my brother owns a part of that, but it doesn't matter.

Yeah.

Um, but if I said to you that that's the most read magazine by 17,000 brokers, every broker in the

country reads it, everybody does, um, have you, maybe you should do an interview with them.

So I have before, and that's exactly the idea. So the idea is then the mortgage broker sits in

front of the Australian person and then explains to them how our policy would work and how it will

be different to us.

The labor parties. That's an important part of this. Cause I think you touch a lot of people

that way, right?

Yeah. Well, you want the mortgage broker to be talking about it.

That's right.

And you want, and mortgage brokers would like to know the liberal party, for example, or the

party, but is in their corner. So, you know, one of the, the other issues that, you know,

the mortgage broker might like to hear from you, you know, through the advisor is, is this, um,

you believe that the mortgage broker is important and that you won't, won't let the

bank banks screw the mortgage broker because mortgage brokers are terrified. And I don't even

know how this could possibly happen legally, uh, that the banks are all going to gang up and

somehow, um, crush the mortgage broker industry and put everyone back to a position where they

have to go individually back to their own bank. And, um, we're never going back to that home line.

Well, if you spoke to the mortgage brokers, you said, we're never going to let that happen again.

We're never going to go back to that.

Hmm.

That would get every mortgage broker in the country supporting just about everything you do,

particularly if you can help their, their first home buyers buy a home more readily.

I mean, and I wonder whether you should be talking to people like the advisor and there is another,

one or two other magazines, but who talk to brokers. I mean, I got, uh, 1500 brokers who

work for me of which probably they've got three or four, three or four, mostly got three or four

brokers working for them. So you've got thousands of people working for us. They're exclusive to us.

Um, that's the question they always ask me.

Which government right now, which government is going to look after us the most? Cause at the end

of the day, voters vote for what's in it for them. That's right. Every one of us, we're not really

thinking about what's in it for anybody else. We're thinking about what's in it for us first.

I understand.

That's our mentality. And, and, and, and I'm thinking about what's it, I'm wanting, I want

to know which party who's up for election is going to look after my business, my people. And I,

cause I'm out there trying to look after my people, my brokers. And, uh, if you guys would

be prepared to talk, but to talk to the advisor and actually, you know, make these sorts of

commitments and maybe labour would too anyway, but I don't know, um, that will go a long way

to getting people to pay attention and listen to you. Cause if you can so show someone what's in

it for me, they will then prosecute what's in it for you. Yeah. And we want the brokers to be

writing more and more loans for first home buyers. Yeah. Because it's pretty hard to get a first

house without a mortgage. And it's very hard to get a mortgage.

a broker these days because loans are complicated and brokers know the rules. Particularly if you

bring rules in like this, these sort of rules where it's only 2%, for example, the threshold,

a borrower doesn't know that. I mean, you might say it a thousand times over, but they may never

have read the paper or listened to the publication where you said it. Whereas a broker, that's their

job to know it. They will know it. And I just, I mean, I'm so glad that you raised this issue

because I'm going to contact the advisor and I'm going to get him to contact you and talk to you

if you don't mind. Yeah, good.

Yeah, because it's a good thing for them to know that someone's batting for the broking industry.

We like them because they provide competition, right? In an industry which is desperately in

need of competition. And the banks are highly protected as species with the four pills policy

plus the banking guarantee. I don't think we owe the banks any favors. I think in fact,

the banks owe the Australian people the best possible deal.

They can give people rather than trying to subsume other parts of the value chain. So I think that's

important. Look, also I've had good experience with brokers in my own life, but I think a lot

of politicians probably don't sit in front of a financial planner or a mortgage broker all that

often. I think that actually impedes their ability to understand how federal regulation

can be deployed or not deployed to help people. And if you don't mind, I just,

I'll make a little comment, but more looking, seeking some guidance from you in relation to what

you guys are thinking about for this election. But in Australia, banking is controlled by a few

banks. There are lots of banks, but largely controlled by a few banks. Insurance is controlled

by a few insurance companies. Retail is controlled by a few retailers. Telco is controlled by a few

telcos, et cetera. What do you think about that?

We're a nation of oligopolies, and this is why I've always been pro-crypto, because I always

thought that if you can get crypto to help disrupt and to get lower prices and better choices,

different choices to Australians, like the international remittances is one of the best

use cases for crypto, that's got to be a good thing. But you've got to make sure that you

harness that rather than just export all those ideas to Dubai or to Singapore. So generally

speaking, I'm worried.

That we are a nation of oligopolies, because I think it could be massively disrupted overnight.

Yeah. And that's what oligopolies do, though. They tend to stop any sort of disruption.

That's bad.

Because they lose part of their power base, and therefore they don't act in concert. They're not

acting. They're not colluding, but they sort of all know what each other does. So they just stay

where it is and all happy to have 25% of the market or 20% of the market, whatever the case may be.

And if we grow one, we'll go down by one.

It doesn't really matter. It's about maintaining our profitability and actually trying to somehow

increase our margins. And that's sort of a definition of oligopoly. It's funny, when I was

a kid, not a kid, when I was a much younger man, I wrote an article in the Fin Review about

oligopolies in relation to the banking industry. And my father, who's passed away, but he's Greek,

and he said, my mother, who's not Greek, she used to read the Fin Review all the time. She put this

one article in front of my dad. And dad said,

Mark, he said, I really like that word oligopoly. I said, what do you mean? Oligo. Oligopoly. Oligo

means few. Poly means many. Few control many. Just a few control many, as opposed to monopoly,

which one controls everyone. Duopoly, two control everyone. But oligopoly is just,

oligo means a few, a small amount, oligo.

And it's interesting, my dad got it straight up. And he didn't go to university, didn't even go to

school, and he worked in a factory most of his life. But people understand simple concepts.

And it's not wrong that a few control everyone, but it also explains to us why prices can be

kept high, and why access to certain things can be controlled.

I think it's interesting that people are being constrained just to the elite, which is actually,

I really like your idea about the threshold stuff, reducing that, making home loans more accessible,

but only accessible, I should say, and more accessible to one cohort of people,

younger people, perhaps, or whatever.

First-time buyers.

First-time buyers. It's a bloody good policy. And it's about time that, I think it's about time that

people are being constrained. And I think it's about time that people are being constrained.

It's interesting. Liberals are sort of going more to the middle. I don't know. It's working class

territories where Labor used to play. And liberals are sort of moving into that territory. It's quite

an interesting change in the politics. I don't think most people know that.

We've always been the promoters of home ownership, though. If you go back to the Menzies' age,

we were always the party of home ownership.

Well, John Howard in 2002.

Always.

Oh, 2001, I think. It was 2001 election. It was affordability.

He launched the affordability program in Adelaide. I remember he launched the election

in that period. It was around home affordability. Because I remember, because I funded

a young man who did a study, a PhD study on this.

Yeah, Joy?

Yeah, Chris Joy.

Yeah.

Who launched it. And the reason I funded it is because he was working for Malcolm Turnbull,

who was at Goldman Sachs. And Malcolm rang me. And I remember I funded the kid. He was a young

bloke, so he didn't have any money. He needed someone to fund the...

The study of it, which...

This is the Menzies' research one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

That was Chris Joy.

Yeah.

And Chris was sitting in that chair only three hours ago.

Is that right?

Yeah, today.

That's crazy.

He's a good mate of mine. But I remember it well. He wasn't a good friend of mine at the time,

because I was introduced to him through Malcolm. But it's interesting. It's still the major issue,

affordability. And that's 24 years ago. And I'm hoping someone will solve it this round.

Well, I think we're going to have a good crack at it.

We're going to have a good crack at it with our supply and our demand side policies,

which are so different from whatever Labor's offering.

That's totally different. It's different from anything I've heard before. So I want to say

congratulations. The best of luck. Look, just for that. Just for that, I hope you guys win.

Thank you. Thank you.

I really do. Just for that, because they're going to put a smile on a lot of Australians'

faces. And that's all I'm interested in, is Australians getting a roof over their heads.

That's the most important thing to me in my whole life.

Well, that's my mission. Yeah.

That's my mission too.

Good.

Good to see you.

Thanks, Mark. Thanks very much.

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