May 12, 2025 • 59 mins
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#140 Senator Gerard Rennick discusses the challenges facing Australia's building industry and the underlying issues that contribute to an industry in dire need of reform.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm hearing from builders a lot and it's one of
these issues that, as you becomea little bit more known amongst
the community, I'm hearing frommore and more builders about
these particular issues and thecost of building.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I do believe, when it comes to the building industry,
we need to get politicians ordecision makers on the ground,
like having round tablediscussions with people that are
doing this stuff every singleday, because there are so many
ways that we can reduce cost inour building industry.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Do?
Do you have to deal withfederal laws as well as state
laws as well as council?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
laws Building cards yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, three bloody levels of government for a
country the size of 27 millionpeople, our industry.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
There is so much room for improvement and so many
areas that can get moreefficient, which I believe will
bring the cost of housing down.
G'day guys, welcome back toanother episode of Level Up.
We are back in the shed todayfor another cracking episode,
(00:54):
and I must say I don't getnervous too often doing a
podcast.
I'm a little bit nervous to bespeaking to the guests we've got
on here today because today wehave our first politician to
have a chat to, and a lot of youguys will know because you
reached out to me and you keptsending me links to posts that
our guest today was posting, andI follow him as well and I'm
very passionate about what hedoes.
(01:14):
So a big warm welcome toSenator Gerard Rennick.
How are you, mate?
Yeah, good thanks, dwayne.
How are you Very well, mate?
I really appreciate you takingsome time out of your busy
schedule to come and have a chat.
You're welcome.
Obviously, we didn't get a realgood result on the weekend, but
I'm sure we'll keep pushing onand see what happens.
Yeah, mate, I love your passion.
(01:36):
You're all data.
I love seeing your videos onsocial media and you're just
facts.
I think that's what we need inpolitics, isn't it?
Yeah, facts.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And I think that's what we need in politics, isn't
it?
Yeah, absolutely.
And we need it in thepoliticians themselves rather
than the bureaucracy or anywhereelse, because the problem with
politics is it's driven byemotion and fear rather than
facts and figures.
And, unfortunately, I thinkAustralia is all the worse off
because of it, because many ofthe colleagues that I used to
work with, or other politiciansthey don't have the skill set to
(02:05):
sit down and analyze data and,as a result of that, they have
to over rely on theirbureaucrats or their staff, many
of whom half their age and havecome through university with no
real life experience themselves.
And we saw that on the weekendwith the Liberal Party, who you
know I can speak from experiencebecause I was inside the, the
parliamentary wing for fiveyears effectively had no vision
for the country.
You know.
(02:26):
They had a few tepid economicpolicies, but nothing of
structural, serious structuralreform, and in the end, people
ended up going back to Albaneseas hard as that is to believe
just because he exuded moreconfidence and he did, do you
know?
He offered some discounts toHECS and some other measures
that were going to make adifference to people in terms of
cost of living.
So yeah, I mean, we really dohave a lack of knowledge crisis,
(02:51):
if you want to call it that,inside the parliamentary wing of
Parliament House.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
What's your opinion, mate?
I see like even in the States,and that we've seen it over the
last probably 10 or so years,but there seems to be a big
influence now in a lot ofelections on young people and
it's it worries me because theythey get sucked in by like one
or two policies that sound greatto them but they don't know the
(03:15):
full behind the scenes or thefull story of it.
But there's all these otherpolicies that actually mean a
lot more and will help thecountry, but they get sucked
into these little ones that andI feel like there's a lot of
politicians out there thatthat's how they get in, because
all these younger voters thatdon't really have a clue really
like what's going on.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Well, look, I think you've been a bit harsh there on
the younger voters.
Look, I mean there's a range ofknowledge, you know, and across
all age groups.
Some younger voters arewell-educated and well, when I
say educated, educated inpolitics, in terms of they know
what the various parties standfor, and others aren't.
I mean, you know, I've hadpeople in their 60s and 70s ask
(03:54):
out a vote and not understandthe difference between a lower
house green card and an upperhouse white card.
You know the difference betweenpreferential voting and
optional preferential and thingslike that.
So I'm very reluctant to makegeneralisations about any
particular.
That's why we call the partyI'll lead people first, because
I don't want to start slicing,you know, the human race up by
(04:15):
various attitudes, age, you know, gender, race, whatever.
I think that's one of the easythings that many of my
colleagues do is that they loveto start the the, the conquer
and divide.
Um, you know things.
So look, uh, you know, and, andlook, the environment's a good
one, right?
I mean, you know we're allworried about carbon dioxide.
(04:35):
You know heating the planet, orsupposedly, uh, but you know we
focus just on carbon dioxidewhilst ignoring the impacts of,
you know mine, lithium mining,rare earth mining.
You know building.
You know lithium mining, rareearth mining.
You know building.
You know wind turbines, orwhatever, and knocking down the
tops of mountain ranges to putup wind turbines and the
consequences on the bird life,et cetera, and the bat life.
You know bats are a very bigpollinator of plants, as you
(04:58):
probably know.
So you're right, like it's veryeasy, it's called framing, as a
matter of fact, and it was whenI lived in New South Wales.
I did a political campaigningcourse and went for nine months,
the first Saturday of everymonth, for nine months, and you
know, the first thing we weretaught about was framing, and
you frame on your strengths, andthen you sort of try not to
(05:18):
talk about the other issues.
And that's what.
Yeah sorry, go on.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I was just going to say I'm very keen to talk to you
about the sustainable stuffbecause I love again how you
speak about all that.
But, like you just said, how isit sustainable when you're
knocking down forests andclearing mountains?
And the infrastructure theyhave to put in to build these
things to start with is justdisgraceful to the environment.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Oh, absolutely.
And this is yet again.
When it comes back to theframing, the alarmists I'll call
them climate alarmists don'tfocus on the damage that you're
doing to the environment, andyet they've got everyone
transfixed at this carbondioxide.
They call it poisoning or atoxin or whatever, but yet
that's part.
The most renewable form ofenergy is photosynthesis,
(06:02):
converting carbon dioxide andwater into sugar and oxygen.
And if you did your biology athigh school, you'd know that, uh
, and yet somehow you knowsomething that you know is
naturally produced.
I think there's 800 billion tonsof carbon dioxide produced, so
that's 8 by 10 to the power of11 um produced, uh, by mother
nature every year.
(06:22):
And mankind produces about 30,35 billion tonnes of it.
So a small sliver, about 4%,wow, yeah, so it's.
You know the Earth's emittingcarbon dioxide all the time,
even without us, even without us, absolutely.
And there's a sink.
So and here's one of the thingsI've picked up in estimates
over the years the biggestcarbon sink on Earth is actually
photosynthesis in the sorryphotoplankton in the ocean.
(06:44):
Uh and um, that's not evenincluded in the net zero model.
So the net zero models are onlybased on land use.
Uh, you know what's what'sabsorbed on the land and what's
emitted on land.
So they ignore the fact thatyou know your biggest carbon
sink is actually offshore in theocean, ie photoplankton.
And it was a good article in theabc just after the bushfires in
(07:04):
2020, where it said there was aphoto plankton bloom in the
southern ocean as a result ofthe bushfires.
All that smoke got blown out tothe southern ocean, ended
settling up, you know, in theocean, and then the photo
plankton bloomed and it's nodifferent to when it rains.
We have your grass grow, youknow.
I don't need to tell you ifyou're living up here.
Uh, you know, it grows, growswhen it rains.
In the summertime, the grassjust grows at a rate of knots.
(07:25):
You know you're mowing everyweekend.
Well, it's the same.
We have natural stabilizers inour earth anyway that will deal
with increased levels of carbondioxide.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
So what's behind them pushing all this renewable
stuff?
Because, like, I don't know,I'm definitely not up to speed
with all of it, but like, frommy little knowledge that I have
and the I guess common sense, tome it just doesn't work Well
look, I'm of the same view.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I mean what's behind it, you know?
I mean one of the things wetalked very early on you're not
allowed to do in the Senate isimpute motive.
So call them saying well,you're trying to, you know,
destroy the planet or, you know,destroy the energy grid, or
something like that.
Look, I don't know.
Well, look, I don't know whatwas behind it initially.
I know what's behind it now isthat a large number of people
(08:10):
are involved in the renewableindustry.
So a lot of people out there,you know and I call them rent
seekers are making a lot ofmoney out of this.
And so you know that's what'sbehind it.
It's just like financialplanning industry now, whereby
you whereby, once upon a time,people, if they had savings,
would pay off their mortgage andthen they'd put money in a bank
account and earn money on theirterm deposit.
(08:31):
Now you're forced to put yourmoney into superannuation.
There's all these rules aroundsuper.
So you've created a whole newbattalion of financial engineers
that, yet again, we don't need.
Prior to 1992, people just wedon't need.
You know, prior to 1992, peoplejust saved for their own
retirement.
If you didn't have enoughassets, you'd go on the pension,
but ultimately you tookresponsibility for your own
(08:53):
savings.
Today we have $3 trillion insuperannuation under management,
just in industry and retailfunds that are managed by other
people that you know in Sydneyand Melbourne, in the ivory
palaces of Sydney and Melbourne,who, basically you know in
Sydney and Melbourne, in theivory palaces of Sydney and
Melbourne, who basically youknow, don't take any
accountability if they lose yourmoney, but they're skimming out
$30 billion a year in fees outof superannuation.
So that's another industrythat's just, you know, come from
(09:15):
nowhere in the last 30 or 40years.
That didn't exist once upon atime.
But you know, good luck tryingto kill it, because when you're
up against 30, $40 billion infees, you know, and this money,
you know, goes to these peopleand then they use it to fight
you back.
It's very hard to, it's goingto be hard industry to.
You know.
Curtail similar to renewables.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
A little bit off-topic, mate, but have you
heard of a book called theCreature from Jekyll Island?
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yeah, I've read it.
Yeah, yeah, I know it very well.
Yeah, yeah, I understand.
Yeah, that's the monetarysystem.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, yeah.
Or just when you're talkingabout how they've set up these
new businesses around super andstuff.
That just takes me straightback to that book and how
everything's had a bit of a oh.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I can give you a whole episode on that book if
you like.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Well, we've only got a limited amount of time, but,
um, I've talked, I've mentionedthat book a few times on the
podcast and a few people reachedout and said, holy shit, like
that was eye-opening.
But, um, it definitely changedthe way.
It probably played a big partin opening up my mind to how I
look at renewable energy andyeah, and super and money and
all that stuff.
But yeah, um, it really doesblow my mind.
But with the like, the peoplethat are, uh, getting behind
this renewable energy and thatsort of thing and think that
(10:30):
it's great, like I don't know,do they overlook all the
clearing of the forest and allthe other stuff that has to go
into to actually be able tobuild that?
Um, those farms and theturbines and all the other
things that are the, all theother things around the planet
that are getting destroyed toproduce that?
I guess.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Absolutely.
They deliberately overlook itbecause it doesn't suit their
narrative.
It's that simple and that's whywe lack ethics.
Australia and many Westerncountries have a real ethical
crisis in their leadership ranks, not just in government but in
private industry and rightacross the board, and we saw
(11:09):
that.
I know we don't want to go here, but we saw that with the COVID
crisis when people were beinginjured by the vaccines.
It doesn't matter what youthink about vaccines, people
were being injured andgaslighted.
And that's probably anotherthing when I went into
government.
The lack of quality assurance Ifyou get it wrong in your
industry, if you get it wrong,you know you can be sued.
(11:30):
Quality assurance, capitalmanagement, quality assurance
are king, right, you have tomaintain safety standards or
you'll be sued.
Even if you're sued and you win, you'll still have your
reputation damaged In politics.
It's not you, it's not you onthe line, you and this is what
what I where I sort of got offthe you know sort of 18 months
(11:51):
into it.
I think you know I had myepiphany there where I just
thought you know, we aredestroying people's lives here
through what we do and there'sthere's no one, there's no
conscience, there's noconscience in politics that goes
you know, know what we're doing.
Is this right?
And that's what really annoysme is that everyone is just
fighting for the here and nowand trying to score that
political point for the 24 hournews cycle, instead of actually
(12:13):
looking down the track andsaying, well, how's this going
to help our children in thefuture?
And that's what we did in the80s.
I mean, I look back now.
You go back to.
You know, the monetary policy.
Keating lifted capital controlsin 1985, and he basically said
we're not going to stop privatebanks in Australia from
borrowing money from offshore.
So yeah, from a financial pointof view, that's similar to an
immigration point of view,whereby the government just said
(12:35):
we're not going to haveimmigration controls.
Now, if the government saidthat, people would be down in
Parliament House with pitchforkssaying you know, this is an
island, you've got to haveimmigration controls.
We just can't have peoplecoming in willy-nilly.
But that's what we did in ourfinancial markets in 1985.
Yeah, and that then you knowthe four major banks at eight
billion dollars in foreign debtin 1985.
By 2008, they had 800 billiondollars in foreign debt.
(12:57):
That money was just lent toaustralians to buy houses.
So you just inflated the priceof a house.
But here's the thing it wasn'ttied to someone's earning
capacity or savings capacity theolder generation we just
inflated the bubble.
So if you've got a couple ofboys and you're not paying five
bucks a week to rake the lawnand they go to a comic book shop
, the most they can pay is $5because that's all they've got.
(13:20):
But if you turn around and lentthem 20 that comic book, they
could pay 25 for the same comicbook.
The comic book doesn't isn'tworth any more or less.
Uh, but they've now got, youknow, four weeks of debt rather
than no debt and that's whatkeating did I mean in the old
days.
so for your listeners, I used towork at the bank of queensland.
When I was there I was atreasury accountant there.
(13:40):
For every million dollars we'dlend out to a house, only
$400,000 came from Australia the$600,000,.
We'd go and tap the foreigncapital markets the other
$600,000.
So that was as a result of whatKeating did in 1985.
So if he hadn't have done whathe'd done, we would have only
been able to lend the $400,000.
But that $400,000 comes fromolder generation savings.
(14:04):
So what we were doing, what usedto happen before Keating just
let go of capital controls, wasthat the price of a house was
tied to someone's, tied to oursavings, and it was a virtuous
cycle whereby the older peoplewould put their money in a term
deposit the bank had landed onto the younger generation.
The younger generation pays theinterest back to the bank, who
pays it back to the oldest oldergeneration, so that the money
(14:26):
stayed within the over half themoney that you pay on interest
on your house is going offshore,tax-free, I might add, because
there's a section in the Tax Actthat says foreign banks don't
have to pay tax on interest theyearn here.
So we are just bleeding moneyoffshore.
And it's similar to therenewable industry, right?
Yeah, 70%.
(14:46):
So we are now shutting down ourlocally sourced coal.
We won't touch uranium, so wewon't touch nuclear.
We've sold most of our gasreserves offshore, you know it
fine and and we now importforeign-made renewables that are
70% owned by foreigners.
So what's your?
Speaker 2 (15:01):
view on all the like.
Australia has so much resource,what like.
What's your view on what'sgoing to happen in the future?
Like?
I reckon we're going to get toa point where we're going to
have to start buying the shipback and it's going to cost us
more money.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Well, we are buying it back and we're going to have
to start buying the ship backand it's going to cost us more
money.
Well, we are buying it back.
I mean, we're at the point nowwhere we've got to buy gas back
because the state, you know,queensland, and Well, queensland
has got a gas reservationpolicy now, but we sold a lot of
the gas offshore without any,because back when you know, we
just relied on coal.
But of course now we're notbuilding any more coal-powered
fire stations, right, coal-firedpower stations.
(15:32):
So, and the other thing is thatNew South Wales and Victoria
excuse me have a moratorium ondrilling for gas onshore, so
we're no longer drilling for gasonshore either.
So Queensland's exporting mostof what they, you know, get out
of the ground.
We do.
I think we do have a recentlyCenex or someone had to do a gas
(15:54):
reservation policy.
So we, we are doing that now,but we we do it in manufacturing
as well.
I mean, that was another 1985decision, the button plan that
allowed manufacturing.
We lifted tariffs and said wecan't compete anymore in
manufacturing, so we're justgonna let it go.
Well, the it wasn't that we'dlet it go offshore, we just got
rid of all tariffs.
And the problem is, it's goodthat we do buy cheaper goods and
(16:15):
services, but that's only goodprovided we're paying our own
way.
So if we eventually and this isthe problem you get to the
point whereby eventually, ifyou're not producing the goods
and services that you'reimporting and you're not making
something here to pay for it,you're borrowing the stuff to
pay for it.
So we're going backwards thatway.
So what's worse is if weproduce it ourselves and buy it
(16:39):
ourselves, yet again we go backto that bank situation where at
least keeping the money in ourcountry, but when we go, well,
we're not going to buildanything anymore and suddenly we
stop generating income onourselves, but we're still
importing goods.
The money we do make out of themining industry, for example,
just goes back offshore becausewe spend it all offshore.
We're not reinvesting it intoour own country or further.
(17:01):
And it's not just a financialtransaction, it's also a
skills-based transaction.
So we've de-skilled our countrynow and now we have to rely on
immigrants to come in and do thejobs and a lot of those skills
we've de-skilled our country nowand now we have to rely on
immigrants to come in and do thejobs.
And you know, and a lot ofthose skills we've gotten from
people you know whereby.
So I was born in 1970, mysister was born in 1964.
(17:22):
When she graduated in 1981, soshe started high school in 77,
she started with four classes inChinchilla.
By the time she finished in1981, in grade 12, she was half
a class because all the men leftschool in grade 9, 10, 11, 12
to get apprenticeships, whereastoday most not all, but the
majority of students go on andget down to university, they get
(17:43):
a degree and then they come outand they're financial planners
or something.
They're being financialengineers instead of mechanical
engineers or civil engineers.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So we're not actually maintaining those skills that
will enable us to add value herein this country mate, I think
the skills thing I'm not I'm notsure a hundred like on other
parts of australia, but here insoutheast queensland, like I've
I've run a quite successfulbuilding business and the um
like and I have a trainingbusiness that helps hundreds of
(18:11):
bills across australia, newzealand, and single builder I
know.
Every trade I know is screaming.
Every single person I know inthe industry at the moment could
easily employ another one toprobably three people.
Yeah, and we can't get them.
Apprentices are like we used toput an ad out for an apprentice
and you'd get a couple of dozenreferences.
Now we put one out and you'relucky to get one, and nine out
(18:34):
of ten the only way they comethrough is if a friend of a
friend or uh, something likethat.
But like we're, we're in thatscenario now.
Like we physically cannot keepup, like every builder I know
cannot keep up with the amountof work they've got on um.
I know a few bigger buildersthat do a lot of volume work
like two, three hundred homes ayear.
Yeah, they are almost at standstills because they can't.
(18:54):
There's no land gettingreleased so they've actually got
no land to build houses thatthey're selling on.
Yeah, and yet we haven't evenstarted building all this
infrastructure for the olympicsyet.
Yeah, and they're trying to telllike I hit, see all these
things that they're trying tosay that we're going to need an
extra 38 000 workers each yearfor the next 10 years to be able
to keep up with the number ofhouses we need and stuff.
I don't know where they'recoming from.
(19:16):
We haven't got them now.
So where are they all of asudden going to appear from?
Yeah, that's right, and I thinkyou mentioned it before we
started recording.
Like a lot of immigrants thatcome in are skilled but they
don't necessarily make it to us,like they um, like I hear lots
of stories that they end up onthese big um like infrastructure
(19:39):
projects and things and that'sno good for us yeah, well,
that's a good point, becausethis is where renewables bring
renewables back into it.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
So there's about 10 000.
So we've got half a millionimmigrants.
That's come back down to 380,but it wasn't that long ago.
We had half a million for the12-month period.
Of that, only 10,000 came in onthe 482 visa, which I'm led to
believe is a building visa.
But the point is, the number ofhouses built in Australia fell,
despite the fact forget relativepercentages and everything
(20:08):
despite the fact we hadsupposedly 10,000 more tradies
in the country.
So the question is why is thenumber of new houses falling?
Now there's obviously issueslike builders going bankrupt and
that, but I'm hearing too thata lot of these people coming in
are building, going on theserenewables projects.
So they're actually that's partof the reason why we've
actually got a housing crisis aswell is that a lot of tradies
(20:30):
are actually going on thesebuilding on renewable projects.
So I've heard of 300 Filipinoscoming in and building the
transmission line between SouthAustralia and New South Wales
around Wagga area.
So they're now pulling thetrades.
As you say, we've got a dearthof trades because not as many
people do an apprenticeshipanymore anyway, but the guys
that are coming in aren'tactually coming in building
(20:50):
houses.
They're building transmissionlines, wind turbines, solar
farms or engaged in lithiummining or something like that.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
And we can't compete, mate.
I actually know a couple ofSparkies, a couple of Concreys,
that are working on the I thinkit's a big wind farm out near
Warwick now and so the moneythey get out there is double to
triple what they get working inthe building industry building
homes.
Yeah, yeah, as long as they keeppushing to do that work, people
are always going to chase thebigger money and that's just
(21:18):
going to put more pressure on uswhich is going to drive the
cost of housing up, not down.
We've actually seen a big spikein.
We employ our own team, sowe've got quite a large team of
carpenters.
We do a lot of work ourselvesand we've seen a lot of pressure
in the last six months on ushaving to keep, uh, putting our
wages up for our team becauseotherwise they just keep, we
(21:39):
keep losing them.
Yeah, um, and like when I tellthe homeowners like we got a
homeowner at the moment that's,um, quite a large businessman
and he, he's in the know and hewants, he likes knowing things,
we have some good conversationsand when I tell, tell him the
rates and what we're payingcarpenters, concreters,
electricians he just falls over,yeah.
(22:01):
Like how is that sustainable?
Yeah, I'm like, well, it's not.
But if people want houses builtand I need to employ them and
I've got to get the work done,that's what.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I've got to pay.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, which is, yeah, pushingthe price of housing up.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah, and so that's the thing.
We do need to change the mix.
As I mentioned before, withsuperannuation, $30 billion
worth of fees there, there's alot of people working in the
finance industry that don't needto be working in the finance
industry.
We need to strip that right out.
Get rid of poker machines.
I read an article a couple ofyears ago.
There's something like 200,000people in New South Wales work
(22:35):
in the poker machine industry.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
You know when.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
I grew up in Queensland we didn't have poker
machines.
I'm not against poker machinesin casinos you have a few
casinos and whatever but youdon't need them in every
sporting club or every pub,right?
But yet again you've got thesepeople sitting there.
Then none of this stuff's valueadd.
Child care industry it's notvalue add, you know.
Get grandma to look after thekids with your family and
friends.
You know it's academia, so manymore people are going to
(22:59):
university and so you've gotyou're not just training more
people to do those, you know,becoming economists and those
sort of soft skill jobs thataren't adding value.
You're taking another fouryears of their life working
career.
So you know, on average, youmight work.
So, let's say, 40 years.
You graduate at 18 and let'ssay, take a couple of years off,
backpack and whatever.
But you know, on average let'sassume it's a 40-year working
(23:21):
life If you're wasting anotherfour years at university, that's
10% off your working career.
So you know these are thethings where people are falling
behind.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, it's unbelievable, it.
I get frustrated when I see, um, like we keep coming back to
the renewable stuff, but likepower has gone up, like
everyone's power bills arecosting more.
But as a builder, like it makesmy blood boil, like when I
think back.
Like uh, 26, yeah, 20 years ago, when I was an apprentice 26,
24 years ago, yeah, and likehouses were so much more simple,
(23:55):
like we didn't everyone justhad what they needed.
It like might have been adouble garage, might have had
two bathrooms or maybe abathroom in an ensuite.
Every room had one sort ofbaton holder in the middle.
Like the fittings and thefixtures were very basic, yeah,
and, but everyone loved it.
Everyone loved their homes andeveryone enjoyed it, whereas now
, like we build homes and it'sit's nothing.
(24:15):
To have over 100 downlights in ahouse, yeah, right, and so it's
.
It frustrates me when I seepeople complaining about the
cost of their power bills.
Yet everyone wants the entirehouse air-conditioned, everyone
wants three bedrooms, threegarages, multi-purpose rooms,
they all want two ovens, two orthree ovens and all the flash
shit in the kitchen, but thenjust something like as simple as
(24:38):
lighting, yeah, like if you'vegot four down lights in every
bedroom.
Like, even though they're ledsand they're supposedly using
less power, like you've gotthree to four times the amount
of lights that we had in housesonly 15, 20 years ago.
Yeah right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
So I don't know if politicians dig this deep into
things, but well, I mean I, I, Iam aware I know there's there's
more, higher standards nowaround the type of glass you use
insulation.
I'm so led to believe there'snow standards for ndis whereby
you've got to have a wheelchairaccess.
Is that correct?
You've got to have wheelchairaccess in every house.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
All houses now have to be built for future, so wider
doorways, less thresholdsinside and outside, so
wheelchair-friendly bathrooms.
So, depending on the type ofjob and whether it's renovation,
new build or whatever, butyou're supposed to have at least
one accessible bathroom.
So I don't think that's a badthing, but I do think it's a
(25:36):
little bit like on a new build.
It doesn't add any cost if it'sthought about at the beginning,
but where it does add cost is,uh, like renovations and things,
if these things are gettingadded along the way and they
become variations.
But, um, I don't think that's abad thing.
The glass thing is thing is afrustrating one, right, Because
even with the like, every househas to have an energy efficiency
(25:57):
test done on it.
Yeah, and if you just go withthe tick and flick model,
they're not getting the bestoutcome and nine times out of
ten they're assessing the entirehouse as one block.
Yeah, whereas if you pay andthat energy efficiency test
might cost four to six hundreddollars, it's just a tick and
flick type thing, but it makesit ticks all the boxes and you
(26:18):
get your house approved.
Yeah, whereas if you spend twoto three thousand dollars and
you get an actual like you talkabout with data and science.
You get someone to do an energyefficiency test that actually
takes into account north, south,east, west, sun west, sun up,
sun down, overhang shading, allthose types of things.
You might end up with double ortriple glazing windows on one
(26:39):
side of the house and the restof the house might be able to go
back to single glazing and allthose types of things, whereas
the tick and flick box thateveryone does just puts the same
envelope over the entire house,which is adding cost as well,
because we find we talk ourclients into going with the
better energy efficiency testsand we're actually finding that
we're taking things out of thehouse, yeah, that they're not
needed.
So there's a lot of efficientlike our industry.
(27:02):
There is so much room forimprovement, yeah, and so many
areas that can get moreefficient, which I believe will
bring the cost of housing down,yeah.
It's just that I don't know howyou get involved in these
discussions.
I do believe, when it comes tothe building industry, we need
to get politicians or decisionmakers on the ground, like
having roundtable discussionswith people that are doing this
(27:24):
stuff every single day, becausethere are so many ways that we
can reduce cost in our buildingindustry.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and look, I know it's a state
government that generally tendsto make the laws, but it's an
issue federally as well, becausethe cost of housing is.
We need to build a lot more newhouses very fast to deal with
the immigrants that have alreadycome in, notwithstanding.
We should lower the immigrationrate.
But, yeah, it's a real issueand I'm hearing from builders a
(27:52):
lot and it's one of these issuesthat, as you become a little
bit more known amongst thecommunity I'm getting.
I'm hearing from more and morebuilders about these particular
issues and the cost of building,so that's a real concern and it
is like it's across the um.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
It's, there's, there's not just one thing.
Like so many things affect ourindustry.
Like we, we're very big on dataand tracking data and, like um,
through covid, yes, there was alot of price increases and
materials and stuff went throughthe roof, but no one was
talking about, like transportand deliveries and the cost of
diesel and stuff.
And yeah, like we, we went onan average, like most of I
(28:27):
shouldn't say average, becausemost of the jobs we do are more
higher end.
But, um, like we went from, say, an average delivery.
Uh, most of our deliveries usedto be between, say, 110 and 160
dollars and it really didn'tmatter what it was.
I was just working on volume,yeah, and then by the end of
covid, like it was nothing, forthat same 110 dollar delivery
(28:47):
was all of a sudden four to sixhundred dollars.
Like we're paying if we want tobring a pallet of tiles up from
from melbourne.
Yeah, those deliveries wentfrom sort of six or seven
hundred dollars, some of them upto three thousand dollars.
Yeah, right, and so there's allthese costs.
Obviously, that all get passedon.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, um, but in the building industry there seems to
be there's a lot of people allgrabbing a piece of the pie um,
well, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, Imean there's a lot of people,
that's a lot of industries, butjust as a, can I just start.
So how long does it take you tobuild a house from scratch, so
just a standard house?
How long would it take you tobuild a standard house and how
many people would it takebuilders would it take to do
(29:26):
that?
Assuming so, and I'll splitthat into two parts.
One, so, and I'll split thatinto two parts One, getting all
the approvals and regulationsfrom the council.
Step one, so you know you'reready to start building.
And then step two, to actuallybuild.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
If you're talking like, if you talk just an
average, say, four-bedroom, justan average family home, from
the client choosing the builder,the design, getting all the
approvals, like that approvaldesign phase can take anywhere
from three to six months, yeah,right.
And then if it's a, if it's abuild efficiently, you'll build
it in six months.
But, um, and to build the house, by the time you add up all the
(30:04):
different tray, like if we'rejust talking to people on site
physically building the house,yeah, um, on most of our jobs,
mate, there would be close toprobably 80 to 100 people on
each home.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Wow Over that six, but not consecutively for six
months.
That's including plumbers thatmight come in for a couple of
weeks and then yeah electricians.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
So there'll be days where there's eight to 12, 14
people on site.
Jeez, if you're at a roughingstage and you've got the
plumbers, the sparkies, the aircon, it's easy to have 10 to 12
people on a site, yeah right.
But if you add up across thejob, all the trades that are
involved to build a house, it'sprobably in excess of 100 people
(30:44):
.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Yeah, right, okay.
And so what's your?
Yet again, your bog standardfour bedroom, two car garage.
What's the cost now?
Could you get built for lessthan half a million?
Speaker 2 (30:54):
You can still build houses for less than half a
million, but you won't get a lotof house, right?
So one of my other big thingswhich I'd love to talk to you
more about at some point I'mreally pushing for builders to
be separated.
So at the moment, builders arejust all thrown in the one one
(31:16):
hat, right?
So whether you're a one-manband that builds one or two jobs
a year, whether you're abuilder that maybe has a team of
15 to 20 blokes turns over 10million dollars, whether you're
a residential volume builder,whether you're a resi builder
that does multi-rise, whetheryou're a tier one that does
high-rise commercial, like,we're all in the one box.
Yeah, and um, I believe thatvolume builders or maybe I think
(31:40):
it should be, say, um 20million, any builder that turns
out more than 20 million shouldgo and play in the big field.
Yeah, and all of our smallerbuilders that are more custom
builders, family run businessesand things.
We need to be separated.
Yeah, Because we all at themoment, we all have to deal with
the exact same rules,regulations and again, you want
(32:00):
to talk about the cost ofhousing.
If we like, I'll put my hand up.
We do not comply witheverything we have to do and if
we tried to, it would probablyadd another 15% to 20% to the
cost of our builds.
If we were to comply witheverything, we would have
traffic control on most of ourjobs every single day.
One day of traffic control on ajob site is $2,000 to $2,500.
(32:23):
You add that up over asix-month period, it's a lot of
money.
And so Work Like a Thousand.
Safety says that any time wehave a concrete pump, a concrete
truck, a crane, a delivery,we're supposed to have traffic
control on site.
Yeah, right, we don't do that.
We do it in certain situations,if it's near a school or main
(32:44):
road or whatever.
Yeah, but there is no way inthe world that I can afford to
do that and there's no way inthe world my clients would pay
to do that.
Yeah.
And then you've got all thesafety stuff that we're like we.
I believe we run a pretty tightship.
Like we, our employees arenumber one.
We want everyone to go home.
Safety, and we do go out of ourway to make sure they're safe.
Yeah, but again, I'll put myhand up we, we definitely
(33:05):
there's things that we do in ourjob sites that aren't meeting
the rules.
Yeah, um, I'm old school.
I think there's a lot of commonsense play on in my business.
Yep, I also believe that a lotof safety has gone overboard and
it's actually causing moreaccidents.
Yeah, like when I wasapprentice mate, like you, you
walked around the top plate of athree-story building and you
(33:25):
just knew you had to.
You had to be safe, you had tothink about what you're doing,
you had to be organized, you hadto make sure you had someone
working with you, whereas noweveryone just expects there to
always be a handrail, always bea platform that they, if they
fall, they're going to land on.
Like, yeah, um, so again, Icould bang on all day about this
stuff yeah, so I plan for everycontingency.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
It's like the wheelchair access in every house
, like you shouldn't have tobuild one unless you actually
decide to buy a house and you'rein a wheelchair.
There's not 20 million peoplein this country that's going to
need a wheelchair, so why buildhouses for 20 million people
with the potential that they mayhave a wheelchair?
But that's what they do, right?
They're always trying to suit,and this is not just in the
(34:07):
building industry.
This is the problem withbureaucracy when it gets out of
control, right, it's a hammerlooking for the nail.
So this is the problem withbureaucracy when it gets out of
control, right, it's a hammerlooking for the nail.
Yeah, so of course that youknow they go into work every
week.
We've got.
You know they create a rulelast week and they've done that.
Now they've got to find anotherrule, and that one that one's
just a classic example.
You know it's um, can't imaginehow much extra that costs I got
a call.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
There's a new um, some guys up here in sunshine
coast have started.
It's called the Good Builder,it's like a media type company
and they're putting out goodnews articles about the industry
and it's.
I think it's fantastic andthey're getting good results.
But they rang me up around Ithink it was around January or
something.
There was a new policy thatcome out of about.
(34:51):
There was some grant that Iwanted to give out to
apprentices yeah, and they rangme up to see what my thoughts
were on it and it was supposedto be aimed at trying to.
They've done some stats and Ithink it's come up that a lot of
people are leaving theirapprenticeship by the time they
finish their second year.
Yeah, and so they.
I forget the name of the grant,but they're trying to bring this
(35:12):
grant in to encourage peoplewith dollars to hang around and
finish their apprenticeship.
And they asked me what myopinion was and I was like, well
, number one, it shouldn't justbe given to them.
Because, yeah, like we reallystruggle with apprentices, like
we can have an apprentice, theychange it all, like in the old
days we used to have to givethem the tool ounce and nine
(35:33):
times out of ten bosses would goand meet them at the tool shop.
We'd load them up witheverything they needed and we'd
pay for it and all that sort ofstuff.
But now you're seeingapprentices get to the end of
their time and they've stillonly got a nail bag and a hammer
.
They haven't spent money onwhat they the rest of the team
(35:54):
on site, because they're usingall their gear, yeah, and so I
don't know.
I piped up and I said, well, thebest thing you could do would
be to do a deal with theemployer that they can supply
them the gear they need to beable to do their job adequately.
Or I said, even better, doadditional training for them,
because a really bad thing inthe building industry and and
this is why I'm so passionateand why I have my training
(36:15):
business now because I've doneall the hard yards, I've been
through the shit To get yourbuilder's license you only have
to do a three-day businesscourse and so you can be.
There's a lot of.
There's towns of incrediblebuilders and tradies out there
that can build an incredibleproduct, but they don't know how
to run a business.
And that was me, yeah, and so Ifeel like I'm not sure if
(36:37):
you're in this part of it, butpoliticians a lot of the time
are throwing money at ourindustry to encourage people to
get into it, but the people thatare in it don't know how to run
businesses effectively orefficiently.
Yeah, they don't understandtheir data, their numbers and
all that type of thing.
And that was me Like I was inthat cycle for 10, 12 years,
nearly went bankrupt three timesbefore I woke up to myself.
(37:00):
And it's only from spending ashitload of time, money and
energy on personal developmentand learning more that I'm
addicted to it.
Now I just want to know more.
Yeah, but again, even in thatside of things, there are so
many areas that the governmentcould help out to add efficiency
.
That again would help reducethe cost of housing.
Yeah, it's, I don't know.
(37:22):
I could talk your ear off allday about it.
Yeah, mate, can we go back alittle bit just before we wrap
it up to like how did you getinto politics?
Because you're a verypassionate person and I'm pretty
blown away by your knowledge.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Look, it's a long story.
Well, I say it's a long story,I guess it's a story of my life.
So I'll just start with thebeginning.
Born in Chinchilla 1970.
Went to high school inChinchilla before finishing a
tournament for two years, got aBachelor of Commerce at UQ, went
back to Dalby for three years,then went overseas for what I
(37:56):
thought was two years, came andended up spending seven years
overseas.
So from the age of 23 to 30, Iwas overseas, had a ball over
there, came back and worked inBrisbane for six years with the
Bank of Queensland and when Iwas there I actually started off
studying biochemistry, hence myinterest in the biochemistry,
the mRNA vaccine.
But then the bank said to me ifyou're going to study, you got
(38:18):
to study finance.
So and that just happened tocoincide when I was given the
role of treasury accountant atthe BOQ.
So from there I got a master'sapplied finance and then went to
Sydney where I worked forWestfield and and they Bank of
Queensland had about fivesubsidiaries, westfield had
about 800.
So I was fascinated by this.
So I went, did a master of taxlaw down there.
So it was when I was doing mymaster's of tax law at Sydney
(38:41):
University one night a lecture.
They were talking about thisthing called the public offer
test, and what it said was wasthat if you issued a bond in the
primary market, you wouldn'thave to pay withholding tax.
Now, the average Joe Boyle onthe street would not have a clue
what that means, right?
But what it meant was was thatthe only people that issued
bonds in the primary market areeither big banks or big
(39:02):
companies, right, and the sortof people that pay withholding
tax are foreigners.
So I knew straight away thatthat meant that foreign
companies don't have to pay taxon the interest that we pay them
.
So I'm thinking my mum wasstill alive.
Then I'm thinking, well, hangon, mum pays tax on her interest
.
We all pay tax on our income,but foreigners don't have to pay
tax on income they earn here.
And that just really put abloody bee up my backside.
(39:26):
So anyway, long story short, asI looked into it further,
throughout that whole masters oftax law, the entire tax act, as
we talked about earlier, therenewables industry, you know
monetary policy.
It favoured foreign investorsover domestic investors.
So it's very hard to competewith a foreign company if you're
an Australian company.
If the foreign company is onlypaying half the rate of taxes,
(39:47):
you are yeah Right, because theycan charge less, right?
So I guess that was when Ithought I'm going to have to do
something about this.
And now I lived in North Sydney,so that was in Joe Hockey, he
was the member for North Sydney.
So I joined the Liberal Partyand, you know, over a couple of
years got to know him Well, notknow him, know him but you know,
(40:08):
had the opportunity to speakabout it to him and when I was
trying to explain it to him itjust went straight over his head
, you know.
And I just realised, well, god,this is a shadow treasurer and
he doesn't get it.
And I realised I can add valuehere in running for politics.
Anyway, long story short, andit wasn't just that, it's, it's
the entire, like the tax act isjust full of loopholes.
(40:31):
It's so bad.
But so when we came back, wehad our first son in Brisbane,
and then my wife lives justclose to here, actually, or grew
up close to here.
So we came back to Brisbane,brisbane, and my wife's former
employer wanted her to stay,keep working, and I was like
that's fine, I'll stay home,look after the young boys.
I loved bringing up the kids Istill do and then I thought,
(40:53):
well, I'll do something, I'llhave a crack for politics while
I stay at home and look afterthe boys.
So I spent about three yearswithin the Liberal Party just
constantly going to every eventto try and get pre-selected for
the Senate.
Long story short, I got did getpre-selected for the Senate and
then I've tried to use my techknowledge you know my knowledge
in monetary policy and taxbecause I've learned a lot to
(41:16):
the Bank of Queensland.
This probably won't mean much toyour listeners, but I brought
in this accounting standardcalled IAS 39, which had to
bring all the derivatives on thebalance sheet.
So when I said before aboutPaul Keating in 1985 opened up
the capital markets and let allthis foreign debt in domestic
banks borrow US dollar bonds.
The bonds are denominated in USdollars, so you have to switch
(41:38):
them out into Aussie.
So that means you're going totake out cross currency swaps
and then the bonds are fixed.
So then you've got to swap themback into variable, because
most home loans in Australia arevariable.
Very few people fix.
Some do about 20, 30% of themarket fixes.
So you've got all these riskscross currency swaps risks,
interest rates swap risks, allthis stuff.
So we had to bring all thosederivatives.
(41:58):
So I understand capital marketsand monetary policy as well.
Um, so I guess that's that's my.
You know, if I don't get backin, that's going to be the real
frustration, because no one down.
It's like you're saying aboutthe building industry, right,
unless you've come from thatindustry and you've obviously
spent 25 years in it.
You know, sounds like you knowit very, very well.
Um, well, that's how I feelabout tax and monetary policy.
(42:19):
Like I understand it and,literally, with the exception of
one or two people, no one elseunderstands it, and the shame
about it is is that we arebleeding billions of dollars a
year um letting money gooffshore.
I'll give you one example likein 2022, pfizer made 1.4 billion
dollars in sales here on thevaccine right in australia.
Yeah, yep, they transferred abillion dollars offshore to
(42:42):
Ireland in royalty fees.
Now Ireland didn't manufacturethose vaccines, right.
But here's the thing they got abillion dollar tax deduction
here, so they saved paying $300million in company tax.
Now there's a withholding taxrate on royalties paid to
Ireland of 10 cents, so we got$100 million of that back.
So we lost $200 million.
Ireland, because it has acompany tax rate of 12 and a
(43:03):
half cents, picked up 125million bucks, and pfizer was 75
million bucks better off fordoing a deal for just a couple
of book entries.
Right now.
That's the sort of stuff thatgrinds my gears because we are
encouraging profits to gooffshore.
And you know, if that wasn't somuch big farmer, we don't have
a lot of big farmer here here.
But similar with BHP and Rioand Fortescue Metal.
(43:27):
About a decade ago they'd setup marketing hubs in Singapore
and they were paying Singaporethese massive charges for
marketing because Singapore hada company tax rate of $0.10.
Now Singapore doesn't know athing about marketing iron ore.
They don't have iron ore inSingapore.
But there's all these structures, and it's not just.
You'll often hear a lot of thepeople on the left side of
(43:47):
politics talk about how we'rebeing ripped off with our gas
and we're letting it all gooffshore.
It's not just gas, it's ourentire economy.
We are bleeding money, ourearnings offshore, and then we
borrow the money and if you knowwhat a balance sheet looks like
, you've got an asset over hereand then you've got debt and
equity.
We're paying offshore all thisinterest, our earnings offshore.
What we should be keeping isequity from the profit and loss
(44:09):
statement and then we borrow itback as debt and then we pay
interest on that, which thengoes offshore.
No tax on that either.
I mean, we allow foreigners tobuy water rights in this country
but get a load of this.
They don't have to pay capitalgains tax on those water rights,
because there's a section inthe tax act that says if a
foreigner owns a non-real asset,ie something that's not
tangible, uh, you don't have topay tax on it.
(44:32):
Like, like, you can't make thisstuff up.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
So um, and obviously all this is what's driving our
tax up?
Oh, absolutely, because we'vegot to cover all the you've got
to cover it.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
You know the share of income tax is a percentage of
the budget.
Since when GST was brought init's gone from $0.45 to $0.55.
You know, and yet again thatwas one of our policies we want
to lift the tax rate thresholdto $40,000 because our view is
if you get out of bed and putyour nose to the grindstone you
shouldn't pay.
There's probably more to behonest with you, but you know
(45:01):
it's like we tax low-incomeearners.
You know, three and a halfgrand on $40,000, plus take five
grand off them for super andthey're back sort of below the
poverty line again.
And yet we'll let foreigners.
You know.
And they haven't.
Yet again, when I've asked themabout Treasury, about this and
estimates, they've gone.
All you know I asked themactually this bloke volunteered
it.
Actually I didn't ask thisquestion specifically, so I
(45:22):
think he knew where I was comingfrom.
They haven't updated the taxtreaty with Ireland since 1983,
right, ireland's gone into theEU in 2000.
They've lowered their companytax rate and the ATO does
nothing about the big end oftown.
But they'll go after smallbusiness, chasing them up on
little amounts of GST and, youknow, really drilling our little
guys while the big end of townand foreign-owned big end of
(45:45):
town just gets away with it andthat's so.
That's sort of you know whatdrives me and why I ran for
politics.
But look, the big sort of whydid I run for politics is I
wanted to make sure our childrenget the same opportunities our
forefathers gave to us.
Yeah, and we owe it, you know,to our children, you know, and
(46:05):
to our forefathers who gave us,you know, all of this wealth and
built this country up fromnothing to make sure that we
pass some sort of form of wealthonto our children.
And we haven't.
I mean, you know, the last 30years we let the foreign debt in
, we've let our manufacturing gooffshore, we've lost our skill
base, we've privatised ourinfrastructure.
Foreigners own that again, ifnot foreigners.
You know super funds that youcan't elect who you know, if you
ever I mean with your superfund, you never get to elect who
(46:27):
runs, controls your money, youknow.
Like that's just absurd, right?
Um, so you've got all these yesmen in the ivory palaces of
sydney and melbourne controllingthree trillion dollars of our
money.
You know, um, just unreal, it'sunbelievable yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Well, mate, look, I really hope you keep your
passion going and you keep doingsomething, um, and yeah, I just
think it's great to see peoplelike yourself.
That, uh, I always remember,like growing up and seeing my
parents and my grandparents,like, um, being passionate, like
they all literally had afavorite politician.
They loved them, yeah, but theywould write they'd come
(47:02):
election time and they'd beraving about them, yeah, and
I've never felt that until I'mseeing you and like every time I
see one of your posts, you cantell that you're the real deal,
you're passionate, you you're um, and I think it's fantastic.
I think if we had morepoliticians like yourself,
australia would be a lot betteroff.
So, yeah, thanks to one, Iappreciate that.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Keep doing what you're doing, man?
Yeah well, I'm probably goingto be out of a job in a couple
of months, once my term finishes.
But, anyway, I'll stay on theedges for a while and you know
we'll see what happens.
But yeah, it's sort of hard tolet it go.
Look, I mean, you know where Ilive, so I could quite happily
retire from that point of view.
But you know, the problem iswhat grinds my gears.
(47:41):
You know, um, and I know thatthe, the current lot, you know
I'll say and not and I'm nottaking sides here the whole lot
of them just don't have thesolutions.
You know, I mean, it's just apunch and duty show down there
and I get politics.
You don't have a bit of that,but it's all of it.
And that's the problem.
No one in this last election wasthe perfect example.
No one's dealing with thosestructural issues to turn our
(48:02):
country around and I just fearfor our children.
They're being swamped byimmigration and they're not
getting skilled.
They're sort of being told thatthey have to feel guilty and
all of this cultural warriorstuff that I don't particularly
like.
But at the same time I can'tsit there and say, well, I'm not
going to have my children toldthey should be ashamed of their
country or the heritage, ourheritage as well.
(48:22):
I not saying it's perfect, but,as we know our parents made a
lot of sacrifices to get uswhere we have today 100%, yeah,
and to somehow sort of run downtheir efforts and not sort of
make them.
You know children, so I saidthis in my main speech.
You know that Roman oratorCesaro said the greatest virtue
of all is gratitude.
You know it's the father of allother virtues and and we have
(48:42):
to be grateful for what we'vegot, not not sort of scorn and
tear down.
You know what our parents andforefathers built up yeah, yeah,
100.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
I know you've got to get going, mate, I definitely
could talk to you all day likeyou.
Quickly, you mentioned beforeum, like people getting into
trying to get the next pressrelease or news media that in a
24-hour period or whatever.
And that's something else thatI saw growing up.
Like politicians had long-termplans.
Yeah, it wasn't just anovernight or a three-year sort
(49:12):
of thing.
Like they set things up to makethe country successful for a
long period of time.
Yeah, and now it just seems tobe that it's just they're there
for their little bit of time andthat's all they're focused on
and whatever decisions they make, they don't care.
The flow and effect of that Idon't know if I'm.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
No, that's exactly right, there is.
I mean, actually I was runningthat line.
I was saying we're a party, youknow people first is a party
with vision We've got a plan forthat vision, we have the know
but you've got to have a vision,because if you've got a vision
and you tell people where youwant to be, that gives them hope
and it gives them a sense ofpurpose.
But too often now it's justlike looking at the opinion
polls and see where they'regoing, and the opinion polls is
(49:50):
just a point in time and anopinion poll in itself isn't an
outcome.
You know, it's just a means toan end which tells you who's
going to have the power, but youknow they don't know what to do
with it, and that's the thing.
That's why we need to go backto people with having a vision.
And you know, I mean I'mtalking to a builder here but we
(50:11):
, if I had to summarize what inone word, what we need to start
doing again, it would bebuilding, you know, and building
those big infrastructureprojects that we desperately
need.
You know big dams, big powerstations, big base load power
stations.
You know ports, roads, like youknow, like from where we are.
I would love to build a tunnelfrom here out straight broke
island.
You know ports, roads, like youknow from where we are.
I would love to build a tunnelfrom here out to Stradbroke
Island.
You know they want to know howwe're going to pay for the
Olympics in Brisbane.
There's 100 kilometres ofMoreton Island, stradio Island.
I know some of your listenersprobably get offended by this
(50:32):
but you don't have to knock thewhole place down.
You know just that coastlinethere and a tunnel east to west
across Brisbane we could havelike.
Basically you know coastlinefrom Coolangatta all the way up
to Rainbow Beach, maybe notquite Winoosa.
You know we've got to startutilising it and lifting the
(50:53):
value and all of that sort ofthing.
So you know, yet again, tollstoday, 2 million people in
Brisbane paying five bucks atoll.
100 years of time It'll be.
You know tunnels this is fortunnels only, not main roads
Five million people paying 50bucks.
The government holds on to thatstuff.
That's how you pay.
You know the state governmentholds on to it.
That's how you pay for therecurring costs of schools and
hospitals because as those costsgo up, you naturally, just as
(51:13):
your population grows throughinflation, collecting more money
from your infrastructure assets.
That's what Biocca-Peterson didwhen he opened up the Bowen
coal deposits and the Weeperbauxite deposits.
When you open them up, you'vegot royalties from the coal,
you've got charges from thetrains, you've got charges from
the ports as the ships came into take them offshore.
Three lots of recurring revenueto pay for schools and
hospitals.
Same for the bauxite deposits.
(51:34):
Actually, leo Hilscher, who wasthe treasurer, said you can't
export bauxite, you're going tohave to only export alumina or
aluminium.
So that meant they had to buildup those smelters at Gladstone.
So they created an industrialtown in Gladstone.
I mean we need that type oflong-term vision.
I mean I love you know, I knowit's a bit of an eyesore, but I
love that Riverside Express inBrisbane that was built for $8
million in 1974.
(51:56):
Can you imagine trying to getthrough Brisbane without that
Riverside Express?
Speaker 2 (52:09):
Yet again, where's the vision to do that stuff?
You know wyvernhoe dam, justyou know, um, we, we haven't
built a serious dam in thiscountry in years.
It's just alarming, seriously,we need to get you in on the
weekend like I don't know, uh,like it's just.
It's to me, it's just allcommon sense, yeah I know yeah,
it just.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
But what it is?
It goes back to the franklindam decision in 83.
Put put aside the decisionabout the environment, bob Hawke
went to the high court and saidbasically, so the Franklin Dam
had become a UNESCO WorldHeritage Site.
So Bob Hawke said that if wesign a treaty the federal
government signs a treaty,foreign treaty we can override
the plenary powers of the states.
Now it's the states that buildeverything, right?
(52:39):
So anytime now the stategovernment decides to build
something, the, theEnvironmental Defender's Office
in the state that we fund willgo to the Federal Environmental
Department and say oh, there's arare frog there, you can't
build it.
And then under some treaty,foreign treaty you won't be able
to build a dam because of somerare frog, and so nothing gets
built.
I mean, we saw that last yearin New South Wales with a gold
(53:01):
mine.
A New South Wales miner paid$190 million to get
environmental approvals to builda gold mine.
Then it was disputed by anIndigenous person who the local
Indigenous people claimed wasn'teven from the area, and so they
over-rid the state governmentto disallow the gold miner from
starting that gold mine.
(53:21):
But here's the thing the goldminer paid $190 million in
regulations to the stategovernment doesn't get that
money back yeah, so it's kind oflike you're trying to build a
house, uh, and then you know,for some reason, you know,
someone decides to take adislike, until he goes to the
environmental defender's officeand then stops you from doing it
.
But you've already paid, youknow, 10 million dollars in fees
to the state government.
You're like, well, you're goingto give me my money back now
(53:43):
that you stopped me from doingit.
Yeah, and so we have all ofthis red tape, green tape, blue
tape, you know, between multiplelevels of government.
That just makes it a nightmare.
I mean, I suspect you probablyhave to deal with.
Do you have to deal withfederal laws as well as state
laws as well as council?
Speaker 2 (53:57):
laws Building cards yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Yeah, bloody levels of government for a country the
size 27 million people, I meangreat britain's just under 70
million people.
It's got two levels ofgovernment.
New zealand has two levels ofgovernment.
We've got three levels ofgovernment.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
You know, we just saw over government.
It's insane yeah, mate, I coulddefinitely talk to you all
night.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
We'll wrap it up I know you, I know you gotta get
going, but I really appreciateyou taking some time out to um.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
Come and have a chat and we'll see where things go.
Mate, I really hope you stay init somehow and keep pushing
what you believe in, becausethat's what we need.
We need people that believe inthings and, like you say, have a
foresight of what's going tohappen in the future.
This country really needspeople like yourself.
Yeah, thank you, guys.
Thanks for listening.
Continue to make thisAustralia's number one
(54:41):
construction podcast.
Like, share, subscribe,subscribe all those types of
things and, uh, look, dependingon when this podcast goes out,
if you haven't seen it yet, makesure you come to my event on
friday, the 30th of may.
It will be the greatest eventthe construction industry has
ever seen, because we areputting the real people in front
of you that you need in frontof you to understand the changes
that are coming into the newbuilding code.
Look forward to seeing youthere.
(55:02):
Are you you ready to?
build smarter live better andenjoy life, then head over to
LiveLifeBuildcom.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
forward slash elevate to get started.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
Everything discussed during the Level Up podcast with
me, dwayne Pearce, is basedsolely on my own personal
experiences and thoseexperiences of my guests.
The information, opinions andrecommendations presented in
this podcast are for generalinformation only, and any
reliance on the informationprovided in this podcast is done
at your own risk.
We recommend that you obtainyour own professional advice in
(55:43):
respect to the topics discussedduring this podcast.
I'm hearing from builders a lot and it's one of
these issues that, as you becomea little bit more known amongst
the community, I'm hearing frommore and more builders about
these particular issues and thecost of building.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I do believe, when it comes to the building industry,
we need to get politicians ordecision makers on the ground,
like having round tablediscussions with people that are
doing this stuff every singleday, because there are so many
ways that we can reduce cost inour building industry.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Do?
Do you have to deal withfederal laws as well as state
laws as well as council?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
laws Building cards yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, three bloody levels of government for a
country the size of 27 millionpeople, our industry.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
There is so much room for improvement and so many
areas that can get moreefficient, which I believe will
bring the cost of housing down.
G'day guys, welcome back toanother episode of Level Up.
We are back in the shed todayfor another cracking episode,
(00:54):
and I must say I don't getnervous too often doing a
podcast.
I'm a little bit nervous to bespeaking to the guests we've got
on here today because today wehave our first politician to
have a chat to, and a lot of youguys will know because you
reached out to me and you keptsending me links to posts that
our guest today was posting, andI follow him as well and I'm
very passionate about what hedoes.
(01:14):
So a big warm welcome toSenator Gerard Rennick.
How are you, mate?
Yeah, good thanks, dwayne.
How are you Very well, mate?
I really appreciate you takingsome time out of your busy
schedule to come and have a chat.
You're welcome.
Obviously, we didn't get a realgood result on the weekend, but
I'm sure we'll keep pushing onand see what happens.
Yeah, mate, I love your passion.
(01:36):
You're all data.
I love seeing your videos onsocial media and you're just
facts.
I think that's what we need inpolitics, isn't it?
Yeah, facts.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And I think that's what we need in politics, isn't
it?
Yeah, absolutely.
And we need it in thepoliticians themselves rather
than the bureaucracy or anywhereelse, because the problem with
politics is it's driven byemotion and fear rather than
facts and figures.
And, unfortunately, I thinkAustralia is all the worse off
because of it, because many ofthe colleagues that I used to
work with, or other politiciansthey don't have the skill set to
(02:05):
sit down and analyze data and,as a result of that, they have
to over rely on theirbureaucrats or their staff, many
of whom half their age and havecome through university with no
real life experience themselves.
And we saw that on the weekendwith the Liberal Party, who you
know I can speak from experiencebecause I was inside the, the
parliamentary wing for fiveyears effectively had no vision
for the country.
You know.
(02:26):
They had a few tepid economicpolicies, but nothing of
structural, serious structuralreform, and in the end, people
ended up going back to Albaneseas hard as that is to believe
just because he exuded moreconfidence and he did, do you
know?
He offered some discounts toHECS and some other measures
that were going to make adifference to people in terms of
cost of living.
So yeah, I mean, we really dohave a lack of knowledge crisis,
(02:51):
if you want to call it that,inside the parliamentary wing of
Parliament House.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
What's your opinion, mate?
I see like even in the States,and that we've seen it over the
last probably 10 or so years,but there seems to be a big
influence now in a lot ofelections on young people and
it's it worries me because theythey get sucked in by like one
or two policies that sound greatto them but they don't know the
(03:15):
full behind the scenes or thefull story of it.
But there's all these otherpolicies that actually mean a
lot more and will help thecountry, but they get sucked
into these little ones that andI feel like there's a lot of
politicians out there thatthat's how they get in, because
all these younger voters thatdon't really have a clue really
like what's going on.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Well, look, I think you've been a bit harsh there on
the younger voters.
Look, I mean there's a range ofknowledge, you know, and across
all age groups.
Some younger voters arewell-educated and well, when I
say educated, educated inpolitics, in terms of they know
what the various parties standfor, and others aren't.
I mean, you know, I've hadpeople in their 60s and 70s ask
(03:54):
out a vote and not understandthe difference between a lower
house green card and an upperhouse white card.
You know the difference betweenpreferential voting and
optional preferential and thingslike that.
So I'm very reluctant to makegeneralisations about any
particular.
That's why we call the partyI'll lead people first, because
I don't want to start slicing,you know, the human race up by
(04:15):
various attitudes, age, you know, gender, race, whatever.
I think that's one of the easythings that many of my
colleagues do is that they loveto start the the, the conquer
and divide.
Um, you know things.
So look, uh, you know, and, andlook, the environment's a good
one, right?
I mean, you know we're allworried about carbon dioxide.
(04:35):
You know heating the planet, orsupposedly, uh, but you know we
focus just on carbon dioxidewhilst ignoring the impacts of,
you know mine, lithium mining,rare earth mining.
You know building.
You know lithium mining, rareearth mining.
You know building.
You know wind turbines, orwhatever, and knocking down the
tops of mountain ranges to putup wind turbines and the
consequences on the bird life,et cetera, and the bat life.
You know bats are a very bigpollinator of plants, as you
(04:58):
probably know.
So you're right, like it's veryeasy, it's called framing, as a
matter of fact, and it was whenI lived in New South Wales.
I did a political campaigningcourse and went for nine months,
the first Saturday of everymonth, for nine months, and you
know, the first thing we weretaught about was framing, and
you frame on your strengths, andthen you sort of try not to
(05:18):
talk about the other issues.
And that's what.
Yeah sorry, go on.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I was just going to say I'm very keen to talk to you
about the sustainable stuffbecause I love again how you
speak about all that.
But, like you just said, how isit sustainable when you're
knocking down forests andclearing mountains?
And the infrastructure theyhave to put in to build these
things to start with is justdisgraceful to the environment.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Oh, absolutely.
And this is yet again.
When it comes back to theframing, the alarmists I'll call
them climate alarmists don'tfocus on the damage that you're
doing to the environment, andyet they've got everyone
transfixed at this carbondioxide.
They call it poisoning or atoxin or whatever, but yet
that's part.
The most renewable form ofenergy is photosynthesis,
(06:02):
converting carbon dioxide andwater into sugar and oxygen.
And if you did your biology athigh school, you'd know that, uh
, and yet somehow you knowsomething that you know is
naturally produced.
I think there's 800 billion tonsof carbon dioxide produced, so
that's 8 by 10 to the power of11 um produced, uh, by mother
nature every year.
(06:22):
And mankind produces about 30,35 billion tonnes of it.
So a small sliver, about 4%,wow, yeah, so it's.
You know the Earth's emittingcarbon dioxide all the time,
even without us, even without us, absolutely.
And there's a sink.
So and here's one of the thingsI've picked up in estimates
over the years the biggestcarbon sink on Earth is actually
photosynthesis in the sorryphotoplankton in the ocean.
(06:44):
Uh and um, that's not evenincluded in the net zero model.
So the net zero models are onlybased on land use.
Uh, you know what's what'sabsorbed on the land and what's
emitted on land.
So they ignore the fact thatyou know your biggest carbon
sink is actually offshore in theocean, ie photoplankton.
And it was a good article in theabc just after the bushfires in
(07:04):
2020, where it said there was aphoto plankton bloom in the
southern ocean as a result ofthe bushfires.
All that smoke got blown out tothe southern ocean, ended
settling up, you know, in theocean, and then the photo
plankton bloomed and it's nodifferent to when it rains.
We have your grass grow, youknow.
I don't need to tell you ifyou're living up here.
Uh, you know, it grows, growswhen it rains.
In the summertime, the grassjust grows at a rate of knots.
(07:25):
You know you're mowing everyweekend.
Well, it's the same.
We have natural stabilizers inour earth anyway that will deal
with increased levels of carbondioxide.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
So what's behind them pushing all this renewable
stuff?
Because, like, I don't know,I'm definitely not up to speed
with all of it, but like, frommy little knowledge that I have
and the I guess common sense, tome it just doesn't work Well
look, I'm of the same view.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I mean what's behind it, you know?
I mean one of the things wetalked very early on you're not
allowed to do in the Senate isimpute motive.
So call them saying well,you're trying to, you know,
destroy the planet or, you know,destroy the energy grid, or
something like that.
Look, I don't know.
Well, look, I don't know whatwas behind it initially.
I know what's behind it now isthat a large number of people
(08:10):
are involved in the renewableindustry.
So a lot of people out there,you know and I call them rent
seekers are making a lot ofmoney out of this.
And so you know that's what'sbehind it.
It's just like financialplanning industry now, whereby
you whereby, once upon a time,people, if they had savings,
would pay off their mortgage andthen they'd put money in a bank
account and earn money on theirterm deposit.
(08:31):
Now you're forced to put yourmoney into superannuation.
There's all these rules aroundsuper.
So you've created a whole newbattalion of financial engineers
that, yet again, we don't need.
Prior to 1992, people just wedon't need.
You know, prior to 1992, peoplejust saved for their own
retirement.
If you didn't have enoughassets, you'd go on the pension,
but ultimately you tookresponsibility for your own
(08:53):
savings.
Today we have $3 trillion insuperannuation under management,
just in industry and retailfunds that are managed by other
people that you know in Sydneyand Melbourne, in the ivory
palaces of Sydney and Melbourne,who, basically you know in
Sydney and Melbourne, in theivory palaces of Sydney and
Melbourne, who basically youknow, don't take any
accountability if they lose yourmoney, but they're skimming out
$30 billion a year in fees outof superannuation.
So that's another industrythat's just, you know, come from
(09:15):
nowhere in the last 30 or 40years.
That didn't exist once upon atime.
But you know, good luck tryingto kill it, because when you're
up against 30, $40 billion infees, you know, and this money,
you know, goes to these peopleand then they use it to fight
you back.
It's very hard to, it's goingto be hard industry to.
You know.
Curtail similar to renewables.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
A little bit off-topic, mate, but have you
heard of a book called theCreature from Jekyll Island?
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yeah, I've read it.
Yeah, yeah, I know it very well.
Yeah, yeah, I understand.
Yeah, that's the monetarysystem.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, yeah.
Or just when you're talkingabout how they've set up these
new businesses around super andstuff.
That just takes me straightback to that book and how
everything's had a bit of a oh.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I can give you a whole episode on that book if
you like.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Well, we've only got a limited amount of time, but,
um, I've talked, I've mentionedthat book a few times on the
podcast and a few people reachedout and said, holy shit, like
that was eye-opening.
But, um, it definitely changedthe way.
It probably played a big partin opening up my mind to how I
look at renewable energy andyeah, and super and money and
all that stuff.
But yeah, um, it really doesblow my mind.
But with the like, the peoplethat are, uh, getting behind
this renewable energy and thatsort of thing and think that
(10:30):
it's great, like I don't know,do they overlook all the
clearing of the forest and allthe other stuff that has to go
into to actually be able tobuild that?
Um, those farms and theturbines and all the other
things that are the, all theother things around the planet
that are getting destroyed toproduce that?
I guess.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Absolutely.
They deliberately overlook itbecause it doesn't suit their
narrative.
It's that simple and that's whywe lack ethics.
Australia and many Westerncountries have a real ethical
crisis in their leadership ranks, not just in government but in
private industry and rightacross the board, and we saw
(11:09):
that.
I know we don't want to go here, but we saw that with the COVID
crisis when people were beinginjured by the vaccines.
It doesn't matter what youthink about vaccines, people
were being injured andgaslighted.
And that's probably anotherthing when I went into
government.
The lack of quality assurance Ifyou get it wrong in your
industry, if you get it wrong,you know you can be sued.
(11:30):
Quality assurance, capitalmanagement, quality assurance
are king, right, you have tomaintain safety standards or
you'll be sued.
Even if you're sued and you win, you'll still have your
reputation damaged In politics.
It's not you, it's not you onthe line, you and this is what
what I where I sort of got offthe you know sort of 18 months
(11:51):
into it.
I think you know I had myepiphany there where I just
thought you know, we aredestroying people's lives here
through what we do and there'sthere's no one, there's no
conscience, there's noconscience in politics that goes
you know, know what we're doing.
Is this right?
And that's what really annoysme is that everyone is just
fighting for the here and nowand trying to score that
political point for the 24 hournews cycle, instead of actually
(12:13):
looking down the track andsaying, well, how's this going
to help our children in thefuture?
And that's what we did in the80s.
I mean, I look back now.
You go back to.
You know, the monetary policy.
Keating lifted capital controlsin 1985, and he basically said
we're not going to stop privatebanks in Australia from
borrowing money from offshore.
So yeah, from a financial pointof view, that's similar to an
immigration point of view,whereby the government just said
(12:35):
we're not going to haveimmigration controls.
Now, if the government saidthat, people would be down in
Parliament House with pitchforkssaying you know, this is an
island, you've got to haveimmigration controls.
We just can't have peoplecoming in willy-nilly.
But that's what we did in ourfinancial markets in 1985.
Yeah, and that then you knowthe four major banks at eight
billion dollars in foreign debtin 1985.
By 2008, they had 800 billiondollars in foreign debt.
(12:57):
That money was just lent toaustralians to buy houses.
So you just inflated the priceof a house.
But here's the thing it wasn'ttied to someone's earning
capacity or savings capacity theolder generation we just
inflated the bubble.
So if you've got a couple ofboys and you're not paying five
bucks a week to rake the lawnand they go to a comic book shop
, the most they can pay is $5because that's all they've got.
(13:20):
But if you turn around and lentthem 20 that comic book, they
could pay 25 for the same comicbook.
The comic book doesn't isn'tworth any more or less.
Uh, but they've now got, youknow, four weeks of debt rather
than no debt and that's whatkeating did I mean in the old
days.
so for your listeners, I used towork at the bank of queensland.
When I was there I was atreasury accountant there.
(13:40):
For every million dollars we'dlend out to a house, only
$400,000 came from Australia the$600,000,.
We'd go and tap the foreigncapital markets the other
$600,000.
So that was as a result of whatKeating did in 1985.
So if he hadn't have done whathe'd done, we would have only
been able to lend the $400,000.
But that $400,000 comes fromolder generation savings.
(14:04):
So what we were doing, what usedto happen before Keating just
let go of capital controls, wasthat the price of a house was
tied to someone's, tied to oursavings, and it was a virtuous
cycle whereby the older peoplewould put their money in a term
deposit the bank had landed onto the younger generation.
The younger generation pays theinterest back to the bank, who
pays it back to the oldest oldergeneration, so that the money
(14:26):
stayed within the over half themoney that you pay on interest
on your house is going offshore,tax-free, I might add, because
there's a section in the Tax Actthat says foreign banks don't
have to pay tax on interest theyearn here.
So we are just bleeding moneyoffshore.
And it's similar to therenewable industry, right?
Yeah, 70%.
(14:46):
So we are now shutting down ourlocally sourced coal.
We won't touch uranium, so wewon't touch nuclear.
We've sold most of our gasreserves offshore, you know it
fine and and we now importforeign-made renewables that are
70% owned by foreigners.
So what's your?
Speaker 2 (15:01):
view on all the like.
Australia has so much resource,what like.
What's your view on what'sgoing to happen in the future?
Like?
I reckon we're going to get toa point where we're going to
have to start buying the shipback and it's going to cost us
more money.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Well, we are buying it back and we're going to have
to start buying the ship backand it's going to cost us more
money.
Well, we are buying it back.
I mean, we're at the point nowwhere we've got to buy gas back
because the state, you know,queensland, and Well, queensland
has got a gas reservationpolicy now, but we sold a lot of
the gas offshore without any,because back when you know, we
just relied on coal.
But of course now we're notbuilding any more coal-powered
fire stations, right, coal-firedpower stations.
(15:32):
So, and the other thing is thatNew South Wales and Victoria
excuse me have a moratorium ondrilling for gas onshore, so
we're no longer drilling for gasonshore either.
So Queensland's exporting mostof what they, you know, get out
of the ground.
We do.
I think we do have a recentlyCenex or someone had to do a gas
(15:54):
reservation policy.
So we, we are doing that now,but we we do it in manufacturing
as well.
I mean, that was another 1985decision, the button plan that
allowed manufacturing.
We lifted tariffs and said wecan't compete anymore in
manufacturing, so we're justgonna let it go.
Well, the it wasn't that we'dlet it go offshore, we just got
rid of all tariffs.
And the problem is, it's goodthat we do buy cheaper goods and
(16:15):
services, but that's only goodprovided we're paying our own
way.
So if we eventually and this isthe problem you get to the
point whereby eventually, ifyou're not producing the goods
and services that you'reimporting and you're not making
something here to pay for it,you're borrowing the stuff to
pay for it.
So we're going backwards thatway.
So what's worse is if weproduce it ourselves and buy it
(16:39):
ourselves, yet again we go backto that bank situation where at
least keeping the money in ourcountry, but when we go, well,
we're not going to buildanything anymore and suddenly we
stop generating income onourselves, but we're still
importing goods.
The money we do make out of themining industry, for example,
just goes back offshore becausewe spend it all offshore.
We're not reinvesting it intoour own country or further.
(17:01):
And it's not just a financialtransaction, it's also a
skills-based transaction.
So we've de-skilled our countrynow and now we have to rely on
immigrants to come in and do thejobs and a lot of those skills
we've de-skilled our country nowand now we have to rely on
immigrants to come in and do thejobs.
And you know, and a lot ofthose skills we've gotten from
people you know whereby.
So I was born in 1970, mysister was born in 1964.
(17:22):
When she graduated in 1981, soshe started high school in 77,
she started with four classes inChinchilla.
By the time she finished in1981, in grade 12, she was half
a class because all the men leftschool in grade 9, 10, 11, 12
to get apprenticeships, whereastoday most not all, but the
majority of students go on andget down to university, they get
(17:43):
a degree and then they come outand they're financial planners
or something.
They're being financialengineers instead of mechanical
engineers or civil engineers.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So we're not actually maintaining those skills that
will enable us to add value herein this country mate, I think
the skills thing I'm not I'm notsure a hundred like on other
parts of australia, but here insoutheast queensland, like I've
I've run a quite successfulbuilding business and the um
like and I have a trainingbusiness that helps hundreds of
(18:11):
bills across australia, newzealand, and single builder I
know.
Every trade I know is screaming.
Every single person I know inthe industry at the moment could
easily employ another one toprobably three people.
Yeah, and we can't get them.
Apprentices are like we used toput an ad out for an apprentice
and you'd get a couple of dozenreferences.
Now we put one out and you'relucky to get one, and nine out
(18:34):
of ten the only way they comethrough is if a friend of a
friend or uh, something likethat.
But like we're, we're in thatscenario now.
Like we physically cannot keepup, like every builder I know
cannot keep up with the amountof work they've got on um.
I know a few bigger buildersthat do a lot of volume work
like two, three hundred homes ayear.
Yeah, they are almost at standstills because they can't.
(18:54):
There's no land gettingreleased so they've actually got
no land to build houses thatthey're selling on.
Yeah, and yet we haven't evenstarted building all this
infrastructure for the olympicsyet.
Yeah, and they're trying to telllike I hit, see all these
things that they're trying tosay that we're going to need an
extra 38 000 workers each yearfor the next 10 years to be able
to keep up with the number ofhouses we need and stuff.
I don't know where they'recoming from.
(19:16):
We haven't got them now.
So where are they all of asudden going to appear from?
Yeah, that's right, and I thinkyou mentioned it before we
started recording.
Like a lot of immigrants thatcome in are skilled but they
don't necessarily make it to us,like they um, like I hear lots
of stories that they end up onthese big um like infrastructure
(19:39):
projects and things and that'sno good for us yeah, well,
that's a good point, becausethis is where renewables bring
renewables back into it.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
So there's about 10 000.
So we've got half a millionimmigrants.
That's come back down to 380,but it wasn't that long ago.
We had half a million for the12-month period.
Of that, only 10,000 came in onthe 482 visa, which I'm led to
believe is a building visa.
But the point is, the number ofhouses built in Australia fell,
despite the fact forget relativepercentages and everything
(20:08):
despite the fact we hadsupposedly 10,000 more tradies
in the country.
So the question is why is thenumber of new houses falling?
Now there's obviously issueslike builders going bankrupt and
that, but I'm hearing too thata lot of these people coming in
are building, going on theserenewables projects.
So they're actually that's partof the reason why we've
actually got a housing crisis aswell is that a lot of tradies
(20:30):
are actually going on thesebuilding on renewable projects.
So I've heard of 300 Filipinoscoming in and building the
transmission line between SouthAustralia and New South Wales
around Wagga area.
So they're now pulling thetrades.
As you say, we've got a dearthof trades because not as many
people do an apprenticeshipanymore anyway, but the guys
that are coming in aren'tactually coming in building
(20:50):
houses.
They're building transmissionlines, wind turbines, solar
farms or engaged in lithiummining or something like that.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
And we can't compete, mate.
I actually know a couple ofSparkies, a couple of Concreys,
that are working on the I thinkit's a big wind farm out near
Warwick now and so the moneythey get out there is double to
triple what they get working inthe building industry building
homes.
Yeah, yeah, as long as they keeppushing to do that work, people
are always going to chase thebigger money and that's just
(21:18):
going to put more pressure on uswhich is going to drive the
cost of housing up, not down.
We've actually seen a big spikein.
We employ our own team, sowe've got quite a large team of
carpenters.
We do a lot of work ourselvesand we've seen a lot of pressure
in the last six months on ushaving to keep, uh, putting our
wages up for our team becauseotherwise they just keep, we
(21:39):
keep losing them.
Yeah, um, and like when I tellthe homeowners like we got a
homeowner at the moment that's,um, quite a large businessman
and he, he's in the know and hewants, he likes knowing things,
we have some good conversationsand when I tell, tell him the
rates and what we're payingcarpenters, concreters,
electricians he just falls over,yeah.
(22:01):
Like how is that sustainable?
Yeah, I'm like, well, it's not.
But if people want houses builtand I need to employ them and
I've got to get the work done,that's what.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I've got to pay.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, which is, yeah, pushingthe price of housing up.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah, and so that's the thing.
We do need to change the mix.
As I mentioned before, withsuperannuation, $30 billion
worth of fees there, there's alot of people working in the
finance industry that don't needto be working in the finance
industry.
We need to strip that right out.
Get rid of poker machines.
I read an article a couple ofyears ago.
There's something like 200,000people in New South Wales work
(22:35):
in the poker machine industry.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
You know when.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
I grew up in Queensland we didn't have poker
machines.
I'm not against poker machinesin casinos you have a few
casinos and whatever but youdon't need them in every
sporting club or every pub,right?
But yet again you've got thesepeople sitting there.
Then none of this stuff's valueadd.
Child care industry it's notvalue add, you know.
Get grandma to look after thekids with your family and
friends.
You know it's academia, so manymore people are going to
(22:59):
university and so you've gotyou're not just training more
people to do those, you know,becoming economists and those
sort of soft skill jobs thataren't adding value.
You're taking another fouryears of their life working
career.
So you know, on average, youmight work.
So, let's say, 40 years.
You graduate at 18 and let'ssay, take a couple of years off,
backpack and whatever.
But you know, on average let'sassume it's a 40-year working
(23:21):
life If you're wasting anotherfour years at university, that's
10% off your working career.
So you know these are thethings where people are falling
behind.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, it's unbelievable, it.
I get frustrated when I see, um, like we keep coming back to
the renewable stuff, but likepower has gone up, like
everyone's power bills arecosting more.
But as a builder, like it makesmy blood boil, like when I
think back.
Like uh, 26, yeah, 20 years ago, when I was an apprentice 26,
24 years ago, yeah, and likehouses were so much more simple,
(23:55):
like we didn't everyone justhad what they needed.
It like might have been adouble garage, might have had
two bathrooms or maybe abathroom in an ensuite.
Every room had one sort ofbaton holder in the middle.
Like the fittings and thefixtures were very basic, yeah,
and, but everyone loved it.
Everyone loved their homes andeveryone enjoyed it, whereas now
, like we build homes and it'sit's nothing.
(24:15):
To have over 100 downlights in ahouse, yeah, right, and so it's
.
It frustrates me when I seepeople complaining about the
cost of their power bills.
Yet everyone wants the entirehouse air-conditioned, everyone
wants three bedrooms, threegarages, multi-purpose rooms,
they all want two ovens, two orthree ovens and all the flash
shit in the kitchen, but thenjust something like as simple as
(24:38):
lighting, yeah, like if you'vegot four down lights in every
bedroom.
Like, even though they're ledsand they're supposedly using
less power, like you've gotthree to four times the amount
of lights that we had in housesonly 15, 20 years ago.
Yeah right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
So I don't know if politicians dig this deep into
things, but well, I mean I, I, Iam aware I know there's there's
more, higher standards nowaround the type of glass you use
insulation.
I'm so led to believe there'snow standards for ndis whereby
you've got to have a wheelchairaccess.
Is that correct?
You've got to have wheelchairaccess in every house.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
All houses now have to be built for future, so wider
doorways, less thresholdsinside and outside, so
wheelchair-friendly bathrooms.
So, depending on the type ofjob and whether it's renovation,
new build or whatever, butyou're supposed to have at least
one accessible bathroom.
So I don't think that's a badthing, but I do think it's a
(25:36):
little bit like on a new build.
It doesn't add any cost if it'sthought about at the beginning,
but where it does add cost is,uh, like renovations and things,
if these things are gettingadded along the way and they
become variations.
But, um, I don't think that's abad thing.
The glass thing is thing is afrustrating one, right, Because
even with the like, every househas to have an energy efficiency
(25:57):
test done on it.
Yeah, and if you just go withthe tick and flick model,
they're not getting the bestoutcome and nine times out of
ten they're assessing the entirehouse as one block.
Yeah, whereas if you pay andthat energy efficiency test
might cost four to six hundreddollars, it's just a tick and
flick type thing, but it makesit ticks all the boxes and you
(26:18):
get your house approved.
Yeah, whereas if you spend twoto three thousand dollars and
you get an actual like you talkabout with data and science.
You get someone to do an energyefficiency test that actually
takes into account north, south,east, west, sun west, sun up,
sun down, overhang shading, allthose types of things.
You might end up with double ortriple glazing windows on one
(26:39):
side of the house and the restof the house might be able to go
back to single glazing and allthose types of things, whereas
the tick and flick box thateveryone does just puts the same
envelope over the entire house,which is adding cost as well,
because we find we talk ourclients into going with the
better energy efficiency testsand we're actually finding that
we're taking things out of thehouse, yeah, that they're not
needed.
So there's a lot of efficientlike our industry.
(27:02):
There is so much room forimprovement, yeah, and so many
areas that can get moreefficient, which I believe will
bring the cost of housing down,yeah.
It's just that I don't know howyou get involved in these
discussions.
I do believe, when it comes tothe building industry, we need
to get politicians or decisionmakers on the ground, like
having roundtable discussionswith people that are doing this
(27:24):
stuff every single day, becausethere are so many ways that we
can reduce cost in our buildingindustry.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and look, I know it's a state
government that generally tendsto make the laws, but it's an
issue federally as well, becausethe cost of housing is.
We need to build a lot more newhouses very fast to deal with
the immigrants that have alreadycome in, notwithstanding.
We should lower the immigrationrate.
But, yeah, it's a real issueand I'm hearing from builders a
(27:52):
lot and it's one of these issuesthat, as you become a little
bit more known amongst thecommunity I'm getting.
I'm hearing from more and morebuilders about these particular
issues and the cost of building,so that's a real concern and it
is like it's across the um.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
It's, there's, there's not just one thing.
Like so many things affect ourindustry.
Like we, we're very big on dataand tracking data and, like um,
through covid, yes, there was alot of price increases and
materials and stuff went throughthe roof, but no one was
talking about, like transportand deliveries and the cost of
diesel and stuff.
And yeah, like we, we went onan average, like most of I
(28:27):
shouldn't say average, becausemost of the jobs we do are more
higher end.
But, um, like we went from, say, an average delivery.
Uh, most of our deliveries usedto be between, say, 110 and 160
dollars and it really didn'tmatter what it was.
I was just working on volume,yeah, and then by the end of
covid, like it was nothing, forthat same 110 dollar delivery
(28:47):
was all of a sudden four to sixhundred dollars.
Like we're paying if we want tobring a pallet of tiles up from
from melbourne.
Yeah, those deliveries wentfrom sort of six or seven
hundred dollars, some of them upto three thousand dollars.
Yeah, right, and so there's allthese costs.
Obviously, that all get passedon.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, um, but in the building industry there seems to
be there's a lot of people allgrabbing a piece of the pie um,
well, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, Imean there's a lot of people,
that's a lot of industries, butjust as a, can I just start.
So how long does it take you tobuild a house from scratch, so
just a standard house?
How long would it take you tobuild a standard house and how
many people would it takebuilders would it take to do
(29:26):
that?
Assuming so, and I'll splitthat into two parts.
One, so, and I'll split thatinto two parts One, getting all
the approvals and regulationsfrom the council.
Step one, so you know you'reready to start building.
And then step two, to actuallybuild.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
If you're talking like, if you talk just an
average, say, four-bedroom, justan average family home, from
the client choosing the builder,the design, getting all the
approvals, like that approvaldesign phase can take anywhere
from three to six months, yeah,right.
And then if it's a, if it's abuild efficiently, you'll build
it in six months.
But, um, and to build the house, by the time you add up all the
(30:04):
different tray, like if we'rejust talking to people on site
physically building the house,yeah, um, on most of our jobs,
mate, there would be close toprobably 80 to 100 people on
each home.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Wow Over that six, but not consecutively for six
months.
That's including plumbers thatmight come in for a couple of
weeks and then yeah electricians.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
So there'll be days where there's eight to 12, 14
people on site.
Jeez, if you're at a roughingstage and you've got the
plumbers, the sparkies, the aircon, it's easy to have 10 to 12
people on a site, yeah right.
But if you add up across thejob, all the trades that are
involved to build a house, it'sprobably in excess of 100 people
(30:44):
.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Yeah, right, okay.
And so what's your?
Yet again, your bog standardfour bedroom, two car garage.
What's the cost now?
Could you get built for lessthan half a million?
Speaker 2 (30:54):
You can still build houses for less than half a
million, but you won't get a lotof house, right?
So one of my other big thingswhich I'd love to talk to you
more about at some point I'mreally pushing for builders to
be separated.
So at the moment, builders arejust all thrown in the one one
(31:16):
hat, right?
So whether you're a one-manband that builds one or two jobs
a year, whether you're abuilder that maybe has a team of
15 to 20 blokes turns over 10million dollars, whether you're
a residential volume builder,whether you're a resi builder
that does multi-rise, whetheryou're a tier one that does
high-rise commercial, like,we're all in the one box.
Yeah, and um, I believe thatvolume builders or maybe I think
(31:40):
it should be, say, um 20million, any builder that turns
out more than 20 million shouldgo and play in the big field.
Yeah, and all of our smallerbuilders that are more custom
builders, family run businessesand things.
We need to be separated.
Yeah, Because we all at themoment, we all have to deal with
the exact same rules,regulations and again, you want
(32:00):
to talk about the cost ofhousing.
If we like, I'll put my hand up.
We do not comply witheverything we have to do and if
we tried to, it would probablyadd another 15% to 20% to the
cost of our builds.
If we were to comply witheverything, we would have
traffic control on most of ourjobs every single day.
One day of traffic control on ajob site is $2,000 to $2,500.
(32:23):
You add that up over asix-month period, it's a lot of
money.
And so Work Like a Thousand.
Safety says that any time wehave a concrete pump, a concrete
truck, a crane, a delivery,we're supposed to have traffic
control on site.
Yeah, right, we don't do that.
We do it in certain situations,if it's near a school or main
(32:44):
road or whatever.
Yeah, but there is no way inthe world that I can afford to
do that and there's no way inthe world my clients would pay
to do that.
Yeah.
And then you've got all thesafety stuff that we're like we.
I believe we run a pretty tightship.
Like we, our employees arenumber one.
We want everyone to go home.
Safety, and we do go out of ourway to make sure they're safe.
Yeah, but again, I'll put myhand up we, we definitely
(33:05):
there's things that we do in ourjob sites that aren't meeting
the rules.
Yeah, um, I'm old school.
I think there's a lot of commonsense play on in my business.
Yep, I also believe that a lotof safety has gone overboard and
it's actually causing moreaccidents.
Yeah, like when I wasapprentice mate, like you, you
walked around the top plate of athree-story building and you
(33:25):
just knew you had to.
You had to be safe, you had tothink about what you're doing,
you had to be organized, you hadto make sure you had someone
working with you, whereas noweveryone just expects there to
always be a handrail, always bea platform that they, if they
fall, they're going to land on.
Like, yeah, um, so again, Icould bang on all day about this
stuff yeah, so I plan for everycontingency.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
It's like the wheelchair access in every house
, like you shouldn't have tobuild one unless you actually
decide to buy a house and you'rein a wheelchair.
There's not 20 million peoplein this country that's going to
need a wheelchair, so why buildhouses for 20 million people
with the potential that they mayhave a wheelchair?
But that's what they do, right?
They're always trying to suit,and this is not just in the
(34:07):
building industry.
This is the problem withbureaucracy when it gets out of
control, right, it's a hammerlooking for the nail.
So this is the problem withbureaucracy when it gets out of
control, right, it's a hammerlooking for the nail.
Yeah, so of course that youknow they go into work every
week.
We've got.
You know they create a rulelast week and they've done that.
Now they've got to find anotherrule, and that one that one's
just a classic example.
You know it's um, can't imaginehow much extra that costs I got
a call.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
There's a new um, some guys up here in sunshine
coast have started.
It's called the Good Builder,it's like a media type company
and they're putting out goodnews articles about the industry
and it's.
I think it's fantastic andthey're getting good results.
But they rang me up around Ithink it was around January or
something.
There was a new policy thatcome out of about.
(34:51):
There was some grant that Iwanted to give out to
apprentices yeah, and they rangme up to see what my thoughts
were on it and it was supposedto be aimed at trying to.
They've done some stats and Ithink it's come up that a lot of
people are leaving theirapprenticeship by the time they
finish their second year.
Yeah, and so they.
I forget the name of the grant,but they're trying to bring this
(35:12):
grant in to encourage peoplewith dollars to hang around and
finish their apprenticeship.
And they asked me what myopinion was and I was like, well
, number one, it shouldn't justbe given to them.
Because, yeah, like we reallystruggle with apprentices, like
we can have an apprentice, theychange it all, like in the old
days we used to have to givethem the tool ounce and nine
(35:33):
times out of ten bosses would goand meet them at the tool shop.
We'd load them up witheverything they needed and we'd
pay for it and all that sort ofstuff.
But now you're seeingapprentices get to the end of
their time and they've stillonly got a nail bag and a hammer
.
They haven't spent money onwhat they the rest of the team
(35:54):
on site, because they're usingall their gear, yeah, and so I
don't know.
I piped up and I said, well, thebest thing you could do would
be to do a deal with theemployer that they can supply
them the gear they need to beable to do their job adequately.
Or I said, even better, doadditional training for them,
because a really bad thing inthe building industry and and
this is why I'm so passionateand why I have my training
(36:15):
business now because I've doneall the hard yards, I've been
through the shit To get yourbuilder's license you only have
to do a three-day businesscourse and so you can be.
There's a lot of.
There's towns of incrediblebuilders and tradies out there
that can build an incredibleproduct, but they don't know how
to run a business.
And that was me, yeah, and so Ifeel like I'm not sure if
(36:37):
you're in this part of it, butpoliticians a lot of the time
are throwing money at ourindustry to encourage people to
get into it, but the people thatare in it don't know how to run
businesses effectively orefficiently.
Yeah, they don't understandtheir data, their numbers and
all that type of thing.
And that was me Like I was inthat cycle for 10, 12 years,
nearly went bankrupt three timesbefore I woke up to myself.
(37:00):
And it's only from spending ashitload of time, money and
energy on personal developmentand learning more that I'm
addicted to it.
Now I just want to know more.
Yeah, but again, even in thatside of things, there are so
many areas that the governmentcould help out to add efficiency
.
That again would help reducethe cost of housing.
Yeah, it's, I don't know.
(37:22):
I could talk your ear off allday about it.
Yeah, mate, can we go back alittle bit just before we wrap
it up to like how did you getinto politics?
Because you're a verypassionate person and I'm pretty
blown away by your knowledge.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Look, it's a long story.
Well, I say it's a long story,I guess it's a story of my life.
So I'll just start with thebeginning.
Born in Chinchilla 1970.
Went to high school inChinchilla before finishing a
tournament for two years, got aBachelor of Commerce at UQ, went
back to Dalby for three years,then went overseas for what I
(37:56):
thought was two years, came andended up spending seven years
overseas.
So from the age of 23 to 30, Iwas overseas, had a ball over
there, came back and worked inBrisbane for six years with the
Bank of Queensland and when Iwas there I actually started off
studying biochemistry, hence myinterest in the biochemistry,
the mRNA vaccine.
But then the bank said to me ifyou're going to study, you got
(38:18):
to study finance.
So and that just happened tocoincide when I was given the
role of treasury accountant atthe BOQ.
So from there I got a master'sapplied finance and then went to
Sydney where I worked forWestfield and and they Bank of
Queensland had about fivesubsidiaries, westfield had
about 800.
So I was fascinated by this.
So I went, did a master of taxlaw down there.
So it was when I was doing mymaster's of tax law at Sydney
(38:41):
University one night a lecture.
They were talking about thisthing called the public offer
test, and what it said was wasthat if you issued a bond in the
primary market, you wouldn'thave to pay withholding tax.
Now, the average Joe Boyle onthe street would not have a clue
what that means, right?
But what it meant was was thatthe only people that issued
bonds in the primary market areeither big banks or big
(39:02):
companies, right, and the sortof people that pay withholding
tax are foreigners.
So I knew straight away thatthat meant that foreign
companies don't have to pay taxon the interest that we pay them
.
So I'm thinking my mum wasstill alive.
Then I'm thinking, well, hangon, mum pays tax on her interest
.
We all pay tax on our income,but foreigners don't have to pay
tax on income they earn here.
And that just really put abloody bee up my backside.
(39:26):
So anyway, long story short, asI looked into it further,
throughout that whole masters oftax law, the entire tax act, as
we talked about earlier, therenewables industry, you know
monetary policy.
It favoured foreign investorsover domestic investors.
So it's very hard to competewith a foreign company if you're
an Australian company.
If the foreign company is onlypaying half the rate of taxes,
(39:47):
you are yeah Right, because theycan charge less, right?
So I guess that was when Ithought I'm going to have to do
something about this.
And now I lived in North Sydney,so that was in Joe Hockey, he
was the member for North Sydney.
So I joined the Liberal Partyand, you know, over a couple of
years got to know him Well, notknow him, know him but you know,
(40:08):
had the opportunity to speakabout it to him and when I was
trying to explain it to him itjust went straight over his head
, you know.
And I just realised, well, god,this is a shadow treasurer and
he doesn't get it.
And I realised I can add valuehere in running for politics.
Anyway, long story short, andit wasn't just that, it's, it's
the entire, like the tax act isjust full of loopholes.
(40:31):
It's so bad.
But so when we came back, wehad our first son in Brisbane,
and then my wife lives justclose to here, actually, or grew
up close to here.
So we came back to Brisbane,brisbane, and my wife's former
employer wanted her to stay,keep working, and I was like
that's fine, I'll stay home,look after the young boys.
I loved bringing up the kids Istill do and then I thought,
(40:53):
well, I'll do something, I'llhave a crack for politics while
I stay at home and look afterthe boys.
So I spent about three yearswithin the Liberal Party just
constantly going to every eventto try and get pre-selected for
the Senate.
Long story short, I got did getpre-selected for the Senate and
then I've tried to use my techknowledge you know my knowledge
in monetary policy and taxbecause I've learned a lot to
(41:16):
the Bank of Queensland.
This probably won't mean much toyour listeners, but I brought
in this accounting standardcalled IAS 39, which had to
bring all the derivatives on thebalance sheet.
So when I said before aboutPaul Keating in 1985 opened up
the capital markets and let allthis foreign debt in domestic
banks borrow US dollar bonds.
The bonds are denominated in USdollars, so you have to switch
(41:38):
them out into Aussie.
So that means you're going totake out cross currency swaps
and then the bonds are fixed.
So then you've got to swap themback into variable, because
most home loans in Australia arevariable.
Very few people fix.
Some do about 20, 30% of themarket fixes.
So you've got all these riskscross currency swaps risks,
interest rates swap risks, allthis stuff.
So we had to bring all thosederivatives.
(41:58):
So I understand capital marketsand monetary policy as well.
Um, so I guess that's that's my.
You know, if I don't get backin, that's going to be the real
frustration, because no one down.
It's like you're saying aboutthe building industry, right,
unless you've come from thatindustry and you've obviously
spent 25 years in it.
You know, sounds like you knowit very, very well.
Um, well, that's how I feelabout tax and monetary policy.
(42:19):
Like I understand it and,literally, with the exception of
one or two people, no one elseunderstands it, and the shame
about it is is that we arebleeding billions of dollars a
year um letting money gooffshore.
I'll give you one example likein 2022, pfizer made 1.4 billion
dollars in sales here on thevaccine right in australia.
Yeah, yep, they transferred abillion dollars offshore to
(42:42):
Ireland in royalty fees.
Now Ireland didn't manufacturethose vaccines, right.
But here's the thing they got abillion dollar tax deduction
here, so they saved paying $300million in company tax.
Now there's a withholding taxrate on royalties paid to
Ireland of 10 cents, so we got$100 million of that back.
So we lost $200 million.
Ireland, because it has acompany tax rate of 12 and a
(43:03):
half cents, picked up 125million bucks, and pfizer was 75
million bucks better off fordoing a deal for just a couple
of book entries.
Right now.
That's the sort of stuff thatgrinds my gears because we are
encouraging profits to gooffshore.
And you know, if that wasn't somuch big farmer, we don't have
a lot of big farmer here here.
But similar with BHP and Rioand Fortescue Metal.
(43:27):
About a decade ago they'd setup marketing hubs in Singapore
and they were paying Singaporethese massive charges for
marketing because Singapore hada company tax rate of $0.10.
Now Singapore doesn't know athing about marketing iron ore.
They don't have iron ore inSingapore.
But there's all these structures, and it's not just.
You'll often hear a lot of thepeople on the left side of
(43:47):
politics talk about how we'rebeing ripped off with our gas
and we're letting it all gooffshore.
It's not just gas, it's ourentire economy.
We are bleeding money, ourearnings offshore, and then we
borrow the money and if you knowwhat a balance sheet looks like
, you've got an asset over hereand then you've got debt and
equity.
We're paying offshore all thisinterest, our earnings offshore.
What we should be keeping isequity from the profit and loss
(44:09):
statement and then we borrow itback as debt and then we pay
interest on that, which thengoes offshore.
No tax on that either.
I mean, we allow foreigners tobuy water rights in this country
but get a load of this.
They don't have to pay capitalgains tax on those water rights,
because there's a section inthe tax act that says if a
foreigner owns a non-real asset,ie something that's not
tangible, uh, you don't have topay tax on it.
(44:32):
Like, like, you can't make thisstuff up.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
So um, and obviously all this is what's driving our
tax up?
Oh, absolutely, because we'vegot to cover all the you've got
to cover it.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
You know the share of income tax is a percentage of
the budget.
Since when GST was brought init's gone from $0.45 to $0.55.
You know, and yet again thatwas one of our policies we want
to lift the tax rate thresholdto $40,000 because our view is
if you get out of bed and putyour nose to the grindstone you
shouldn't pay.
There's probably more to behonest with you, but you know
(45:01):
it's like we tax low-incomeearners.
You know, three and a halfgrand on $40,000, plus take five
grand off them for super andthey're back sort of below the
poverty line again.
And yet we'll let foreigners.
You know.
And they haven't.
Yet again, when I've asked themabout Treasury, about this and
estimates, they've gone.
All you know I asked themactually this bloke volunteered
it.
Actually I didn't ask thisquestion specifically, so I
(45:22):
think he knew where I was comingfrom.
They haven't updated the taxtreaty with Ireland since 1983,
right, ireland's gone into theEU in 2000.
They've lowered their companytax rate and the ATO does
nothing about the big end oftown.
But they'll go after smallbusiness, chasing them up on
little amounts of GST and, youknow, really drilling our little
guys while the big end of townand foreign-owned big end of
(45:45):
town just gets away with it andthat's so.
That's sort of you know whatdrives me and why I ran for
politics.
But look, the big sort of whydid I run for politics is I
wanted to make sure our childrenget the same opportunities our
forefathers gave to us.
Yeah, and we owe it, you know,to our children, you know, and
(46:05):
to our forefathers who gave us,you know, all of this wealth and
built this country up fromnothing to make sure that we
pass some sort of form of wealthonto our children.
And we haven't.
I mean, you know, the last 30years we let the foreign debt in
, we've let our manufacturing gooffshore, we've lost our skill
base, we've privatised ourinfrastructure.
Foreigners own that again, ifnot foreigners.
You know super funds that youcan't elect who you know, if you
ever I mean with your superfund, you never get to elect who
(46:27):
runs, controls your money, youknow.
Like that's just absurd, right?
Um, so you've got all these yesmen in the ivory palaces of
sydney and melbourne controllingthree trillion dollars of our
money.
You know, um, just unreal, it'sunbelievable yeah, no.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Well, mate, look, I really hope you keep your
passion going and you keep doingsomething, um, and yeah, I just
think it's great to see peoplelike yourself.
That, uh, I always remember,like growing up and seeing my
parents and my grandparents,like, um, being passionate, like
they all literally had afavorite politician.
They loved them, yeah, but theywould write they'd come
(47:02):
election time and they'd beraving about them, yeah, and
I've never felt that until I'mseeing you and like every time I
see one of your posts, you cantell that you're the real deal,
you're passionate, you you're um, and I think it's fantastic.
I think if we had morepoliticians like yourself,
australia would be a lot betteroff.
So, yeah, thanks to one, Iappreciate that.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Keep doing what you're doing, man?
Yeah well, I'm probably goingto be out of a job in a couple
of months, once my term finishes.
But, anyway, I'll stay on theedges for a while and you know
we'll see what happens.
But yeah, it's sort of hard tolet it go.
Look, I mean, you know where Ilive, so I could quite happily
retire from that point of view.
But you know, the problem iswhat grinds my gears.
(47:41):
You know, um, and I know thatthe, the current lot, you know
I'll say and not and I'm nottaking sides here the whole lot
of them just don't have thesolutions.
You know, I mean, it's just apunch and duty show down there
and I get politics.
You don't have a bit of that,but it's all of it.
And that's the problem.
No one in this last election wasthe perfect example.
No one's dealing with thosestructural issues to turn our
(48:02):
country around and I just fearfor our children.
They're being swamped byimmigration and they're not
getting skilled.
They're sort of being told thatthey have to feel guilty and
all of this cultural warriorstuff that I don't particularly
like.
But at the same time I can'tsit there and say, well, I'm not
going to have my children toldthey should be ashamed of their
country or the heritage, ourheritage as well.
(48:22):
I not saying it's perfect, but,as we know our parents made a
lot of sacrifices to get uswhere we have today 100%, yeah,
and to somehow sort of run downtheir efforts and not sort of
make them.
You know children, so I saidthis in my main speech.
You know that Roman oratorCesaro said the greatest virtue
of all is gratitude.
You know it's the father of allother virtues and and we have
(48:42):
to be grateful for what we'vegot, not not sort of scorn and
tear down.
You know what our parents andforefathers built up yeah, yeah,
100.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
I know you've got to get going, mate, I definitely
could talk to you all day likeyou.
Quickly, you mentioned beforeum, like people getting into
trying to get the next pressrelease or news media that in a
24-hour period or whatever.
And that's something else thatI saw growing up.
Like politicians had long-termplans.
Yeah, it wasn't just anovernight or a three-year sort
(49:12):
of thing.
Like they set things up to makethe country successful for a
long period of time.
Yeah, and now it just seems tobe that it's just they're there
for their little bit of time andthat's all they're focused on
and whatever decisions they make, they don't care.
The flow and effect of that Idon't know if I'm.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
No, that's exactly right, there is.
I mean, actually I was runningthat line.
I was saying we're a party, youknow people first is a party
with vision We've got a plan forthat vision, we have the know
but you've got to have a vision,because if you've got a vision
and you tell people where youwant to be, that gives them hope
and it gives them a sense ofpurpose.
But too often now it's justlike looking at the opinion
polls and see where they'regoing, and the opinion polls is
(49:50):
just a point in time and anopinion poll in itself isn't an
outcome.
You know, it's just a means toan end which tells you who's
going to have the power, but youknow they don't know what to do
with it, and that's the thing.
That's why we need to go backto people with having a vision.
And you know, I mean I'mtalking to a builder here but we
(50:11):
, if I had to summarize what inone word, what we need to start
doing again, it would bebuilding, you know, and building
those big infrastructureprojects that we desperately
need.
You know big dams, big powerstations, big base load power
stations.
You know ports, roads, like youknow, like from where we are.
I would love to build a tunnelfrom here out straight broke
island.
You know ports, roads, like youknow from where we are.
I would love to build a tunnelfrom here out to Stradbroke
Island.
You know they want to know howwe're going to pay for the
Olympics in Brisbane.
There's 100 kilometres ofMoreton Island, stradio Island.
I know some of your listenersprobably get offended by this
(50:32):
but you don't have to knock thewhole place down.
You know just that coastlinethere and a tunnel east to west
across Brisbane we could havelike.
Basically you know coastlinefrom Coolangatta all the way up
to Rainbow Beach, maybe notquite Winoosa.
You know we've got to startutilising it and lifting the
(50:53):
value and all of that sort ofthing.
So you know, yet again, tollstoday, 2 million people in
Brisbane paying five bucks atoll.
100 years of time It'll be.
You know tunnels this is fortunnels only, not main roads
Five million people paying 50bucks.
The government holds on to thatstuff.
That's how you pay.
You know the state governmentholds on to it.
That's how you pay for therecurring costs of schools and
hospitals because as those costsgo up, you naturally, just as
(51:13):
your population grows throughinflation, collecting more money
from your infrastructure assets.
That's what Biocca-Peterson didwhen he opened up the Bowen
coal deposits and the Weeperbauxite deposits.
When you open them up, you'vegot royalties from the coal,
you've got charges from thetrains, you've got charges from
the ports as the ships came into take them offshore.
Three lots of recurring revenueto pay for schools and
hospitals.
Same for the bauxite deposits.
(51:34):
Actually, leo Hilscher, who wasthe treasurer, said you can't
export bauxite, you're going tohave to only export alumina or
aluminium.
So that meant they had to buildup those smelters at Gladstone.
So they created an industrialtown in Gladstone.
I mean we need that type oflong-term vision.
I mean I love you know, I knowit's a bit of an eyesore, but I
love that Riverside Express inBrisbane that was built for $8
million in 1974.
(51:56):
Can you imagine trying to getthrough Brisbane without that
Riverside Express?
Speaker 2 (52:09):
Yet again, where's the vision to do that stuff?
You know wyvernhoe dam, justyou know, um, we, we haven't
built a serious dam in thiscountry in years.
It's just alarming, seriously,we need to get you in on the
weekend like I don't know, uh,like it's just.
It's to me, it's just allcommon sense, yeah I know yeah,
it just.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
But what it is?
It goes back to the franklindam decision in 83.
Put put aside the decisionabout the environment, bob Hawke
went to the high court and saidbasically, so the Franklin Dam
had become a UNESCO WorldHeritage Site.
So Bob Hawke said that if wesign a treaty the federal
government signs a treaty,foreign treaty we can override
the plenary powers of the states.
Now it's the states that buildeverything, right?
(52:39):
So anytime now the stategovernment decides to build
something, the, theEnvironmental Defender's Office
in the state that we fund willgo to the Federal Environmental
Department and say oh, there's arare frog there, you can't
build it.
And then under some treaty,foreign treaty you won't be able
to build a dam because of somerare frog, and so nothing gets
built.
I mean, we saw that last yearin New South Wales with a gold
(53:01):
mine.
A New South Wales miner paid$190 million to get
environmental approvals to builda gold mine.
Then it was disputed by anIndigenous person who the local
Indigenous people claimed wasn'teven from the area, and so they
over-rid the state governmentto disallow the gold miner from
starting that gold mine.
(53:21):
But here's the thing the goldminer paid $190 million in
regulations to the stategovernment doesn't get that
money back yeah, so it's kind oflike you're trying to build a
house, uh, and then you know,for some reason, you know,
someone decides to take adislike, until he goes to the
environmental defender's officeand then stops you from doing it
.
But you've already paid, youknow, 10 million dollars in fees
to the state government.
You're like, well, you're goingto give me my money back now
(53:43):
that you stopped me from doingit.
Yeah, and so we have all ofthis red tape, green tape, blue
tape, you know, between multiplelevels of government.
That just makes it a nightmare.
I mean, I suspect you probablyhave to deal with.
Do you have to deal withfederal laws as well as state
laws as well as council?
Speaker 2 (53:57):
laws Building cards yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Yeah, bloody levels of government for a country the
size 27 million people, I meangreat britain's just under 70
million people.
It's got two levels ofgovernment.
New zealand has two levels ofgovernment.
We've got three levels ofgovernment.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
You know, we just saw over government.
It's insane yeah, mate, I coulddefinitely talk to you all
night.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
We'll wrap it up I know you, I know you gotta get
going, but I really appreciateyou taking some time out to um.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
Come and have a chat and we'll see where things go.
Mate, I really hope you stay init somehow and keep pushing
what you believe in, becausethat's what we need.
We need people that believe inthings and, like you say, have a
foresight of what's going tohappen in the future.
This country really needspeople like yourself.
Yeah, thank you, guys.
Thanks for listening.
Continue to make thisAustralia's number one
(54:41):
construction podcast.
Like, share, subscribe,subscribe all those types of
things and, uh, look, dependingon when this podcast goes out,
if you haven't seen it yet, makesure you come to my event on
friday, the 30th of may.
It will be the greatest eventthe construction industry has
ever seen, because we areputting the real people in front
of you that you need in frontof you to understand the changes
that are coming into the newbuilding code.
Look forward to seeing youthere.
(55:02):
Are you you ready to?
build smarter live better andenjoy life, then head over to
LiveLifeBuildcom.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
forward slash elevate to get started.
Speaker 2 (55:20):
Everything discussed during the Level Up podcast with
me, dwayne Pearce, is basedsolely on my own personal
experiences and thoseexperiences of my guests.
The information, opinions andrecommendations presented in
this podcast are for generalinformation only, and any
reliance on the informationprovided in this podcast is done
at your own risk.
We recommend that you obtainyour own professional advice in
(55:43):
respect to the topics discussedduring this podcast.
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