# 2026 Federal Budget Reaction with Economist Chris Richardson

An episode of [Straight Talk with Mark Bouris](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1572546872), 13 May 2026, 1 h 05 min.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/2544644999/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2fb3740d-3436-44af-8cc0-a91900716aa5/1c4759f0-81fc-4f35-85d1-b305004fc1e8/dd738f3e-0014-4f74-9437-b449009c4c1d/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=573776d2-4dbd-4f2f-a825-b305004fc1ef

Chris Richardson is one of Australia’s most quoted economists and the founder of Rich Insight, bringing decades of expertise from his time at Deloitte Access Economics to decode complex fiscal policy. Chris and I might not agree on every aspect of this budget, but that is what makes this conversation worth having. In this analysis of Australia’s latest budget, Richardson reveals why our living standards have barely grown over the past decade while other OECD nations have surged ahead by 17%. He dissects the real economic effects of the budget on inflation, interest rates, and the Reserve Bank’s delicate balancing act. Richardson also exposes the “off-budget” spending that keeps billions in government expenditure hidden from public scrutiny and explains why housing affordability will not be solved by capital gains tax changes alone. Join my exclusive Mentored+ community: https://mentored.com.au/become-a-member/ Subscribe to the Mentored newsletter here: https://the-mentored-platform-pty-ltd.myklpages.com/l/WWJGc5 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: I just finished podcast with Chris Richardson. Here's the former
[0:06] Speaker 1: economists that Deloitte access and now he runs his own
[0:11] Speaker 1: business called rich Insight, and he's a great economisty, but
[0:14] Speaker 1: he's very technical, very very technical. And the reason I
[0:17] Speaker 1: want to do that podcast with Chris is because I
[0:19] Speaker 1: want someone to unpack the Treasurer's budget for twenty twenty
[0:25] Speaker 1: six as it's going to affect twenty seven and beyond
[0:28] Speaker 1: more in an economic sense, like how's it going to
[0:30] Speaker 1: affect this strain economy, not how it affects individuals has
[0:33] Speaker 1: been affected by the capital gains tax, not how it
[0:35] Speaker 1: affects people relative to losing their ability to deduct the
[0:41] Speaker 1: interest they pay to the banks relative to the rent
[0:43] Speaker 1: they pay that is negative gearing. It's not about not
[0:46] Speaker 1: about any of those, It's about actually unpacking the fiscal
[0:50] Speaker 1: policy of the budget relative to how it affects inflation
[0:55] Speaker 1: potentially and therefore, of course all of you know how
[0:58] Speaker 1: inflation that will be managed by the reserve banking relations
[1:01] Speaker 1: interest rates. So what I'm trying to find out is
[1:03] Speaker 1: will interest rates go up after this budget in an
[1:07] Speaker 1: general economic sense. I didn't talk to Chris Richardson about
[1:12] Speaker 1: a couple of gainst tax per se and or negative
[1:15] Speaker 1: gearing or tax on trust. By the way those effect individuals,
[1:20] Speaker 1: they are and they were designed by the way, and
[1:24] Speaker 1: Chris will say it that they're going to have very
[1:27] Speaker 1: little impact on affordability for housing. They're going to have
[1:30] Speaker 1: very little impact on new supply of new housing for
[1:33] Speaker 1: people to buy. This budget, the narrative around his budget
[1:40] Speaker 1: is called intergenerational equity, in other words, looking at the
[1:45] Speaker 1: problem that exists for younger people and let's call people
[1:48] Speaker 1: under thirty five just for the sake of it. And
[1:53] Speaker 1: actually there is, actually is an intergenerational inequity. In other words,
[2:00] Speaker 1: the older generation own a lot of assets, and they've
[2:05] Speaker 1: enjoyed high price rises through all unusual periods GFC, during
[2:14] Speaker 1: and post COVID, but they've also enjoyed high prices or
[2:19] Speaker 1: higher prices relative to what they paid for maybe fifteen
[2:22] Speaker 1: or twenty years ago. They've enjoyed it because the government
[2:26] Speaker 1: has not kept up supply to the levels of immigration
[2:30] Speaker 1: and to the levels of population growth. And Chris Richardson
[2:34] Speaker 1: will talk about that supply is the key here. It's
[2:38] Speaker 1: not that people got rich at the cost of people
[2:41] Speaker 1: who didn't get rich. It's not that older generation have
[2:45] Speaker 1: sucked all the dollars out of the system. It's because
[2:50] Speaker 1: we have not supplied enough properties into the market relative
[2:53] Speaker 1: to the demand for those properties. That is, you know,
[2:55] Speaker 1: young people becoming of age, and or immigration or both.
[3:00] Speaker 1: We just this government has not supplied enough properties, not
[3:03] Speaker 1: just the federal government, the federal and the state government
[3:05] Speaker 1: and the councils. And Chris goes on to say, to
[3:08] Speaker 1: some extent, it's also about us as individuals, because us
[3:11] Speaker 1: as individuals, a lot of us don't want any new
[3:13] Speaker 1: things to be built in our street because you know,
[3:16] Speaker 1: we worked to hard our whole lives to buy this house,
[3:18] Speaker 1: which we want to leave to our children or our grandchildren,
[3:21] Speaker 1: whatever the case may be, or we want to live
[3:22] Speaker 1: there to the day we die. Of course, health has improved,
[3:25] Speaker 1: we don't have to be put in a home or
[3:26] Speaker 1: a hospital, which is fine. What we should be doing,
[3:30] Speaker 1: the government should be doing, is finding new green fields
[3:32] Speaker 1: and opening up new areas for younger people to move into.
[3:39] Speaker 1: But the narrative is a thing that's wrong. The Treasurer's
[3:42] Speaker 1: narrative is wrong. The Treasurer is saying this budget is
[3:46] Speaker 1: designed to help younger people is politics. Cos Samaris sat
[3:52] Speaker 1: right here last week and said exactly that. He didn't
[3:56] Speaker 1: say it was wrong, but what he said was governments
[3:59] Speaker 1: or governments. All those people here advisors at least know
[4:02] Speaker 1: that there is a massive vote that they're missing out
[4:06] Speaker 1: on as going to the Greens that's sitting between young
[4:09] Speaker 1: people eighteen through thirty five because they're not like by
[4:12] Speaker 1: the party. Some of them may end up moving over
[4:15] Speaker 1: to one nation, but there is a huge amount of
[4:18] Speaker 1: people sitting there. So this narrative around this budget is
[4:22] Speaker 1: directed at trying to make those individuals who vote for
[4:25] Speaker 1: governments in the future, and there will be an election
[4:26] Speaker 1: in twenty eight. Oh guys, we and our budget, this
[4:30] Speaker 1: budget and future budget, we are looking after you. We
[4:33] Speaker 1: are trying to mend this intergenerational inequity. In other words,
[4:36] Speaker 1: we are trying to get you into a house. We're
[4:38] Speaker 1: trying to give you what your parents and grandparents have got. Now,
[4:43] Speaker 1: what I am annoyed about is that that narrative is wrong.
[4:49] Speaker 1: This budget will not help younger people get into a home.
[4:53] Speaker 1: By the way, the very people who are supposed to
[4:56] Speaker 1: causes into generational inequity, the older people. They've been protected
[5:02] Speaker 1: because effectively, they've been grandfathered on any gains that they've
[5:05] Speaker 1: made to date. They're fifty percent discount on the capital
[5:08] Speaker 1: game that they're going to make still remains. They will
[5:12] Speaker 1: still get that discount. So the government didn't want to
[5:16] Speaker 1: punish them because they worry they might lose their votes.
[5:18] Speaker 1: So so those people are fine, they're fine, but nothing's
[5:22] Speaker 1: happened down the other end of the end of the
[5:24] Speaker 1: board like the other you know, the books have been
[5:27] Speaker 1: pushed down one end of the shop, but the other
[5:28] Speaker 1: end's empty. So you young people are not going to
[5:31] Speaker 1: get anything out of this budget. Nothing's going to happen.
[5:34] Speaker 1: Nothing's going to change for you. Interest rates aren't going
[5:36] Speaker 1: to go down so you can afford to borrow more money.
[5:40] Speaker 1: The banks ain't going to end you any more money.
[5:43] Speaker 1: The government's not going to give you a deposit. No
[5:46] Speaker 1: one's going to supply more housing so that there's more
[5:48] Speaker 1: competition in terms of those people are trying to buy
[5:50] Speaker 1: these properties. In actual fact, I think this budge is
[5:53] Speaker 1: going to create into generational inequity, and I'll tell you why.
[5:57] Speaker 1: The exemption. In other words, those people who still will
[6:02] Speaker 1: be able to get negative gearing for new purchases post
[6:06] Speaker 1: today or post last night. Applies to new housing. So
[6:11] Speaker 1: anybody who's got coin and they want to invest in
[6:16] Speaker 1: the property market and get negative gearing, which could be
[6:20] Speaker 1: you as a younger person, but anybody. Because this is
[6:22] Speaker 1: available to everybody across the board. An older person might say, well,
[6:26] Speaker 1: instead of buying an existing property now and renting it
[6:29] Speaker 1: out and getting negative gearing on that property and getting
[6:32] Speaker 1: the capital gains tax discount that, I'm not going to
[6:35] Speaker 1: get it anymore. What I'm going to do is I'm
[6:38] Speaker 1: going to go and buy new housing. Anything that's new,
[6:41] Speaker 1: I'm going to buy that. I'll put in my twenty
[6:43] Speaker 1: percent deposit because I've saved a deposit. I'm retired, I've
[6:48] Speaker 1: been saving it up. I'll borrow the money from the bank. Oh,
[6:51] Speaker 1: negatively gear it. Those people are now exempt. They get
[6:54] Speaker 1: the negative gearing, and when I go to buy it,
[6:56] Speaker 1: I can afford to pay more than the young person.
[6:58] Speaker 1: Those people will outcompete young people every single time. So,
[7:02] Speaker 1: as usual, government involvement in an asset class usually all
[7:10] Speaker 1: it ever does, that is my experience, is all I've
[7:13] Speaker 1: ever seen. Has just happened recently in the five percent
[7:15] Speaker 1: deposit Government guarantee scheme. All it does is to increase
[7:20] Speaker 1: the price of the asset, which then in a rising
[7:25] Speaker 1: interest market interest rate market we are right now, puts
[7:29] Speaker 1: that beyond the reach of a younger person. So all
[7:34] Speaker 1: of a sudden, those properties, those new properties will be
[7:38] Speaker 1: bought by the same people who've been buying properties for
[7:42] Speaker 1: the last ten twenty years. They will control that market.
[7:46] Speaker 1: They'll be looking for people to rent because they're not
[7:48] Speaker 1: going to live there. They own the big house somewhere else.
[7:50] Speaker 1: They're going to put it on the market of for rent.
[7:52] Speaker 1: When someone young goes along to rent that property, they're
[7:57] Speaker 1: going to pay the market price because you know, people
[8:00] Speaker 1: have paid a lot of money for it and they
[8:01] Speaker 1: want to get a return. Then that will lead into
[8:04] Speaker 1: their ability to save a deposit for the future. So
[8:07] Speaker 1: this system, these initiatives by in this budget, as far
[8:12] Speaker 1: as I own concern and I'm going to call it out,
[8:14] Speaker 1: are not going to work. In fact that they're going
[8:16] Speaker 1: to have the opposite effect like they always do. It
[8:19] Speaker 1: might have a positive effect for a couple of months,
[8:22] Speaker 1: but as soon as everyone gets in the market and
[8:24] Speaker 1: starts working this arbitrage out, they'll take advantage of it.
[8:27] Speaker 1: And by the way, you don't blame it for taking
[8:29] Speaker 1: advantage of it. Because it's a free market. People will
[8:31] Speaker 1: invest the money where they can and where the demand
[8:33] Speaker 1: is that they'll push the prices up. Especially if the
[8:35] Speaker 1: supply is low, and the supply will remain low. We're
[8:38] Speaker 1: not going to get any great supply. What we should
[8:41] Speaker 1: be doing, what governments could be doing. They could be saying,
[8:46] Speaker 1: you know what, if you're an employee or you're running
[8:50] Speaker 1: a business, and let's say you earn less than one
[8:52] Speaker 1: hundred and fifty grand, where you're paying a marginal tax
[8:56] Speaker 1: rate of thirty thirty five percent, young person or any person,
[9:02] Speaker 1: if you elect to into a scheme, what will allow
[9:10] Speaker 1: you to do is only pay twenty percent marginal tax
[9:13] Speaker 1: rate on that one hundred and fifty grand. In other words,
[9:16] Speaker 1: you can save ten or fifteen percent. But the condition
[9:19] Speaker 1: of that saving of tax is that money must be
[9:24] Speaker 1: invested into your super fund alongside your compulsory superinnovation that
[9:27] Speaker 1: your employee pays. But you are investing this money now,
[9:30] Speaker 1: not the So the employee is going to invest his
[9:33] Speaker 1: twelve percent. You are, alongside that employee, going to invest
[9:36] Speaker 1: this money into your superfund. And you a person earning
[9:40] Speaker 1: a lesson hundred and fifty thousand. You can access that
[9:44] Speaker 1: money over time at any time if you choose, but
[9:48] Speaker 1: only if it is to buy a house or a dwelling.
[9:53] Speaker 1: That money will be taxed free your super it's deductible
[9:57] Speaker 1: to you. You get a deduction for it. You're only
[10:00] Speaker 1: and you've made the elections. See, you're only paying twenty
[10:02] Speaker 1: percent tax. So you're saving money if you don't touch
[10:04] Speaker 1: it and sits there forever. You can pick it up
[10:06] Speaker 1: when you turn sixty five. But the only time you
[10:08] Speaker 1: can access this money is to buy house. This extra money. Now,
[10:12] Speaker 1: maybe this is you've got flaws in it from a
[10:14] Speaker 1: tax point of view, and there could be Treasure will
[10:16] Speaker 1: run the ruler over it if they ever did. I'm
[10:18] Speaker 1: sure there's flaws in it. But point being here is
[10:21] Speaker 1: this is the sort of stuff that I would have
[10:24] Speaker 1: liked to see in the budget, this sort of real
[10:27] Speaker 1: tax reform that actually helps out the younger generation solve
[10:33] Speaker 1: this inequity problem. And the only way you're going to
[10:36] Speaker 1: do it is to reduce tax give them more net
[10:39] Speaker 1: money so it allows them to build a deposit, which
[10:43] Speaker 1: allows them them to go into the market and compete
[10:46] Speaker 1: with a full deposit. That's what we need to see.
[10:50] Speaker 1: That's what I would like to see in this budget.
[10:52] Speaker 1: So I'm sorry, Treasurer and Prime Minister. I don't copy it.
[10:58] Speaker 1: I think this is unfair. I don't think it's achieved.
[11:01] Speaker 1: The thing that your narrative keeps talking about. No doubt
[11:05] Speaker 1: you're gonna have lots of arguments with the Greens about
[11:07] Speaker 1: this because they're going to say the taxing that you've
[11:08] Speaker 1: put in is not enough, the exemptions that you've applied
[11:12] Speaker 1: shouldn't be there. So it's going to be hard to
[11:14] Speaker 1: get the support of everybody. Hopefully, you know, we don't
[11:17] Speaker 1: have some sort of double dissolution this budget doesn't go through. Yeah, Jim,
[11:23] Speaker 1: it was courageous, mate, But at the end of the day,
[11:26] Speaker 1: it was courageous because I know, I think I can
[11:29] Speaker 1: tell you feel that this has not been accepted and
[11:33] Speaker 1: it just didn't go the way everybody thought it was
[11:35] Speaker 1: going to go. And this is a tough period. We've
[11:37] Speaker 1: got interest rate rising, we've got the ram or doesn't
[11:40] Speaker 1: look like it's going to get solved too quick. We've
[11:42] Speaker 1: got the price crew it oil is going to be
[11:44] Speaker 1: a drama. We've got petrol pricing or fuel out the
[11:48] Speaker 1: bowers and everywhere else in the country causing inflation. We've
[11:51] Speaker 1: got potentially more interest rate rises. We're in a tough period,
[11:56] Speaker 1: and what I was hoping for was something that actually
[11:58] Speaker 1: will help this country grow. And by the way, in
[12:00] Speaker 1: this podcast, Chris Richardson talks about growth and he talks
[12:06] Speaker 1: about prosperity. And one thing that Chris is a bit
[12:11] Speaker 1: disappointed in is that this is not a prosperity budget
[12:16] Speaker 1: and the only way to make things more affordable is
[12:19] Speaker 1: put more money in people's pockets, not by government handouts,
[12:22] Speaker 1: but by the country growing prosperity, which is what we need. Anyway,
[12:29] Speaker 1: Enjoy the podcast. Chris is a very knowledgeable guy, one
[12:32] Speaker 1: of the best economists in the country. It does get
[12:35] Speaker 1: pretty deep and pretty into the minutia, but like if
[12:38] Speaker 1: you're interested in understanding how a budget actually works and
[12:41] Speaker 1: the economics of all this stuff, it's worth listening to
[12:45] Speaker 1: Chris Ritchers and welcome a straight talk mate.
[12:47] Speaker 2: Many many thanks for having me Mart.
[12:49] Speaker 1: We would be good today to talk to someone of
[12:52] Speaker 1: your expertise about is the economic effects of the budget
[12:56] Speaker 1: or perhaps even the economic objectives of the budget, and
[13:00] Speaker 1: there and what do you think will be the economic
[13:02] Speaker 1: effects of the budget in terms of it being executed objectively?
[13:08] Speaker 1: So obviously big worry to our audiences, and you know
[13:12] Speaker 1: Australias generally is how do you see this budget looking
[13:16] Speaker 1: for the year ahead and perhaps periods after, but just
[13:20] Speaker 1: a little about the year ahead relative to inflation? How
[13:22] Speaker 1: does it look?
[13:24] Speaker 2: Let me just step back for a moment, Because the
[13:28] Speaker 2: federal budget is about a quarter of all the money
[13:32] Speaker 2: in Australia goes in and back out. You can kind
[13:37] Speaker 2: of think of it as is true. You know, every family,
[13:41] Speaker 2: every community, every nations has a social compact. The federal
[13:45] Speaker 2: budget's a bit of a social compact. You know, we
[13:48] Speaker 2: tax workers, we tax businesses. We spend it on the
[13:51] Speaker 2: young and the old and the sick and the poor
[13:53] Speaker 2: and defense forces and the like. I tend to think
[13:59] Speaker 2: of any budget, any social compact, having two big aims,
[14:05] Speaker 2: and both of them are part of the backstory to
[14:09] Speaker 2: this particular budget. So two aims are to make people
[14:13] Speaker 2: better off, to raise the standard of living over time sustainably,
[14:18] Speaker 2: so with the sort of prosperity aim, but there's also
[14:22] Speaker 2: a fairness aim as we as a group become more
[14:26] Speaker 2: prosperous over time. Are we sharing those games well? And
[14:33] Speaker 2: the true backdrop to this budget, you know, I don't
[14:37] Speaker 2: necessarily think it is the inflation challenge at the moment
[14:40] Speaker 2: of the Reserve Bank. I don't necessarily think it is
[14:43] Speaker 2: a run. And then the war in the Middle East.
[14:47] Speaker 2: I would step back a little further and say, across
[14:51] Speaker 2: our lifetimes, Australia has been a magnificent prosperity success story.
[14:56] Speaker 2: We spent a long time with our standard of living
[15:00] Speaker 2: moving up at times, including decades faster than you saw
[15:06] Speaker 2: in the US. But in the past decade our living
[15:12] Speaker 2: standards have barely grown. If you look across the rich
[15:15] Speaker 2: world as a whole, or the average citizen in that
[15:19] Speaker 2: sort of rich world club, the OECD, their living standards
[15:23] Speaker 2: have gone up about seventeen percent in the past decade.
[15:29] Speaker 2: Now that's their income, but it's disposable income. Now it's
[15:34] Speaker 2: inflation adjusted. It's per person. In Australia it's less than
[15:38] Speaker 2: a third of that. And because we're not becoming more
[15:43] Speaker 2: prosperous at the same rate that we used to do,
[15:46] Speaker 2: we are getting grumpier with each other. You're seeing fights
[15:49] Speaker 2: over the pie again. A very dominant part of this budget,
[15:55] Speaker 2: and you are seeing everything from social media to our
[16:00] Speaker 2: voting patterns, we are grumpier with each other, and it
[16:05] Speaker 2: does worry me. You know, I actually like a bunch
[16:08] Speaker 2: of things in the budget, but it worries me that
[16:11] Speaker 2: it hasn't done enough to break us out of that
[16:16] Speaker 2: low prosperity trajectory, which means we may stuck stay stuck
[16:22] Speaker 2: fighting over fairness, and that's not a great place to be.
[16:28] Speaker 1: How does one measure our standard of living so that
[16:32] Speaker 1: what is that measurement? Is it a universal one?
[16:35] Speaker 2: I just use basic numbers coming out of the Bureau
[16:38] Speaker 2: of Stats, the exact same numbers used in the exact
[16:42] Speaker 2: same way by the OECD. They look across a bunch
[16:45] Speaker 2: of countries. What you are doing is taking your total
[16:48] Speaker 2: income from everything from wages, salaries, dividend, interest, you know,
[16:53] Speaker 2: profits however you get in the rent, taking out two
[16:57] Speaker 2: big things to make it disposable income. One is personal text,
[17:03] Speaker 2: the other is interest payments, and then inflation, adjusting it
[17:08] Speaker 2: over time, putting it on a per head basis, and
[17:12] Speaker 2: at least at the index level. You can then compare
[17:14] Speaker 2: across countries as well as across time. In economics, there
[17:20] Speaker 2: is one truly great one liner. The Nobel laureate Paul
[17:26] Speaker 2: Kubman once said, productivity isn't everything, but in the long
[17:31] Speaker 2: run it is almost everything. Australia stopped getting better at
[17:36] Speaker 2: doing stuff about a decade ago, and when that happens,
[17:40] Speaker 2: your living standards don't increase. And that productivity fail is
[17:47] Speaker 2: a prosperity fail. Is what's got us. I think in
[17:51] Speaker 2: many ways into this current mess.
[17:54] Speaker 1: Is the ultimate outcome very sensitive at tax rates? Or
[17:57] Speaker 1: is it more about wage growth? Or is it what
[18:00] Speaker 1: is it more about? Or is it not more about anything?
[18:02] Speaker 1: Is about everything?
[18:03] Speaker 2: Well, it is about something in particular. It is about
[18:06] Speaker 2: wages relatives to prices of you know, all nations have
[18:11] Speaker 2: a personal tax take ours is relatively high, and you
[18:16] Speaker 2: know it has increased a bit over the longer term.
[18:20] Speaker 2: But it's not personal tax that has been make or
[18:23] Speaker 2: break for our lack of prosperity growth for a long time.
[18:27] Speaker 2: It's wages haven't gone faster than prices. And people love
[18:30] Speaker 2: to reach for all sorts of conspiracy theories around that,
[18:33] Speaker 2: But it goes back to the productivity thing that I said.
[18:37] Speaker 2: We are not, you know, making great use of new technologies,
[18:43] Speaker 2: we are not investing in stuff. You know, I don't
[18:47] Speaker 2: mean the financial investments, I mean the you know, the road,
[18:50] Speaker 2: the Riyal, the factory, the computer, the the whatever else
[18:56] Speaker 2: and that combination. You know, We're not using our skills
[18:59] Speaker 2: as well as we can. Good we are not using
[19:02] Speaker 2: our environment built environment out there as well as we could.
[19:07] Speaker 2: Means that we are not advancing at the rate that
[19:10] Speaker 2: a bunch of other nations are advancing. So you look
[19:12] Speaker 2: across the OECD, we're still in terms of the increase
[19:18] Speaker 2: in our living standards over the past decade, we're still
[19:21] Speaker 2: beating the poems and it always you know, it's nice
[19:25] Speaker 2: to do, but they are essentially bottom of the list,
[19:29] Speaker 2: right you know, and under us top of the list
[19:33] Speaker 2: in terms of games in its living standards. And I
[19:36] Speaker 2: do think Australia can and should do better. Our politicians,
[19:39] Speaker 2: by the way, aren't make or break around a lot
[19:42] Speaker 2: of that. But they can either stand in the way
[19:45] Speaker 2: of our productivity gains, our prosperity gains, or they can
[19:50] Speaker 2: help them along. And for some decades now, you know,
[19:54] Speaker 2: we have been in a nation where our politicians have
[19:59] Speaker 2: not challenged us as much as they should, haven't made
[20:03] Speaker 2: us change as much as we should, and therefore we
[20:07] Speaker 2: haven't had our political classes giving us a boot along
[20:12] Speaker 2: on that prosperity front.
[20:14] Speaker 1: It's very interesting. So the RBA's mandate sort of also
[20:20] Speaker 1: talks about prosperity of all Australians and also the welfare
[20:23] Speaker 1: of all Australians, and those two in some respects conflict.
[20:27] Speaker 1: But we sort of understand when inflation is really high,
[20:30] Speaker 1: we've got to look after the welfare of everybody. Therefore
[20:32] Speaker 1: we put interest rates up. When inflation is nice and low,
[20:36] Speaker 1: we need to grow or be prosperous, and we put
[20:39] Speaker 1: interest rates down. Pretty simple. That's very similarly for me
[20:44] Speaker 1: to understand when it comes to the government relative to
[20:48] Speaker 1: their policies fiscal policy. So RBA's monetary policy for our audience,
[20:55] Speaker 1: but when it comes to fiscal policy when the big
[20:57] Speaker 1: one is, you know, the budget, the big event is
[20:59] Speaker 1: the budget. Does the government also look at those two
[21:04] Speaker 1: aspects prosperity therefore growth measured by growth and welfare.
[21:11] Speaker 2: To be fair, it does look at all that. But
[21:14] Speaker 2: again you raise a really important point around the backdrop.
[21:19] Speaker 2: You know, at times people pretend there is a magic
[21:22] Speaker 2: wand you know, well, we could all just be more prosperous,
[21:25] Speaker 2: if this, if that. Sometimes it's let's just you know,
[21:29] Speaker 2: raise everybody's wages, which at one stage Australia in the
[21:33] Speaker 2: mid nineteen seventies did that, and of course we've got
[21:35] Speaker 2: a lot of inflation and we did not get any
[21:37] Speaker 2: change in prosperity. There are all sorts of people out
[21:41] Speaker 2: there who will pedal simple solutions for complex problems. If
[21:45] Speaker 2: you look at the problem that the Reserve Bank has
[21:48] Speaker 2: to juggle, it promises Australians that over time it will
[21:53] Speaker 2: stay on top of inflation. And what is inflation, and
[21:57] Speaker 2: you know, inflation it crops up when when we have
[22:01] Speaker 2: too much money chasing too little stuff, when our spending
[22:06] Speaker 2: runs ahead of the ability of the economy to produce
[22:09] Speaker 2: the stuff that we're spending on, or in the economist jugge,
[22:12] Speaker 2: demand is ahead of supply. And that is a situation
[22:17] Speaker 2: that we had before the Iran War. Inflation had you know,
[22:22] Speaker 2: it looked as i it was going down for a while,
[22:23] Speaker 2: but it had popped its head back up. The Reserve
[22:26] Speaker 2: Bank had brought out the hammer and was whacking that nail,
[22:30] Speaker 2: and then this war happened. It is worth noting and
[22:33] Speaker 2: you're talking about the budget, and you're entirely right, right,
[22:36] Speaker 2: it is worth noting that what we are juggling in
[22:39] Speaker 2: Australia in the near turn is not that dissimilar to
[22:44] Speaker 2: what we juggled back in twenty twenty two. In twenty
[22:46] Speaker 2: twenty two, right, there was already inflation like we had
[22:50] Speaker 2: before the Iran War, and then Russia's invasion of Ukraine
[22:54] Speaker 2: sent energy prices up, and you got off the back
[22:59] Speaker 2: of that common I'm worsening in inflation. And again we're
[23:03] Speaker 2: getting that worsening in inflation now and governments. So I've
[23:09] Speaker 2: mentioned the feeds are about a quarter of the spending
[23:12] Speaker 2: in Australia. By the time you add in the States,
[23:15] Speaker 2: you're about two fifths forty percent of all the spending
[23:18] Speaker 2: in Australia. The politicians essentially reacted to that by giving
[23:26] Speaker 2: us money right and lots of subsidies for this and that,
[23:30] Speaker 2: And I suspect there was a certain amount of grinding
[23:34] Speaker 2: of teeth from the Reserve Bank around that because it
[23:39] Speaker 2: sounds good. You know, in a bunch of cases they
[23:41] Speaker 2: handed us money in ways that reduced the measured inflation rate,
[23:46] Speaker 2: but they still actually worsened inflation because they were giving
[23:49] Speaker 2: us extra money at a time when there was already
[23:52] Speaker 2: too much money chasing too little stuff.
[23:55] Speaker 1: So if I might be able to ask you then
[23:57] Speaker 1: in that regard, the Reserve Bank Governor in her post
[24:00] Speaker 1: announcement press conference last week did say, I come remember
[24:05] Speaker 1: exact words which I remember. One of the words she
[24:07] Speaker 1: used exactly. She said Australians could be forgiven for feeling poorer,
[24:12] Speaker 1: and that sort of sort of puts a knife straight
[24:16] Speaker 1: into how we feel about our standard of living, so
[24:19] Speaker 1: we feel poorer. That goes right to the very heard
[24:21] Speaker 1: of that. And she has been very as you would
[24:26] Speaker 1: expect the government of Reserve Bank or Federal Reserve of
[24:29] Speaker 1: any country, been very careful not to be critical of
[24:33] Speaker 1: the government relative to fiscal policy, but has made some
[24:37] Speaker 1: references to increases by government in spending, for example, the
[24:44] Speaker 1: tjoure and fifty bucks that they're going to give to everybody.
[24:46] Speaker 1: Not that there's and by the way, it's not coming
[24:47] Speaker 1: into twenty twenty eight anyway, but it doesn't matter. She
[24:51] Speaker 1: has been sort of made some references to it. And
[24:54] Speaker 1: then the Prime Minister has made reference to this being
[24:57] Speaker 1: a budget which is with full of labor values. I
[25:02] Speaker 1: don't quite know what that means, but I could guess.
[25:05] Speaker 1: I guess, I can guess. Do you think that in
[25:09] Speaker 1: that context, do you think that this budget is one
[25:13] Speaker 1: that is aimed at growth or constraint and or will
[25:21] Speaker 1: it have an effect by increasing pressure on inflation by
[25:28] Speaker 1: increasing private demand?
[25:30] Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, and you are setting out I thought of
[25:35] Speaker 2: three tests for the budget. One, just briefly, if you like,
[25:38] Speaker 2: was insurance in the sense of paying more for fuel
[25:43] Speaker 2: really hurts. But running out of fuel, especially these allow
[25:46] Speaker 2: our farmers feed the world, our miners make us the money,
[25:50] Speaker 2: our transport sector moves everything that you know is our lifeblood.
[25:55] Speaker 2: If we were to run out, then that would be
[25:57] Speaker 2: a real problem. So the you know, the main asked
[26:00] Speaker 2: for the government right now is to make sure that
[26:03] Speaker 2: we're getting supplies and that our supplies are secure. The
[26:07] Speaker 2: second one, though, and you talked about it, inflation, because
[26:12] Speaker 2: back a handful of years ago, when the Reserve Bank
[26:17] Speaker 2: was taking money out of the economy, governments and the
[26:20] Speaker 2: states were arguably worse than the FEDS. Governments were putting
[26:23] Speaker 2: the money back in. And if inflation is too much money,
[26:27] Speaker 2: you're chasing too little stuff. It was a real problem
[26:31] Speaker 2: and we had in the week or two leading up
[26:34] Speaker 2: to this week's budget, some state budgets Victoria or Western Australia,
[26:40] Speaker 2: and they have So Victoria's got no money, but they
[26:44] Speaker 2: still spent some more on their punters. Western Australia's got
[26:48] Speaker 2: heaps and heaps of money, but they spent more on
[26:51] Speaker 2: their punters. And you could just hear the teeth start
[26:54] Speaker 2: to grind at the Reserve Bank, you know, the states
[26:58] Speaker 2: being part of the problem, and their fear would have
[27:02] Speaker 2: been that maybe the federal government would do as it
[27:04] Speaker 2: did a handful of years ago, you know, the because
[27:08] Speaker 2: an energy crisis is one where the budget is better off,
[27:11] Speaker 2: but families are worse off, families a poorer. As the
[27:14] Speaker 2: governor pointed out, the temptation for governments to hand over
[27:17] Speaker 2: some money is very high. To this government's credit, it
[27:22] Speaker 2: has not extended things like that fuel tax cut. It
[27:25] Speaker 2: hasn't handed out too much money. But I'm cautious of
[27:31] Speaker 2: saying that they haven't made life a little more complex
[27:37] Speaker 2: for the Reserve Bank, or at least I'd say they
[27:40] Speaker 2: haven't helped the Reserve Bank. So the last big budget
[27:44] Speaker 2: update we got head of Christmas about five months ago,
[27:48] Speaker 2: the estimate of spending in the financial year we're just
[27:52] Speaker 2: about to start was eight hundred and eleven billion dollars.
[27:56] Speaker 2: Do I hate myself that I know that number? Yes,
[28:00] Speaker 2: And then the update we got in the budget it
[28:03] Speaker 2: was no longer eight hundred and eleven billion in spending.
[28:05] Speaker 2: It was eight hundred and thirty billion in spending. That
[28:08] Speaker 2: extra eighteen nineteen billion, And you can understand some of it.
[28:12] Speaker 2: There were policies, there's new policy stuff, some of its defense,
[28:15] Speaker 2: some of its fuel security, some of its pharmaceutical benefits,
[28:19] Speaker 2: some of its well, governments do spend more when inflation
[28:23] Speaker 2: goes up and the economy weakens. Some of it is
[28:26] Speaker 2: the continuing blowout in the ndis that put the boot
[28:30] Speaker 2: up the bomb of the government to get more serious
[28:33] Speaker 2: on reform. Then, but that increase in spending five months ago,
[28:37] Speaker 2: the expectation was that spending in the year just about
[28:39] Speaker 2: to start by the federal government would increase by three
[28:43] Speaker 2: point one percent. As at the budget, they said, well,
[28:46] Speaker 2: hang on, we now think it's going to be five
[28:48] Speaker 2: point three percent. And I do think that will have
[28:52] Speaker 2: raised a couple of eyebrows at the Reserve Bank. So, yes,
[28:56] Speaker 2: the reserve will be quite happy there wasn't a big
[28:59] Speaker 2: cost of living package. We have not repeated those mistakes.
[29:04] Speaker 2: The stakes, though, are still throwing some money around, and
[29:07] Speaker 2: the fids are spending more than they had said they
[29:11] Speaker 2: were going to do last time they updated us.
[29:14] Speaker 1: I'm imagining you remember the Costello years, and let's go
[29:18] Speaker 1: back to the mid two thousand's early period, and Peter
[29:22] Speaker 1: Costello did talk about intergenerational equity in those days. This
[29:27] Speaker 1: has been an ongoing conversation and you know treasurers post him,
[29:31] Speaker 1: you know Hockey, did you know Swan did, et cetera.
[29:36] Speaker 1: So it's not something new, and it probably is an
[29:39] Speaker 1: intergenerational problem in that all the wealth seems to be
[29:42] Speaker 1: at one end of the table and the younger people
[29:44] Speaker 1: are struggling to get there. That makes sense. What's interesting
[29:48] Speaker 1: about this is that Costello's thesis about fixing intergenerational inequity,
[29:56] Speaker 1: if that's the way we put it, is that instead
[29:59] Speaker 1: of running deficits, we should run surpluses. And the reason
[30:04] Speaker 1: we should run surpluses is so that we can reduce
[30:08] Speaker 1: national debt. Of course, he wasn't talking about state debt.
[30:11] Speaker 1: He's talking about the federal debt, and the justification for
[30:14] Speaker 1: that was we don't want our kids and grandkids and
[30:18] Speaker 1: future generations to have to pay either an interest or
[30:25] Speaker 1: alternatively in extra at tax the debts that say, my
[30:28] Speaker 1: generation and perhaps your generation have accumulated for them. But today,
[30:33] Speaker 1: if we fast forward, that the intergenerational inequity still exists
[30:41] Speaker 1: and in the same format that existed in the mid
[30:43] Speaker 1: two thousands. I actually remember in two thousand and one
[30:45] Speaker 1: election when John Howard was going for election affordability housing
[30:49] Speaker 1: affordability was his mainstay policy and he launched it in Adelaide.
[30:53] Speaker 1: I remember him launching and Chris Joey, who was where
[30:56] Speaker 1: I first met him. Chris Joey wrote a paper for
[30:59] Speaker 1: Malcolm Turber when Malcolm was a chair of Goldbinzachs. I
[31:02] Speaker 1: remember the event very well. So we haven't really solved affordability.
[31:06] Speaker 1: We have, and we haven't as solved intergenerational inequity. We've tried,
[31:10] Speaker 1: we haven't solved it. The thesis for solving that today
[31:14] Speaker 1: seem to be a lot different As an economist. How
[31:17] Speaker 1: do you feel about solving for this problem as an
[31:19] Speaker 1: economist relative to fiscal policy?
[31:21] Speaker 2: For example, So there are three standout things that you
[31:27] Speaker 2: can do. You mentioned one of them. That's to have
[31:30] Speaker 2: a better, a stronger long term budget so that we're
[31:34] Speaker 2: handing on less debt to the generations that follow. To
[31:39] Speaker 2: be fair to this budget, it does that to be
[31:42] Speaker 2: less fair. It gets there over the longer term by
[31:47] Speaker 2: assuming we'll be able to make some pretty big savings
[31:50] Speaker 2: in the NDIS and that's going to be hard to do.
[31:54] Speaker 2: And certainly the speed of the turnaround that the government
[31:57] Speaker 2: is looking for on the spend on the NDIS is
[32:00] Speaker 2: pretty fast, so it's hard to find too many people
[32:04] Speaker 2: here in Canberra who think that that will be achievable.
[32:08] Speaker 2: But so yes, you can improve fairness over generations by
[32:14] Speaker 2: being more careful with the longer term budget. There's been
[32:18] Speaker 2: a bit of that in this budget. You can be
[32:22] Speaker 2: fair to younger Australians if you give and you've mentioned
[32:25] Speaker 2: it a few times, if you give a greater potential
[32:28] Speaker 2: around growth. I've called it prosperity. You don't get growth
[32:33] Speaker 2: in living standards without growth in the economy. The growth
[32:36] Speaker 2: in prosperity it is, it's essentially all the same. And
[32:40] Speaker 2: there are some things right of the bi all sorts
[32:42] Speaker 2: of changes around artificial intelligence and the like, and that
[32:47] Speaker 2: chopping and changing in the economy will create some some
[32:51] Speaker 2: problems on the way through, but it will also give
[32:53] Speaker 2: us a more prosperous economy. We will get greater prosperity
[32:58] Speaker 2: out of those technology changes in the law. Like what
[33:00] Speaker 2: worries me is that we are not getting enough of
[33:06] Speaker 2: a push from our political classes and haven't done for
[33:08] Speaker 2: decades around the everything else of prosperity. There are all
[33:12] Speaker 2: sorts of things we do in the federal budget and
[33:16] Speaker 2: outside the federal budget that are astoundingly stupid and that
[33:20] Speaker 2: holds us back on the prosperity front. I am a
[33:25] Speaker 2: sad said human being. Mark. I love tax right, you know,
[33:29] Speaker 2: and I think we can and we should do better
[33:31] Speaker 2: in text. But you look at some of the biggest
[33:33] Speaker 2: tax reforms we can make in Australia. I mean you
[33:38] Speaker 2: look at well, you know what's the economic models that
[33:42] Speaker 2: people like me and others run. You know what's the
[33:45] Speaker 2: boost to prosperity we get out of something. You may
[33:48] Speaker 2: be surprised to hear that the you know, tax I
[33:53] Speaker 2: love it to death, We can and we should do
[33:55] Speaker 2: it better, but it's not make or break around prosperity.
[33:58] Speaker 2: There is a little known push by the federal government
[34:04] Speaker 2: to change non compete clauses. That's you know, you get
[34:09] Speaker 2: a new job, you sign the bit of paper that
[34:11] Speaker 2: says as and when you leave that job, you can't
[34:14] Speaker 2: do this, you can't do that. And here in Australia
[34:19] Speaker 2: about one and every four workers signs those and they're
[34:22] Speaker 2: way too restrictive. As I like to say, the clue
[34:25] Speaker 2: is in the name right non compete clauses. We are
[34:29] Speaker 2: stopping competition, and competition is a grand thing. If we do,
[34:35] Speaker 2: you know, really wind back the scope of those clauses
[34:38] Speaker 2: or even get rid of them and protect intellectual property directly,
[34:43] Speaker 2: you can have as big an impact on prosperity as
[34:46] Speaker 2: some of the you know, the huge tax fights that
[34:49] Speaker 2: you know, changes out of tax that we can get.
[34:51] Speaker 2: So I do worry that sometimes we row down rabbit
[34:55] Speaker 2: holes rather than chasing some of the easier means that
[35:00] Speaker 2: we could achieve.
[35:02] Speaker 1: In the context of that, then Chris, maybe you get
[35:04] Speaker 1: explained to me and our audience why over the last
[35:09] Speaker 1: tour months we've had changes to super which probably at
[35:13] Speaker 1: the margin don't make much difference relative to the budget,
[35:17] Speaker 1: changes to trust tax, the way that we tax trust,
[35:23] Speaker 1: and all those capital gains and you know, the elimination
[35:26] Speaker 1: of negative gearing or the changes to negative gearing. Why
[35:30] Speaker 1: do we have that as such a big deal if
[35:34] Speaker 1: in relation to growth and or prosperity, they're not going
[35:37] Speaker 1: to have that much of an impacts. What's that all about?
[35:40] Speaker 2: Then? Yeah, and they're not going to have that much
[35:42] Speaker 2: of an impact. And let me add because I do
[35:45] Speaker 2: worry about so I'm broadly happy in particular with the
[35:50] Speaker 2: capital gains tax change, but I do worry that it's
[35:54] Speaker 2: being marketed, it's being spun. As you know, the soul's
[35:59] Speaker 2: how affordability in Australia and the good academic work in
[36:06] Speaker 2: this area has never claimed that. And you know the
[36:10] Speaker 2: simple illustration, over the next five years, the changes to
[36:15] Speaker 2: cattle gains tax and to negative gearing will raise an
[36:18] Speaker 2: extra three point six billion dollars in tax. Now that's
[36:22] Speaker 2: a lot of money. I would bend down and pick
[36:25] Speaker 2: it up. But across the same five years, we will
[36:30] Speaker 2: as a nation pay about six hundred billion in terms
[36:35] Speaker 2: of mortgage interest payments, not principal, just mortgage interest payments.
[36:41] Speaker 2: So three point six versus six hundred Or look at
[36:44] Speaker 2: the total size of Australian housing currently valued at twelve
[36:49] Speaker 2: point three prillion. These sort of changes will have an
[36:53] Speaker 2: overall impact on housing. But if you think of housing
[36:57] Speaker 2: as a big rock and we are moving the lever
[36:59] Speaker 2: there um we've got a tiny lever and this is
[37:03] Speaker 2: Australia's largest rock, I would take you back to twenty
[37:06] Speaker 2: twenty one, around twenty twenty two. Even at that stage,
[37:09] Speaker 2: before interest rates started rising in Australia, you could have
[37:13] Speaker 2: made two relatively reasonable arguments about why Australian housing was
[37:19] Speaker 2: so unaffordable. One was, well, infrastrates had been falling for
[37:24] Speaker 2: a long time during the pandemic. They fail to essentially nothing.
[37:28] Speaker 2: And when money is cheap as chips, no wonder, housing
[37:32] Speaker 2: prices had gone up. And when infrastrates in Australia rose,
[37:36] Speaker 2: you would think, well, hey, presto, house prices will come down,
[37:39] Speaker 2: they'll become more affordable. The alternative argument said, well, look,
[37:46] Speaker 2: you know, for decades the Australian housing policy has been
[37:50] Speaker 2: the word no, you know, no, you can't build it, No,
[37:53] Speaker 2: you really can't build it there and that leafy suburb
[37:56] Speaker 2: because older and richer people don't want you to. If
[38:00] Speaker 2: in the rare occasions we say yes, you know, we
[38:04] Speaker 2: put all these rules of regulations that make it stunningly
[38:06] Speaker 2: expensive to do, and if you roll on to today,
[38:10] Speaker 2: our infrastrates have risen a lot over that period. And
[38:14] Speaker 2: it is the equivalent of the Reserve Bank abolishing negative
[38:21] Speaker 2: gearing and the entirety of capital gains tax discounts of
[38:27] Speaker 2: any kind many times over, right, whether you're talking about
[38:31] Speaker 2: interest rates, capital gains, negative gearing, you are talking about
[38:36] Speaker 2: the cost of money going into property. Right, we've done
[38:40] Speaker 2: the equivalent of all this stuff around negative gearing and
[38:43] Speaker 2: on capital gains taxes and it did not stop a
[38:46] Speaker 2: big rise in house prices in Australia. We now know, right,
[38:50] Speaker 2: we have great evidence that the way to fix housing
[38:54] Speaker 2: in Australia is going to be the political fight of
[38:58] Speaker 2: the rest of our lives. You know. It is convincing
[39:02] Speaker 2: older and richer Australians who don't want change in and
[39:06] Speaker 2: around the suburb where they live that if population is
[39:10] Speaker 2: going to grow this much, we need to change a lot.
[39:13] Speaker 1: If I can interpret that, I think what you're saying
[39:16] Speaker 1: is the rules and regulations are not conducive or are
[39:21] Speaker 1: not encouraging any more supply in those particular areas for example,
[39:27] Speaker 1: and because of Australia is such an unusual nation with
[39:31] Speaker 1: fifty five percent of its population whatever it is living
[39:34] Speaker 1: in three capital cities and they're surrounded by mountains and sea.
[39:39] Speaker 1: That's very hard to go beyond those places. So supply
[39:41] Speaker 1: is a problem. Supply is a huge problem. Did you
[39:44] Speaker 1: see anything in the budget that's going to help us
[39:46] Speaker 1: with supply therefore help us with perhaps access for younger
[39:51] Speaker 1: people to buy their own place and or affordability.
[39:55] Speaker 2: Yes, I did, very happy to see it. I also
[39:57] Speaker 2: fair to say, you know, it's again not a big
[40:00] Speaker 2: enough leaver. So the budget has an extra two billion
[40:03] Speaker 2: dollars essiectually going into infrastructure around housing, all the you know,
[40:09] Speaker 2: the seige and the rest of it. And that is
[40:12] Speaker 2: great because we haven't been spending enough. But the ultimate
[40:18] Speaker 2: supply in Australia requires street by straight, suburb by suburb,
[40:22] Speaker 2: council by council. We've got to say yes where for
[40:25] Speaker 2: decades we've said no. And the people who said no,
[40:28] Speaker 2: they're not in my backout. It's the nimbis who said
[40:30] Speaker 2: no thought they were doing the right thing. But here
[40:32] Speaker 2: we are forty years later and we know we have
[40:35] Speaker 2: killed the prospects of a generation by continuing to say no.
[40:40] Speaker 2: And the Feds it's hard for that. You know, the
[40:44] Speaker 2: Feds have leavers that can have an impact on the States,
[40:47] Speaker 2: the States have leavers that can have an impact on
[40:49] Speaker 2: local council. But at the end of the day, this
[40:52] Speaker 2: is still a fight where older, richer Australians who are
[40:58] Speaker 2: already there don't want change around them. And that is
[41:03] Speaker 2: the ugliest political fight you can ever imagine. I've always
[41:07] Speaker 2: liked there was a Speaker of Congress over in the
[41:11] Speaker 2: US many years ago, Tip O'Neill. He said, all politics
[41:15] Speaker 2: is local, and all our housing problems are local, and
[41:20] Speaker 2: it's hard for the feeds to fix it.
[41:22] Speaker 1: Could you explain the connection or the dynamic between public
[41:28] Speaker 1: spending and private demand? So when the reserve band government
[41:32] Speaker 1: talks about aggregate private demand has been increasing outside of
[41:39] Speaker 1: fuel prices, I'm talking about and she often says it,
[41:43] Speaker 1: where does public spending, money spent by the government fit
[41:46] Speaker 1: in governments, not just federal states as well, fit into that.
[41:51] Speaker 2: So feeds are about a quarter and in the States
[41:53] Speaker 2: are about forty percent of all spending in Australia. But
[41:58] Speaker 2: of course you know they tax and they spend sometimes
[42:01] Speaker 2: what they do is give a tax cut or give
[42:04] Speaker 2: a subsidy. You know, you're seeing that with fuel taxes
[42:08] Speaker 2: at the moment. You've seen it recently with electricity costs.
[42:12] Speaker 2: There was another tax cut announced in the budget. So
[42:17] Speaker 2: sometimes even if governments aren't spending more, they are giving
[42:21] Speaker 2: families or perhaps businesses the money to spend more. Inflation
[42:29] Speaker 2: doesn't care if you like, whether an extra dollar got
[42:32] Speaker 2: spent by a federal government, of state government, a family,
[42:36] Speaker 2: a business, whatever. All that inflation cares about is how
[42:43] Speaker 2: much spending in total we're getting relative to our ability
[42:47] Speaker 2: to supply that spending. Again, I'd go back to that
[42:51] Speaker 2: basic equation, too much money chasing too little stuff. And
[42:56] Speaker 2: that's I think some of the frustrated I'm not want
[43:00] Speaker 2: of those people who thinks the Reserve Bank can or
[43:03] Speaker 2: should jump up and down about governments. That's not their role.
[43:07] Speaker 2: They are there to fight inflation, and the politicians, to
[43:11] Speaker 2: be fair to them, they have a different role, and
[43:14] Speaker 2: politics being what it is, sometimes you know they are
[43:17] Speaker 2: going to make the task of inflation fighting harder with
[43:20] Speaker 2: their decisions. That's what it is. You know. I don't
[43:23] Speaker 2: expect the governor of the day or the Reserve Bank
[43:26] Speaker 2: to be jumping up and down about what governments do.
[43:29] Speaker 2: That's not how it works. If you want an assessment
[43:33] Speaker 2: of what governments are or aren't doing, you know, there's
[43:36] Speaker 2: plenty of people out there who can give opinions. You
[43:39] Speaker 2: can't necessarily expect the Reserve Bank to be the one,
[43:42] Speaker 2: you know, the part of government to be jumping up
[43:44] Speaker 2: and down about the rest of government.
[43:47] Speaker 1: We often talk, and it's in the media all the time,
[43:50] Speaker 1: about the national debt being nine hundred and let's call
[43:55] Speaker 1: it sixty billion, close enough to a trillion, maybe also
[44:00] Speaker 1: explaining to our audience that's not the end of it,
[44:03] Speaker 1: because I think the debt of Victoria alone is a
[44:08] Speaker 1: couple one hundred billion. Does that fit into the national debt?
[44:12] Speaker 1: Or is that in addition to the national debt? So,
[44:14] Speaker 1: and what would our national debt look like when you
[44:16] Speaker 1: add everything up?
[44:17] Speaker 2: A couple of thoughts for you, best way to measure
[44:20] Speaker 2: debt is not gross dead it's net debt. If I've
[44:23] Speaker 2: got a big housing loan, but I've got a bunch
[44:25] Speaker 2: of money in the bank, I'm better off than somebody's
[44:27] Speaker 2: got the same loan but no money in the bank.
[44:30] Speaker 2: The net of our financial assets is important. So the
[44:34] Speaker 2: feeds are close to our trillion dollars, as you know
[44:38] Speaker 2: in debt, but net debt, once you allow for the
[44:41] Speaker 2: money they've got stashed away in various places, is about
[44:44] Speaker 2: six hundred billion. Second thought is, you know, well, whether
[44:51] Speaker 2: I've got a big housing loan and whether or not
[44:53] Speaker 2: I've got money in the bank. What's also reallemant is
[44:56] Speaker 2: my way how much I'm earning. And the same is
[44:59] Speaker 2: true for government. So you look at the nation as
[45:02] Speaker 2: a whole, and you look at that six hundred billion
[45:07] Speaker 2: in federal debt, you kind of need to compare it
[45:09] Speaker 2: to national income. And I suspect this will come as
[45:14] Speaker 2: a surprise to you and to many people if you're
[45:19] Speaker 2: looking at net federal debt as a share of Australian
[45:23] Speaker 2: national income that is below where it was before COVID.
[45:28] Speaker 2: You know, yes, COVID was expensive, but it was temporary
[45:33] Speaker 2: and our national income has grown a lot, and we've
[45:37] Speaker 2: had a burst of inflation which has boosted the size
[45:40] Speaker 2: of national income, but it hasn't boosted the debt. So
[45:44] Speaker 2: I am less worried about federal debt that a bunch
[45:47] Speaker 2: of people are. What has changed over the past decade
[45:50] Speaker 2: and you mentioned it, you know, the Victoria with its
[45:53] Speaker 2: two hundred billion debt, A bunch of others states have
[45:56] Speaker 2: also got debt. They also have less financial assets, so
[45:59] Speaker 2: that the the reduction to net is more of an
[46:05] Speaker 2: issue for them. To the extent that Australia has a
[46:09] Speaker 2: public sector debt problem, it is more the states than
[46:15] Speaker 2: the feeds these days.
[46:17] Speaker 1: Thank you. Are there any insights you can offer around
[46:21] Speaker 1: something that rarely has discussed, but the off budget budget
[46:25] Speaker 1: some in other words, things that weren't disclosed in the
[46:29] Speaker 1: income expenditure budget that are more in the capital side
[46:32] Speaker 1: of the budget or what we're going to spend what
[46:34] Speaker 1: Australian government's going to spend on capital items.
[46:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, and the distinction is a different one. So if
[46:44] Speaker 2: there's a given measure of the budget that the media
[46:47] Speaker 2: and analysts concentrate on, then the politicians have an incentive
[46:52] Speaker 2: to put money that it doesn't show up in a
[46:54] Speaker 2: measure that's been concentrated on. And until that Charter Budget
[47:00] Speaker 2: honesty back in nineteen ninety eight, we used to look
[47:05] Speaker 2: at a number that was made better when governments sold
[47:10] Speaker 2: an asset, when they privatized.
[47:12] Speaker 1: For example, like Comworth Bank or Telstra.
[47:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and indeed you saw a lot of
[47:16] Speaker 2: privatizations at the state level, and just before change of
[47:21] Speaker 2: government from Keating to Howard Jeff Kennett was privatizing some
[47:26] Speaker 2: things that led him payback some debt to the Feds.
[47:29] Speaker 2: The repayment of some Victorian government loans allowed the federal
[47:36] Speaker 2: government to say at that stage, or the budget is
[47:40] Speaker 2: in good nick, you know, whereas it was being propped
[47:44] Speaker 2: up by one off privatization receipts effectively, and so economists,
[47:50] Speaker 2: including me, said well, hang on, you know, we need
[47:52] Speaker 2: to fix that, and then we had a chart of
[47:54] Speaker 2: budget honesty. Our problem is that when we changed what
[47:57] Speaker 2: we look at, we simply changed the incentives for the politicians.
[48:02] Speaker 2: And don't get excited by one side or the other,
[48:04] Speaker 2: right I. If you think one side of politics are
[48:09] Speaker 2: genius and the other side are incompetent and evil, then
[48:12] Speaker 2: you are a deep disappointment to your primary school maths teacher.
[48:17] Speaker 2: You know, they are all flawed human beings and they
[48:20] Speaker 2: are dealing with flawed incentives that we as a nation
[48:24] Speaker 2: have given them. And as soon as we change the incentives,
[48:28] Speaker 2: as soon as we said, well, you know, we're now
[48:30] Speaker 2: going to concentrate on this budget measure, not that one.
[48:34] Speaker 2: It gave them an incentive to put different money instead
[48:38] Speaker 2: of privatizing. We we're sort of nationalizing suddenly. We had
[48:41] Speaker 2: all sorts of funds, you know, We've got funds around housing,
[48:44] Speaker 2: We've got funds around climate change. We've got everything from
[48:50] Speaker 2: the NBN to snowy hydro to student debt. All sorts
[48:54] Speaker 2: of things sit off budget.
[48:57] Speaker 1: They're not in the current budget.
[48:59] Speaker 2: They are not in the measure that we look at
[49:01] Speaker 2: the most. And the sort of punter way to think
[49:05] Speaker 2: about it is, I don't mind if something goes off budget.
[49:10] Speaker 2: If if that's just a money is going to go out,
[49:13] Speaker 2: but it's going to earn a bit of a return
[49:14] Speaker 2: and that money will come back in. I don't care.
[49:17] Speaker 2: I don't need to look at that closely. It can
[49:19] Speaker 2: go off budget. That's fine. A travel is that our
[49:24] Speaker 2: rules and our reporting mean that effectively stuff goes off
[49:26] Speaker 2: budget and then we stop caring about it so increasingly
[49:31] Speaker 2: over time, that's where the trash goes, you know, and
[49:34] Speaker 2: that money goes dark. We don't look at it enough,
[49:38] Speaker 2: and so you you know, for example, when you have
[49:43] Speaker 2: debt right offs as we did recently with student debt.
[49:47] Speaker 2: It doesn't show up in or not immediately. It only
[49:50] Speaker 2: shows up very slowly in the main measures that we
[49:53] Speaker 2: look at, right, you know, So there's a real incentive
[49:56] Speaker 2: for our governments to put trash off. I mean to
[50:01] Speaker 2: forgive that debt, you know, because the system sort of
[50:04] Speaker 2: lets them get away with that. It's not, by the way,
[50:07] Speaker 2: the only way in which they do things. They tend to.
[50:13] Speaker 2: Any given budget gives you some numbers over ten years,
[50:16] Speaker 2: but it gives you detailed numbers over four years. So
[50:19] Speaker 2: they try to be careful in the four years, and
[50:21] Speaker 2: mysteriously years five and six are suddenly much worse. Right,
[50:25] Speaker 2: you know, there's that dodge, there's all sorts of things
[50:29] Speaker 2: we do need, and I would it is an incredibly
[50:33] Speaker 2: neude and niche point forgive me, right, But if we
[50:35] Speaker 2: give our politicians such terrible reporting rules, of course they
[50:41] Speaker 2: are going to vault them. And I'm desperate to change
[50:43] Speaker 2: those rules. We are letting our politicians consistently pull the
[50:49] Speaker 2: wall over our eyes.
[50:51] Speaker 1: I think what you're sort of saying here is that
[50:53] Speaker 1: there are a number of items that have effectively been
[50:58] Speaker 1: classed as assets for under the in this environment and
[51:02] Speaker 1: don't appear in the expense column or the income column.
[51:06] Speaker 1: The income column being that the tax they collect and
[51:09] Speaker 1: other things, the expense column being the thing that they
[51:11] Speaker 1: spend day to day on the government, that is in
[51:14] Speaker 1: terms of the budget. But there's another column over here
[51:16] Speaker 1: called assets. Snowy Hydro for example, or NBN Snowy Hydro,
[51:20] Speaker 1: by the way, is not even completed heads. In fact,
[51:23] Speaker 1: they stopped doing some work on it recently because there
[51:25] Speaker 1: was a cave in or something. But they're going to
[51:27] Speaker 1: keep throwing money at it. But that's money that's coming
[51:30] Speaker 1: from it's either borrowed money or alternatively, it's coming out
[51:34] Speaker 1: of the tax pool. It's got to come from somewhere
[51:37] Speaker 1: because you've got to spend it.
[51:38] Speaker 2: Yeah, and the acceleration in the amount of money that's
[51:43] Speaker 2: headed off budget is spectactical. To be fair, this week
[51:48] Speaker 2: it didn't throw you know, threw an extra five billion
[51:51] Speaker 2: in over four years, and I'm not that excited. It
[51:56] Speaker 2: was only five billion, but there has been a truly
[52:00] Speaker 2: massive amount. We are currently looking across a five year
[52:04] Speaker 2: period at one hundred and fifteen billion dollars that sits
[52:08] Speaker 2: off budget. Again, I hate myself for knowing that number
[52:12] Speaker 2: without having to check it. But yeah, you know, Australians
[52:16] Speaker 2: deserve better, and it's such a nude thing. We would
[52:20] Speaker 2: be outraged if businesses were raughting their accounts, you know,
[52:26] Speaker 2: if the auditors were failing to jump up and down
[52:30] Speaker 2: about all this sort of stuff. The behavior is bad
[52:33] Speaker 2: because we let it be bad.
[52:35] Speaker 1: I think what you're saying there too, Chris, is that
[52:38] Speaker 1: it's really our responsibility, or perhaps more the responsibility professionals
[52:42] Speaker 1: like yourself, because most punters wouldn't understand this, but there
[52:46] Speaker 1: is a level of obligation or responsibility for people in
[52:50] Speaker 1: this country to hold the government to account for these
[52:54] Speaker 1: sorts of things. So we talk about hundreds of billions.
[52:56] Speaker 1: We're talking about seriously big dollars, and the question comes,
[53:00] Speaker 1: will the so called assets actually one day make us
[53:03] Speaker 1: money or at least we get some utility utility out
[53:06] Speaker 1: of them? At some stage we don't know the answer
[53:08] Speaker 1: to that. There was anything about the NBN the other day.
[53:12] Speaker 1: You know, the NBN great, But you know, when you
[53:16] Speaker 1: look at Muss Starlink, I mean like I mean, if
[53:21] Speaker 1: you've got a farm for examp or even good of
[53:22] Speaker 1: you had house, Starlink works really well, and it costs
[53:27] Speaker 1: the consumer, you know, three or four hundred bucks, and
[53:30] Speaker 1: we've yet, we're spending billions on the NBN, and I
[53:33] Speaker 1: know it's valuaboard, we use it here.
[53:35] Speaker 2: Yeah, the technology changed, so you might have thought that
[53:38] Speaker 2: the NBN was a you know, good and safe investment.
[53:41] Speaker 2: You could set it off off budget there because it
[53:44] Speaker 2: was going to be okay. But the technology changed and
[53:46] Speaker 2: we've lost money. You look at the snowy hydro turns
[53:50] Speaker 2: out that there was a lot harder to dig, a
[53:55] Speaker 2: lot more expensive, and a lot slower to dig than
[53:58] Speaker 2: we thought. So it might have been reasonable to put
[54:01] Speaker 2: it off budget to begin with. But here we are.
[54:03] Speaker 2: We now know we've lost a fortune. There are all
[54:06] Speaker 2: sorts of things or you know, some of our money
[54:11] Speaker 2: these days, props up at aminium smelters because there are
[54:15] Speaker 2: votes in it. Although props up the production of Tim Tams.
[54:19] Speaker 2: And I love Tim Tams, but I don't want, you know,
[54:23] Speaker 2: my taxpayer dollars supporting it at the cost of everything else.
[54:29] Speaker 2: We let crap happen. That's on us much more than
[54:34] Speaker 2: it is on the politicians.
[54:35] Speaker 1: I thinks that's that's a very clear answer on that.
[54:39] Speaker 1: Thanks very much that the one that wasn't the word
[54:43] Speaker 1: that was not used, I don't think in everything that
[54:46] Speaker 1: I read in a relation to the budget, and I
[54:49] Speaker 1: did use AI to help me, the word that didn't
[54:52] Speaker 1: come up was immigration. Do you reckon? You could just
[54:57] Speaker 1: sort of sort of drill down a little bit on
[55:01] Speaker 1: immigration relative to fiscal policy, relative to inflation, and probably
[55:09] Speaker 1: finally the standard of living, our standard of living, because
[55:12] Speaker 1: that's where we started.
[55:13] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it is worth going back a couple
[55:17] Speaker 2: of decades when migration was a clear positive for Australia.
[55:24] Speaker 2: But because we have not built, or when we're built,
[55:27] Speaker 2: we haven't built in the right place, or when we're built,
[55:29] Speaker 2: we haven't you know, the rules and regulations have made
[55:31] Speaker 2: it stunningly expensive. But that isn't the fault of the migrants,
[55:35] Speaker 2: right again, that's on us. We've screwed up. But the
[55:38] Speaker 2: worst that housing has become, the more of a complication
[55:43] Speaker 2: that the pace of our migration has been. Now migration,
[55:48] Speaker 2: the government has been tightening up, but we have a
[55:51] Speaker 2: system that lets you appeal this appeal that meaning that
[55:56] Speaker 2: the slow down in migration is occurring more slowly than
[56:00] Speaker 2: the government had expected this financial year. In the budget
[56:04] Speaker 2: the other day the government just revised up the expected
[56:08] Speaker 2: net migration this year about thirty five thousand people. I
[56:11] Speaker 2: think twenty thousand next year to be fair. That number
[56:16] Speaker 2: is coming down to be really fair. If we want
[56:19] Speaker 2: to get back to a society that can be much
[56:23] Speaker 2: more welcoming as we should be, we have to be
[56:26] Speaker 2: doing better on housing and a range of other fronts.
[56:29] Speaker 2: We've made the migration equation for Australia much more complex
[56:35] Speaker 2: and we can or we should do better.
[56:38] Speaker 1: Did you think there's a mismatch or there has been
[56:41] Speaker 1: a mismatch relative to policy on immigration into Australia And
[56:46] Speaker 1: we're talking about net immigration, so with the people leaving
[56:49] Speaker 1: this people coming relative to the policy relative in relation
[56:55] Speaker 1: to housing these people, has there been a mismatch?
[57:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, and again that's on us. We should be much
[57:03] Speaker 2: better at building housing than we are and we're not.
[57:06] Speaker 2: There are other complications though, right when migrants arrive. Federal
[57:11] Speaker 2: governments tend to make money. They get the taxes. State
[57:13] Speaker 2: governments tend to lose money. They've got to build the
[57:16] Speaker 2: roads and the schools and the hospitals and the like.
[57:20] Speaker 2: But it's the feds who get to make the decisions,
[57:24] Speaker 2: so they tend to make money out of it, and
[57:29] Speaker 2: you know that has a bit of an impact. They
[57:31] Speaker 2: also like net migration to be higher, partly because it
[57:36] Speaker 2: makes it less likely that the economy ever tips into recession.
[57:41] Speaker 2: Politicians hate headlines about recessions. More people means that's less
[57:45] Speaker 2: likely to happen. To be clear, right, you know, the
[57:48] Speaker 2: the politics of migration are made much more complex, not
[57:55] Speaker 2: just by those things, but by our policy failings on
[57:59] Speaker 2: everything else. And most policy failings on everything else have
[58:03] Speaker 2: lasted for so many decades, right, that responsibility lies clearly
[58:08] Speaker 2: with us to get them better.
[58:11] Speaker 1: Do you think overall that this budget was a reform budget?
[58:15] Speaker 2: I do, which is not the same thing as saying
[58:18] Speaker 2: I like everything in it. There's some things in it
[58:21] Speaker 2: that I quite strongly disagree with. But it is fair
[58:25] Speaker 2: to say if you look back in the last couple
[58:27] Speaker 2: of decades, we have had white knuckled scary budgets as
[58:33] Speaker 2: we fought off crises, right, you know, and the budget
[58:35] Speaker 2: had to do really important things during COVID, during the
[58:38] Speaker 2: global financial crisis. And again not to say that our
[58:42] Speaker 2: decisions were perfect either time, but we know because we
[58:45] Speaker 2: could compare to what other nations did that. Both times
[58:48] Speaker 2: we did better than other nations. And you know, federally
[58:53] Speaker 2: it was under one side of politics with COVID and
[58:55] Speaker 2: another side during global financial crists. What we have not
[58:59] Speaker 2: done for many years now, our politicians have not challenged
[59:05] Speaker 2: Australians enough. If an opposition says, you know, we really
[59:09] Speaker 2: need to change, we don't vote them in. If a
[59:12] Speaker 2: government I don't think of the twenty fourteen budget says
[59:15] Speaker 2: all right, we do need to change, and this budget
[59:17] Speaker 2: said we do need to change, we tend to kick
[59:20] Speaker 2: them out at the following election. As an electorate, we
[59:24] Speaker 2: have begged our politicians to do nothing. We have elected
[59:28] Speaker 2: the ones who promised to do nothing, and then they
[59:31] Speaker 2: deliver on that promise of doing nothing. Our problem is
[59:35] Speaker 2: that our the barnacles continue to grow. You see it
[59:38] Speaker 2: in housing, You see it in climate policy, You see
[59:41] Speaker 2: it in federal State relations. You see it see it
[59:45] Speaker 2: in our tobacco taxing. You see it in now gas taxing.
[59:49] Speaker 2: You see it in the NDIS. You see it in
[59:52] Speaker 2: the deal, the sweetheart deal that gives West Australia extra
[59:57] Speaker 2: money even though it's got money coming out of its ears.
[1:00:00] Speaker 2: We do dumb things. And I find that very frustrating.
[1:00:04] Speaker 1: Can I show you one final question, Chris, in the
[1:00:07] Speaker 1: interest of time for you, and I appreciate the time
[1:00:10] Speaker 1: you spent on this. If you were advising the Treasurer
[1:00:15] Speaker 1: tough one and and he said to you, look, Chris,
[1:00:19] Speaker 1: this interest generation and equity is just wrong. We've got
[1:00:22] Speaker 1: to fix it. And the way I want to fix
[1:00:25] Speaker 1: it is I want to get young people into a house.
[1:00:28] Speaker 1: What would you whisper in?
[1:00:29] Speaker 2: Is he? I would say, and again, you know, I
[1:00:33] Speaker 2: was happy enough for the capital gains tax changes, but
[1:00:35] Speaker 2: I would say, it's not about tax. It is about
[1:00:38] Speaker 2: our stupid regulations. And I was part of that reform
[1:00:43] Speaker 2: round table here in Canberra last August. One of it's
[1:00:47] Speaker 2: key recommendations was just stop adding things to the National
[1:00:51] Speaker 2: Construction Code, those regulations. And if you are in a
[1:00:55] Speaker 2: nation where one of the key recommendations is just stop, right,
[1:00:59] Speaker 2: you know it helps you show the stupidity of what
[1:01:02] Speaker 2: we have done. I described it earlier as for decades,
[1:01:07] Speaker 2: Australian's housing policy has been the word no, no, you
[1:01:11] Speaker 2: can't do that. We have to make it yes. And
[1:01:14] Speaker 2: that is incredibly urgent because even if we have perfect policies, federal, state,
[1:01:20] Speaker 2: local council. Even if we have older and riches Australian
[1:01:24] Speaker 2: saying all right, okay, I get it. I've got to
[1:01:27] Speaker 2: change in my mind. I've got to be willing for
[1:01:29] Speaker 2: this to happen. You've then got to build it right.
[1:01:33] Speaker 2: And that's going to take a very long time to fix.
[1:01:36] Speaker 2: And that is the tough news. There is no magic
[1:01:40] Speaker 2: wand in housing. And I suspect the fix that it
[1:01:44] Speaker 2: needs is not merely automatically slow because of the building process,
[1:01:49] Speaker 2: but it has to travel through older and richard people
[1:01:52] Speaker 2: who really do not want that sort of change.
[1:01:55] Speaker 1: And would you offer them an incentive to accept a change?
[1:01:58] Speaker 1: Would you say to older, richer people, look, you know,
[1:02:01] Speaker 1: if you five people in those five houses, all alongside
[1:02:04] Speaker 1: each other, all agree to sell to this develop who's
[1:02:06] Speaker 1: going to put a block of apartments up there? Maybe
[1:02:10] Speaker 1: I know there's some special incentive for you, some some
[1:02:12] Speaker 1: tax incentive, or you know, I don't know, whatever. Would
[1:02:15] Speaker 1: you do you think that's the way out of this,
[1:02:17] Speaker 1: because I mean, how do you how do you how
[1:02:19] Speaker 1: do you change people's attitude towards like you just said,
[1:02:23] Speaker 1: the five older people living in a leafy suburbs. They've
[1:02:25] Speaker 1: always lived for the last fifty years, have paid off
[1:02:26] Speaker 1: the house that worked, paid the taxes. They don't want
[1:02:29] Speaker 1: a five story building popping up next door to them.
[1:02:32] Speaker 1: How do you incentivize these people? What do you think?
[1:02:36] Speaker 2: And I'm assuming they don't have kids and grandkids. They
[1:02:40] Speaker 2: clearly not worrying about them. And the answer is that
[1:02:44] Speaker 2: you're seeing it in New South Wales at the moment
[1:02:45] Speaker 2: as they have changed by planning rules and regulations around
[1:02:49] Speaker 2: train stations, for example, you are suddenly getting builders going
[1:02:54] Speaker 2: to them and saying, well, hang on, there's money if
[1:02:56] Speaker 2: you wanted to. You know, we can now do stuff
[1:02:58] Speaker 2: that we couldn't do before. There's money here. So there
[1:03:00] Speaker 2: is an incentive of financial incentive to change once that
[1:03:05] Speaker 2: change is allowed. We are not yet at the point
[1:03:10] Speaker 2: in Australia where much change is allowed. There's a spot
[1:03:15] Speaker 2: I walked past in Sydney all the time. It's you know,
[1:03:17] Speaker 2: a little half a terrace and it looks terrible. It
[1:03:20] Speaker 2: is tiny, it is dirty, and I suspect it costs
[1:03:24] Speaker 2: many millions of dollars and squeeze that there is no
[1:03:27] Speaker 2: actual parking spot, but squeezed in under the sort of
[1:03:30] Speaker 2: bay window. There is a very expensive looking push. We
[1:03:35] Speaker 2: are creating a first world nation that has third world housing,
[1:03:40] Speaker 2: and that just drives me crazy. You know, why are
[1:03:45] Speaker 2: we are shooting ourselves in the foot like that?
[1:03:48] Speaker 1: Well, Chris, Chris Richardson a former Deloitte Access Economics, but
[1:03:53] Speaker 1: probably importantly today your business. You're the founder and principle
[1:03:57] Speaker 1: of rich Insight. I really appreciate you. And by the way,
[1:04:00] Speaker 1: thanks very much for explaining these complex minutia that sort
[1:04:05] Speaker 1: of sit in budgets that, by the way, the media
[1:04:08] Speaker 1: never talks about. They just hit the headlines all the time,
[1:04:11] Speaker 1: and their headlines obviously are important to some people will
[1:04:14] Speaker 1: be upset about CGT, and some people are going to
[1:04:17] Speaker 1: be upset about negative gear and going and trust taxes
[1:04:20] Speaker 1: and all that sort of stuff. And that's for another day,
[1:04:22] Speaker 1: for another topic that's not for you and I today,
[1:04:24] Speaker 1: But for you and I, what I really appreciate is
[1:04:27] Speaker 1: you sort of get into the minutiri and sort of
[1:04:29] Speaker 1: giving us context about that sort of stuff. I really appreciate.
[1:04:31] Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
[1:04:32] Speaker 2: I love it all too much, and it's my preuth.
[1:04:35] Speaker 1: These griz

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.