Episode 424 - Housing and Gaza

Sir David: 00:00:03

Suburban Eastern Australia, an environment that has, over

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time, evolved some extraordinarily unique groups of homosapiens.

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But today, we observe a small tribe, akin to a group of Meerkats that

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gather together atop a small mound to watch question and discuss the

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current events of their city, their country, and their world at large.

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Let's listen keenly and observe this group fondly known as the

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Iron Fist and the velvet glove.

Trev: 00:00:42

Yes.

Trev: 00:00:43

And after 423 episodes, we are still trying to figure out audio.

Trev: 00:00:48

technical issues, despite all of the practice, dear listener.

Trev: 00:00:53

So yes, sorry about the audio last week.

Trev: 00:00:56

Um, and it still turns out I had errors in it, which I might get to fixing tomorrow.

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And now we're just trying to deal with Joe's audio, which was soft

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and muddy and trying to fix it.

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And we're doing that in a mad panic before the start time of eight o'clock.

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So, well, coming through loud and clear.

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From regional Queensland, Scott the Velvet Glove.

Trev: 00:01:17

Scott, how are you?

Scott: 00:01:18

Not too bad.

Scott: 00:01:19

G'day Trevor, g'day Joe, g'day listeners.

Scott: 00:01:21

I hope everyone's well.

Trev: 00:01:23

And possibly sabotaged by Peter Dutton for the abuse that Joe gives him as

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a member in his electorate or as a voter.

Trev: 00:01:31

Joe the Tech Guy, are you coming through loud and clear?

Trev: 00:01:36

I'm hoping so.

Trev: 00:01:37

That's better.

Trev: 00:01:38

Yes, that's better.

Trev: 00:01:39

Okay.

Trev: 00:01:39

So good.

Trev: 00:01:41

All right.

Trev: 00:01:41

We'll keep working on that as we go.

Trev: 00:01:43

So dear listener, Oh, what a week.

Trev: 00:01:46

Hey, what a week.

Trev: 00:01:49

We'll work our way through the different issues, have a chat

Trev: 00:01:51

about them, see where we end up.

Trev: 00:01:55

We'll talk a little bit about my anecdote in relation to the Bondi tragedy.

Trev: 00:02:01

Uh, we'll kick off a bit about housing affordability.

Trev: 00:02:05

I know we've done it lots, but there's more stuff come out.

Trev: 00:02:08

Um, and I think we'll get onto.

Trev: 00:02:13

Um, just the way that the Labor and the Coalition are really now sort of reduced

Trev: 00:02:20

town to about a third of the vote each, which leaves a third for Independents and

Trev: 00:02:25

how we're moving to perhaps a European style of Parliament that nobody's

Trev: 00:02:29

quite ready for yet, and Tasmania is the first example of that perhaps.

Trev: 00:02:33

And then we'll get on to Gaza and Israel and Iran and.

Trev: 00:02:41

All that sort of stuff, and, yeah, there we go.

Trev: 00:02:45

So if you're in the chat room, say hello.

Trev: 00:02:46

John's in there.

Trev: 00:02:47

Uh, he's calling in from Glen Innes.

Trev: 00:02:50

Good on ya, John.

Trev: 00:02:52

So, okay.

Trev: 00:02:54

Um, kicking off.

Trev: 00:02:57

Grateful for.

Trev: 00:02:59

I'm grateful for the game of Quiddler.

Trev: 00:03:01

You guys ever played Quiddler?

Trev: 00:03:03

No.

Trev: 00:03:04

No?

Trev: 00:03:04

Little board game, not that expensive, you can get it for under 20 bucks.

Trev: 00:03:09

Basically, uh, you get dealt cards that have letters on them.

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The letters have a value, a bit like Scrabble, in that hard to

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use letters have more points.

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You've got to form words.

Trev: 00:03:19

It's just a fun game.

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My wife and I have been playing it heaps and Yeah, getting a

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lot of fun out of that one.

Trev: 00:03:26

So if you're looking for a board game, dear listener, I highly recommend Quiddla.

Trev: 00:03:32

So Q U I D D L E R I don't get any commission or receive

Trev: 00:03:39

any royalties for that.

Trev: 00:03:40

It's an honest review.

Trev: 00:03:43

You guys got anything that you're grateful for?

Trev: 00:03:45

Anything good happen?

Trev: 00:03:46

Anything you want to share of your personal lives before we move on?

Scott: 00:03:50

I've had a couple of interviews just recently.

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I've still got to wait back to hear from one and another one that's coming

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up for me on Wednesday afternoon.

Trev: 00:03:59

Thoughts and prayers, Scott?

Scott: 00:04:01

Yeah, we can shove your thoughts.

Joe: 00:04:04

Joe, anything for you?

Joe: 00:04:08

Ah, nothing exciting, um There are a couple of games that I do play.

Joe: 00:04:14

Um, there's a word game that someone I know in the UK has

Joe: 00:04:19

written, I've just shared it in the chat, which is called Cell Tower.

Joe: 00:04:23

Um, which is just a little brain teaser.

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Uh, renews every 24 hours and you can work your way through trying to work out.

Joe: 00:04:33

Basically, there's however many words in a block.

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of letters, and you just have to work your way out the right number

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so you don't paint yourself in a corner by picking the wrong words

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and end up with letters left over.

Trev: 00:04:48

Very good.

Joe: 00:04:50

But that's a single player game.

Joe: 00:04:52

There's also an online jigsaw puzzle game, which you can actually play with

Joe: 00:04:59

multiple players, which we've done.

Joe: 00:05:02

It does kind of stifle the conversation though.

Trev: 00:05:05

Just back to Quiddla, um, you obviously have arguments about

Trev: 00:05:09

whether a word is a valid word.

Trev: 00:05:10

So we bought an old dictionary from a second hand bookshop.

Trev: 00:05:14

And if it's not in that dictionary, it's not a word.

Trev: 00:05:16

Because you can go online and there's all sorts of BS words online, on these

Trev: 00:05:23

online dictionaries, so, if you do end up with Quiddla, buy yourself a, get

Trev: 00:05:28

a hard copy dictionary, so you don't have to look up phones and, yeah,

Trev: 00:05:32

there's a little tip there, so, right.

Trev: 00:05:34

I,

Joe: 00:05:35

I remember playing Scrabble with mum's partner and he refused to

Joe: 00:05:38

accept that quoll was a valid word.

Joe: 00:05:40

Okay, well okay, it's just an animal, isn't it?

Joe: 00:05:43

It's a quoll.

Joe: 00:05:43

Well, yeah, yeah, but I mean, he's from the UK, nobody's ever heard of it.

Joe: 00:05:48

Yeah.

Trev: 00:05:48

Well, if you're using a UK dictionary, he might have challenged

Trev: 00:05:52

you, because it may not be in there.

Trev: 00:05:54

I

Joe: 00:05:54

think it, I think it's in the Oxford English.

Trev: 00:05:56

There you go, so yeah.

Trev: 00:05:58

Alright, um.

Trev: 00:06:01

John in the chat room says, are you going anywhere near the Luhrmann result?

Trev: 00:06:03

And the answer is no, cause I haven't even heard the result.

Trev: 00:06:06

What was it?

Trev: 00:06:08

Well, maybe we are.

Trev: 00:06:09

Scott, be careful, be careful Scott, not to commit any acts of defamation.

Scott: 00:06:13

Well, I'm not going to commit any, I'm just going to

Scott: 00:06:16

repeat what the judge said.

Scott: 00:06:17

The judge said that as far as he can tell that, uh, she was, that she and Luhrmann

Scott: 00:06:25

had sex in the, um, in Parliament House.

Scott: 00:06:30

And that he also couldn't, he also said that he didn't

Scott: 00:06:33

believe that it was consensual.

Scott: 00:06:35

So he had actually, it certainly sounds like the judge has come down on the

Scott: 00:06:41

side of the, uh, prosecution, but the judge, he actually was at pains to

Scott: 00:06:46

say that, that the burden of proof in a civil case is a lot lower than the

Scott: 00:06:51

burden of proof in a criminal case.

Scott: 00:06:53

So as far as he was concerned, there was no.

Scott: 00:06:56

Judgment of his guilt or innocence, but it was just saying on the balance of

Scott: 00:07:00

probabilities, he probably raped her.

Trev: 00:07:01

Therefore, the defamation case failed.

Trev: 00:07:04

Was thrown out, yes.

Trev: 00:07:05

Oh,

Joe: 00:07:07

wow.

Joe: 00:07:09

And said that he had doubts about the credibility of both witnesses.

Joe: 00:07:14

Uh, but that Lerman was, uh, I think he said something like, economical

Joe: 00:07:23

with the truth when it suited him, something along those lines.

Joe: 00:07:26

Hmm.

Joe: 00:07:28

But he said he didn't believe that, I think, uh, either

Joe: 00:07:32

witness was completely truthful.

Trev: 00:07:34

There we go.

Trev: 00:07:35

Well, I mean,

Scott: 00:07:37

it's one of those things, it's just, you know,

Scott: 00:07:38

like I said, it's not a burden.

Scott: 00:07:40

The burden of proof is very different under a civil case

Scott: 00:07:43

than what is in a criminal case.

Scott: 00:07:45

So the judge was at pains to actually point that out.

Joe: 00:07:47

Yeah.

Joe: 00:07:48

Uh, whatever article I was reading basically said, in a

Joe: 00:07:51

civil case, you can just say, this is the most likely explanation.

Joe: 00:07:55

It's a burden.

Joe: 00:07:56

Whereas in a criminal case, you have to say you've excluded

Joe: 00:07:58

all other explanations.

Trev: 00:08:00

And so the Lerman case starts to, um, joins up now with what's

Trev: 00:08:04

becoming a longer list of defamation actions that were started and that

Trev: 00:08:10

backfired on the people who started it.

Scott: 00:08:13

It's blown up in his face, and the judge even said something about, um,

Scott: 00:08:19

I can't remember exactly what he said, but he said something about, you know,

Scott: 00:08:21

he's come in here to collect his hat, and it's been thrown back in his face.

Scott: 00:08:26

You know, which is just one of those things, it's, uh.

Joe: 00:08:30

And there's still the Toowoomba trial to go, isn't there?

Scott: 00:08:33

Uh, I believe so, yeah.

Trev: 00:08:37

Yeah, because it has been a weapon, this sort of defamation threat,

Trev: 00:08:42

that these huge payouts are possible.

Trev: 00:08:46

I sometimes have to question whether they were in line with the

Trev: 00:08:49

actual damaged reputation or not.

Trev: 00:08:51

But, uh, anyway, people might maybe start to think twice, a bit more.

Trev: 00:08:57

I mean, I

Scott: 00:08:57

think, um, Well, that's two, two high profile cases that

Scott: 00:09:01

have blown up in their faces.

Scott: 00:09:03

You know, like you've got, um, the soldier, can't remember his name.

Scott: 00:09:07

Robert Sazer.

Scott: 00:09:08

Sorry?

Scott: 00:09:09

Robert Smith.

Scott: 00:09:10

Robert Smith.

Scott: 00:09:11

Yeah.

Scott: 00:09:11

You know, he sued and that soldier's blown up in his face.

Scott: 00:09:15

And then you've got Lerman's sued and that's blown up in his face.

Scott: 00:09:17

And

Trev: 00:09:19

I think there was a

Scott: 00:09:19

recent

Trev: 00:09:20

thing where there was reports made about Alan Jones.

Trev: 00:09:24

And, um, basically he hasn't started a defamation suit, and maybe in past

Trev: 00:09:34

times he might have thought about it, maybe learning some lessons from the

Trev: 00:09:38

current, you know, from those two cases.

Trev: 00:09:40

So, yeah.

Scott: 00:09:42

Well, I would hope so, because it's just, I, I'm just a little bit concerned

Scott: 00:09:48

about the level of, um, Litigiousness that's already going on in Australia,

Scott: 00:09:53

becoming a very litigious community just like the United States, which I just

Scott: 00:09:57

don't think is actually good for us.

Scott: 00:09:58

Yeah,

Trev: 00:09:59

you just want a genuine assessment of somebody's reputation and how

Trev: 00:10:02

it's been damaged and, you know.

Joe: 00:10:05

I'm thinking, you know, um, I would never have assumed that a

Joe: 00:10:10

defamation case was going to win because I remember the Geoffrey Archer case.

Trev: 00:10:15

Who's that?

Trev: 00:10:15

Geoffrey Archer.

Trev: 00:10:16

Geoffrey Archer, he

Joe: 00:10:17

was a novelist back in the UK, and he was accused of,

Joe: 00:10:21

I think, cheating on his wife.

Joe: 00:10:23

Yes.

Joe: 00:10:24

And he, he basically sued for defamation, lost, and then was,

Joe: 00:10:29

I think, jailed for, uh, perjury.

Joe: 00:10:32

Yes.

Joe: 00:10:33

He was jailed anyway, and I'm fairly sure it was in relation to that case.

Joe: 00:10:36

Yes.

Joe: 00:10:38

Um, so, yeah, that was in the 1980s in the UK.

Joe: 00:10:42

Right.

Joe: 00:10:42

Right.

Joe: 00:10:43

And kind of said, you can't just, the thing about defamation is very

Joe: 00:10:49

much, if it's a person who's rich and threatening somebody who's poor, they

Joe: 00:10:54

can't afford to defend themselves.

Trev: 00:10:57

And then there was Lance Armstrong was basically warding off enquiries from

Trev: 00:11:02

people with threats of defamation when people were writing things or wanting

Trev: 00:11:08

to write things about his doping.

Trev: 00:11:10

I think he was threatening defamation as a means of Stopping, um,

Scott: 00:11:16

that

Trev: 00:11:16

being exposed, so, yeah.

Scott: 00:11:18

The US has got a very different defamation system over there, don't

Trev: 00:11:23

they?

Trev: 00:11:23

Particularly if you're a public figure, it's kind of, um, almost all bets

Trev: 00:11:29

are off if you're a public figure.

Joe: 00:11:31

Well, you have to prove that they knowingly told a falsehood.

Joe: 00:11:35

Yes.

Joe: 00:11:35

Or that they acted in such a way that they should have reasonably known.

Joe: 00:11:39

Yeah.

Joe: 00:11:40

Yeah.

Joe: 00:11:42

So that they were, they were not just, oh well I thought it was different.

Joe: 00:11:47

You have to prove that they, they should have known better.

Trev: 00:11:49

Yes.

Trev: 00:11:51

Yeah.

Trev: 00:11:53

Maybe one of those rare areas where the US legal system might be, might be

Trev: 00:11:59

closer to the mark of what's the best.

Trev: 00:12:01

So yeah, oh there we go.

Trev: 00:12:03

So John, I wasn't planning on it, but um, there you go, some

Trev: 00:12:07

hot takes on that decision.

Trev: 00:12:09

Um, A sorry state of affairs really for our media, just the, I don't read the

Trev: 00:12:15

nuts and bolts of it, but just the way that he was entertained and rent paid.

Trev: 00:12:21

Yeah, that

Scott: 00:12:22

was bloody disgusting.

Trev: 00:12:25

Allegedly, thank you, Joe, allegedly entertained.

Trev: 00:12:27

They were

Scott: 00:12:28

allegedly entertained with, allegedly by hookers

Scott: 00:12:32

and drugs and everything else.

Scott: 00:12:33

Those were the allegations that were made.

Trev: 00:12:35

Yes, just.

Trev: 00:12:37

Uh, doesn't paint a good picture of, um, journalism in this country.

Trev: 00:12:43

Mmm.

Trev: 00:12:45

Mmm.

Trev: 00:12:46

Now, um, oh, the Bondi Junction, um, stabbings.

Joe: 00:12:55

Mmm.

Joe: 00:12:55

Yes, did you notice in a certain private Facebook group that

Joe: 00:12:59

somebody had posted some discussion literally hours after it happened?

Joe: 00:13:03

going on about the religion of peace and how it was obviously a muslim

Joe: 00:13:07

because he had a big thick beard

Trev: 00:13:08

No, I didn't

Joe: 00:13:10

Okay

Trev: 00:13:10

Yeah, you

Scott: 00:13:13

know I saw an interview with the mother and that sort of

Scott: 00:13:16

stuff of him and she did not look like Islamic or anything like that.

Scott: 00:13:19

She just looked like,

Joe: 00:13:20

you

Scott: 00:13:21

know, it's one of those things.

Scott: 00:13:24

I'm not sure where you legit stand on this, but, um, I said years and years

Scott: 00:13:28

ago to my brother, who's a psychiatric nurse, I said to him, you know,

Scott: 00:13:31

speaking is a purely non Professional from that field, I would suggest that

Scott: 00:13:37

the closure of asylums and everything else in Australia was a mistake.

Scott: 00:13:42

And he said, yes, I agree with you.

Scott: 00:13:44

So he actually reckons that, uh We don't have

Trev: 00:13:46

asylums?

Scott: 00:13:47

Sorry?

Trev: 00:13:48

We, we don't have asylums?

Scott: 00:13:49

We don't have them.

Scott: 00:13:50

No, you have to actually, you have to be a threat to yourself and

Scott: 00:13:53

others to get locked up in them.

Scott: 00:13:54

Right.

Scott: 00:13:55

See, whereas prior to that, you could actually commit someone who wasn't

Scott: 00:13:58

a threat to themself or others.

Scott: 00:13:59

Ah.

Scott: 00:14:00

So I would have thought that this bloke who had been under the treatment

Scott: 00:14:05

of physicians and everything for about 18 years, that they would have

Scott: 00:14:09

actually said, well, that's serious enough that we've got to lock him up.

Scott: 00:14:13

But anyway, they, the government chose to close them down many, many moons ago.

Joe: 00:14:20

The argument was the modern medications meant that a people could

Joe: 00:14:24

live a full and active life in community.

Joe: 00:14:30

However,

Scott: 00:14:31

only if they're taking the drugs.

Scott: 00:14:32

Yeah, exactly.

Scott: 00:14:33

Which is one of the things, if you're not going to take the drugs, you're going to

Scott: 00:14:35

end up falling off that wagon and you end up fucked up again, which means you're

Scott: 00:14:43

sleeping on the street, you're potentially a victim of violence, or you're

Scott: 00:14:47

potentially a perpetrator of violence.

Scott: 00:14:52

I think to myself, what would that mother actually prefer?

Scott: 00:14:56

Would she prefer to go and visit her son once a week?

Scott: 00:15:00

In a mental hospital, where she knows that her son was being medicated and

Scott: 00:15:05

looked after and everything else.

Scott: 00:15:07

Or would she prefer just to go and visit his grave now?

Joe: 00:15:11

Having been on psychiatric wards, they're not a place you'd want to be.

Scott: 00:15:16

No, I agree wholeheartedly.

Scott: 00:15:17

I agree wholeheartedly.

Scott: 00:15:19

They're not very nice places at all.

Scott: 00:15:21

But if you compare that to the number of people that are living

Scott: 00:15:25

on the streets now, um, you know, it's just one of those things.

Trev: 00:15:32

Well, my experience was that I was getting into an elevator in this

Trev: 00:15:36

apartment building and there's an elderly couple on the same floor who

Trev: 00:15:40

I know, and Um, they said, oh, they were, uh, heading in the elevator to go

Trev: 00:15:45

down to the shops to buy the newspaper.

Trev: 00:15:47

And I immediately was like, rolling my eyes, because that

Trev: 00:15:51

clearly meant only one newspaper, which was, uh, The Courier Fail.

Trev: 00:15:56

And um, as we got in the, in the elevator, um, the lady said, oh, I

Trev: 00:16:02

think we just, oh, wasn't that terrible what happened in Bondi, and she

Trev: 00:16:05

said, yeah, terrible, and, you know, Somebody should tell that Albanese

Trev: 00:16:10

that that was one of his immigrants.

Trev: 00:16:11

That's, you know, somebody should tell him.

Trev: 00:16:14

I was like, born in Australia at, at that point I'd only sort of just

Trev: 00:16:18

heard that he was a Queenslander.

Trev: 00:16:20

I said, well, I just heard he's a Queenslander.

Trev: 00:16:22

And she was like, oh, really?

Trev: 00:16:24

But I just thought, man.

Trev: 00:16:27

Yeah, that's people from Toowoomba, you can't trust them.

Trev: 00:16:30

Scott being from Toowoomba.

Trev: 00:16:32

Yeah, I was from Toowoomba.

Trev: 00:16:33

And I thought, wow, on a matter like this, we have, people are prepared

Trev: 00:16:39

to reduce that to party politics.

Trev: 00:16:41

Yeah.

Trev: 00:16:42

And just, it was really disappointing.

Trev: 00:16:45

And, you know, they're a nice couple and, but I just thought this

Trev: 00:16:48

fucking Murdoch rag, if it, just the, the way it's, Propagandise

Trev: 00:16:55

people into being able to take that

Joe: 00:16:58

view.

Joe: 00:16:59

I don't think it's just that.

Joe: 00:17:02

I think whoever you hate the most, you're going to, if you're small

Joe: 00:17:09

minded, you're going to immediately assume it's whoever you hate.

Trev: 00:17:12

And you're looking for an excuse to blame whoever you hate.

Trev: 00:17:15

Yeah.

Trev: 00:17:15

For everything that happens that's bad.

Trev: 00:17:18

Yeah.

Trev: 00:17:19

It's like, really?

Trev: 00:17:20

Just on a day like this and you're ready to lay it at Albanese feet.

Trev: 00:17:24

And I was thinking, I was thinking to myself afterwards, I should

Trev: 00:17:28

have thought even quicker.

Trev: 00:17:29

Like I should have told her.

Trev: 00:17:30

No, it was one of, uh, Morrison's, um, immigrants, actually, it might be one of

Trev: 00:17:34

Dutton's, um, not Dutton, um, Costello's.

Trev: 00:17:39

Yeah, Abbott's.

Trev: 00:17:40

Oh.

Trev: 00:17:40

Or uh, somebody like that.

Trev: 00:17:42

'cause it was just the assumption that it had to be Albanese immigrant.

Trev: 00:17:46

It was just really.

Trev: 00:17:48

Depressing, but there we go.

Trev: 00:17:51

Yeah,

Joe: 00:17:52

uh,

Trev: 00:17:54

right, anyone got anything more to add on that or we'll just move on?

Joe: 00:17:58

Well, um, so which immigrants were the William Biller shooters?

Trev: 00:18:03

Uh, were they the ones out past Dolby?

Trev: 00:18:06

Yeah.

Trev: 00:18:06

Yeah.

Trev: 00:18:08

I don't think there are any immigrant from anywhere except, um, White Anglo

Trev: 00:18:12

Saxon fridge from Yeah, well, exactly.

Trev: 00:18:14

Yeah.

Trev: 00:18:15

Well, maybe they weren't, Joe.

Trev: 00:18:16

I don't know.

Trev: 00:18:16

Just, you can't say that by looking at somebody, can you?

Joe: 00:18:19

Well, that's true.

Joe: 00:18:19

They might have

Trev: 00:18:19

identified as Indigenous.

Trev: 00:18:21

I don't know.

Trev: 00:18:22

Didn't hear that come out, but, um Yeah, that was depressing.

Trev: 00:18:27

All right.

Trev: 00:18:28

Yes.

Trev: 00:18:29

We're going to talk about housing now.

Trev: 00:18:32

So, there was A poll out from Essential asking people about, um, to what

Trev: 00:18:39

extent would you support or oppose the following housing policies in Australia?

Trev: 00:18:44

And, um, remove tax concessions like negative gearing and capital gains

Trev: 00:18:52

tax discounts for property investors.

Trev: 00:18:55

Overall, 24 percent strongly support and 27 percent somewhat support.

Trev: 00:19:04

and 30 percent were neutral.

Trev: 00:19:07

Only 19 percent would oppose that.

Trev: 00:19:12

So we're reaching the point where the majority of Australians are ready to

Trev: 00:19:18

remove negative gearing and capital gains tax according to this, uh, essential poll.

Trev: 00:19:26

So there's a mood out there for change is brewing, I think.

Trev: 00:19:31

Um, Unfortunately, in the same poll, I asked people about a policy

Trev: 00:19:37

of allowing first home buyers to access their superannuation to help

Trev: 00:19:41

them purchase their first home.

Trev: 00:19:43

And unfortunately, 57 percent of people were in favour of that,

Trev: 00:19:51

and 25 percent were neutral.

Trev: 00:19:54

Dear listener, all that will do, allowing young is boost up the price of housing.

Trev: 00:20:03

Saul Eslake.

Trev: 00:20:04

Scott, you listened to the 7am podcast.

Trev: 00:20:06

Yeah, and I listened

Scott: 00:20:07

to him this morning.

Scott: 00:20:08

He was very articulate.

Scott: 00:20:09

He laid the blame right at Howard's feet.

Trev: 00:20:11

And he said

Scott: 00:20:12

that, you know, everything Howard did was just going to inflate the prices.

Trev: 00:20:15

Yeah.

Scott: 00:20:16

Which is exactly what has happened.

Trev: 00:20:18

Yeah.

Trev: 00:20:18

So he was

Scott: 00:20:19

It's one of those things.

Scott: 00:20:20

Howard has never made any secret that he hated the capital gains tax.

Scott: 00:20:24

He hates

Trev: 00:20:25

it.

Scott: 00:20:26

And he actually tried to He wanted to repeal it, but they

Scott: 00:20:29

all said no, you can't repeal it.

Scott: 00:20:31

So we did the next best thing, which is where he gutted it.

Trev: 00:20:35

You

Scott: 00:20:35

know, it's

Trev: 00:20:37

Now, were you a card carrying member of the Liberal Party at the time, Scott?

Trev: 00:20:39

Oh, I

Scott: 00:20:39

was, yes, a card carrying member of the Liberal Party.

Scott: 00:20:41

Did

Trev: 00:20:42

you think at the time, well, that's a good idea.

Scott: 00:20:44

No, not really.

Trev: 00:20:46

Right.

Scott: 00:20:46

I did actually have some questions of it.

Trev: 00:20:48

Okay.

Scott: 00:20:49

Because I didn't think it was that bad what they're asking

Scott: 00:20:53

you to do, to calculate the post.

Scott: 00:20:58

The post inflationary gain was all you paid tax on.

Scott: 00:21:01

Yes.

Scott: 00:21:01

Which was very reasonable.

Trev: 00:21:03

Mm.

Scott: 00:21:04

So if your property price is, uh, If your property price went up above

Scott: 00:21:08

the, above the, above the inflation rate, then you pay tax on that.

Scott: 00:21:14

And then they also had another thing that, um, said that that couldn't

Scott: 00:21:18

push you up into the next tax bracket or anything like they calculated the

Scott: 00:21:22

total tax on that at the highest rate of tax that you're currently getting

Scott: 00:21:26

charged, which was quite reasonable.

Scott: 00:21:29

Now what they've done is they have just slashed it and they've said

Scott: 00:21:31

that, you know, you hold something for 12 months, you sell it and you

Scott: 00:21:36

make a profit on it, you only have to pay tax on 50 percent of that.

Scott: 00:21:39

Now I don't know whether or not you still, um, I don't know where you actually

Scott: 00:21:45

get that, um, whether or not it, uh, I can't remember what it was called,

Scott: 00:21:49

I think it was, anyway, averaging or something like that on the income tax,

Scott: 00:21:53

you know, I'm not sure if you still get that averaging or whether or not

Scott: 00:21:55

you, you actually pay tax at the end.

Trev: 00:21:58

I think people who have a very variable income can average it out

Trev: 00:22:03

over a few years if they've had a spike for some reason of some sort.

Trev: 00:22:08

Yeah, but that's a I don't know if that's still the case.

Trev: 00:22:10

It used to be.

Scott: 00:22:11

That only relates to farmers and those sorts of people.

Scott: 00:22:13

You've got, um, that was where you average your income out over a few years.

Scott: 00:22:16

Is

Trev: 00:22:17

that what you're talking about?

Scott: 00:22:18

No, but the averaging was, averaging was something

Scott: 00:22:21

that was, was given to you if you were in receipt of capital gains.

Scott: 00:22:28

And that was to make sure that you didn't actually get boosted up into

Scott: 00:22:30

the top capital, and you didn't actually pay tax at the top rate.

Scott: 00:22:34

on the capital gain, it was at a lower rate because they averaged it out.

Scott: 00:22:39

So I'm just not sure if that's still the case or whether or not

Scott: 00:22:41

they just throw the 50 percent of it into your, into your income tax

Scott: 00:22:45

and you just pay the tax on that.

Scott: 00:22:47

I couldn't tell you.

Scott: 00:22:48

My

Trev: 00:22:48

memory, Scott, when capital gains was first introduced by Keating?

Trev: 00:22:56

I think,

Scott: 00:22:56

I

Trev: 00:22:57

think

Scott: 00:22:59

it was September 1985 was when it started.

Trev: 00:23:01

Yeah.

Trev: 00:23:02

And basically it was announced that night, like in a budget or something like that.

Scott: 00:23:07

I don't know where it was announced.

Scott: 00:23:09

It was, it was either announced by, um, media conference or it

Scott: 00:23:12

was announced in the budget.

Scott: 00:23:13

I couldn't tell you.

Trev: 00:23:14

Yeah.

Trev: 00:23:14

But it was pretty much the day of the change, which was from now on.

Trev: 00:23:19

Exactly.

Trev: 00:23:20

From this moment onwards.

Scott: 00:23:21

19th of September 1985.

Trev: 00:23:24

Yeah, um, there was, uh, assets bought prior to that time would be exempt.

Trev: 00:23:31

Pre

Scott: 00:23:31

CGT and they're exempt.

Trev: 00:23:32

Correct.

Trev: 00:23:33

And assets bought after that time would then be subject to

Trev: 00:23:36

the new capital gains tax regime.

Trev: 00:23:40

And it was, I don't know, I just have a memory of it being a, A bit of a shock

Trev: 00:23:44

and a bit of a well kept secret, or just, it sort of was just announced very

Trev: 00:23:52

suddenly and there was no opportunity for people to quickly acquire assets.

Scott: 00:23:57

No, there wasn't, because the assets and everything, if

Scott: 00:23:59

you didn't own it by September 1985, then you were fucked.

Trev: 00:24:03

Yeah, yeah.

Trev: 00:24:04

So, it was done in a way that stopped people from quickly buying assets

Trev: 00:24:07

to get in a pre CGT situation.

Trev: 00:24:09

No, I agree.

Trev: 00:24:10

And it

Scott: 00:24:10

was done like that.

Trev: 00:24:11

Yeah.

Trev: 00:24:11

Okay.

Trev: 00:24:11

Those were the days when people made decisions and said, boom, here it

Joe: 00:24:15

is.

Joe: 00:24:16

Did that have a depressionary effect on assets that people were investing in?

Scott: 00:24:23

I couldn't tell you.

Scott: 00:24:24

It's been years, so I couldn't tell you.

Scott: 00:24:26

It's just one of those things, like, you know, I don't understand

Scott: 00:24:30

why Howard had such a physic A philosophical hatred of it.

Scott: 00:24:35

It was just trying to take something Because it makes

Joe: 00:24:38

rich people less rich.

Joe: 00:24:39

Yes.

Scott: 00:24:40

I suppose so, but anyway, it's one of those things, like, see, up

Scott: 00:24:43

until then, there was a reason why you had to There were all these cases about

Scott: 00:24:48

whether or not something was capital, whether or not something was income.

Scott: 00:24:51

If it was capital, it was exempt from income tax because

Scott: 00:24:54

it was only a capital gain.

Scott: 00:24:55

So you didn't actually get taxed on it.

Scott: 00:24:57

After that, it didn't really matter because, you know, the posts, uh,

Scott: 00:25:01

the profit that was in excess of the inflation rate was what you paid tax on.

Trev: 00:25:07

Yes, wasn't it?

Trev: 00:25:08

Which was

Scott: 00:25:08

quite reasonable.

Scott: 00:25:09

It was, it was quite reasonable.

Scott: 00:25:10

And I don't understand why the hell they didn't want to actually maintain that.

Trev: 00:25:15

Yeah, well, you know, yeah, well, just on the essential polls

Trev: 00:25:23

still, you know, when we, the figure I gave before was for, um, just the

Trev: 00:25:28

overall sample that they took, so all people, all ages, all genders.

Trev: 00:25:33

And looking where it breaks up, say, by age, pretty much,

Trev: 00:25:40

there's not a lot of change.

Trev: 00:25:42

Um, people's views on, um, on getting rid of capital gain stacks and

Trev: 00:25:50

negative gearing, um, you know, very minor differences in the age groups.

Trev: 00:25:56

So, I found that interesting.

Trev: 00:25:58

And even in voting intention, Not a lot of difference amongst

Trev: 00:26:03

the different, um, groups.

Trev: 00:26:05

Greens, Labor, Coalition, Independents.

Trev: 00:26:11

You know, as far as these things go, in kind of agreement on this.

Trev: 00:26:15

So, we've reached a point.

Joe: 00:26:18

I did notice, actually, it was the 35 to 54 year olds that

Joe: 00:26:23

were most against any change.

Joe: 00:26:25

Um, uh, whereas the pensioners seem to be.

Joe: 00:26:28

As happy that things changed as the young people.

Trev: 00:26:32

Yeah, um, let me just see here, so, for the removal of the capital gains

Trev: 00:26:39

and the negative gearing, um, you say by age, um, so in the younger cohort,

Trev: 00:26:48

18 to 34, uh, 55 percent were in favour.

Trev: 00:26:54

Um, And in the older cohort, the 55 plus, it was still 48 percent were in

Trev: 00:27:01

favour of changing negative gearing and capital gains tax, so given the

Trev: 00:27:07

divide often in the age groups on other issues that we've looked at, I thought

Trev: 00:27:12

that was a relatively small difference.

Joe: 00:27:16

Yeah, I think it is, but I was surprised that, I was expecting

Joe: 00:27:20

the OEPs to be the reactionaries and go, I don't want any change.

Joe: 00:27:24

And it seems to be, um, 35 to 54, which is going to be families, sort of.

Joe: 00:27:34

You're already set up, you're in your house, and you're just

Joe: 00:27:39

hanging on, you don't want any depreciation of your assets, maybe.

Scott: 00:27:42

Which is one of the things that I do worry about, you know, because we can

Scott: 00:27:46

all talk about everything with housing prices and all that sort of stuff.

Scott: 00:27:50

However, if they do actually go down, and if they go down by a substantial

Scott: 00:27:54

amount, then that will depress the economy, because people will no

Scott: 00:27:59

longer feel as wealthy, because their housing prices have gone backwards.

Scott: 00:28:03

It's one of those things.

Scott: 00:28:05

Well, well,

Trev: 00:28:05

Scott, if they're not

Scott: 00:28:08

owning a house

Trev: 00:28:08

though

Scott: 00:28:09

If they're not owning a house, I agree, they're going to love that.

Scott: 00:28:12

They're going to love that, because the prices have come

Scott: 00:28:14

down, which will make them, make them more affordable for people.

Trev: 00:28:16

And that'll be a boost to the economy.

Trev: 00:28:18

If in fact we get to the position where more people If people don't

Trev: 00:28:22

own a house, then that sort of policy could be expansionary.

Trev: 00:28:28

Um,

Scott: 00:28:29

I don't see how it could be expansionary.

Scott: 00:28:30

It wouldn't be expansionary because all you're just doing is, you're

Scott: 00:28:35

taking established homes and making them belong to someone else.

Scott: 00:28:38

And you've also got these other people that are going to record

Scott: 00:28:42

losses and all that type of thing.

Scott: 00:28:43

And this is the other thing, Capital Gains Tax.

Scott: 00:28:46

You pay tax on the gain.

Scott: 00:28:49

You don't, you don't get a tax reduction for the loss.

Trev: 00:28:52

Nobody's going to suffer a loss though.

Scott: 00:28:55

I know that, not now, but anyway, it's one of those things.

Scott: 00:28:58

If you were to actually, if you were to actually depress house prices

Scott: 00:29:02

enough that it comes down, then, you know, you're not going to be able to.

Scott: 00:29:09

So you're arguing,

Joe: 00:29:12

one of those reports actually said, uh, that the removal of

Joe: 00:29:15

capital gains and negative gearing.

Joe: 00:29:18

create a 2 percent change in the value of houses.

Scott: 00:29:22

Which is no problem at all.

Joe: 00:29:24

Well, exactly.

Joe: 00:29:25

And that, yes, there would be a big shift in the ownership of houses, so people

Joe: 00:29:30

would get out of the investment market, but that that slack would be taken up

Joe: 00:29:35

by people who are currently renting.

Joe: 00:29:38

So really, it would have very little effect on the cost of houses.

Joe: 00:29:42

It just means that more people would be in, would be living

Joe: 00:29:46

in a house that they owned.

Scott: 00:29:48

Ah, John Seamans, where do you listen to Eastlake Scott?

Scott: 00:29:52

I listened to him on the 7am podcast this morning, they've got a Five part series on

Scott: 00:29:58

the housing disaster, I think it's called.

Scott: 00:30:01

So, yeah.

Scott: 00:30:02

Part one

Trev: 00:30:03

was today.

Trev: 00:30:03

It was very good.

Scott: 00:30:03

Yeah, part one was today.

Scott: 00:30:05

It's very much worth looking at, you know, worth listening to.

Scott: 00:30:09

It was very good.

Trev: 00:30:11

And the Saturday paper had an article, the Saturday paper

Trev: 00:30:13

and the 7am podcast are both

Scott: 00:30:16

Schwartz Media.

Scott: 00:30:17

Yeah.

Trev: 00:30:17

So, um, yeah, that was where that came from.

Trev: 00:30:20

And Salt Lake's very good.

Trev: 00:30:22

Um, Paying tax is

Scott: 00:30:24

never really reasonable according to

Trev: 00:30:26

Landon Hardbottom.

Trev: 00:30:27

Hello Landon.

Trev: 00:30:28

So, um, just, just on house prices then, in the same poll they asked people, Huh?

Trev: 00:30:37

Would you like to see house prices continue to rise, reduce, or stabilise?

Trev: 00:30:43

And overall, 15 percent wanted continue to rise, 45 percent wanted

Trev: 00:30:50

stabilise, and 40 percent of those surveyed wanted prices to reduce.

Trev: 00:30:58

That was a significant number, and probably matches the number

Trev: 00:31:02

of people who don't own a house, I would say, at this point.

Trev: 00:31:07

So yeah, um, that one of course, sorry Joe.

Joe: 00:31:13

Look, if you're a housing market, you don't care whether

Joe: 00:31:15

your house goes up or down, really.

Joe: 00:31:18

Um, but you might want it to go down for your kids.

Trev: 00:31:20

Yeah,

Joe: 00:31:21

true.

Joe: 00:31:22

So unless you're leaving an area, unless you're leaving the bubble, do

Joe: 00:31:26

you care about where the bubble is?

Trev: 00:31:27

Yes, true.

Trev: 00:31:31

Yeah.

Trev: 00:31:34

What else was on here?

Trev: 00:31:35

Um, views on the Australian housing system.

Trev: 00:31:38

So, these were the options people were asked.

Trev: 00:31:42

Our housing system is working well, doesn't require change.

Trev: 00:31:46

Or, the housing system is not working in some parts and

Trev: 00:31:50

needs change in those areas.

Trev: 00:31:52

Or, the housing system is broken and needs to be fundamentally rethought.

Trev: 00:31:58

End.

Trev: 00:31:59

Only 9 percent of people thought the housing system was going well, 47

Trev: 00:32:04

percent wanted some tinkering, and 43 percent say the system's broken and

Trev: 00:32:10

needs to be fundamentally rethought.

Trev: 00:32:12

So, and that, um, what about being fundamentally rethought, was pretty

Trev: 00:32:18

much even across the age groups.

Trev: 00:32:20

Like, um, Uh, 42%, 45%, 44 percent from the young, middle aged to

Trev: 00:32:28

elderly all thought the same thing.

Trev: 00:32:30

So again, pretty common, unusually sort of uniform thinking by

Trev: 00:32:36

Australians on this issue, um, that the system has got some real problems.

Trev: 00:32:44

Yeah.

Trev: 00:32:44

So, um.

Scott: 00:32:45

It's one

Trev: 00:32:46

of

Scott: 00:32:47

those things, like, you know, um.

Scott: 00:32:52

I know what Landon's saying, you've either got to have fewer

Scott: 00:32:54

people or more houses, well

Joe: 00:32:55

Well, the Bondi guy was trying to remedy that.

Scott: 00:32:58

Yeah, I know that.

Scott: 00:33:00

Too early,

Joe: 00:33:00

Joe.

Joe: 00:33:02

Too soon.

Scott: 00:33:02

It's one of those things, you can't, um, you can't actually

Scott: 00:33:06

You can't actually have a population that goes backwards because that

Scott: 00:33:08

will end up fucking up the economy.

Scott: 00:33:11

And if the houses and everything that we've got and that sort of stuff, if they

Scott: 00:33:14

become some kind of Runaway excuse to make a hell of a lot of money on, then,

Scott: 00:33:21

you know, it's just one of those things.

Scott: 00:33:22

You've just got to make a decision as to which is, which is better for you.

Scott: 00:33:27

You know, um, anyway, it's, I'm not sure why it has got to this sort of level

Scott: 00:33:33

because we have had high migration in the past and we have coped as a country.

Scott: 00:33:39

We have managed to put everyone in, we've managed to put everyone in

Scott: 00:33:43

under a roof and everything else.

Scott: 00:33:45

And we also managed to employ them and everything else.

Scott: 00:33:47

It's just, I just don't understand where it's all gone wrong.

Trev: 00:33:51

Well, we're trying to work that out in this podcast, aren't we?

Trev: 00:33:54

So we've, we've blamed, uh, negative gearing and capital gains, but, uh, we've

Trev: 00:34:01

blamed also land banking that we looked at last week where it's, uh, developers

Trev: 00:34:09

sitting on, on approvals and not actually releasing the land because to do so would

Trev: 00:34:17

cause a drop in prices if you had too much supply, so there's that issue, there's

Trev: 00:34:25

the way to counteract that is to have more public housing put onto the market

Trev: 00:34:33

supplied by the government because the government doesn't need to make a profit

Trev: 00:34:39

from it, in fact wants to depress it.

Trev: 00:34:41

say.

Trev: 00:34:42

If you were to, to get the government to be creating more public

Trev: 00:34:47

housing, that would be a solution.

Trev: 00:34:50

And in the podcast this morning, Scott, saw less like I think, or one of the

Trev: 00:34:55

commentators was saying how There was a significant amount of public

Trev: 00:34:59

housing built during the Menzies era.

Scott: 00:35:02

Yeah, I know.

Scott: 00:35:02

It's one of those things.

Scott: 00:35:03

It's something that Menzies was very proud of.

Trev: 00:35:05

Yeah, and it was the neo liberal policy of privatising everything, less

Trev: 00:35:11

government, that led to Australia, as well as other countries, but Australia

Trev: 00:35:16

in particular, pulling back and ceasing that sort of public housing.

Trev: 00:35:22

Um, building that had been a significant component of, of sort of the Menzies era,

Trev: 00:35:30

and unfortunately the tax concessions that were brought in, one of the arguments

Trev: 00:35:38

was it would lead to the creation of more housing, but it turns out the investors

Trev: 00:35:42

just bought existing houses and didn't actually create that many new houses.

Scott: 00:35:47

Exactly.

Scott: 00:35:47

It's one of those things.

Scott: 00:35:48

I don't understand what the hell was the problem with, um Public housing?

Scott: 00:35:55

No, what the hell was it?

Scott: 00:35:56

What the hell was the opposition leader's name at the time?

Scott: 00:35:58

Shorten?

Trev: 00:35:59

I

Scott: 00:35:59

don't understand what the hell, what the hell the problem

Scott: 00:36:01

was with his, um, with his policy.

Scott: 00:36:03

You know, he just said that he wasn't going to, he wasn't going to

Trev: 00:36:06

Murdoch didn't like it and he created a great scare campaign.

Trev: 00:36:09

Yeah, I know.

Trev: 00:36:10

And we got Morrison.

Scott: 00:36:11

We got Morrison instead, which is, you know, that's history.

Scott: 00:36:15

But you've just got to look at him.

Scott: 00:36:17

What he was actually saying was he just wanted to have negative gearing

Scott: 00:36:21

only available for new builds.

Scott: 00:36:23

Which honestly I think makes perfect sense.

Trev: 00:36:25

Um, yeah.

Trev: 00:36:29

Interestingly, our foreign investment laws, um, when people want to buy

Trev: 00:36:32

residential property, they could buy new units, for example, but they

Trev: 00:36:38

couldn't buy existing properties.

Trev: 00:36:40

So that was a way of Is that still the case?

Trev: 00:36:42

I'm pretty sure it would be, but I haven't looked at it for a long time.

Trev: 00:36:45

But, uh, that was done as a way of at least foreigners buying property

Trev: 00:36:53

would have to be encouraging some sort of new building.

Trev: 00:36:57

They couldn't buy existing ones.

Joe: 00:36:58

So, um, I know in London that there are laws saying that for every

Joe: 00:37:05

Yeah, whatever it is, ten high value apartments that you build, you have

Joe: 00:37:12

to buy five affordable apartments.

Joe: 00:37:14

Right.

Joe: 00:37:14

Uh, and so friends in London have said, basically you get a tower block with one

Joe: 00:37:19

entrance on one side, which is for all the rich apartments, and one entrance on the

Joe: 00:37:23

other side that's for all the poor people.

Joe: 00:37:27

Well, at least it's there.

Joe: 00:37:29

Well, absolutely.

Joe: 00:37:30

It's basically saying, yeah, to get approval for X number of houses,

Joe: 00:37:34

you have to provide affordable housing in an equivalent amount.

Trev: 00:37:38

Yes.

Trev: 00:37:39

There was an article in the John Menendee blog by a guy, Michael Keating.

Trev: 00:37:43

He put forward some interesting ideas.

Trev: 00:37:45

Um, One of them was looking at the increase in population versus the increase

Trev: 00:37:51

in the number of dwellings since 2017.

Trev: 00:37:55

And um, over the last seven years, the increase in the number of dwellings has

Trev: 00:38:00

exceeded the rate of population growth.

Trev: 00:38:04

So, um, so, where people like Peter Dutton want to blame immigration

Trev: 00:38:13

for the housing crisis, he's got the statistics that show that

Joe: 00:38:18

basically How many kids does Dutton have?

Trev: 00:38:20

Yeah, I don't know.

Joe: 00:38:22

Well, maybe it's his fault for breeding too many.

Scott: 00:38:26

See, that's one of the things that I just don't understand, is that if

Scott: 00:38:30

they actually looked back on the proudest days of the Liberal Party, which was

Scott: 00:38:33

when Menzies was in charge, apparently, you know, you've just got to look at us.

Scott: 00:38:37

We were awash with migrants.

Scott: 00:38:39

We were awash with public housing.

Scott: 00:38:40

We did those two things at once.

Scott: 00:38:42

Why the hell aren't they trying to copy that again?

Trev: 00:38:44

Mmm, yeah.

Trev: 00:38:47

Another statistic he gave here was the increase in house prices and the

Trev: 00:38:52

increase in dwelling construction costs.

Trev: 00:38:55

And, somewhere like Melbourne, for example, between 2002 and 2010,

Trev: 00:39:02

median house price increased by 8.

Trev: 00:39:05

6%, but dwelling construction costs Increased by 4.6%.

Trev: 00:39:11

So that meant the land cost increased by 4%.

Trev: 00:39:16

Um, in the following 10 years, the Melbourne million

Trev: 00:39:20

house price increased 4.5%.

Trev: 00:39:22

Construction costs increased 2.4.

Trev: 00:39:25

That meant that the land increased, had to be 2.1.

Trev: 00:39:29

And from, um, 2020 to 2023, the median house price in Melbourne Rose 18%.

Trev: 00:39:36

Dwelling construction costs rose 7.

Trev: 00:39:39

7, so basically the cost of land increased by 11.

Trev: 00:39:45

3.

Trev: 00:39:47

So some of these statistics show, okay, we've had some periods of high

Trev: 00:39:53

construction costs, but there's also been in there periods of very high

Trev: 00:40:00

increase in the actual land component, not just the cost of housing.

Trev: 00:40:06

So, um So that's adding more information to the puzzle of why prices have gone

Trev: 00:40:16

up and he argues that we need more higher density sort of suburbs using

Trev: 00:40:22

less land, therefore Yeah, I agree.

Trev: 00:40:25

Yeah, makes sense.

Trev: 00:40:26

It's

Scott: 00:40:26

one of those things that when my, when my place was in Brisbane and that

Scott: 00:40:29

sort of stuff, that was supposed to be zoned for units and that type of thing,

Scott: 00:40:35

but um, the LNP government knocked that on the head and they said you can only

Scott: 00:40:39

have units up on the um, Logan Road.

Scott: 00:40:41

So anything that was off Logan Road was deemed to be,

Scott: 00:40:45

you gotta have bigger blocks.

Trev: 00:40:47

So

Scott: 00:40:47

I was able to split my block, but yeah, it's just one of those things.

Trev: 00:40:52

Um, in the same article, makes the point, first homeowner grants, um,

Trev: 00:40:58

stamp duty exemptions, things like that, they just, uh, don't lead to poor people

Trev: 00:41:04

getting houses, they just lead to higher house prices, because these people are

Trev: 00:41:09

now competing with each other, so if you give them a 50, 000, um, Sort of both.

Joe: 00:41:16

Or robbing your superannuation.

Trev: 00:41:18

Yes.

Joe: 00:41:19

It just means you have less superannuation.

Joe: 00:41:21

Yes.

Trev: 00:41:23

Yes.

Trev: 00:41:24

So, um, so yeah.

Trev: 00:41:26

And then in the Saturday paper was an article, The Men and Decisions Behind

Trev: 00:41:30

Australia's Housing Crisis, And that sort of was, um, following along the same lines

Trev: 00:41:37

as the podcast you listened to, uh, Scott.

Trev: 00:41:41

One of the interesting anecdotes in that was that, um, Howard was

Trev: 00:41:45

interviewed on a radio program, um, And, um, so, yeah, Brisbane Radio,

Trev: 00:41:55

2003, John Howard was being interviewed.

Trev: 00:41:57

Since the election of the coalition government, uh, seven years

Trev: 00:42:01

earlier, house prices had doubled.

Trev: 00:42:04

And Howard's interviewer wanted to know what the government

Trev: 00:42:06

planned to do about it.

Trev: 00:42:08

And he, Howard said nothing.

Trev: 00:42:10

Howard said, quote, I haven't found anybody in seven and a half years

Trev: 00:42:15

shake their fist at me and say, Howard, I'm angry with you for letting

Trev: 00:42:18

the value of my house increase.

Trev: 00:42:21

And, um, So that's been sort of cited with frequency over time, but the,

Trev: 00:42:27

um, There was actually something that followed that statement and the

Trev: 00:42:32

interviewer responded and said well Let me be the first to complain.

Trev: 00:42:35

People like myself are actually being forced to face the possibility

Trev: 00:42:39

We may be renting for the rest of our lives because getting into, and

Trev: 00:42:44

he was interrupted at that point, and Howard said Do you own a home?

Trev: 00:42:49

And the host said, no, I rent.

Trev: 00:42:50

And Howard said, no, well, I'm sorry.

Trev: 00:42:53

I was talking about people who own a home.

Trev: 00:42:55

So essentially his concern was only for people who owned a home and,

Trev: 00:43:02

uh, well, nobody's complained to me.

Trev: 00:43:03

And the interviewer is saying, well, I want to

Joe: 00:43:05

complain.

Trev: 00:43:05

And Howard goes,

Joe: 00:43:06

well, also, I suspect.

Joe: 00:43:08

Brisbane prices went up in that period because they were incredibly

Joe: 00:43:13

undervalued because of Sir Joe's legacy.

Joe: 00:43:15

Yeah, possibly.

Joe: 00:43:16

And people finally realised, the southern states finally

Joe: 00:43:18

realised that Sir Joe was gone.

Trev: 00:43:20

Mm.

Joe: 00:43:21

And that they could take their money from selling a Sydney or Melbourne

Joe: 00:43:23

house and retire on the difference.

Trev: 00:43:25

Yes.

Trev: 00:43:26

Mm.

Trev: 00:43:26

Yeah.

Trev: 00:43:27

But at that point At that point, it made sense politically for Howard

Trev: 00:43:32

to favour people who owned a home, because they were the majority.

Trev: 00:43:36

And you got the most votes by pandering to that cohort.

Scott: 00:43:42

But now that majority has got their adult children still living with

Scott: 00:43:45

them at home, it's starting to turn.

Trev: 00:43:48

Yeah.

Trev: 00:43:49

This is just one of the ongoing problems about the boomer generation

Trev: 00:43:51

is that they were such a large voting bloc who by age and circumstances had

Trev: 00:43:58

similar interests that governments were forced around the world to kind of.

Trev: 00:44:04

You know, uh, okay, all those guys are educated, let's now charge people

Trev: 00:44:10

for their university degrees, because it's not affecting the boomers.

Trev: 00:44:13

Let's now introduce superannuation, because that's what the boomers want.

Trev: 00:44:17

And just a range of policy decisions that were made, um, uh,

Trev: 00:44:24

with an eye to democracy, Scott.

Trev: 00:44:26

You know, like, we make decisions.

Trev: 00:44:31

That best help the majority of people.

Joe: 00:44:35

The tyranny of the majority?

Joe: 00:44:36

Yes.

Joe: 00:44:36

Tyranny of the mass?

Joe: 00:44:37

I can't remember all the phrases.

Trev: 00:44:39

But unfortunately that meant a particular large voting group

Trev: 00:44:44

got particular favours and that was perhaps detrimental to the

Trev: 00:44:50

long term viability of the country.

Trev: 00:44:53

That's sort of one of the failings of a democracy.

Scott: 00:44:57

Yeah, but I'd still prefer to live in Australia's failed democracy than

Scott: 00:45:00

live in the People's Republic of China.

Trev: 00:45:01

Yeah, but I'm just saying it's one of the Or the

Scott: 00:45:03

Russian Federation.

Trev: 00:45:04

Yeah, yeah, but I'm just, um, just saying it's one of the things to consider.

Trev: 00:45:12

Hmm.

Trev: 00:45:13

Um, uh, what else did it say in here?

Trev: 00:45:16

Um, when Howard came into power, 42 percent of people Owned their home,

Trev: 00:45:23

free and clear, with no mortgage, 42%, um, and 28 percent had mortgages.

Trev: 00:45:35

Um,

Joe: 00:45:38

let me just see, uh, yeah, but they were mortgages of 18%.

Joe: 00:45:41

It was a different mortgage than you get these days.

Joe: 00:45:43

Yeah,

Scott: 00:45:44

they weren't that high back then.

Scott: 00:45:45

You know, it's, it's one of those things.

Scott: 00:45:47

It's the boomers would love to, we'd love to have you believe that they paid

Scott: 00:45:51

22 percent interest on a 400, 000 house.

Scott: 00:45:54

They paid 22 percent interest on a six on a 60, 000 mortgage.

Trev: 00:45:58

Yeah.

Trev: 00:45:59

You know?

Trev: 00:46:00

Um, so in 2002, the average retirement age was 55.

Trev: 00:46:06

Yeah.

Trev: 00:46:07

Yeah, that was low, wasn't it?

Trev: 00:46:09

It was very low, but you know, it's,

Scott: 00:46:11

it's, what's going on in this world?

Scott: 00:46:16

I don't know.

Scott: 00:46:17

We're going backwards.

Scott: 00:46:17

I'm very, very pissed off about it because it's one of those things

Scott: 00:46:21

I just think to myself, you know.

Scott: 00:46:22

Yeah.

Scott: 00:46:22

In a happier bygone era, I'd be thinking to myself, I've only

Scott: 00:46:26

got five years left of this shit.

Scott: 00:46:28

So, you know.

Trev: 00:46:30

Oh, that was the other thing.

Trev: 00:46:31

As the boomers have got older, the retirement age has been bumped up.

Trev: 00:46:34

Yeah,

Scott: 00:46:34

and they have bumped it up and up and up.

Scott: 00:46:36

And I just think to myself, if you actually want to solve the

Scott: 00:46:41

youth unemployment problem in this country, you've actually got to

Scott: 00:46:43

encourage some of those boomers.

Scott: 00:46:45

To pull outta the workforce now.

Trev: 00:46:47

Mm.

Trev: 00:46:48

Okay.

Trev: 00:46:48

Let me just finish the statistic here.

Trev: 00:46:50

2012, average retirement age was 55 and only 4% of homeowners aged over

Trev: 00:46:57

65 carried mortgage debt by 2020.

Trev: 00:47:03

So 18 years later, the average retirement age was 64 and more

Trev: 00:47:08

than 50% of homeowners, um, aged 55 to 64 still had mortgage debt.

Trev: 00:47:15

So within 20 years.

Trev: 00:47:20

Significant mortgage debt on those people.

Trev: 00:47:24

Hmm.

Trev: 00:47:25

Hmm.

Trev: 00:47:27

Ah, what else have we got here?

Trev: 00:47:29

Um,

Trev: 00:47:33

uh, oh, negative gearing.

Trev: 00:47:38

So, one of the arguments is that if you were to get rid of negative

Trev: 00:47:43

gearing, then rents would go up.

Trev: 00:47:47

And, you may ask yourself, dear listener, well we'll never know,

Trev: 00:47:50

will we, until it actually happens.

Trev: 00:47:53

And in this article they make the point that there's, the experiment has already

Trev: 00:47:56

been run, so the Hawke government, um, dropped negative gearing in 1985, and

Trev: 00:48:06

reinstated it in 1987, following sharp rises in rents in Sydney and Perth.

Trev: 00:48:18

So that seems to be an argument against abolishing negative gearing.

Trev: 00:48:24

But Saul S Lake and others point out that, um, rises in those two cities, Sydney and

Trev: 00:48:31

Perth, were a consequence of a shortage of supply and contrary to that Adelaide

Trev: 00:48:38

rents actually fell and the abolition had no impact anywhere else in the country.

Trev: 00:48:44

So if you want to take that experiment and the word of Saul S Lake, their negative

Trev: 00:48:50

gearing, if it was to be, dropped.

Trev: 00:48:53

would not lead to increases in rent.

Trev: 00:48:58

So at the time, Labor buckled in the face of a thorough, well, in what Saul

Trev: 00:49:05

Eslake calls a thoroughly dishonest campaign by the opposition leader, John

Trev: 00:49:09

Howard, uh, invested property interests, uh, in the usual media suspects.

Trev: 00:49:14

And they restored negative gearing and of course introduced

Trev: 00:49:18

a halving of the capital gains.

Trev: 00:49:20

So, um, What else is in this article that's of interest?

Trev: 00:49:24

Um, we've mentioned before how much it costs to have these deductions.

Trev: 00:49:31

Um,

Joe: 00:49:32

I

Trev: 00:49:32

told you

Joe: 00:49:32

about land valuation, by the way.

Joe: 00:49:35

Uh, what part was that, Joe?

Joe: 00:49:36

My, my recent land valuation went up 30%.

Joe: 00:49:40

Yeah, it's two years.

Joe: 00:49:41

So it's 15 percent per annum.

Joe: 00:49:43

Congratulations.

Joe: 00:49:45

No, not really.

Joe: 00:49:46

It means absolutely nothing.

Joe: 00:49:49

Congratulations

Trev: 00:49:50

on your higher rates, Phil.

Trev: 00:49:53

Pass that on to your tenants.

Trev: 00:49:54

Oh wait, you don't have any.

Joe: 00:49:56

Exactly.

Joe: 00:49:57

Can't claim it on negative

Trev: 00:49:58

gearing either.

Trev: 00:50:00

Uh, anything else of interest in this?

Trev: 00:50:03

Um, I think that's enough sort of stuff to have in your head at the moment

Trev: 00:50:09

about, uh, oh, here's an interesting one.

Trev: 00:50:14

In the seven years to the mid 2019, the median Sydney home Earned more

Trev: 00:50:23

than the median full time worker.

Trev: 00:50:26

So basically the average Sydney home in a seven year period increased in

Trev: 00:50:32

value at a yearly rate greater than the average median full time worker.

Joe: 00:50:41

And it only paid half the tax on that.

Trev: 00:50:44

Yes, indeed.

Trev: 00:50:46

There's some amazing statistics, isn't there?

Trev: 00:50:48

Um, yeah.

Trev: 00:50:50

Um, uh,

Joe: 00:50:54

what else was there?

Joe: 00:50:55

Well, it would be interesting to put together how much foregone tax, negative

Joe: 00:51:01

gearing and halving the capital gains.

Scott: 00:51:05

Um, it hasn't actually halved the capital gains tax because, you

Scott: 00:51:09

know, you would assume that you would be paying tax on 100 percent of the gain.

Scott: 00:51:13

You never were.

Scott: 00:51:15

You were only paying tax on the post inflationary gain.

Scott: 00:51:19

Yes.

Scott: 00:51:20

Which was probably 80 to 90 percent of what you were paying.

Scott: 00:51:26

So you've probably cut it by around about 30%.

Scott: 00:51:32

You haven't actually halved it.

Trev: 00:51:33

Well, according to this article, negative gearing costs 27 billion per

Trev: 00:51:37

annum and the cap, the CGT discount costs 19 billion per annum, uh, 20

Trev: 00:51:46

or 30, roughly 50 billion per annum.

Trev: 00:51:48

How many subs is that?

Trev: 00:51:51

50 billion used to get you 12 subs, and at that time it was outrageous.

Scott: 00:51:56

Yeah, but now you're talking about 300 billion for 10, wasn't it?

Trev: 00:51:59

That you'll, that we'll never get.

Scott: 00:52:01

Yeah, exactly.

Scott: 00:52:02

Uh,

Trev: 00:52:03

360 Yeah, so that's

Joe: 00:52:04

30 billion a sub.

Trev: 00:52:05

Yeah.

Trev: 00:52:06

So yeah, uh, 50 billion a year, um, is what that's cost us.

Trev: 00:52:12

So one and a half submarines a year.

Trev: 00:52:13

Yeah.

Trev: 00:52:15

Look, you know, it's actually It's probably 10 Japanese

Trev: 00:52:20

subs a year, isn't it?

Trev: 00:52:21

Yeah,

Scott: 00:52:21

exactly.

Trev: 00:52:23

Ah, okay, um

Joe: 00:52:27

So what's the question, that now the Japanese are joining Orcus?

Joe: 00:52:29

Yes.

Joe: 00:52:30

Do we get a discount on the subs?

Trev: 00:52:31

Maybe we could get Japanese subs now.

Joe: 00:52:34

Well, no, no, it's more, can we get a group rate?

Trev: 00:52:39

Between Japan and us, yeah.

Trev: 00:52:40

But Japan makes their own.

Trev: 00:52:41

They don't need to buy them.

Trev: 00:52:42

Yeah,

Scott: 00:52:42

but Japan doesn't make nuclear powered submarines.

Scott: 00:52:46

Well, exactly.

Scott: 00:52:47

So why are they joining AUKUS, if not?

Trev: 00:52:48

Because JAUKUS just sounds so good.

Scott: 00:52:52

No, they are joining to get access to American

Scott: 00:52:56

technology, which is hypersonic missiles and that type of thing.

Scott: 00:53:00

And they're also joining to get a greater air defence shield

Scott: 00:53:03

and everything like that.

Scott: 00:53:04

It's just, um, And they really don't like the Chinese.

Scott: 00:53:10

Well, they really don't like the Chinese, but they do have a

Scott: 00:53:12

fairly vexed history with China.

Scott: 00:53:14

Now, I know Japan started that war, but China has never forgiven them for it.

Scott: 00:53:19

No, they're

Trev: 00:53:19

very, they're very bitter

Scott: 00:53:20

about that.

Scott: 00:53:21

Oh God, yeah, they are very bitter about it.

Trev: 00:53:23

I remember my, um, homestay boys, Chinese, were very bitter about Japan.

Scott: 00:53:29

Yeah.

Scott: 00:53:30

It's one of those things, like, you know, I was in China, I don't

Scott: 00:53:34

know, when I went over there years ago to go visit my brother.

Scott: 00:53:37

And there was a, um, there was a television show that was highlighting

Scott: 00:53:42

the atrocities committed by Japan.

Scott: 00:53:44

And they had it in, they had English subtitles, Japanese

Scott: 00:53:47

subtitles, Korean subtitles.

Scott: 00:53:49

They had all the subtitles on there just to actually try and get the message across

Scott: 00:53:52

that the Japanese were bastards, you know?

Trev: 00:53:56

Yeah, they're big on that.

Trev: 00:53:56

I've

Scott: 00:53:57

got no doubt that they were pricks to them, for sure.

Trev: 00:54:00

Yeah.

Trev: 00:54:02

Um, actually in this article there was another interesting, um, anecdote,

Trev: 00:54:06

uh, so, around Halloween, uh, October 31, 2020, we had, uh, big, uh, storms

Trev: 00:54:15

in South East Queensland cause a billion dollars worth of damage.

Trev: 00:54:19

A lot of that was down sort of Springfield way, as I recall.

Trev: 00:54:24

Just, just every house in the suburb lost, you know, badly damaged

Trev: 00:54:30

roof, uh, lots of hail damage.

Trev: 00:54:33

And what he says is, it took two weeks for the increase in demand for

Trev: 00:54:38

roof plumbers in Brisbane to hit the price of roof plumbers in Melbourne.

Trev: 00:54:43

It literally just swept down the country.

Trev: 00:54:45

So incredible demand for roof plumbers in Brisbane.

Trev: 00:54:50

And um, Two weeks later, in Melbourne, uh, price of roof plumbers went up.

Trev: 00:54:57

Anyway, um, all these interesting things that come into play, um,

Joe: 00:55:06

So the two weeks was for the southerners to realise there was a quick

Joe: 00:55:11

buck to be made and jump on a plane?

Trev: 00:55:13

Yes, or they could simply say to their boss, Um, well, you pay

Trev: 00:55:19

me extra or I will go on a plane to Brisbane and, um, I've got two

Trev: 00:55:24

years worth of work up there at this crazy rate, so you have to match it.

Joe: 00:55:30

I remember when the cyclone came into Yippoon, and a mate of mine who is

Joe: 00:55:35

up there said, a big truck turned up two days after whilst things were still shit,

Joe: 00:55:42

um, filled up with Bunnings generators.

Joe: 00:55:46

That he'd bought at 500 pound, uh, 500 a pop at Bunnings in Brisbane, stuck on

Joe: 00:55:52

the back of a truck, drove up to Rocky, and was flogging him at 2000 a pop.

Joe: 00:55:57

Right.

Trev: 00:55:58

Because the power lines were down

Joe: 00:55:59

there.

Trev: 00:55:59

There you go, yeah.

Scott: 00:56:01

What a prick.

Trev: 00:56:03

Yeah.

Trev: 00:56:04

Anyway, uh, so that's more information to put in your kit bag about trying to

Trev: 00:56:09

explain Australia's housing situation.

Trev: 00:56:12

Yeah,

Scott: 00:56:12

I, I just, I still don't think that negative gearing is entirely to

Scott: 00:56:16

blame because Canada doesn't have negative gearing and Canada is also suffering the

Scott: 00:56:20

same sort of housing crisis that we are.

Trev: 00:56:23

Now

Scott: 00:56:24

I can't remember which city is, I think it's Vancouver where prices have

Scott: 00:56:27

shot up ridiculously high over there.

Scott: 00:56:30

Just one city?

Scott: 00:56:31

I don't know if it's just one city or whether there's all the cities.

Scott: 00:56:34

It's just, it is what it is.

Scott: 00:56:36

It's, I, I, you know, I'm not, I've got a negatively geared

Scott: 00:56:41

property in South Ripley.

Scott: 00:56:43

There's no doubt about that.

Scott: 00:56:44

So it could be, you could be ignoring everything I have to say here, but

Scott: 00:56:47

it's just, I just don't think it's entirely the fault of negative gearing.

Scott: 00:56:52

I think it is, I think it is certainly to blame, but it is not entirely to blame.

Scott: 00:56:56

Well,

Trev: 00:56:56

that's the whole point of this conversation is we're

Trev: 00:56:58

saying there's a whole host of.

Trev: 00:57:00

Factors involved.

Trev: 00:57:00

Oh God, yeah.

Trev: 00:57:01

There's a shit load of

Scott: 00:57:02

Hef.

Scott: 00:57:02

There's a shit load of factors involved.

Trev: 00:57:03

And, and the, um, podcast with 7:00 AM made a good point

Trev: 00:57:06

about culture that Australia has, you know, for various reasons

Trev: 00:57:12

become a, a culture of, of property speculators and of DIY improvement.

Trev: 00:57:19

So we are way into DIY improvement much more than a lot of other

Trev: 00:57:25

cultures around the world.

Scott: 00:57:27

I agree.

Scott: 00:57:28

But,

Trev: 00:57:28

but also.

Joe: 00:57:29

Um, our rental system is set up for short term rentals.

Joe: 00:57:34

So, uh, yeah, I've got a friend who's just moved into an apartment

Joe: 00:57:37

in Germany, and the landlord was basically talking about ten years time.

Joe: 00:57:45

Right.

Joe: 00:57:46

Yep.

Joe: 00:57:46

Yeah, the expectation was that, and it's, it's, it's a studio.

Joe: 00:57:51

It's not even a one bedroom apartment.

Trev: 00:57:53

Right.

Joe: 00:57:53

And, you know, I wouldn't expect anyone to be in a studio for ten years.

Joe: 00:57:58

Right.

Joe: 00:57:59

You'd be thinking you're going to be married and have a family and

Joe: 00:58:02

you can't have kids in a studio.

Joe: 00:58:04

You want a slightly bigger place.

Joe: 00:58:08

But yeah, the assumption was that he was going to be in there long term.

Joe: 00:58:11

There was, there was no, this is a six month lease.

Joe: 00:58:14

And at the end of six months, we're going to jack your rent up.

Scott: 00:58:18

You can't even do that now.

Scott: 00:58:19

You've got to wait 12 months between rent increases to

Scott: 00:58:21

actually increase the rent again.

Scott: 00:58:23

It's just, hmm.

Trev: 00:58:27

All right.

Trev: 00:58:28

Um, some good news.

Trev: 00:58:31

Uh, Scott Morrison has been busy signing copies of his book, Plans for Your Good.

Trev: 00:58:36

Um, it's hot off the presses.

Trev: 00:58:38

You can pre order your copy today from Booktopia.

Trev: 00:58:41

Are

Joe: 00:58:42

you going to read it and review it for us, Trev?

Trev: 00:58:47

No, I'll wait till it's, I'll wait till it's in the 2 bin.

Trev: 00:58:51

Hmm.

Trev: 00:58:51

I won't have to wait long.

Scott: 00:58:53

No, I just think I'll just go borrow it from the library because I

Scott: 00:58:56

just don't, I'm not really interested in giving that bastard any more money.

Scott: 00:59:00

You know, I, anyway, once we get off air, I'll tell you a story up here.

Scott: 00:59:06

Oh, okay.

Scott: 00:59:06

All right.

Scott: 00:59:07

That's not really salacious or anything like that.

Scott: 00:59:09

Anyway.

Scott: 00:59:10

Yeah.

Scott: 00:59:10

Okay.

Scott: 00:59:11

You'll make baby Jesus cry.

Scott: 00:59:13

No, it's not gonna make baby Jesus cry.

Trev: 00:59:15

Yeah.

Trev: 00:59:16

Um, I won't go into it.

Trev: 00:59:18

There was an article by Alan Patience in the John Menendew blog, um, basically

Trev: 00:59:25

talking about how with elections now, one third Labor, one third, uh, Liberal

Trev: 00:59:33

National and one third Independents, Teal or Green or Jackie Lambie or whatever.

Trev: 00:59:44

And.

Trev: 00:59:45

That we're moving away from what was the case, and Guy Rundle wrote a piece in

Trev: 00:59:53

Crikey looking at the Tasmanian situation.

Trev: 00:59:58

So, the Tasmanian Premier pulled an early election.

Trev: 01:00:02

Uh, they changed the number of parliamentarians and increased it, but the

Trev: 01:00:10

Liberal vote didn't match that increase.

Trev: 01:00:13

And they're kind of a parliament that's a bit of a one third, one third, one third.

Trev: 01:00:17

And, uh, the Liberal government is forming a rough coalition with the

Trev: 01:00:25

Jackie Lambie Network and seems to have enough to guarantee supply.

Trev: 01:00:33

Labor refused to get into an agreement with the Greens.

Trev: 01:00:38

Just point blank refused.

Trev: 01:00:39

Yeah,

Scott: 01:00:40

I know, which is one of the things that I do not understand, but it

Scott: 01:00:43

makes me think that perhaps we're not part, we're not privy to what the Greens

Scott: 01:00:49

actually do when they get into government.

Joe: 01:00:52

Or maybe we're not privy with how right wing Labor are.

Trev: 01:00:56

Yes.

Scott: 01:00:56

That's also a possibility.

Trev: 01:00:58

Guy Rundle's theory was that the Liberals and Labor are much closer in

Trev: 01:01:05

ideology than any of the other groups.

Trev: 01:01:08

And in fact, there should be a grand coalition of Liberal and Labor with

Trev: 01:01:14

the Greens as the genuine opposition.

Trev: 01:01:17

It's just that they couldn't bring themselves to admit

Trev: 01:01:19

how close they actually are.

Trev: 01:01:22

He doesn't say it in so few words, it's a bit more flowery, but, uh,

Trev: 01:01:28

You know, this is what happens when you talk about Europe and renting.

Trev: 01:01:31

Well, over there, there's a lot more of these sorts of, um, mixtures of

Trev: 01:01:36

coalitions of, uh, Yeah, there are.

Trev: 01:01:39

And we're hitting that one.

Trev: 01:01:40

Yeah,

Joe: 01:01:40

but then you also get the case of Israel, which was very much a proportional

Joe: 01:01:46

representation and they were held to ransom by The right wing conservatives,

Scott: 01:01:55

so that's where Likud had to go in with them and they have now reaped

Scott: 01:02:01

what they've sown, you know, I would have thought that if Benny, whatever

Scott: 01:02:05

his name was, Prime Minister and that sort of stuff, this war would have been

Scott: 01:02:07

over months ago because I think he would have flattened Gaza and he was, no,

Scott: 01:02:13

whatever his name is, Benny Gantz, was it?

Scott: 01:02:15

Was that the?

Scott: 01:02:16

Oh, okay.

Scott: 01:02:17

I don't know.

Scott: 01:02:17

I would have thought that if he was the Prime Minister over there, they would

Scott: 01:02:20

have flattened Gaza and then they were pulled out and they would have said,

Scott: 01:02:22

right, you want these borders open again?

Scott: 01:02:25

Give us back our people.

Scott: 01:02:27

You know?

Scott: 01:02:28

Because I just don't see the point in continuously bombing

Trev: 01:02:32

the Isn't that the first part of the plan you just mentioned?

Trev: 01:02:35

Flatten Gaza?

Trev: 01:02:36

Aren't they still doing that?

Trev: 01:02:37

Yeah,

Scott: 01:02:37

I know, but they've flattened Just haven't quite finished it?

Scott: 01:02:40

They could have actually stopped.

Scott: 01:02:42

You know, they could have flattened it and then they could have stopped,

Scott: 01:02:44

but instead they've got this obsession with going in and, you know, rooting

Scott: 01:02:49

everything out and all that sort of stuff.

Scott: 01:02:51

And I think to myself, you know, Hamas was a creation of the Israeli

Scott: 01:02:55

government because they wanted something that was against Fatah.

Scott: 01:02:58

You know, it's, uh.

Trev: 01:03:01

Okay.

Trev: 01:03:01

Well, let's talk about, uh, Gaza and the Middle East.

Trev: 01:03:06

So Iran recently, in the last few days, uh, sent a bunch of, uh, Missiles slash

Trev: 01:03:17

drones plus firecrackers across to Israel who were busy with their Iron

Trev: 01:03:25

Dome intercepting those objects and some got through, but apparently there

Trev: 01:03:31

was only one injury from that entire, um, project, which seems extraordinary.

Trev: 01:03:41

So, the coverage of this has been Affected by the, you know, the stabbings in Bondi.

Trev: 01:03:51

So here in Australia, you know, turning on the news, not

Trev: 01:03:56

a lot has been said about it.

Trev: 01:03:59

But, what, if you do look at the news, and you, or you read a Murdoch paper,

Trev: 01:04:08

because that's the only goddamn paper out there, or Fairfax, which who are

Trev: 01:04:12

just as bad, you Um, and they talk about, um, you know, everybody in the world has

Trev: 01:04:18

been warning Iran, don't do it, don't send missiles, but they did it anyway,

Trev: 01:04:23

and this is just a, goddamn Iranians.

Joe: 01:04:26

Well,

Trev: 01:04:27

uh,

Joe: 01:04:28

I, I read a thought that they gave them plenty of warning, they knew

Joe: 01:04:33

that the Iron Dome was going to stop them, effectively this was Iran, uh,

Joe: 01:04:37

Iran showing, uh, Not the saving face.

Joe: 01:04:41

They'd been attacked.

Joe: 01:04:42

They had to save face.

Joe: 01:04:44

Correct.

Joe: 01:04:45

This was the way of doing it.

Trev: 01:04:46

And how had they been attacked, Joe?

Scott: 01:04:49

Because they had their

Trev: 01:04:50

embassy blown up in Damascus.

Trev: 01:04:52

In Syria?

Trev: 01:04:53

Yeah.

Trev: 01:04:53

You would not know that that happened in Australia.

Trev: 01:04:57

Well, I knew about it.

Trev: 01:04:59

Well, how did you know?

Trev: 01:05:01

Because I read it on the ABC weeks ago when it happened.

Trev: 01:05:04

It's, so, so when Iran retaliated.

Trev: 01:05:08

It was because the Israelis attacked, uh, their embassy.

Trev: 01:05:14

It was actually the building beside the embassy, technically, I think.

Trev: 01:05:17

But, you know, with the intent of, and killed a number of people.

Trev: 01:05:23

And, and people are expressing shock and horror at the Iranians retaliating.

Trev: 01:05:28

Just imagine if somebody had, you know, Had done that to a US embassy anywhere on

Trev: 01:05:36

the planet, there'd be no question about the retaliation that would be expected.

Joe: 01:05:42

That then, then Hillary Clinton would be blamed.

Joe: 01:05:45

Yes.

Joe: 01:05:46

Hmm.

Scott: 01:05:47

Yes.

Scott: 01:05:48

But it just It's one of those things, you know, I just don't understand why the

Scott: 01:05:53

hell they decided to bomb that embassy.

Scott: 01:05:57

You know, it's, I just think to myself, that bastard is trying to,

Scott: 01:06:01

he's trying to extend this war.

Scott: 01:06:02

He's trying to keep them going and that sort of stuff.

Scott: 01:06:04

He's trying to drag the Yanks into it.

Trev: 01:06:06

Yeah.

Scott: 01:06:07

But I was very pleased that Biden has already said, no, the

Scott: 01:06:09

Israelis are on their own over this.

Trev: 01:06:11

Apparently that's a red line that was never crossed in any previous sort

Trev: 01:06:14

of world wars or major conflicts of,

Joe: 01:06:17

of

Trev: 01:06:18

attacking your enemies.

Trev: 01:06:21

Consulate like that in another country.

Joe: 01:06:24

Not by a nation state, no.

Trev: 01:06:25

Yeah.

Trev: 01:06:26

So.

Trev: 01:06:26

By terrorists.

Trev: 01:06:27

Yes, but not by a nation state.

Trev: 01:06:30

So I think Israel has yet to claim responsibility, but the

Trev: 01:06:36

USA said, yep, Israel did it, so.

Scott: 01:06:39

Yeah, the Yanks have said Israel did it, so they're on their own.

Trev: 01:06:42

Yeah.

Trev: 01:06:43

And there are all these warnings given because, um, different Western

Trev: 01:06:47

powers were citing to their citizens.

Trev: 01:06:50

Do not go anywhere near these areas.

Trev: 01:06:52

Um, it was because the Iranians had said we're going to send some bombs

Trev: 01:06:57

as a retaliation, uh, missiles.

Trev: 01:06:59

And anyway, they've sent them and they've said, uh, that's it.

Trev: 01:07:05

The project's over as far as we're concerned.

Trev: 01:07:07

Um, it was in retaliation for what was done to us and, uh, we're done now.

Trev: 01:07:12

We're not doing any more, but

Joe: 01:07:14

that's They have said to Israel, don't retaliate for the retaliation.

Trev: 01:07:18

Yes.

Trev: 01:07:19

Yeah.

Trev: 01:07:19

So Which I don't blame them for.

Trev: 01:07:22

Interesting move by the Iranians.

Trev: 01:07:25

Yeah, of course,

Scott: 01:07:25

it was a very interesting move by them.

Trev: 01:07:27

Yeah, so, um, um, yeah.

Trev: 01:07:33

Headline in the New York Times, Israel bombed an Iranian embassy complex.

Trev: 01:07:38

Is that allowed?

Trev: 01:07:38

And Alan McLeod makes the point.

Trev: 01:07:43

Imagine if Iran just bombed the Israeli embassy in DC.

Trev: 01:07:48

Would anybody be asking if it was legal?

Trev: 01:07:51

Good point.

Trev: 01:07:52

Um, just a dearth of background material on that.

Trev: 01:07:56

And, um, You know, I saw comments by um, Penny Wong urging Iran not to

Trev: 01:08:04

escalate the conflict and when they did, Albanese decried Iran's actions

Trev: 01:08:12

and said, um, Iran has ignored our call and those of many other countries not

Trev: 01:08:17

to proceed with these reckless attacks.

Trev: 01:08:20

Anyone who cares for the protection of innocent life must

Trev: 01:08:22

stand against these attacks.

Trev: 01:08:24

Albanese continues, this escalation is a grave threat to the security

Trev: 01:08:27

of Israel and the entire region.

Trev: 01:08:29

It risks greater instability and devastation.

Trev: 01:08:32

And he says, Iran's ongoing flouting of international law, its

Trev: 01:08:37

egregious human rights abuses and threat to international security.

Trev: 01:08:41

Is why this government has imposed targeted financial sanctions

Trev: 01:08:45

and travel bans, he said.

Trev: 01:08:47

Now, I googled and tried to find anything where Australia condemned Israel for

Trev: 01:08:55

the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus and I couldn't find anything.

Trev: 01:09:04

So, it's just the hypocrisy and the double standards, um, that just are annoying.

Trev: 01:09:11

Again, that might have been affected by the fact The, uh, bombing of Damascus

Trev: 01:09:19

Embassy, or the Embassy in Damascus, was on the 1st of April and that was

Trev: 01:09:22

around, the very next day was when that aid worker was killed, uh, Zomi?

Trev: 01:09:28

Yeah, it

Scott: 01:09:29

could well have, yeah, Zomi, whatever her name was.

Trev: 01:09:31

So again, the media was just full of, of that tragedy and not much about an

Trev: 01:09:38

Iranian embassy being hit by the Israelis.

Scott: 01:09:43

Yeah, was it done with, um, how'd they do it?

Scott: 01:09:46

They do it by aircraft or they do it by, um, cruise missiles?

Trev: 01:09:51

Not sure how it was done.

Trev: 01:09:52

I can't, I'm not sure.

Joe: 01:09:54

Usually it's, um, aircraft.

Joe: 01:09:57

The attack on the, um, nuclear processing plant was aircraft.

Trev: 01:10:02

Ah, what else have we got on this, um, oh.

Trev: 01:10:10

I showed image on one episode of those guys who were hit by.

Trev: 01:10:15

You know, walking along, there's some terrible stuff you can see online.

Trev: 01:10:22

One is, um, this one is reported extensively in a Guardian article.

Trev: 01:10:29

But, um, Israeli soldiers taking potshots at a starved Garzan clinging

Trev: 01:10:38

to a bag of airdropped food aid.

Trev: 01:10:41

Um, The soldiers wounded him repeatedly.

Trev: 01:10:45

He kept struggling to crawl to safety and they continued shooting for

Trev: 01:10:49

no reason until they murdered him.

Trev: 01:10:52

Cold blooded murder in broad daylight.

Trev: 01:10:54

You can see that on Twitter.

Trev: 01:10:59

And what's another example here?

Trev: 01:11:02

Uh, uh, just, just going back to the Australian aid worker who was

Trev: 01:11:08

killed and You know, like, the uproar here in Australia by our

Trev: 01:11:16

government, saying, This is outrageous.

Trev: 01:11:21

The Israelis have crossed the line here.

Trev: 01:11:23

I demand an explanation.

Trev: 01:11:25

How dare this happen?

Trev: 01:11:29

30, 000 Palestinians die, and nowhere near the Yes, but they're not Australians.

Trev: 01:11:36

I know, it's so pathetic to be so parochial into just Ignore 30, 000 people

Trev: 01:11:47

being killed, but then get all, um, just the reaction when one Australian does.

Trev: 01:11:56

It's really so small minded.

Trev: 01:11:59

I mean, by all means express the outrage for the Aussie aid worker

Trev: 01:12:04

being killed, but a proportionate amount of outrage for the 30, 000

Trev: 01:12:11

Palestinians who've been killed.

Trev: 01:12:14

Might be nice or consistent.

Trev: 01:12:17

You know, by the way, why was she there?

Trev: 01:12:20

Potentially because Australia had pulled back its funding of UNRWA.

Trev: 01:12:24

So groups like the ones she was with had to come in and, and,

Trev: 01:12:30

uh, sort of fill that void,

Scott: 01:12:34

fill

Trev: 01:12:34

that void.

Trev: 01:12:35

So, you know, is Australia partially responsible?

Trev: 01:12:41

There's a drone that killed her.

Trev: 01:12:44

was by a company that Australia is paying big sums of money to, as part

Trev: 01:12:51

of an agreement between, um, so getting sort of, uh, military supplies from.

Trev: 01:12:59

So, something like, oh, where is it here?

Trev: 01:13:03

Um, so, yeah, the lady's name was Zomi Franken.

Trev: 01:13:11

Killed by a drone, and we're, we're handing 900 million dollars to the

Trev: 01:13:17

company that helped murder her.

Trev: 01:13:19

So, the Israeli arms company that provided the tools for the murder, um,

Trev: 01:13:26

will be handed 900 million dollars.

Trev: 01:13:27

Yes, but guns don't

Joe: 01:13:27

kill people.

Trev: 01:13:28

People kill people.

Trev: 01:13:30

Yes, um.

Trev: 01:13:32

This is from an article in Crikey, and In February, in February, the ABC revealed

Trev: 01:13:38

the Defence Department had awarded Elbit Systems a 917 million contract despite

Trev: 01:13:45

equipment previously supplied by the company being torn out of Australian

Trev: 01:13:48

systems due to national security concerns and um, so they're going to be

Trev: 01:13:54

handsomely rewarded by Australians Was there any mention that, hey, Albanese,

Trev: 01:14:02

if you're so outraged by the murder of this Australian, do we reconsider paying

Trev: 01:14:08

900 million dollars to the company that supplied the drone that killed her?

Trev: 01:14:16

People like Richard Miles just simply refuse to respond when people like

Trev: 01:14:19

Crikey ask questions like that.

Trev: 01:14:22

Um, uh,

Joe: 01:14:25

Well, they just made the weapon, they didn't target it.

Trev: 01:14:28

Yeah, just, all the, all the outrage, but when you can do something,

Trev: 01:14:36

they're not prepared to do it.

Trev: 01:14:37

Um, The Onion had an interesting headline, satirical, it's like The

Trev: 01:14:44

Chaser or like, uh, The Batuta Advocate, headline in The Onion, Israel warns Gaza

Trev: 01:14:51

still harbouring hundreds of doctors.

Trev: 01:14:53

I mean, they're killing just hundreds of doctors, they're, ah,

Trev: 01:15:01

what else have we got here, we've got um Mind you, so's the NHS.

Trev: 01:15:06

Yes, but there's articles where doctors, both Palestinian and

Trev: 01:15:12

foreigners, are saying, look, lots of kids are killed by, you know, uh,

Trev: 01:15:17

bombs and by rubble falling on them.

Trev: 01:15:20

But we're also seeing groups of kids just brought in with gunshot wounds to the head

Trev: 01:15:25

and no other adult victims and the snipers are just picking off kids in the streets.

Trev: 01:15:33

Um, and then various reports by Palestinians and Twitter videos

Trev: 01:15:41

of, of, of people lying injured in the middle of the street.

Trev: 01:15:47

Bystanders unable to move to the middle of the street to try

Trev: 01:15:50

and pull them out of harm's way.

Trev: 01:15:51

And the snipers just continuing to take potshots at them.

Trev: 01:15:55

Like, it is dystopian what is going on there.

Trev: 01:15:58

Um, what else have we got?

Trev: 01:16:03

Places like Germany.

Trev: 01:16:05

There was a professor, um, who's Jewish.

Trev: 01:16:10

She's been disinvited from a guest professorship in Germany for signing a

Trev: 01:16:14

public letter in support of Palestine.

Trev: 01:16:17

The letter was just a pretty simple, um, document about supporting Palestine

Trev: 01:16:25

for the most obvious of reasons.

Trev: 01:16:28

Uh, she's been banned from her position.

Trev: 01:16:31

Yiannis Varoufakis.

Trev: 01:16:33

Has been, um, there's just been an order made against him, a ban on any political

Trev: 01:16:39

activity in Germany, Fiatus, because of his support for the Palestinians.

Trev: 01:16:46

And it's not just a ban on visiting Germany, but also

Trev: 01:16:49

from participating via Zoom.

Trev: 01:16:51

So, so some pretty heavy censorship occurring in Germany.

Trev: 01:16:58

Because,

Scott: 01:16:59

you know, anybody who's Germany feels a hell of a lot of

Scott: 01:17:01

guilt over this second world war.

Scott: 01:17:04

And they actually feel personally responsible for the Holocaust.

Scott: 01:17:09

And I just think to myself, it's time for them to get over that too.

Scott: 01:17:13

Yeah.

Scott: 01:17:13

You know, because they are a modern, fully functional democracy

Scott: 01:17:18

now and that sort of thing.

Scott: 01:17:19

They can still have the history, but they've got to actually move on from

Trev: 01:17:22

it.

Trev: 01:17:23

There's reports of the Israelis using AI for targeting of, um, people.

Trev: 01:17:30

And also reports where When they've sort of located the activities of

Trev: 01:17:37

junior Hamas operatives, they've preferred to kill them in their

Trev: 01:17:41

homes rather than out in the field.

Trev: 01:17:44

Um, this is a method of war.

Trev: 01:17:47

And, uh, yeah, there's an extensive article in the Guardian about

Trev: 01:17:52

snipers targeting children.

Trev: 01:17:54

And, uh, gores.

Trev: 01:18:00

You guys, when you put, like, a bandage on Referred to as gauze, um, so it

Trev: 01:18:07

comes from, um, Gaza, because Gazans were skilled weavers for centuries.

Trev: 01:18:14

So that's where the word gauze comes from.

Trev: 01:18:18

Um, what else we got here in this just litany of disasters,

Trev: 01:18:23

so, ah, it's just incredible

Trev: 01:18:33

Brutality, uh, cold blooded killing, and, um, it's just continuing

Trev: 01:18:45

right in front of our faces.

Trev: 01:18:47

And it's not stopping, these people are now starving, um, oh, you know,

Trev: 01:18:53

allegations, even someone like Bob Carr, former New South Wales Premier

Trev: 01:18:58

said, You know, that attack on the Australian aid worker was probably to

Trev: 01:19:04

scare off and stop aid workers operating.

Trev: 01:19:07

So, in his view, it was an intentional act to scare off aid workers and to

Trev: 01:19:14

reduce the level of aid going into Israel.

Trev: 01:19:17

Not just some simple mistake.

Trev: 01:19:20

Um, you just couldn't put anything beyond them at this point.

Trev: 01:19:25

On the whole, they're doing terrible things.

Trev: 01:19:28

The Australian government has been very limited in its response.

Trev: 01:19:34

Um, Australian government is sending over a guy to talk to the Israelis to

Trev: 01:19:43

investigate the murder of that aid worker.

Scott: 01:19:49

Well, he's not going over to investigate.

Scott: 01:19:51

He's going over to advise the government on the investigation.

Scott: 01:19:54

Right.

Scott: 01:19:55

So he's going to actually be the Australian witness for the

Scott: 01:19:58

investigation and that sort of stuff.

Scott: 01:19:59

So he's going to be sitting in on meetings and all that type of thing.

Trev: 01:20:02

Yeah.

Trev: 01:20:04

Good luck with that.

Trev: 01:20:05

Exactly.

Trev: 01:20:06

Um, yeah.

Trev: 01:20:08

And meanwhile I

Joe: 01:20:09

hope he speaks Hebrew.

Joe: 01:20:10

Hmm.

Joe: 01:20:11

Because what's the odds all the meetings won't be in English?

Scott: 01:20:13

Yeah.

Scott: 01:20:13

No, they won't be in English.

Scott: 01:20:14

They'll be in Hebrew.

Joe: 01:20:15

Yeah.

Trev: 01:20:16

And there we go.

Trev: 01:20:17

Yeah.

Trev: 01:20:18

A complete disaster, Australia doing nothing about it and in fact paying

Trev: 01:20:22

big money to the company that's made the drone that killed the Australian.

Trev: 01:20:27

And uh, meanwhile, criticise the Iranians, um, who are retaliating

Trev: 01:20:34

because their embassy was bombed by the Israelis, so they go to town

Trev: 01:20:37

criticising them, but not the Israelis.

Trev: 01:20:39

It's all so two faced, it's all so hypocritical,

Trev: 01:20:44

hypocritical, quite depressing.

Trev: 01:20:46

I don't know.

Trev: 01:20:46

And, uh, and there we go, that is another, um, episode.

Trev: 01:20:53

So, ah, alright Baldy listener, sorry for the audio last week.

Trev: 01:21:00

I'll try and fix that up, so long term it'll be better.

Trev: 01:21:03

But, uh, anyway, we'll be back next week.

Trev: 01:21:07

We'll talk to you then.

Trev: 01:21:09

Bye for now.

Trev: 01:21:11

And it's a good night from me.

Joe: 01:21:13

And it's a good night from him.

Trev: 01:21:14

Good night.