Mailbag, incl: Give us some optimism? May 31, 2026

24:50Well, here's another one. You can't. You know, so it's like you want to go, oh, mandatory climate reporting. And you go, well, I'm the first one carrying the banner to protect the environment. I think it's really important, right? Do I think a bureaucracy making large companies do mandatory climate reporting makes any difference? Or are we just going to see a huge amount of guff and greenwashing and a huge amount of money wasted and spending writing reports that no one will ever read just so someone can jump up and down and go, look how green we are. It's like, you know, anyway, it's silly. So there are things that I just sound good.

25:26You've got to be careful when you criticise them though because it makes you, oh, so you don't like the environment. Oh, you don't think social housing is important. It's like, no, no, no, I am massively in favour of all of these things but I just think the way that they're doing it. I guess it's not trying to be negative. It's just that if the only solution to a problem is to throw money at it, I just think, I just don't think it's very smart, that's all. But that's why your answer was interesting because what you essentially said was, oh, they're completely screwing it up, but I at least like that they're talking about the right things.

26:00No, no, I like specific parts of some of their policies. You see yourself, you didn't mind the negative gearing changes? Yeah, yeah. Index, that's your tax records, you pro or con? I don't mind that component of it, but I'm very much against the minimum 30 % tax rate on it. I actually think it disadvantages the very people that they think will help. Ridiculous. Yep. All the people are trying to say, anyway, let's say a little bit. Let's say positive. John's next challenge, a positive long-term outlook for a specific Australian industry.

26:38Healthcare workers operating in the NDIS.

26:44You know what's happening about industries? Are we talking about profitability? Are we talking about, like, it's a funny one, right? Yeah. Okay, here's another way. In 10 years' time, which industry do you reckon will have gained the most profit? Just for a fun, we just want to ask John's question more specifically. And while you're thinking, mate, here's the, so I'll just give you, and this is not the only way to look at it, by the way, here's the ASX list. And by the way, if you're listening at home, have a think while we do the same. The sectors, and I'll try and do it in the last, I know we've done this a little bit in different contexts, but over the last little while.

27:19The last 12 months, the highest performing sector on the ASX. Oh, it's not going to work. CompSEX overlay numbers. Oh, there is. It's energy. No materials, 44.8%. Energy, 39.23%. Next one is utilities, up 8%. Financials, up 4%. Then we go to... What's next? Communication, down 0.9%. Industrials, down 4%. Consumer staples down 6%. Real estate down 6.2%. IT down 36%. Healthcare down 45.2%. So the sectors are energy, materials, industrials, consumer discretionary, consumer staples, healthcare, financials, IT, communication services, utilities and real estate. Give me a bull case for one of those.

28:12Does it have to be a bull case I think will happen or that I think has incredible potential? Oh. Let me go the latter because the person... That's what I don't have any answer for. I think we have a massive opportunity in front of ourselves in terms of an energy sector. Right. And I mean that in a very balanced kind of way. I think there is a just a necessary... Again, you hate the environment. It's good to know. No, I love the environment. I really want to... I'm kidding. I would be the happiest person in the world if we just electrified everything in Australia. Now, we've got the reason. There's not a lot of places that can do it, but Australia can.

28:43We've got the right geography, the right climate. Everything just lines up for us. It's a massive country. We've got time zones and the whole, yeah. But I'm also realistic that, you know, if you turned off everything tomorrow, then, like, we're going back to the Dark Ages. But I would love to see a path forward on that and not just like, hey, I'm a politician, I'm cutting a ribbon and I created a bunch of jobs in the middle of nowhere and they're going to actually go in two years and it's not going to make any difference. They're going to have a white elephant. But, I mean, proper, targeted, incentivised policy to capture that opportunity because why that is such a fascinating area is because it actually enables a whole raft of downstream activities.

29:26So everyone bemoans the death of Australian manufacturing. It's like, well, you know what would fix that? Abundant energy would fix that, you know, particularly when it's coupled with, you know, automation, robotics, AI, some of these other kinds of things. I mean, we've just got such a massive opportunity there. So I would love to see that developed more. It would require a huge investment, obviously. And I don't want the government to throw money at it because I think that's silly. But I would want very clear legislation and proper incentives to make sure that that happened. I actually think tourism is something that is not done as well as it could be.

30:05It's another competitive moat that there's only one Uluru, there's only one Great Barrier reef. There's, you know, I mean, the, the, the coastline that we have is just insane. You go and look at beaches in other countries and you laugh. It's like, this is your beach. Like it's like, no, we, we, and a lot of people recognize it and it's a big industry for us, but I would, I would be leaning into that in a long way, particularly because of the multiplier around that and the downstream effects around that, you know, it's just sort of like, you know, who benefits from tourism? It's like the person running the cafe and coughs.

30:37They benefit from you know, the AMVB operator in Maroochydore, you know. Like there's so many things that spin off all of that kind of stuff. Is that rain or static? I'm going to assume it's rain. Rain, yeah, sorry. I literally got a corrugated iron roof on the home office and it's obviously in the window and it's raining a bit heavily. So hopefully it's so loud. I just want to mention it just in case people are wondering if there's static coming through. No, it's just rain on the roof. Nice, I like it. Energy and tourism, I think. And if I could add, you know, maybe technology as well. I think too many of our tech leaders just go to the US.

31:15I was bemoaning on Twitter the other day about Iron, which got rejected from the ASX. It's actually been one of the massive superstars of the NASDAQ. You were sure about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'll get into that another time, but it's such a missed opportunity. I was going to go tech, actually, so I'm glad you mentioned it. That was the one that was first on my list. And I think for all the reasons we talked about, We just finished talking about the fact I hate the phrase tech, right? Yet there is an international technology sector. But I think technology enablers are going to have a dramatic impact on our society.

31:47And while I don't know where all of the value is going to go in a particular company by company or even trend by trend level, I think overall technology is going to, technology provision is going to be a bigger and bigger sector over time. So I suspect that is one of the big growth areas, despite the fact most aren't genuine tech. And there's fintech, I think, and that, and it's just a bit of a mess. So I think that. I'm also going to steal your tourism. I was going to say tech anyway. I wasn't going to say tourism, but I love it. I'm going to steal it. That is a massive opportunity for us. As you say, mate, we have unique assets here, and it's an export industry too, right?

32:23So the best thing about it is you actually manage to grow jobs without having to grow local consumption. And the beauty of that is you're actually adding to economic activity and it's just a surplus for the Australian economy. And so that is just a wonderful way to go about developing, growing and actually the multiplier is also hugely important. And not even the coffee, not even the barista in coughs, but the barista in coughs that get their car service local mechanic can afford the car because they've got a job, because the tourists are here. It multiplies not only in the sector itself but right through the entire economy.

32:58So it's a hugely important one. I'm glad you mentioned it, mate. I think that's one of my...

33:06If I can't be treasurer, I'd love for you tourism minister. And I just think you can do so much to make the country more welcoming and accessible for tourists. You know why this has them going home raving about the place they send their friends back? And it's just an absolute no-brainer for me. And it goes beyond throwing silly amounts of money at an advertising agency. Oh, of course it does. To do something that kind of cool and gets a bit of a ripple on social media for three weeks and then no-one talks about it again. and it's much more real life. Just double the number of customs staff. When you come home from Sydney, you're like, you won't believe it.

33:37I got off the plane, I was buggered, and I was long fly, and my legs were sore, and the person smiled at me, and I waited in customs for 13 minutes, and I was through. I got to the other side, and the airport was big, and it was attractive, and it's literally first impressions. You know, it almost seems hackneyed, right, but that's exactly what it is. Make the Sydney Harbour ferries free. Why? Get all the bloody tourists on the fairies going, this is amazing. I'm coming back and I'm bringing my friends. It's really, really cheap, like stupid cheap in terms of the ROI for this sort of stuff. Instead we're bloody, sorry, I've got to be positive, John, in the budget they increased the bloody departing travellers charge.

34:16What are you people doing? We're making it hard for people to come and spend their money with us. It's just madness. So, yeah, I would love to be in charge of tourists. You're right, mate. It's not that at all. People know what Australia is. Yeah, you can remind them. That's important. When your friends go home, you go, oh, mate, you've got to go there. I had such a great time. The people were friendly. The languages, the signs were in 15 different languages. I knew exactly where I was going and what I was doing. The ferries were free. The streets were clean. It's like, what's up to love? The thing is, it can't be disrupted.

34:46AI is not going to disrupt, you know. No-brainer. All that wonderful, you know, natural qualities. It's bulletproof. There's only one place in the world. There's one place in the world you go to see a pyramid. Yes, correct. There's another place in the world where you go to see a kangaroo, right? And it's just like it's as easy as that. But we talk about day in and day out about competitive moats. And, you know, it's like, well, that's Australia's moat. That is an incredible moat. Melbourne culture, Sydney harbour, Gold Coast beaches, Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef, vineyards in South Australia.

35:24Margaret River, Broome. I mean, man. Yeah. Like, unless you're a humusant, we're a big country. We've got, I mean, I'm really, I think, I said in the podcast, I'm not reading a book by Bill Bryson. I mentioned it on last week's podcast. I think I might have. Okay. So he's written a whole book about going through England, which is a tiny, piddly little island. And it's made to make a whole, it's all these really fascinating, cool things. Like, oh, I didn't know that was there. And then think about Australia. I'm not saying we're better. We're just so much bigger. The opportunity for all the things.

35:51Like, it's a no-brainer. And the interesting thing is, is what you said too, It's more about removing things than adding things, you know? It's like this is not hard stuff to do. It's not like, oh, we could do it, but, you know what, we need to come up with an extra$500 billion to do it. It's like, no, we could actually do it from really, really cost-effective kind of ways, really low-impact kind of ways on the budget, you know? It's just there's a lot of things like that that are just surprising in the bang for buck that you would get. Oh, it's just, yeah, OK. Last one, mate. I'm going to assume you're going to reject this one, but I'm going to try anyway.

36:29John says, If Andrew dares, a bull case for a cryptocurrency technology other than Bitcoin. But he says, Not as a currency, but purely as a technology that is of interest. Many technologies have been built upon fiat and were and are investable enterprises. Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Wise, etc. Is there a crypto equivalent? Yeah, there's thousands of crypto equivalents. That is all nonsense. I mean, without getting too... Is there a tech out there that can be used effectively for other things? Yeah, yeah, there is.

37:05There... You challenged me with this stuff because I want to start talking but I know that it's like I need to, like, spend 15 minutes building the foundation and then explain. But I'll just say... Give us some examples. I think there is a lot of work that is being done right now and really exciting stuff. Spark is worth a mention. Strike is worth a mention. Block is worth a mention in terms of what they're doing, which is more on the infrastructure side of things. And what they're really doing is like, the reason Bitcoin's going to win is not because there's a bunch of, you know, hardcore Austrian fanboys out there.

37:46It's because the tech is just going to be faster, better, cheaper. That's it. Grandma, why are you going to use that? In fact, I'm not even knowing that I'm using that. In the same way that I open up my app and send you some money through a pay ID, I've got no clue what's happening under the chassis. But it works and it can work fast and it can be done in an interoperable, open manner. I think that is just wild. What the world, the wider world, hasn't yet figured out, but most people have looked at it and figured it out, is that these things trend to one, they're winner-take-all markets. There's one internet protocol.

38:20right you know there's that's just it there just is right and and because it doesn't make there there doesn't make sense for there to be others and so even when you look at the only one product market fit ever to come out of broader crypto has been in stable coins um particularly tether and the very large ones they're all migrating to a bitcoin blockchain because it just it it turns It turns out that buzzwords like decentralisation and the fact that they can't be controlled or co-opted and they're open and they're permissionless, there's actually a real thing. If you want to see a mistake and then have an Ethereum foundation roll it back for the 12th time, it's just like all you've done is rebuild Visa on very expensive technology that's very fragile.

39:08And it doesn't, I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. If you're going to replace something, You need to replace it in a way that actually has real-world utility. And the rest of the world is just going to focus on number go up and down and it's volatile and it's this and that and it's completely going to miss the bigger picture. But that's cool. It'll take time. Is there a business or a feature or a product being built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain that is fascinating? Yeah, thousands of them. Is there one to you like, you're like, this is really cool, it's a good example of... It's not other than Bitcoin, which was John's question, but just to change John's question a little bit, you may mention those infrastructure companies, they're building stuff largely on the back of the Bitcoin blockchain.

39:49Yeah. What's cool out there that's being enabled by the blockchain, the Bitcoin network? I liked what... Well, there's some really interesting stuff being doing in Latin America to ensure the transparency and accuracy of voting because it's a mutable ledger. You can do really interesting stuff on that. But I'm going to go back to Block, though, because what they really did... I mean, one of the chicken and the egg problems you've got with something like this is that why would I accept it if no one else will accept it? You know, it sort of goes from a collectible to a store of value, then in theory to a medium of exchange and then finally a unit of account.

40:23And the store of value, I think at this stage, is pretty undeniable. But the medium of exchange part is very hard. And what Block has basically done through Square is just basically say, you don't really care what you want. You want to pay in Bitcoin and receive US dollars? You can do it. You want to pay in US dollars and receive Bitcoin? You can do it. How does it work? It doesn't matter. Tap your phone. It just happens. Oh, and by the way, instant settlement, very, very low transaction costs, no chargebacks, all the things that people love, I think is super, super, super cool. I know. That's awesome.

40:54Yeah, the interoperability stuff is kind of cool. One thing that I don't think is yet to dawn on the finance sector, I mean, it's money. It's like, what's the use case of money? It's like, well, if I have to explain that, it's hard. So it's sort of like, it's the same use case as dollar. It's just a different sort of foundation with it all. Sorry, you were expecting a short answer. You were kidding. I think you better than that by now, mate. We're a thousand episodes in. But things like lending, I think is lending is going to explode. And that sounds really scary. I'm like, what? You're going to take a very volatile, unreal asset, you know, that's just made of hot air and boils the oceans and does all this other stuff allegedly, and you're going to add leverage to that.

41:39The lenders, though, haven't realised that it's the best form of collateral in the world because it's 24-7, it's hyper-liquid. You know, if I was going to lend you money and you said I'll put up my house or I'll put up some Bitcoin, I'll take the Bitcoin every day of the week, even if I hate the damn thing because I can liquidate you in a microsecond, you know, 20 % away from any threshold and it's just sort of like it's super low risk and it's going to lower cost of capital, I think, and it's going to share a lot of multiplicative, didn't say that right, benefits. Nice. Motley Fool Money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener.

42:21Mate, let's go to Nathan. And I like this challenge. I have some thoughts, but I hope you do too. Pod machine pilots, says Nathan. Thanks for everything you do. I've got a bit of pushback that I hope creates some discussion. As always, Ram will tell you why you're wrong, Nathan. I've heard the case for a sovereign wealth fund, being that it would be a way for the Commonwealth, of the Commonwealth, to be maintained. I've made exactly that case, Nathan. But doesn't a sovereign wealth fund actually require sovereign wealth to begin with, he asks? How can you justify the creation of such a fund while the government is in debt and running a budget deficit?

43:00Thanks, Nathan. I have some thoughts, but I'll let you go first. Well, you've got to... He's right, right? You've got to fix that problem first. To save money... I don't think you do. You have to save money, I would argue, at least in aggregate over time, right? Like, I guess you can reach a point where the flows from the fund are significant enough to make up for the shortfall, but you've still got to seed it somehow. So maybe we take a one-off dilutive impact or something like that. And look, maybe there is... I'll be keen to hear what you have to say, but I think even you would sort of say, ideally, ideally we live within our means.

43:38Like, why not have both? It's like the taco ad, right? You know, soft and hard shells? Yeah, we can do two things at once. Yep. Do you want me to go? What do you reckon? No, that's it. That's all I got. So, Nathan, two things. The mathematical answer, honestly, to that question is if your returns are going to be higher than the cost of your debt, it's effectively a margin line, right? So at some level, if I got a trillion dollars in debt and a trillion dollars in assets, I'm stoked. I'd rather have a trillion dollars in debt and a trillion dollars in assets if I was a government at government borrowing rates than nothing in either.

44:11I wouldn't pay the debt off, right? Because I expect to get 6%, 7%, 8%, 9 % from my sovereign wealth fund and I expect to pay 2%, 3%, 4 % on my bonds. So it makes perfect sense. It's pure arbitrage. It's carry trade 101. And so there is a... But it does deaden it, though. Because that means the real rate of return at the end of it is like a very low single digit. So you're right, the maths works, but it's all like... But spending the trillion dollars to pay the debt off first, you'd actually be worse off in 10, 20, 30 years' time if you actually invested alongside it, right? But would you carry the debt forever, though?

44:43No, no, no. No. Okay. Even in that very limited scenario, it's like, you're right, I'll get to that. In that very limited scenario, it's a margin loan. Every investor, why have a margin? You could sell your shares and pay off the margin loan. Why wouldn't you do that? Well, because we're going to borrow at five and invest at nine and make the difference. And so I'm still ahead. So even if there was no way to reduce the deficit, you would still be better off doing that if that was available to you than not doing it at all, in my humble opinion, which, you know, I'm entitled to be wrong. That's my gut feeling.

45:14Two other thoughts. So firstly, no, I'll go your question, your challenge last round. Next one is, and here's a way to think about Nathan, which is going to sound like I'm being wacky or being a sir, but I'm actually being completely and totally honest and upfront. when we have a government budget, we measure the cash things. And we say, there's this much cash going out, this much cash coming in, this much debt being owed. And like a company, we put together a profit and loss statement. And that's totally appropriate because it's exactly what's going on. We have a balance sheet of sorts. But imagine a company's balance sheet.

45:51If you said to Woolies, here's the thing, do your P &L, but on your balance sheet, all you can include is the cash you have and the debt you owe. And Willis would say, but that's not my, that's not the total of my assets or my liabilities. And I'd say, what do you mean? Well, we have buildings and trolleys and we own some of the land and we should be able to count that on our balance sheet. And so to your point about sovereign and common wealth, Nathan, and this is not supposed to sound like I'm being too weird here, we already own the assets under the ground. So Australia's common wealth or sovereign wealth already includes all of the oil, the coal, the iron, the gold, the copper, the silver, the uranium, the bauxite, the rare earths, the titanium, plutonium.

46:39We as a country, unless someone comes and invades us, we have that sovereign wealth exists and belongs to us. And so on a national balance sheet, we already have that commonwealth, that sovereign wealth, which is exactly my argument for saying, rather than digging it up and flogging it off for nothing, you dig it up, you sell it, and you turn the proceeds into, you know, think about the balance sheet again, asset was, you know, ounce of gold. You can flog that off and say asset was an ounce of gold, turn that into cash, spend that cash on trinkets, and poof, it's gone. And I hope you enjoyed the year because now we've got no gold left.

47:14or you can say asset gold turns into asset cash or asset investments preferably and so we keep that as part of our sovereign wealth and so i think you're absolutely i think so you know that i think we should think more broadly about it we should actually and i'm not saying the budget should include natural assets necessarily in on the budget bottom line but i'm not sure it shouldn't if you think about you know what do we own and what do we owe you know there's a lot there and And yes, it costs money to get out of the ground. So you could even just, you could value it at the selling price. You could value it at the royalty value.

47:47You can value it at whatever you want, but they exist. Those assets are there and they are part of our common wealth. We can argue about whether the states own it or the feds own it and therefore what share each of us get, but it's there. So it's on our national balance sheet, even if it's not in the budget papers. And the third one then, Ram, is to your very good point, which you started with, which is just pay the bloody debt off and then build some sort of wealth on top of that because why the hell wouldn't you? Why carry the debt you don't need to carry? It's funny enough, we get back to that conversation about investing, mate, margin loans, and you're not talking about how much debt we should carry, and you're in that same conversation.

48:22But I think at a national level, on one level, we have the ability to create money and we shouldn't, but in a worst-case scenario, it's not a zero-sum game. But on the other hand, I can't think of anything that should be run more conservatively than a country from that perspective because it's kind of like this is all we got. And not only is it all we've got, we're running on each other's behalves. I know the national interest is kind of a bit cute and quaint these days, but it's still real. Not only that, though, what our kids inherit is whatever we leave. So we've got to, and this is a value judgment, other people can disagree, I think we have a moral and ethical responsibility to manage the country in such a way that we improve the national lot rather than making it worse.

49:03And so, again, I go back to my first point, could we borrow a gazillion trillion dollars, invest that gazillion trillion dollars in something else, make more money yeah we could maybe we even should at some level um purely from an investment account perspective rather than a you know run a deficit so we can so we can you know as the what i'm saying so we can say the trains run on time uh we should run our our concurrent spending and our as in the you know the the the current budget year and the current year's taxation roughly equal across the cycle because we are going to raise some money and spend the money and it makes sense that we pay our own way rather than saying, I'm going to tax 10, spend 11 and make our kids carry the extra dollar into perpetuity.

49:45It's madness. It's, you know, the worst part about this is not, this is not from an Austrian perspective or from any other kind of economic, not that it's bad, it's not an economic system perspective for mine. It's just the madness of us as a society kind of going, it's okay to run some debt living to the kids, why wouldn't you? and I just, you know, things that, speaking of phrases, make your head explode is probably the one we should both have a drink from. But it makes my head explode. It's like how do we normalise, screw it, spend more than you earn, leave the debt for the kids? Like I'm almost speechless because it rolls off the tongue, well, of course that's what we do, it's what we do, it's what we do.

50:25And then you stop and go, why do we do that? Why would we keep doing that? on what moral basis do I say to my sons so here's the thing guys when I die I'm going to leave you the house but I'm also going to leave you a massive amount of debt would you mind paying it for me it's like well I mean if it's there I guess I'll have to pay it dad but is it possible maybe you could cut back on the caviar and the champagne and maybe not buy the third Ferrari because I kind of, I mean it's up to you but I'd rather not have to pay your debts, it seems reasonable for you to pay your own debts dad, if you Yeah, trouble is always so far in the future.

51:02And then when it happens, well, then I'll just pay it to my kids and you know what I mean? I'll just carry it and it just kind of gets kicked down the canvas. How did we decide morally that was okay? Like I know economics isn't the study of morality and I know there's differences. People lead from moral views and that's okay too. I just, I will never understand how we decided. The reason is we didn't decide, it just kind of happened and we kind of went, okay then, and we just got used to it. It's the boiling frog, which apparently isn't real, but, you know, it's a boiling frog thing of like, you know, the water's cold, a little bit of debt, a little bit more debt, a little bit more debt, a little bit more debt, a little bit.

51:35We've always said debt, haven't we? Oh, so long as I can remember, yeah. And this gets back to your money printing questions around and it's very valid and I'll look, frankly, but at the very least, Nathan, I absolutely get you, mate, I completely agree. I would justify the creation of such a fund while we had debt because that would be less worse than not doing it. So if you're asking the question directly, how do I justify it? that way because we can earn nine and we can pay five and I would do that every day of the week. If the choice is pay five and earn nothing or earn nine and pay five, I'm earning nine and paying five because it's just less bad.

52:08So that's the answer. That's how I justify it. But if you're asking, shouldn't we do better than that? Yes, 100 times yes. Yeah. Because we have a moral responsibility to each other and to our kids. I don't know how that's controversial. Maybe morality has changed as I was a kid. I just don't. I don't understand any other view. Things, I talked before about how quickly things turned around for China, right? Yeah. We've got to remember that it goes the other way too. China. My favourite example from history, it's not even, you have to go back that far, but at the turn of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the richest places in the world.

52:44It was actually interesting because you had steam-powered shipping and railway investment and you had very good government and open and free economy. And it used to be the phrase, as rich as an Argentinian, ask your grandparents. Right. Yeah, that's where, because anyone from Argentina was incredibly rich and wealthy. Yeah, right. They were, like Australia, endowed with incredible natural bounty and they leveraged that in a very, very, very effective way. If you even go to, I haven't been there, I really want to go there, but if you go there today, you will see some of the architecture and buildings from that time and it's palatial and it gives you a sign of what it was.

53:21Now, it's almost a parody these days. They said, I mean, you know, it's like the actual poster chart for monetary debasement and fiscal irresponsibility. Right. What happened? They took their bounty and they turned inwards. They put up tariffs. It was like 15 different military coups where they thought that they could print their way out of... Literally thought they... You know, thugs get involved on the promise of some socialist agenda. They go, oh, we'll give you... Put us in power and we'll give you more money. And actually, we're just going to keep it for ourselves and we're going to screw you around.

53:54And, oh, when things get too high, we'll just print the difference. And it works until it doesn't and then it collapses spectacularly, right? And that is what is happening. Now, I'm not saying for a second Australia is going to end up like Argentina, but you've always got to remember that, you know, things can deteriorate and we should always be looking to improve our lot because... And we talked about CSL the other day, right? And I argued that there was a degree of complacency amongst the board there that let that happen because you get comfortable in your ascent and in your dominance and you start to think, well, we're untouched, we're CSL, we're Argentina, what could possibly...

54:33We're Australia. Everyone in Australia is super rich. It's one of the best places to live and it's all true. But for God's sake, let's not take that for granted. Let's remember what gave us this incredible sort of lifestyle that we have and let's make sure that we lean into that stuff and yet we're not. We're spending like drunken sailors. We're not investing a damn thing. We're taking on a pile of debt. And every time there's a problem, we print out more money and throw it at it and set up a raft of regulations. We've played this record before a thousand times around the world. Like literally not once has it worked.

55:10Not once has it worked, right? That doesn't mean that we ban welfare or any of these other stupid nonsense that people sort of retort back with, but it really does sort of say you've got to be mindful of the reasons for your success and to nurture them and to not take them for granted. And that's what... Sorry, John, I'm going back to the negativity here. Sorry, we moved on from John. It's OK, you're allowed to now. There's a lot of examples around the world where that kind of thing happens. Yeah. I've even more recently on the pod talked about the example in Germany. Mm-hm. I mean, they shut off all of their nuclear reactors because nuclear are bad.

55:52I didn't want to get into that thing. And it's like, well, even if you're going to do it, can you just like replace the energy before you turn it off? Like, oh, what was the downstream consequences of that? Yeah, manage the consequences, exactly. You know, like one of the most incredibly prosperous, richest nations post-war, post-war, right? Like, let's even go back a bit further. Like, the journey, like, so much of the best high-end manufacturing well, still to a good degree does, came out of Germany, but it's on the decline, right? Because they took it for granted. They thought they were indestructible and they started legislating everything to within an inch of its life.

56:26And again, that's not an argument for laissez-faire, but it is hopefully a bit of an example and a reminder if you lean too much, anyway, too much that way or too much the other way, things go bad and there are, there's just, I don't know. All of the stuff that you're saying, I just don't know how, this is what I don't get, dude. Sorry, let me go here. What's so controversial about don't spend more than you want and make investments? Where's the controversy? Who's arguing this? Some idiot MMT, modern monetary theorist, potentially, but put the flat earthers aside. Like who on God's green earth is saying, no, we shouldn't do that?

57:11It just makes my head explode when you talk about these things and people look at you as if you're like, you know, you're trying to sell them a hoverboard that doesn't exist. I just, it's so, some things are, well, not some things, most things in life in this world are hard and complicated. This is not one of them. This really is not one of them. It doesn't mean utopia awaits, but there's a spectrum and there is a better version of Australia that awaits, just as there is a worse version of Australia that awaits if we're too complacent and we're not aware enough of the bigger driving forces behind things.

57:48Love it. I love you mentioned Argentina too, mate, because I can't remember the book. I should look it up. It's an audio book. I listened to ages ago and it was fast. I love economic history, as you do. So good. And the point actually, the whole point of the Australian, the question was exactly, if you go back to whenever it was, It might have been$9 ,100-ish. And it was literally, it was like, why, from a standing start, why did Australia succeed where I just didn't fail? And it literally, not only is it a good analogy, it's literally the starting point for most of that analysis, which is these things diverged and what makes the difference.

58:22And I think if we don't learn those lessons, we're in trouble. And the thing you've always got to remember is people are people are people, right? So the difference wasn't the resources, it wasn't the people, it wasn't the capacity, it was the administrative system wrapped around it. But it was that... Yep, yep. That's the smoking gun here. And there's different ways of doing things, and I'll shut up before I go too far. And that, we can finish with optimism, because that is possible. All we have to do is grasp the nettle. Yep. Lovely. And until then, have a great week. And full on. Nice one. Cheers.

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