Making sense of CEOs (allegedly) misbehaving. September 19, 2025

24:51I mean, I think a lot of people are right to be angry. They're just angry at the wrong thing. And these kinds of things have ripple effects, right? Even when the people whose whole raison d 'etre or the whole job with a regulator is to find malfeasance, root it out and punish it and then even you guys are hitting them with a wet lettuce, it's like how else is anyone out there going to go? It's all rigged. And it gets to the point, unfortunately, with those narratives is it goes too far and you get sort of weird conspiracy theories and, you know, everyone's against me and the pendulum swings too far.

25:28So I've really got to be careful here and hopefully I think people can understand the context and the nuance here. It's just my point is it's like, you know, we're pushing people towards these worldviews, these dangerous worldviews, because everything that they see, they're going to misdiagnose it. They're not going to understand the depth of it necessarily. But the anger is legitimate and it's fair. And all this does is just basically say you're right to be angry and you're right to think everything is rigged. Yeah, and you're one of my people think that way. It's exactly right. And you know who doesn't think that way?

26:02People, it's something that you can only experience when you have that direct experience. It's why I think I was more uniquely positioned to understand the rental situation, having been a renter for 10 years. You know, I've been in a house now for less than two years and I've already started, the rage is fading. It's exciting, yep, yep. And I'm embarrassed to admit that, but it's because me personally selfishly, it's no longer a problem for me. I can only imagine what it's like for someone who never went through all of that to sort of intellectually, you know, cognitively understand, though, yeah, this is an ideal is a very different thing to know.

26:40I viscerally understand the inequity and the injustice in this kind of system, right? It's like saying rape is bad. Yeah, goddamn rape is bad. You're never going to have the perspective of a victim, right? And it's something that I don't know what I'm trying to say here. It's just like, I think generally in my circles, when I'm raging about certain things, those who have the most pushback or the most ambivalence, it's not because they're evil or they're dumb or anything like that. It's just that they personally haven't experienced directly. So it's not that they can't intellectualize that, oh yeah, that's not ideal.

27:17I agree with you. But there's no passion or there's no anger because Because for me, I'm kind of all right. And I don't know what that is other than a statement of human nature. Sorry, man, I cut you off before. No, it's a really important point because it's that idea of empathy only goes so far, right? And it's also too easy to, when something's hard and difficult to grasp, it's just you go, well, surely it can be that bad. Yeah, you can try. Is that big a deal? And it's not people trying to not care. It's like there's so much empathy, so much attention, so much consideration, so much kind of challenge to one's worldview that we want to kind of indulge in.

27:56It's like, well, if I have to accept that might be true, then what does that mean about everything else? It's the dominoes falling. It's not the first domino falling. The rest of them are completely fine. So it's, well, I mean, surely it's not that bad. I mean, you're obviously over-exaggerating. Rendy can't be that bad. I mean, you've got a household. That's exactly the response. Exactly. Yeah. And I don't think people don't care. Oh, you've been unlucky. You know, most people are good or this or that, which is probably some degree of truth to that as well. That's because we want to believe it.

28:17We want to believe people are good. It's that worldview that gets challenged. It's time to change. One point before we move on with ANZ, and I know I always make this, but it's worth pointing out, you would kind of think if you're going to be as dodgy as you have been, at least you would expect to the benefit of shareholders and insiders. Like, nah, shareholders, I make the point all the time. ANZ is the classic example. Even in Chanticleer in the AFR article, just like, you guys are probably the worst run bank in Australia, an environment which has not had a recession in a million years, who's going through a property boom unlike the history has never seen.

28:57How are you not, and you're breaking the law. How are you not making out like King Midas at this point? If this is how you perform in this environment, my goodness, what are you going to be like if ever the worm turns on this, which generally speaking economies tend to do from time to time. I mean, like, these guys are paying out basically the same in dividends that they did in 2016. And, like, despite all of that, it's just criminal. It's just so, not criminal's not the right, it's just, what is the right word? Criminality is definitely part of it in regard to the specifics that were being discussed, but it's just almost, it's almost incompetence.

29:36Like, in any free market actual capitalism, capitalistic society, these guys just would have been out-competed into oblivion by someone who can do it. And I'll just say very quickly, I've always been with CBA because I was just a kid who got handed a money box when I was very young and I was just indoctrinated at an early age, which, by the way, anyone running a cult, that's how you do it. Not allowed to do it anymore. Surprise, surprise. So anyway, with the home loan at the moment, it's with ANZ and I can tell you their systems are just, oh, look, I hate all the banks. I'll bash them all day long.

30:10CBA systems are brilliant next to ANZ. It's just unbelievably bad. And it's like, dude, the internet has been around for a while. You've had a website for a while. You've had an app for a while. How can you be so God awful bad at this? It's like you will force in my face these like afterpay clones all day long and give me the opportunity to buy a car. I'm the absolute reckless with your like pumping this cheap credit down my throat. But if I want to know when my next mortgage payment is coming out and what the interest rate is, I'm going to have to go 12 different layers deep in some labyrinthine kind of wandering fashion.

30:54Oh, screw you, ANZ. Screw you and everything you stand for. So, where do we go from that? But thanks for giving me a home loan. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Motley Fool Money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener.

31:16So speaking of banks, mate, this is the other thing. I mean, I'm loathe to let you keep going, but I will because, you know, why not? Why not? We talked a little bit about the fact the RBA has recommended that credit card surcharges now be removed. And we talked a little bit. I'll re-go over the ground just in 30, 60 seconds just for the sake of it. So back in the day, there were no credit card surcharges. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was illegal. The final price is the final price. And then someone decided, I think completely fairly, in the realm of you and I say, you know, you should try, somebody should try things.

31:43If they don't work, then say, okay, we tried it. Yeah, we didn't work. The RBA said, you know what? If there's no price signal for credit cards, consumers will simply use whatever card they want and the credit card companies aren't exposed to competition. Amex can charge more than Visa and MasterCard. They can charge more than BankCard and whatever else because they just can because they're widely owned and widely used and they set the price and the business has got the choice of either saying, I won't accept Visa or I will and I'll pay the fee. And so at some levels, okay, well, that seems like is not particularly a competitive marketplace.

32:13So what we're going to try is we're going to say businesses can now add a surcharge. So the cost of using diners versus Amex versus Visa versus Mastercard versus Bankcard versus FPOS versus cash can kind of be shown in some sort of scale. If you want to use your Amex, it's going to cost you 1.4%. You can use Visa for 0.6%. You can pay cash for their surcharge. And the idea was to give an overt price signal. That could change behaviour. and from all reports it modestly, very modestly, did change behaviour. We had more people using Visa, less people using Amex and, you know, it kind of worked to some degree.

32:49The reality was that in the event, the rest of the public went, I hate this, I hate this with a passion, this is stupid, make this go away, burn this with fire, I never want to pay a surcharge again in my life. Maybe even to our detriment, but that was the response. And so the RBAs read the room and, again, if you're representing, you know, a collective electorate and the vast, vast world people say, make the surcharges go away, please. The RBA has decided, well, okay, we probably should take them away. So that's the announcement. Is their plan to take them away? I think it's next year sometime.

33:17The banks are charging a massive, massive rearguard action on this one, basically saying, oh, you couldn't possibly take this away. You must let us keep charging these surcharges. If you don't, all hell's going to break loose. It's going to be terrible for everybody. And I just thought it was fascinating. If only they cared so much about charging dead people. If they put half the effort in, right? Funny that. So, yes, they are now saying that it would be terrible for everything. In fact, what it'll do is it'll make life harder for small business. They're going to have to absorb it, and we think that's terrible, and we don't want that to happen.

33:50So can you please make it go away? And, by the way, the other thing that the RBA said as part of this, which is kind of not going to get most people's attention because it's just not obviously part of what we do, is they're going to talk about reducing the intercharge fee between the banks. In other words, when they make all their money from charging each other and then pass that on to the customer, they're trying to get that reduced as well. And what are the banks seeing? They're seeing a massive reduction in their potential make-profit. So, of course, now they're saying, oh, we're really sticking up for small businesses, RBA.

34:19You guys are really bad because we want to help the small businesses out there. And see, we're going to have no choice but to pass on the surcharge to the small businesses if you make us do this. And it's just one of those situations where it's absolutely crystal clear. They are playing a political PR game, which is if you do this, we're going to tell small business it's your fault and you're going to have to cop the head. That's exactly what this is going on. It's a – by the way, why are they complaining? The RBA's own estimates reckon that if they remove the exchange fees, it reduced bank revenues by about$900 million a year.

34:56So that's why they're doing it because they're like, hang on, this massive fee gravy train might possibly go away. It's like, well, in what world is that a bad thing? Well, let's be fair. Let's try and be fair. You don't even try? Well, look, businesses have costs. Yeah, they do. They're not charities. Correct. If there's no profit incentive, then no one will do it and we won't have anything. So there are costs with running a network, a monetary network. There's that, right? And particularly with credit cards because you do need fraud protection. There are chargebacks, callbacks. There's all these kinds of things that cost money.

35:35And so I'm the last person to say, well, you, you, you know, you shouldn't be able to recoup it. Cause the end, I mean, it's only because the end, the end result of that line of thinking is, well, I guess we don't do credit cards anymore. And like, I don't know that there's prior to a recent technology, that's sort of like unfeasible. So what are you, what are you, what are you suggesting? No, I'm not, I'm not suggesting anything like that, but you, you use the profit word, not the revenue word there before, right? So this is after costs. Yeah. And so you go, well, at the end of the day, are we just talking about zeros and ones travelling down fibre optic cable here?

36:13Yeah, pretty much. So I kind of think it's like trying to be fair and throw them a bone. I don't think that this is a service that should be provided for free. But this seems to be a pretty good example of rent seeking in the classical economic description of the term rent seeking. which is not a good thing. The other thing that I think the regulators miss here is that these kinds of payment networks are very strongly influenced by network effects. Why is it they're only Visa and MasterCard with a very, very big distance between that and Amex and then nothing? Why? Well, so rationally there's either incredibly big barriers to entry and there are, that's definitely a fact.

37:05I mean, if you don't think that's true, try setting up a payment network. But also once you've got a payment network up, it's almost impossible to overcome because even if you do say, well, I'm better, faster, cheaper and all of those things, like, yeah, but no one accepts Scott Card because no vendors have it. And if no vendors have it, no customers want it. It's the classic network effect at play here. So, okay, networks tend towards monopoly or at least duopoly or very tight oligopoly. They just do because it just doesn't make sense. I mean, this is why everyone hates Elon and everyone uses Twitter, right?

37:46It's like despite the rage, it's like none of the other networks really managed to do much to it, not because of anything other than network effects are dramatically important. You and I get this when we're investing outside of this realm. If we see a company with strong network effects, like it's a pretty good opportunity to buy that thing because it's almost impossible to destroy it. Not impossible, but almost impossible. And Buffett will tell you all day long the importance of moats. And as far as moats go, they don't get better than a network effect. So my point is this, is it's like when you find yourself and there's a whole bunch of historical reasons as to why we do find ourselves in this situation.

38:21but you do find yourself in this situation where you have this competitive advantage that's surrounded you that you are exploiting to the maximum effect, then maybe that would be okay. But when it's impacting the very wheels of commerce and the economy, like you can't operate in the modern economy without these networks. If Visa and MasterCard were to shut down tomorrow, the economy would grind to a halt, unemployment would, like, there would be chaos in the streets. Like, that's how important it is. So I come back to my earlier statement with the banks. When you find yourself as an institution systemically important and absolutely critical to the functioning of our modern society, there's a higher burden of requirement there.

39:15There just is. There just is, right? 100%. And so the banks can kick and scream all they like and it's just sort of like, well, I don't even blame them. Like, of course you're going to like try and - Fight your corner. You're going to fight in your corner? Yeah, I don't want - I make a lot of money. I would like to keep making. Don't begrudge them. I don't begrudge the intent. What I can't understand is how that actually works on anyone else. There's 25 million people in this country. Those directly benefiting from this, you could probably fit into a single room. So where's the argument? You'd think that every single person turns around and goes, yeah, you just don't get to do it.

39:52But, but, but, but, yeah, sucks to be you. I don't know what to tell you. You're still incredibly well off. You're still incredibly privileged. You've still got incredible benefit, right? Like, but you just don't get to do it. And unless you can give me a super compelling reason as to why you get to guard a closed network that you're going to and demonstrably rent-seek on, then we're going to change the rules. Yeah, yeah. Where's the argument? I mean, push back on that. Just be devil's advocate for a second. Give me one half reasonable answer to that question. No, there is one. This is exactly why, to your very point, it's an issue, is that we don't have – the banks will try and lean on the fact they've got lots of shareholders and super funds and that idea of, well, you're an investor, just be careful you don't have Rob Peter to pay Paul here.

40:43That's all the PR exercise. But separate to any of that stuff, to exactly your point, is, okay, but in the real world, what's the actual issue here? You mentioned network effects, mate. I want to double down on that actually because you mentioned Visa and Mastercard Payment Network. Amex has got one to a lesser extent. Here's the other thing. They have not only – and this is just the investing takeaway, actually, kind of moving away from banks. We can move back to bashing the banks if you want, but it just occurred to me as we were thinking about this. Oh, I won. There is – so there are network effects and network effects, right?

41:11Bank card had one. instead of diners. Yep. And so it isn't just the fact you have an effect. There are some customers and some suppliers, in this case retailers, who will trade. It's like even then, these were the five largest network effects in Australian financial services, two of which disappeared. Bank card has been closed down for years. Diners, I don't know, it doesn't even still exist. It probably does. But effectively, like it's gone, right? And not because it didn't do what it said it was going to do, just because the others got bigger and better scale and better scale meant lower prices and lower prices meant they could actually undercut the other guy.

41:43And all of a sudden, retailers are like, well, actually there's fewer people using bank card now and the MasterCard have pushed them to use theirs instead and the retailers don't really want to take it. The network's hard and expensive to maintain. And all of a sudden it's like, well, and this is your point about oligopolies. We couldn't even sustain a five-player oligopoly. There's now effectively three or 3.2 or 3.1, I don't know how big diners it is. Around the world there's UnionCard out of China. there's the, what's the MasterCard version in the EU? I can't remember now. But effectively it's the same kind of thing, just rebranded.

42:13Either way, there is only, you know, even with network effects, even if you've got one, unless yours is the strongest and the best, you have to learn some pressure. Money tends to one, dude. That's why we don't have five different national currencies in Australia because it's ridiculous. Of course it's going to be one. And in the case of our payment rails, it's centred on two, really. Exactly, exactly. So just from an investing angle, call that anything exists of a network effect, a strong one will always be the weak one. Yeah. And that's exactly what you're saying. So even if you describe diners or if you describe bank cards, Australia's bank card network, bank card was the first credit card from memory, at least the big Australian, like maybe MX was around beforehand.

42:51You know, it was the dominant one. We all, everyone can probably remember the bank card logo if you're of a certain age. Yeah. And it just got absolutely smashed. It was the biggest, probably, well, maybe it wasn't. I should be careful. It was a very large network in Australia, every right to be big. But as you said, even nationally, we don't have five national currencies. We don't have five national payment processes. We have two or three big international ones. And that's because scale wins. So it's an investment which is important as well. Underneath that layer is the SWIFT network, right? Yes, correct.

43:21These are just privately run networks. It's all they are. I have to say it because I just have to say it and then we'll move on. I think you did well so far. It's just an open door. I've got to walk through it. But this is one of the things that frustrates you. You could have seen this coming, frankly. I really should have, yeah. But, I mean, it's one of those things I always scratch my head about when people say, oh, but Bitcoin has no utility. It's sort of like, what? An open, permissionless network that allows us to do all of this and anyone can do it and there's no gatekeepers and there's no ability and we actually open up payment rails to the free and open market.

43:58And also I can do instant settlement. If you actually look at a credit card, you tap on your credit card, The retailer gets their money weeks later. It's in escrow up until that point there because it needs to be settled at the back end because they're just one bank system talking. It's all ones and zeros, right? It's all talks, yeah. Oh, but it's not real. It's like, well, do you think your money is real? This is just sitting on a bank database somewhere. That's all it is, and that bank database has to talk to this other bank database, which has to talk to this one. When they're all walled gardens, they're all sealed off and they're all being exploited to maximum effect rationally by the operators of that network.

44:37And you're telling me that we have an effective solution around that but it doesn't do anything? Anyway. I'll shut up. Feel better? I mean, the point has to be made, right? Other than everyone sees it as this thing that you speculate on and it's like, no, it's like in the same way that the internet is vastly superior than a network of fax machines. This is vastly superior than Visa or MasterCard. It just is, right? In fact, just quietly, not even quietly, because they've talked about it. MasterCard and Visa are looking at this, right? Because just so they can use the protocol themselves for the backend settlement, right?

45:15Why go through Swift? I can just do it. What? I can spin up a node and do this by my, yeah, easily. And there's no counterparty risk? Yep. Like it's no laser eyes money, fix the money, fix the world. It's just like prudent, sensible business case because it's more efficient and more effective, which is why it'll win. It'll win. Anyway, there. I said it. I got it out partly and I'm happy. We can move on. I'm glad. If you're happy, I'm happy, Mr. Page. Let's maybe finish. Let's do it super retail. Now, I want to be really, really, really, really, really careful here and throw a lot of allegedly.

45:48So assume that everything's allegedly when we go through this one because the super retail boss, Anthony Herity, I think his name is pronounced, was fired earlier this week. Straight out. And it's been an ongoing investigation about allegations of a relationship between he was the CEO and the company's, I think, former head of HR from memory and what the board did or didn't know. And it kind of comes on the heels of other kind of CEO controversies, let's call them. We had Richard White at WiseTech. Was it last year or this year? I can't remember now. We had Chris Ellison at Mineral Resources. And it reopens a whole lot of questions, mate.

46:26And I don't, well, probably not with the same place we did last time, but it just always fascinates me trying to work through as an investor, as an investor, not as a citizen, not as a policymaker, not as a board director, not as a whatever, but trying to unpick all this. Now, what, frankly, seems to be the issue, and the board were, I should say, by the way, OSHA isn't super retail, just get that up front because it's important. But it just seems really interesting to me that when it came to what was happening. The board effectively punted him this week. By the way, for what, it's$9 million worth of salary and incentives and whatever, so good on him for being decisive and making the call they felt they had to make.

47:06Again, I'm not judging his innocence or guilt, just they came to a decision and were very, very clear about what they wanted to do. Here's the quote. The board made this decision after receiving new information from Mr. Herity regarding his relationship with the company's former chief human resources officer. In light of this new information, the board has concluded Mr Herity's prior disclosures were not satisfactory. End quote. The cover-up is always worse than the crime. Well, like, what I'm not sure about, they were really vague about, I don't know if deliberately or otherwise, was he fired for lying to the board?

47:40Or was he fired for the new disclosures putting his previous behaviour at a different light and therefore being, you know, you wonder about it. It was kind of like, mate, you lied. I could have done it. You lied to me. Okay, now I don't trust you anymore. Or is it, well, actually, we thought it was X, turns out it's actually really Y, and if it's Y, then you have to go. And that's kind of a bit vague and unclear, and no allegation, no assumption, just like I'm actually genuinely not sure whether his behaviour was proven to have been worse than they thought. Probably was either way. But they don't say whether he was sacked for the behaviour or sacked for the information that had now only just now come to light, and whether that changes the complex of the original alleged, perceived offence, or whether it's a case of, well, dude, we gave you a chance to be up front and you didn't take it, so now you don't get any more love, any more leeway.

48:27It's a really difficult one, mate. And again, on top of that, as I said, for an investor, how much do or should we care? I mean, on one level, there's the old line, if I can lie for you, I can lie to you. So you want someone who's going to be candid and up front honest and all that kind of stuff and do the right things, observe workplace policies. On the other, we've seen this. Richard White at WiseTech, shareholders effectively went, well, whatever you did wrong, we'd rather have you than not because you're too valuable to lose. And so there's some really, really difficult, very mercenary questions as investors about where do you draw the line?

49:03You want someone who's going to behave appropriately, however you want to define appropriately. I want to be careful. I'm not saying that Andrew Herdy hasn't been appropriate. Just saying outright, how much value does he add? How much value does his bad behaviour retract? I don't have a strong view on this one, mate. As a shareholder, I genuinely have no strong view. If he'd stayed where I'd be unhappy, no. If he's gone, am I unhappy? No. Should I be more unhappy in one of those circumstances? Yeah, if I knew the realities. I mean, if the behaviour was abominable, okay. Or if he's staying or going is going to be meaningfully impactful for my investing, maybe.

49:37And then I like to be kind of, you know, reasonably moral and ethical, but how much behaviour would I overlook? look, because it's like an individual person doing their own thing. Is it bad? Yes. Is it worth more? Is the bad behaviour going to cost me more than punting him costs me? I don't know the answer to these questions. I find myself really, really, I go shrug. I kind of don't care that he's gone, but I wouldn't have cared if he'd stayed, I guess. It's uncomfortable because I like to have opinions and I like to feel like I'm, you know, a reasonable person with reasonable morals and ethics and standards of behaviour.

50:13And I'm not condoning anything that was done wrong if it was done. I don't know the details. I have no ability to condone or condemn. But I don't know if I feel like it's a big enough deal for me to be, you know, want him gone or happy that he's gone. I just don't know. Yeah. I mean, you've got to separate, not you, I just proverbial you. You have to separate what you might find morally reprehensible versus what might be illegal versus also what really matters, I suppose. So if the best person for the job is someone who in their private life engages in activities that you don't adhere to your moral standards but are perfectly legal, I'm kind of of the opinion of who cares, right?

51:06If there's no victim here, I just, I don't care. It's like in the old days people would have kept their homosexuality a secret because it would have cost them their career. Is that right? I don't care what you do in your spare time. I don't care who you love. It's none of my business, right? And I wouldn't care less. So maybe there's a false equivalence there, but it sort of gets at that. For me, the nub of the issue is the one of trust because what I do want is someone who I feel is trustworthy. and when you've been caught out in a lie, and there's different degrees of lie, right? There's the good white lie you might tell your kids about certain things, right?

51:47For their benefit. And we get into a debate on ethics here, which is like the philosophers have been wrestling with this for 10 ,000 years. So we're not going to fix it here. But for me, like you asked me as an investor and that's how I'll answer it. If there is someone who has been, you know, demonstrated to have consistently lied, not by omission, which is a bit fuzzier, but by when directly questioned has been lied and then found out. It just puts everything, now everything you say I'm going to question. CEO said that they're going to hit this target next year. Are they just saying that or are they lying?

52:26You know, it's like look at your partner, you know, look at your better half. Like you may catch them out in a lie on one thing which in and of itself may be not the worst thing, but now everything that they do or say, there's just going to be that doubt there. It opens the door a little bit. So, again, there's a spectrum here. There's no black or white. At this point you cross the threshold and there, no, I can't trust you. So, again, I'm speaking deliberately in vague general terms here. So Richard White's a good example, actually, because I just don't care. He sounds like a pig of a man. Honestly, frankly, if I can say that without using the word alleged, I don't know.

53:03That's just my humble opinion, right? He might think I'm an idiot too and good on him. He even knows I exist. But he's also an incredible entrepreneur and he's built a wonderful business and he's probably got a lot going for him there. So that's different than outright overt lying and cover up and all these other things. Am I making any sense there? No, total sense. So here's my hypothetical question to you. If you had a CEO who you knew was someone who could magic touch stuff, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, pick your brilliant CEO, and every day he gives you$100 worth of value that you knew wouldn't come from someone else.

53:48But at the same time, you caught him taking$10 a day out of your wallet. What do you do? Firing instantly. And then you're$90 a day worse off. Yep. Demonstrably. Yeah, because it reveals a character flaw that it's like, well, maybe it's only$10 now. But once you've been doing this for a few more years and you were emboldened, a leopard never changed their spot. So it's sort of like, you know, the one thing that matters to me above all else when it comes to senior management in a company that I own or part own is trust. Without trust is nothing. I mean, everything, I don't care how talented you are.

54:26I can't trust you. I just, I'm on very shaky grounds. And so yes, maybe I'm leaving money on the table by getting rid of you. But it's also, I just, this is only what I know about. And you've demonstrated to me that you've been lying and cheating. And so then it's like, well, I guess as long as that's all you're doing, I'm okay with it. But how do I know that? The doubt, once doubt is there, it's very hard to go. Buffett always said that, you know, reputation is something it takes a lifetime to build and an instant to destroy. And he was right, you know, and it's sort of like I just, I just, it, I don't know.

55:07You're normally the cynic, right? So here's my other thought is the CEO is probably taking 10 bucks out of your wallet anyway. You just don't know it yet. Yeah, true. And so there's kind of the part of. But innocent until proven guilty, I suppose. Yes, but I think we also as humans, this is, again, we're back to philosophy, right? As humans, we absolutely, maybe there's no other option, right? But we respond viscerally to the thing that we know and we happily close our eyes and our minds. We just talked about stuff we don't want to know with renters and other things, right? So that idea of kind of like to assume everyone else is perfect, every other CEO is telling the truth, but this guy, this guy, he's the one lying to the board and needs to go, allegedly.

55:45And I kind of, you know, is every other CEO absolutely candid with their board about what's going on in the business? No. Is there every CEO in the ASX keeping something from their directors? Every might be too much, but is it 99 %? Yeah. And nothing necessarily even illegal or even unethical, just that once it is in black and white, you probably have no choice, to your point. I don't disagree with you, by the way. I'm just kind of holding out that idea of the idea that, you know, gee, every other CEO is absolutely ethical and candid and on the level with this guy. This guy was the problem. We never get rid of him.

56:23The ASX is fine now. Every company is wonderful. It's great. No, yeah. And that's kind of, I know you're not saying that, by the way, but I'm just raising that as the kind of, that idea of we kind of, and again, we probably have no other option because the proof is the proof and once you know something, you can't unknow it. And I get all that stuff. I just, part of me is kind of like, you mentioned the cover-up that gets you. It's like, well, how many entrepreneurs lie about their startups, right? Because they haven't quite got it there, but once they, And the lie actually works because it buys them enough time to get to that.

56:54Let me impugn the dead horribly here. Did Steve Jobs, was he always on the level about everything that was going to happen? Is Elon currently genuine about his deadlines? Or is he just blowing smoke? Has Elon lied about every single deadline or has he been wrong about every single deadline? I don't know. But at some point, do I trust him? Well, you know, again, it's every CEO, every piece of guidance, every, you know, wishful thinking. and again, there's a philosophical question we're not going to resolve here. I just think at some level you're not wrong about the proven stuff, but the idea that we go from on to off or from zero to 100 or whatever metaphor you choose in that sort of environment, that's the bit I kind of just want to keep for myself enough space, which is just I don't really know.

57:38And so on that basis maybe I should just be a little bit careful not to do the whole I trust you implicitly, I don't trust you at all. And again, I know you're not saying that either. I'm just, when I think about what I'm trying to do with this, Richard what? You know, Chris Ellison allegedly had some dealings within mineral resources where there were some related party transactions allegedly. You know, if we went back and said Steve Jobs had in 1975 stolen a copy of something and it was proven in court, he was guilty of theft in 1978, do we not invest in Apple ever again after that because he was proven to be a thief?

58:16Or does money take over? Or is there some sort of statute of limitations? Or is there, and again, I'm asking the questions rather than suggesting answers because I don't have them. I'm just trying to model the grey and the complexity and the easy, every talkback shock, right? Yeah. Oh, they're guilty. Hang them. Shame them. This is awful. You know, everyone else, oh, well, maybe not. And again, innocent until proven guilty is absolutely the right legal framework. I just want to leave enough room for assuming everything's okay unless we know for sure it's not, and then having, you know, very, very black and white treatments and results and implications for those people involved.

58:53And, again, really, really, in a really mercenary way. You know, should I have never owned Apple shares? I didn't, by the way, because Steve Jobs was, if he had been a convicted thief in 1972, I don't know. Was Warren Buffett meeting his mother in 1948? Probably. Yes, I know different circumstances, different capacities, but I don't know. There's also just a statistical dimension to this. Whenever you're looking at a large enough company, I would almost say with 100 % certainty that there is a pedophile in every one of the major ASX 200 companies. Right. Now, that's a pretty dark topic. I'm sorry to go there.

59:26Maybe I should have chosen a better example. Thank you, yeah. But, you know, there's a certain background incidence of this. These companies have thousands of employees. Just statistically, it would be surprisingly if that wasn't true. Yep. So, you know, if your standard of, if your moral standards, oh gosh, I've got to be careful because it feels like I'm, I'm just sort of saying there's no company out there that is perfect. And there's certainly no CEO out there is perfect. I reckon Warren Buffett's done all kinds of shameful things we probably don't know about, right? Or that, you know, we would probably, geez, that's a bit unsavory.

1:00:06Or I don't know. I don't want to impugn the guy, but he's a human being, right? God knows. I have done things I'm not proud of. I'm happy to admit that and show me someone without sin, right? Like it's true. But so it's not as though that there is a binary on off switch at a certain point. Yes. But things do, I'm very big on the idea of trying to look at things as holistically as possible. If it's a great company with a great product, doing great things, with great potential, and the CEO has been caught lying on a relatively small matter once, I'll probably overlook it. If it's a so-so company, which I'm not that impressed about too, and they've been found to lie about something that was put to them pretty bluntly and they had every opportunity to do it, you know, I'm like where does it, well, so draw me a line there, Andrew.

1:00:57I was like, I can't draw you a line. All I can do is be a subjective human being and I will have a point at which I just go, no, it's not for me. And I shouldn't even try and say that this is reflecting of this particular company because I haven't looked at this company in a long, long time. I didn't even know who the CEO was until this news story sort of came out. But as a general principle, I do, I mean, again, it just comes back. Here's a good lesson for anyone out there, particularly if you're younger. It's like if you make, when you make, not if, when you make a mistake, the best thing you can do is fess up to it, acknowledge it, make amends as best you can and move on.

1:01:37Yeah, nice to know. You see this all the time, particularly in politics. It's like it's the cover-up. That almost was like, oh, God, I did something bad and now I'm going to, now you've done something wrong. What's worse is now trying to go out of your way and waste everyone's time and resources for you to try and manipulate us into thinking that you didn't do something. It's like it's worse in so many different ways. So, yeah, I don't have an exact answer. But I do know as an investor, and I say this outside of any moral considerations, is that there's no such thing as a perfect company. So every single company I own, there are things I don't like about it, you know.

1:02:19And if I'm waiting for the perfect company with, you know, the Pope, not a bad example, that is, with someone beyond reproach at the head of it, who in every way aspect, in every conceivable analysis is just beyond reproach and brilliant. It's like, I'm just never making an investment. That's what I'm, you know. So you've got to be a pragmatist with this. I'll tell you that. You made the point where it depends how much I love the company and how much, you know. It's degrees. And I think that's the right point. For me, it is just degrees. It is just how much do I care? How big a deal is it? What does it mean from here?

1:02:56I'm kind of also, I don't know, I feel like I need to justify this or explain this, which is just kind of a sign of the world that we're in at the moment. But it used to be kind of like you've done your time, you've done your time. Yeah. You know, kind of like you pay your - Our entire justice system is predicated on that fact, right? Right, you pay your society. Once you've done, you've paid your fine, you've served your sentence, you're done. And our society seems completely obsessed with, well, no, then you have to keep paying. You have to keep paying because you did a thing. It's like, well, yeah, but we've punished you.

1:03:30We agreed as a society. I won't say we agreed. We have a democracy that chooses these things and sets these things. There is a statutory range of punishments. A court, hopefully duly constituted, has decided which part of that spectrum the punishment is appropriate. You've done your thing and we just can't. And again, it's that idea of some of those things we hang on to, Others we let go for kind of not very justifiable reasons, not justifiable as you can't explain them away, but just we are very, very inconsistent. And it depends and it's all that stuff. And it just, you know, either the punishment aren't enough or they are enough in which case we'd let him go.

1:04:09Back to the CEO stuff, it's like, well, I don't know, you know, where's the line? Although, you know, again, in this instance, even if you could convince me that the CEO in question was unfairly treated, I'm still not going to lose much. I just, I feel as though of all the things and injustices in the world that are happening right now, a many, many multimillionaire many times over are losing their job, even unfairly, while wrong. It's just like, yeah, but there's kids getting their legs blown off right now. You know, there's, so it's kind of like you also have, there's only so much scope for outrage.

1:04:50and if there is going to be one, the perceived injustice of what happens to very senior, extraordinarily well-paid executives just doesn't occupy a large part of my brain, I guess. For the record, I'm glad you raised it because that wasn't what I meant. I know you didn't mean that. I think entirely selfishly, which is if they've done a bad thing, do I want to punt them straight away? Not for their sake, but for mine. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah. They've got to the position in theory they're doing a half-decent job running the business. Yeah. And I'm kind of like, well, okay, you know, how many times do you do something wrong before I punch you?

1:05:26By the way, in this case, allegedly, if you were given a chance to fess up if you didn't and something comes up later, it's like, well, you did it and then you lied to me. I was going to give you a chance the first time around and now you've lied to me. I have a lot more sympathy for a situation. If this is the case, allegedly, allegedly, then, yeah, I've got, you know, dude, help me help you. I gave you a chance. It shouldn't be a no-strike game in other words, right? That's kind of my thinking. And again, not that everything's permissible or everything's - Yeah, some things are definitely a no-strike game, right?

1:05:55Right, exactly. But at some point I just - Like you have to kill someone three times or three different people before we charge you with murder. Correct, correct. There's some, yeah. But in corporate malfeasance, we call wrongdoing. I just, I don't know. Who am I hiring? What am I hiring you for? And this is dangerously relativist, right? So call me on it. But part of me is like, you mentioned I don't care who you love. And it's kind of, part of me is kind of like, all right, you fell in love with the HR chick. So that sounds really sexist actually and not very useful. The HR lady, the HR woman, the HR professional.

1:06:28And he didn't mean to and a couple of glasses of wine, you looked at each other across the room, sparks flew. I don't know. I've never had a work relationship. Workplace romances are so common, right? Because they're the people you're mixing with, of course. So part of me is kind of like, this wasn't, I used to take money out of the wallet. I mean, well, I can allegedly, allegedly, as far as we know, The guy wasn't taking money out of the corporate cash register. He wasn't, you know, was it should have been disclosed? Yes. Was it awful and difficult and none of them wanted to lose their jobs and all that sort of stuff?

1:06:56I don't know. And again, I don't know the detail. I'm not sticking up for the person in particular. I just think there's some question about which, that's what I mean with relativism, the question of which crimes are genuinely problematic and which ones aren't, right? There's fraud. Clearly, break the law on behalf of the company, you're out. By the way, ANZ,$240 million for the fines and maybe a few people have broken the law and stayed in their jobs. Break the economy, you're out. Steal money from shareholders, you're out. You know, that stuff I'm 100 % with you at the, you know, no second chance I don't trust you anymore.

1:07:28There's a range. There's a range, I guess, is all I'm thinking. And again, not for that person. I don't care about the CEO individually. I'm being entirely selfish and thinking if I'm a super retail shareholder, do I actually want to punt him for that? I don't know that I do. I'm not sure that I don't, but I'm definitely not sure that I do, given there's potentially some implications for the business. And if I'm worse off for it and it was a, if you'd fall in love with three people in the office and had three separate romances, well, okay, well, dude, we gave you a couple of chances. What do you want from me?

1:07:54I don't know. I don't know. Can I, before we end, I just want to circle back to the credit card thing because I had a tab open. I think you don't said the B word. I think you don't said the B word. I had a tab open and I forgot to mention it because it ties in nicely with everything we were saying before. Right, right. This is a non-partisan statement, but the new, the banking association boss, you know who that is, right? Simon Birmingham. Former Liberal Minister. Replacing, I should say, Anna Burke, who was the former Labor ACT. Just only for the interest of, you know. You're bashing my team.

1:08:32Well, you're an idiot if you're all that one-dimensional. I'm sorry you're an idiot, frankly. I'm going to be much nicer than, much less nice than you would be. So it's just like, I think you can only call out that for what it is. I'm not going to tiptoe around it if you're going to be that myopic. But, I mean, like here's a dude, right, who's now in one of the most powerful lobby organisations in the world whose only skill is having connections to the political apparatus. Yep. You know, if you look at his CV, which I have, right, he started work as an elector officer. He worked as a PR officer for a lobby group.

1:09:10He worked for a director of a lobby group, the Winemakers Federation, then went into politics. Hey, Andrew, where's the banking experience that you might want from someone who's running the bank? Don't have any. Zero have any. And again, it's not to throw shade at Simon because he's operating within the system that allows him to operate it. But just on my earlier point of like, for the love of God, can we not see why people have any lack of faith in institutions? You do your time in parliament. you walk straight into an incredibly powerful lobby group like this and you use your influence and connections to advocate for the continued, you know, for less choice and service for Australians.

1:09:56Because in the interests of a group who collectively are making close to a billion dollars a year by rent-seeking on this. Like it's just, it was just another bit of outrage I had to say into a microphone and now I've said it, I can breathe a little deep, a little bit more in a more relaxed fashion. My question for you, sir, is will this get you through to Sunday morning? Well, you know what? Even if it doesn't, the way that the world is, there'll be like 500 other things to be outraged about between them. I hope the venting allows you to enjoy the next day and a half until Sunday morning is my hope.

1:10:31The secret is just to not open, not put the phone away. Put the phone down. step back that's really the secret I'm reading a book called How Not To Be A Grumpy Old Bugger by Jeff Hutchison I want to say former ABC Perth radio presenter he wrote an article on the Herald it's a little opinion piece I'm reading it and I am consciously and regularly reminded that the number of theaters I should be outraged at are probably much smaller than the ones I am actually outraged at yes yeah sometimes can I borrow it when you're finished yeah sure

1:11:07It sounds like a book. It's like a very, you should read this book, Andrew. This podcast may turn into a yoga retreat at some point if we do read the book. So be warned, be prepared, be informed. It's going to get very zen, don't you worry. Good change. Until we're zen on Sunday, full on. Cheers. The Motley Fool and people appearing in this program may have positions in the companies mentioned. General advice only. Please speak to your financial professional to understand how it may pertain to your situation. Subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener. The Motley Fool operates under Financial Services Licence 400691.