Pollies doing some bad (and good!) things. June 28, 2024

31:32And you're like, oh, by the way, sign up to my service. $500 a year and I'll give you my hot takes. And then there's a dude over there going, actually, we forecast interest rates to be, you know, this to eight decimal places. And this is the sectors that you want to be in. And it's like, I'm going for this reason and that reason. Exactly. Yes. one is certain right and why do they sell it because we're human we want it we crave it yes nature whores a vacuum I said before market hates uncertainties the other cliche and sometimes I hate using cliches the other there are some I'm like they're cliches because they are real that's kind of that's how they become cliches cliches for a reason right and so it's like yeah people don't want uncertainty we want to believe someone can solve our problem for us and it's like oh so that guy over there saying I don't know and it might it depends and it might be bumpy this guy over here is like nah I'll solve your problem for you I'll fix it You'll be all right.

32:19It's like, oh, thank God someone's helping me here. And finally, someone's giving me a solution I can go with. It's like, no, no, they're just selling you a snake oil. Absolutely. Mate, let's go to tax cuts. We're never getting jobs outside of these, by the way. It's not for you. You own your own business. I'm like, if I get fired from the Motley Fool, I am screwed. That's why I started my own business. I think I was employable anywhere else. Like, shut the hell up, dude. You're not helping. I've done a story. I've bad companies on Twitter. I'm like, right, I'm not going to get speaking engagement from this industry or that industry.

32:52I'm not going to get employed by that mob. Neither political party is ever going to take me. Not that I want to be in politics. Neither political party is going to take me. It's like, what am I doing? I'm spending my entire life just annoying people who actually might be able to help me. Motley Fool Money. For more, subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener.

33:12So I'm going to rant because I can. and it's bloody stage three tax cuts mate and and government generally in governments plural not not the current government i i tweeted again during the week and someone a couple of people actually said to me one person tells what you really think the other one said scott it seems like you're getting increasingly heated up about this issue and i and i just really am mate and i i guess i don't know just because i can and because we've got a platform and screw it why not um i just wanted to one more time stage three tax cuts come out next week right i'll be on holidays when they hit so you know it's i'm gonna save everyone from the from the after effects of my rent rantiness but i will rant in advance um i just if you were trying to put a set of policies together to make inflation worse interest rates higher and increase the pain on people you would have a population growth that's frankly it's not out of control it's a bit too hyperbolic but way higher than it should be and you would throw more as you said i loved your line about trying to put the fire up by throwing petrol on it that's exactly what's happening when it comes to the tax cuts and government spending and it's just like there is i you know if you have an ideal you and i have ideological differences on bitcoin for example right a whole lot of stuff and it's like okay here's your reasonable view here's my reasonable view we just disagree that's cool right ideology philosophy approach to life frankly you know guesses about the future they differ reasonable people can disagree reasonably that's that's great it's really really useful one of the best things about twitter is when we have those sort of conversations basically this podcast too by the way with great questions from our listeners and then you get these situations where it's like there is no way on god's green earth giving a tax cut on the first of july 2024 does not put pressure on inflation there is no way in god's green earth bringing in 560 odd thousand people over 12 months doesn't make house prices higher and inflation worse if you were trying to do those things this is exactly what you would do if you believed at any part of your fiber of your being that actually not making people's lives harder not making prices higher not making mortgages more expensive not making rents more expensive if you believe in any part of your body that was actually the goal you would take different actions and i just it just feels so incredibly reckless mate i'm i'm really lucky right i don't have i'm not the same position of a whole lot of other people i have a pretty good job i get paid pretty well um i bought my first house a long time ago i was not not not that long i'm not that old but you know i didn't have to buy a house at prevailing prices yesterday i don't have to work for the average wage i don't have three kids to support um so i'm doing i'm doing all right but if i look around and think i just cannot believe and this is this is the last government left a massive structural deficit and and legislated tax cuts the current government's made it frankly worse uh they've redistributed the tax cuts but the dollars are the same they've kept spending even though they know inflation is still out of control and way too high and i just i just it's almost time to make you run outside just yelling at the clouds right there is just something about the lack of i i'm hesitant to prescribe motives right because that's that's not fair i don't know what's going on in the heads of the treasury the politicians the government or the opposition but nobody has a policy to actually fix the problems that that are so obvious there are some really difficult challenges in australia right some really difficult problems the energy energy debate is really really difficult this one is not difficult i mean you know economics is not maths and it's not physics and there are a whole other unintended consequences and second order impacts as you've mentioned before but just for the love of god not adding to the inflationary problem is just such an easy thing to do you could fix it tomorrow should you have the political will and a bit of common sense and i just i don't know of any reasonable reason not to i don't know of anyone else's ideological view which like no no it's good we're doing this because it's going to make things better in any meaningful way those say the tax cuts are going to help pay the bills Yes, it's true.

37:00They're also going to make the bills higher. So guess what? It's a Pyrrhic victory. I just don't know, mate. I just don't get it. And it frustrates the hell out of me. It's really, really cranky. The government seems to care so little about people who are getting absolutely smashed by this stuff and not even trying to help in any meaningful way. Am I completely off base? No, you're absolutely right. The trouble is it's a really interesting dynamic where what the government looks like it's doing is helping. Right. That's why it's so pernicious. So you're right. They're not helping. Guys, stop. They're making it worse.

37:33That's not that they're not helping. They're genuinely making it worse. Get out of the way here. You're making it worse. Yes, yes. Stop trying to help. Stop helping, okay? If this is what help looks like, I don't need it. But the trouble is to, again, the proverbial man in the street, it's kind of like you're telling me that they're going to give me some extra money to buy my house. That's really cool. Oh, you're telling me that I'm going to have to pay less tax and you're telling me that's a bad thing? like again we talk about it often the difference between first order and second order thinking it's like yes in nominal terms you will have more money in your pocket it's just that everything is going to be a hell of a lot more expensive and in real terms you're going to be worse off that's the problem and we're going to have all kinds of social impacts and increasing wealth divides and all these these undesirable qualities is exactly what we're going to do and this isn't some fringe academic theory that may or may not.

38:24This is well-established kind of stuff. In fact, there's a name for this, and it's called fiscal dominance. And we've seen periods of this throughout history before. Fiscal dominance is a scenario where the government's fiscal activities, i.e. its spending and its taxation policies, are such, and in the context of a a good deal of government debt, override anything that the RBA can do. We know that setting interest rates and creating money has a big impact, right? Obviously it does, but it can be overridden by, by, uh, uh, government fiscal spending and to, and to a very significant degree where the, the RBA is kind of like secondary in the, in this, in this whole equation.

39:11Yeah. Yeah. We saw, we saw this actually writ large, in Japan, the big period of fiscal dominance there. And we've kind of seen sort of what's been playing out. But it happens, it actually happens historically over long stretches of time, really towards the end of what they call the big debt cycles. The big, I'm sure there's a better word than big. There's something that's more technical sound just escapes me at the moment. But we have these credit cycles, right? Things expand and then they tighten up and boom, bust, all that kind of stuff. but there's a really great YouTube video actually from Ray Dalio, a guy who started Bridgewater, the biggest hedge fund in the world, how the economy works.

39:53And he talks about these debt cycles. It's actually a really cool animation. Oh, yeah. You know, it's really old. He's actually done more recent ones as well, but someone animated it. It's really cool. It's really cool. And he talks about these giant debt cycles. And, again, students of history will notice they happen all the time and have for hundreds of sort of years. But it's usually at the end of when things start to get towards the pointy end of things, when there's a huge buildup of debt, which sort of hamstrings the central banks in what they can do. Then the government tries to help, which does the exact opposite thing than what it should do, which makes it very bad, which inevitably precipitates a deleveraging event, is what Dalio calls it.

40:39Now, he makes the point here. Now, I'll make the point, too. this is what we want. We want a deleveraging. Your personal credit card, you've got 12 personal credit cards, you're up to the eyeballs in all of them, you're in big kind of trouble. Not a bad idea to deleverage, right? I'm going to put it out there. And it's the same for economies and governments and stuff as well. But he talks about a beautiful deleveraging versus a catastrophic deleveraging. And I just want to make the point that it can be done, at least in theory in a way which is less painful than having the market sort of force it upon you because things just reach a breaking point and everything collapses in on the government just can't do anything at that kind of point.

41:25But for that to happen, you need a bit of foresight. And to your original point here, stop helping. Stop bloody helping, right? Get out of the way here. And we want to sort of manage this transition as effectively as we can. It's going to happen. The hangover is coming, right? One way or the other, whether it's tomorrow or it's 10 years later, you just cannot extrapolate these trends forever. Because if you do, you get to ridiculous things that just fall under their own weight. So we have to fix it. I think everyone would agree on that. And this is your point. I'm probably stealing your thunder here.

41:57But it's just like what you are doing is not helping. It's the opposite of helping guys get the hell out of the way. Well, I'm a little bit less hands-off than you. I think I actually should be doing things that actually make a difference, which is also very possible. You know, I think, stop helping, but also start helping, right? Start actually helping, not pretending to help. I just want to make that point, because there are so many things governments can do. I know I use the example all the time, but the ABS has got a biplane, right? It's got a joystick in front of it, up, down, or sideways.

42:28That's all it can do. Literally, I mean, yeah, the jawbone, yeah, QE, but realistically, up, down, and sideways. That's kind of it, right? Now, QE can be meaningful and massive, by the way, so i don't i don't want to downplay it but the reality is they haven't got that many different tools that they've got you know one or one and a half tools that kind of work the same way and do the same thing at at a very broad you know cross-sectional kind of impacts governments are flying the proverbial fighter jet or jumbo jet right with dials and switches and knobs and weapons and and you know that they can do things that that a biplane can only dream of doing and in really really super precise ways they're not carpet bombing it's laser guided missile stuff you know don't mix my metaphors and yet they're like if i can have a tax cut and the rest is up to governor bullock sorry and just that it's just such a ridiculous approach to the way that we think about actually helping right just there is a real issue and the issue is being dealt with now again remember you have a different view which is essentially leave the whole line that's fine um the reality is people are getting smashed by inflation and we can either say i'm sorry can't help you off you go or we actually say let's actually try and find a solution make it work I'm in the latter camp you may you may be in the pure hands-off camp mate and frankly if they at least did that I'd be happier so I think we have a unity ticket there I'd push a little bit harder do a little bit more but the bottom line is still these are tax cuts that are going to make things worse the Queensland government gotta love them is throwing money around I don't watch Queensland politics super closely but they are so badly trying to I say by the election I don't mean it in a bribery or untoward sense but they are throwing so much money at so many promises to desperately try and win enough votes it's just bananas um economically let alone politically the best thing might be if they don't return to power i don't mean that any any partisan political sense i don't know any of their other policies but but purely economically if they're gonna throw that much money at stuff it's like i'm not sure we're not better off without them the government's federal government's energy bill relief that was three and a half billion dollars being given to everyone including juna and twiggy is just madness um i just i could i i do believe honestly believe that our bar and chumers want to do the right thing i i don't think they're there just for their own purpose i don't think it's just selfishness i don't even think it's just power but i just think once you get to that situation of i really should do these things but if i do i might lose power and if i do the other guys might get in so i won't do those things just in case it's unpopular and i just think it's the worst way to try and run a government and as i said this is not just ideological right there are people literally getting smashed right now who could be smashed less in other circumstances should the government as you say stop helping the way they are and i would argue at least start helping in a more productive way that's the slippery slope of rationalization there right it's sort of like well we have to i know it's not great to do this but if we don't do this we won't be in power if we're in power we can't fix and then there'll be the other guys and they're terrible so we can't let them so we're going to do the wrong thing yeah and it's sort of like totally right and i kind of get it they're voting for an opposition so they can get into government they can host with their own petard i mean you know there should not have been tax cuts on july 1 they just should not have been given the inflate so it shouldn't be funded with debt i've said that before and it shouldn't be done right now yeah if you want to give tax cuts if they're justified fine do it at an appropriate time you're not gonna make inflation worse and fund it with spending cuts or more revenue from somewhere else knock yourselves out yeah this is just it was stupid to vote on at the time it was stupid of the former government to legislate something three or four years out where you didn't know what the hell was going to happen by then it was stupid of the then opposition now government to vote for it in opposition it's stupid on the continue it through this.

45:51It's stupid of the opposition to say, well, you have to do it. And apparently they've recommitted to giving back even more money now on top of the people who missed out after the stage three tax cuts were redone, I believe. I might be wrong. Their policy is to make those people whole on the tax cuts they were going to get. So they're going to make it worse rather than better. I'm an optimist, mate. You know I'm a glass half full guy. I'm the Pollyanna in the room. But gee, our politicians are making it hard to believe. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, and the RBA is complicit to a degree too. And they have to be, their hands are tied.

46:22So government spends more than it takes in. Okay. You have to borrow the rest. How do you borrow the rest? You issue a bond. There you go. Free market, take a bond. Free market will take it. But knowing that the central bank has these things called open market operations, which is just a fancy way of saying, because here's the thing, right? I think we all assume that the RBA's target rate is this mandate. That's just what it is. Like, no, it's actually banks set the rate at which they lend each other overnight. It's a target rate. And the way that the RBA affects that target rate is by buying and selling securities on the secondary market.

46:53It's an actor, except it's a very unique actor because when it buys, it's buying with just a poof, I just created some money. I shall now buy these bonds off you. And in doing so, it sets a market price that no one else can transact, meaning if you're different from because of that. Again, exhibit A being Japan who took that to the nth degree. Yes. And again, not a conspiracy, just I think the mechanisms are worth understanding. understanding and i just want to draw a line through all of this because because what that ultimately means is if the if this if the private market isn't prepared to take those bonds well the rba will effectively buy them with free money which means the greater money in the system more money in the system same amount of goods and services in the system guess what happens prices go up yeah guess what we're trying to not make happen to go up and again they have and so when don't say their hands are tight it's like okay michelle bullock goes no we're not going to do that i'm like okay so liquidity drains from the system there's just not enough there's not enough demand for people to sell the bonds at the price that they would like so they take losses there they become more nervous they don't lend out that big that just you know so on and so forth and then it leads to very dire situations so i was like and the mandate is stability financial stability and price stability.

48:10So they have to do it, even though, God, please let this be true, that they know how the world works. I'm not convinced they do. Do you know what I mean? It's sort of like, what do you do? What do you do? And I think the fact that you, and we said this recently, the fact that she came out, she is the cat's mother, I shouldn't say that, Michelle Bullock, came out and said, gee, it would help if the government wasn't counterproductive, is so, like she said it very sensibly and soft-spokenly, but the fact she said it at all shows you just what they, behind closed doors, they must be tearing their hair out.

48:54Oh, that is the equivalent of bureaucratic shouting. That's true about carrying a placard down Martin Place, yelling as she went, you guys are really going to put your fingers out of the right thing here for the love of God. because when a bureaucrat gets to that point of even mentioning their political masters, not because they're being political, just because there was a Westminster tradition, for better or worse, that a public servant has those conversations behind closed doors. They don't see it as their view to wade into the politics of these things or tell the government how to run itself.

49:22And I don't think that's necessarily inappropriate. Some people think it is. I don't necessarily think it is. But in either case, the simple reality is that she said it as loudly as anyone I think pretty much ever has, or certainly anyone's been prepared to recently, which is you guys need to come to the party here. Yeah. Yeah, I'm less sympathetic to that. I prefer to be able to speak without fear or failure, fear or favour, sorry. That's true. In the Westminster system, that's normally to your minister, not in the public domain. The head of defence material doesn't come out and say, the minister is terrible.

49:55I think we should be buying more guns and less tanks or more submarines or something. They kind of, they give the minister the frank and fearless advice, hopefully knowing the minister won't then sack them for saying what they don't want to say, but doing it inside the offices rather than outside. That's the general – again, I'm not saying Chicago shouldn't change, but the frankenfielers are generally inside the halls where the minister hears it, you know, unvarnished, so they can, in theory, make better decisions rather than yes, minister, no minister. Whatever you say, minister, it's more, mate, you're an idiot.

50:20Here's what you need to know. But now you've got to make the call. Yeah, yeah. And you hope, by the way, that's happening in the Treasury offices too. I hope it is, but I just – I always think – this is the great epiphany I think everyone has as they get older. Like when you're a kid, right? Adults run the world. They seem to know what's going on. Yeah, that's right. You know, what do I know? I'm still trying to figure out how to put one foot in front of the other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you reach a certain age and I probably reached a lot later than most people, but you reach a certain age where you go, everyone's making it up as they go along.

50:53I don't care if you're Jerome Powell or you're the prime minister. I'm like, you're just, you're one person. You're not that smart. You're not that, you know, you're not, you're not a superhuman. You're the same. You're full of doubts and uncertainties and frailties and failures and, you know, imperfections. And no one kind of knows what's going on. And five out of the day than us, right? Because they've done the work and done the research. I mean, yeah, there are people who are more informed and better able to make those decisions based on experience and education. But they're not infallible.

51:21As you say, you can't know what's going to happen next. The 4 ,000 ingredient cake is still 4 ,000 ingredient cake no matter how many ingredients you know off by heart. Yeah. Well, there's a very real potential that the most powerful man in the world come November will have an IQ below 100. So I don't know if I accept that that's the case. I mean the bureaucrats rather than the politicians, actually. I don't want to put that all. I can point to a few examples there as well, right? So I guess what it all means is that I always feel as though don't be afraid to ask dumb questions because I don't think there really are any dumb questions.

51:58And particularly in this domain, I'm sure a lot of people listening to this podcast go, God, it's all gobbledygook. And when you really think about a lot of the commentary and stuff, it's said with a lot of big words and with a lot of confidence and certainty. And just push on it a little bit. But we don't push on it. I don't push on it enough because I'm afraid I'm just going to look like an idiot because someone's going to go, Andrew, it's really easy. Actually. It's this, this, and it's this. and you just embarrassed yourself in front of a huge number of people. So that voice in your head keeps you doing it.

52:31That's so true. But this is so important, this stuff. This is our very prosperity and robustness that is at stake here. And if we can't be able to – that's why I lamented a lot of the quality of journalism. They just can't get up there and ask the really dumb question. Yeah, I think that's right. And then say, no, explain that to them. Everyone's hurting here. You're doing this. Draw me a line so that I can understand it. Don't just say a big word. Don't appeal to authority. Don't use any of these, any number of behavioral biases to sort of just make me think or gaslight me into thinking that I just don't know.

53:07And don't you worry your pretty little head. I'm an adult expert, you know. Yeah. Because the more I kind of push on it, the more I've got to, and again, I'll caveat this by saying I'm just not that bright. So there is very much that. I get that. but it's just like the deeper i go the more i'm convinced that it's just like a lot of this is underpinned by some pretty flimsy thinking to my mind at least but i could be wrong hey mate i want to move on a bit because we're running our time again well you know relative time um i'm gonna talk about two two bits of politics we've just spent a lot of time talking about it but i just want to a couple a couple of good things at least at least in theory um and i this is not a mailbag episode but we did get a message recording this on thursday the 27th of June.

53:49Julian Assange was freed overnight. I don't want to get into the pros and cons of that necessarily. It's not my point of raising it. I know people have different views and that's completely fine. I just, you know, for all of our, this is a nice counterpoint, right, for all of my rantiness just before. Brandon just sent me a direct message this morning. He said, G'day Scott. No question today. I just hope you can bring this up in an upcoming episode of The Pod Machine. I like that, Brandon. Thank you. A delegation of six Australian politicians came together. Two Greens, two Coalition, one independent and one labor to go and petition the u.s government into releasing julian assange if this isn't what politics should look like i'll eat my shorts with a sweat smile emoji keep up the good work fellas initially that was that was worth just highlighting because you know it's again with you with you if you're julian assange aside um sometimes politics does work that the idea of you know people from across the political spectrum getting together and doing something they thought was useful regardless of party affiliation i thought that was just a nice a nice reminder.

54:45I think not to be only and too cynical. I disagree. Why? I don't. Actually, I don't. Look, I think absolutely this is an example of a good political outcome. That's the point. Even if you don't believe you should be released necessarily, I don't know if you're doing it, that's okay. I totally think you should be released. The point was just they are working together across across the political spectrum for a joint outcome rather than resorting to party lines and saying, I think this, you think that, you're bad, I'm good. There was actually a genuine goodwill effort to do something they all thought was worthwhile.

55:23I think that's, we see that too infrequently. Yeah. So I do agree with that. So I'm being a little bit cheeky, cheeky here. But what I said to you off air before we started recording, why I still lament the fact that it has to be a political process. In my naive world, again, I'm a simpleton. I know, I know. But in my naive world, we have this thing of the separation of powers. We have an independent judiciary. And I would argue that the law is the law is the law is the law. Sure. And why does a politician need to get involved to affect a legal outcome? How can a politician impact a legal outcome?

56:03Now, I'm old enough to know that that's how the world works, right? It's also the US justice and rather than ours, to be fair as well. So it's a little bit cross-jurisdictional at some point, too. Yeah. But again, the US is the most important country in the world in a number of respects. And I guess that's the lament for me. Is this a great example of politics and people going across party lines who affect a positive outcome? And again, let me just say that it's got nothing to do with the person himself or his character. It's the principle that's at play here. But the fact that it needed to be a political, that it was a political process makes me despair.

56:42Yeah, fair enough. That's also fair. Yes, I think that's right. Although, I don't know, mate. I've got enough issues with the Australian political system. I'm not going to wade into the US political judicial system. But I disagree with you, actually. It does. Yeah, it does make you wonder. I just very quickly on that, too. I heard the lawyer, Julian's lawyer being interviewed. And she was, gosh, she was good. and she was just making the point here it's like what this is so fundamental to our democracy again the specifics of the case and people whether they like him or not or what he you know they i think we we're losing the key issue here and the key issue here is that you should if as a journalist and it doesn't even matter if you think he's a journalist or not but the the current state of play is that if a journalist is handed sensitive information and receives that they could be liable for treason in the way that the current law is.

57:33Now, they've not yet published it. They've not yet verified, but they've accepted it willingly. That's one of the key nubs at the issue. And I would say for, we talk about the balance of power, and we've often talked about the fourth estate and the importance of media to hold powers to account for all of us, for the health of our democracy, and to keep powers in check. Now, if you're reckless with that information and you endanger lives, And they're, okay, fine. It's a very different conversation. But if you can't even receive information to make a determination on whether this is in the public interest and whether this is something that people do need to know about and that I am going to, like with Watergate or any number of big, you know, I am going to expose a great inequity or great evil.

58:20if that if you're going to be i mean we're very close to stalinist russia you know and and other parts of the world that don't enjoy these freedoms and and democracy dies like slowly a thousand cuts here and i i think it's something that that we need to focus on and what has happened here and why it is so important um that that that he has been released and that there are certain realities that have been recognized. Not codified, which is the problem, I suppose. Correct. But at least recognized, and it does sort of precede. So I, for one, am super glad he is out, and I think it sets an incredibly important precedent.

59:03I think that's all true. The only thing I'll make is, again, we're talking about US law here, not Australian law. Oh, yeah, sure. We're talking about democracy. But they're our major ally. They're a major trading partner. They're the world's police. They're a nuclear power. they're an economic superpower you know i just like i get you but yeah i just made the point you know the the benefit is that you know again i well david mcbride's been jailed for whistleblowing in the right sort of sense so there is a whole lot of whole lot of stuff there um there is something funny and this is to me i'm being just being um ornery and contrarian for the sake of it but i i think it's it's really important we have views on these things tend to be more

59:47strident when i think we expect more of the party that we're talking about which is kind of appropriate but also kind of just interesting in itself you know for everything that's going on china uh chinese uh uh plane passengers apparently have to keep their window blinds down when they're flying over you know chinese military bases these days right and so there's kind of that that idea of you know there's you know the u.s is horribly horribly flawed as it is and as much as i think Donald Trump is entirely unfit to be president again. You know, will they be worse than China or Russia or whatever?

1:00:15Probably not. Yeah, and are they perfect? Yeah, but that's, that's, that's a, if that's your best, I know what you're saying, by the way, but if that's your best, it's like saying, hey, at least I'm not Hitler. You know, like, okay. My point, I suppose, is that we need to, we should, we should push for better things everywhere. I guess my point is that we tend to, we start from a ratchet position of, you know, well, at least China's not killing Uyghurs anymore. That's okay. as if you know it's that incremental benefit of you know if if some of those countries that we don't necessarily love had at least the the flawed democratic circumstances of the u.s they'd be in a million percent better better position they are sure and i'm not defending the u.s in slightest i'm just kind of making the point we kind of feel more aggrieved by by behavior relative to what they're stated stated it's the hypocrisy that we we hear right it's like you know if if china had the sort of laws the u.s had we'd feel like it was a massive improvement and yet we look at the us go man that's terrible i think both are true i guess is my point i'm not saying one is better than the other or one justifies the other for a second well i i agree i i just well you you mentioned mcbride here i think it's super super important the interesting thing is whether it was the afghan files where's the ato stuff or who was the other one who came forward with some of the stuff the cba was doing and et cetera yes yes i believe yes i believe i believe that's yeah and And what's interesting in these particular cases is that, and again, remove yourself from the personalities that are involved here.

1:01:39You can't go to jail for being an annoying person, right? Half of us would be in jail if that was the case. So get rid of all of that. When you have released information after going through the proper processes, after it has been determined that, yes, it was in the public interest, after it was determined that no one's life was endangered in any way. and after it was determined that you were right you didn't make it up it was right after all of those things and you go to jail not the u.s in australia correct is is beyond like no had it been that oh he did something and he put all these soldiers lives in danger different story how'd he done this and it was full of half-truths and and you know um okay different different kind of story had it been found that actually it's got no bearing on the public interest angle here sort of like yeah i guess it kind of happened but doesn't really impact you know okay fine but none of those things were true none of those things were true and again it's just sort of like pull yourself away from the specifics of each of these issues and ask yourself yeah is that the kind of country we want to live in now again is that good democracy correct do we we hand these people and these institutions incredible amounts of power because you kind of you just can't run the entire world in a decentralized fashion you need you need institutions right well at least that's the best way we've come up with so far right and okay that's that's fine but but to those great institutions with great power must be held to account must be held to account and the fact that you were embarrassed doesn't cut it as a reason as to why some poor schmuck should end in jail i have their life like financially bankrupt or ruined you know it's just to me i just i can i try to pride myself on having a balanced view of things of trying to sort of at least try and understand the other viewpoint i've got i've gotten zero on this these regards like how is it that anyone takes the other side of that argument and goes no that guy needs to spend years and years and years in jail we need to ruin his life for telling the truth revealing something that was in the public interest and and preventing a great evil from from from uh extending or not being recognized or not you know i think any of us would realize that if if if if evil has evil is too strong a word but has been done in our name on our behalf by people who are never going to be held to account and they start to recognize that that's going to be the case going forward gosh that's a slippery slope like things things change very radically in a world where it's just like huh turns out i can kind of do all this stuff and there's no recourse for anyone to stop me it just i don't know i i get i get very scared with those potentials i think that's fair let's go back to the positive i love i love how you know i always know i always know that you've got a different view if you move on very quickly no i don't it's it's uh i'm thinking we're a minute four minutes of our podcast that's all no i okay so let me let me uh if i'm wrong i'm wrong like let me know i think i think you're i think we need i know i think you're 100 right i don't know that i don't actually know enough of the details of the assange case to know really uh the david mcbride case i know a little bit more about and it seems pretty unreasonable to use the laws they've used to jail him um not that well here's the problem right what i want to be actually really careful here it was not reasonable to use the laws to jail him the judge interpreted the laws appropriately i have no question the judge was acting in their magistrate whoever it was justice um acting acting according to the law so i want to be really careful i'm not saying there's any judicial um uh malfeasance malfeasance just general no i don't know there's any areas of law um nothing wrong the question is the laws right and and i think it's good for democracy to have more daylight and i think there should be more codified whistleblower laws so that as you say mate whatever the whatever the preconditions are putting people in danger whatever the national interest whatever whatever um whatever those things are that if we could agree on a better version of them more whistleblower laws are desperately necessary um sunlight sunlight is the is the best disinfectant right big shout out rex Patrick, former SA Senator, an absolute tragedy for our parliament.

1:05:48We lost him to the Senate. He's brilliant. Gosh, he's brilliant. The great thing is he's taken on himself to now basically run a million, not literally, freedom of information requests and try and add transparency to government, which is brilliant. Have you tried to get him on the good oil? I have not. Actually, I should. Do it. Dude, do it. Get him. Reach out right after this. You've got to do it. He's excellent. Let me go back to what I was going to say, though, about news about politicians, because we had some really good news this week. No guarantees, no promises. We ranted before, I've ranted before, about the federal government's suggestion to tax unrealized gains in super for accounts that have more than$3 million in them.

1:06:23So what they've decided to do is, if you're on the$3 million, your tax rate is now 30 % on those earnings, and the earnings would be measured in realized and unrealized gains. In other words, if your portfolio of$3 million went up by 10 % because your shares went up, you'd make a$300 ,000 paper profit, and you had to pay tax on that paper profit even if you hadn't sold or received a cent in dividends from that, which is just absolute policy madness. I don't know what Jim Chalmers was thinking. I have hypothesized before that I think they're probably saying they want to effectively de facto cap on super by saying to people, you can't meet the tax burden.

1:06:59If you've got to sell the asset, you might as well take it out of super. I suspect that's actually what they were trying to get at, a little too cutely. But great news this week. David Pocock and Jackie Lambie, senators both, apparently are against that particular part of the proposal and would, in theory, vote against it, making it much, much more likely that it won't get up as a new piece of legislation, which I think is wonderful news. I don't think we need to mollycoddle people with a lot of super. Don't get me wrong. This is not about protecting the rich or anything else. Whether you have a dollar or a million dollars in unrealized earnings, you shouldn't have to crystallize those earnings to pay a tax bill is my very, very strong view.

1:07:34So excellent work from Senators Pocock and Lambie in my view. No, strong agree. Strong, strong agree. It's absolute madness. That's what I mean. I've got to believe they did it literally to try and become this de facto whacking stick to cap super. Like if you're on the three million bucks, you might as well take it out because you're going to have to sell something anyway to take the money out. Just do that. Just do that. It's extra compliance. It's extra work. It's extra cost. It's greater inefficiency. And again, for those that go, yeah, but they got richer. It's like, okay, spend it. Spend it.

1:08:05Correct. Oh, you have to sell your shares to spend it? Yeah. And then when you sell it, there'll be a tax event? Yep. We're not advocating for no pay. You will pay tax. Right. But it's just when you sell it. And until you sell it, it's a number on a screen, right? Yeah, it's crazy. That's the worst part of this. It's not even collecting more tax. It's purely a timing difference. Yeah. It's like, do you collect it now when it's gone up on paper or tomorrow when you sell the shares? There was no incremental tax revenue on this one. It's just a timing difference. It just makes such little sense. It's absolute madness.

1:08:37Yeah, it really is. And think about it this way too. If I make a capital loss, my shares or my property or whatever in my super goes down. Yeah. I've got to recognize that in the year. This is the thing. It's just that stupid paperwork and complexity and it's like another bloody rule, another bloody something going on. It's just crazy, isn't it? Yeah. Sorry for my phone beeping in the background too. I'm desperately trying to shut it up. I'd actually hear it. I'm not sure it'll come through. Can't you hear it? Okay. We'll see how we go. Sorry. I've been guilty of that before so I feel your pain mate on that note I reckon we might finish up one last one for me just to say I know I've said I think I've said before I certainly am going to say in upcoming episodes I'm going on holidays after today's episode we pre-recorded Sundays already so you'll hear a couple of pre-recorded episodes in fact four weeks of them away for three weeks but we figured we'd do the extra week just in case something went badly I didn't make it back for one reason or another at least hopefully make it back at some point but just to make sure there was no pressure on that particular week of recording um i want to say thank you to you for for uh putting in the hard yards it's a lot of it's a lot of pre-recording we do as our listeners well know more than an hour an episode uh it takes more time to write and think and talk and and andrew's been very very generous in making his time available over the over the last three or four weeks to kind of shoehorn some of these in he also gets a four-week break from me so i'm just gonna say i'm getting a holiday too so it's you know but um i just want to say i appreciate it thank you everyone who's sending questions and stuff we'll be around um it will be around i'll be on the socials on and off uh and we'll certainly be back so if you've got any more questions for the marvade do throw at us um we are recording one more episode after this one but it won't come out for a few weeks so um yeah it's what matters one today thank you to you and just let our listeners know that's happening uh i will be heading to broom i'm going up through the middle and then across to broom and then back again because i'm an idiot and uh and apparently driving you know 11 or a thousand kilometers was a good idea so i hope hopefully it'll be enjoyable hopefully be worthwhile uh i'll certainly be around about if you if you see me around the place come and say g'day uh but otherwise i'll i'll be back we'll be back recording new episodes in late july so that's that's our time frame at the moment but you won't be without uh link our audio uh producer engineer extraordinaire has done a wonderful job of getting some of these episodes ready so we won't leave you without i just want to kind of put that on the record so people know what's going on and know what to expect out of the next few weeks yep uh i'm a little bit annoyed at you though i mean you are look at you going around the country stimulating things.

1:10:57We're trying to control inflation and there you are swimming with the whale sharks and la-di-da. You know what, Miss Bullock, you need to put interest rates up because Scott is stimulating the hell out of Australia on his whirlwind stimulatory tour. Mate, I'm driving a diesel Hilux. There's no... And we're camping most of the time so unfortunately anyone hoping for a glamping inspired economic recovery is not going to get it from me. My lady wife may have decided differently had she been in charge of the itinerary. I'm just making fun of some of the established thinking. I'm sure you'll have a great time, and I'm extremely jealous.

1:11:33I cannot wait. I will throw some photos on the social, so if you don't want to see them, now's a good time to unsubscribe from the socials, but it'll be a bit of fun. Anyway, I don't want to be too self-indulgent. I just want to let our listeners know what was going on, and thank you, mate, for doing that. We are going to be back this Sunday. I know that is a fact because we've already recorded the episode, but we are going to record another episode to come out soon, so stay tuned for that. And in the meantime, have a great weekend and Fool on. Yeah, thanks for listening.